VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican is preparing a document that could prevent men with homosexual tendencies from becoming priests, Church sources said on Tuesday.
The document, being worked out by several Vatican departments, is currently in an early drafting stage and it is not clear when it will be released.
In its present form it would require bishops and directors of seminaries to block men with homosexual orientation from entering the priesthood.
The Church sources stressed that the document was still being discussed and that a number of bishops had expressed reservations about how it could be implemented.
The issue of gay men in the Roman Catholic priesthood, long one of quiet discussion, was thrown into the open this year following pedophilia scandals in the United States.
While Church officials insist there is no link between pedophilia and celibacy, the scandals have opened debate on many aspects of sexuality among the all-male clergy, particularly because most abuse cases concerned homosexual acts.
The Catholic Church's traditional teaching says that homosexual orientation is not sinful but homosexual acts are.
The Church's Cathechism says homosexual tendencies are "disordered" and some Vatican officials have said that men with homosexual inclinations should be barred from the priesthood.
DEBATE OVER ORDINATION
Some experts say gay men should still have the possibility of becoming priests if they are committed to living chaste lives, just like heterosexual candidates.
The Rev. Thomas Reese, editor-in-chief of the U.S. Jesuit weekly magazine America, said there were more arguments in favor of ordaining gay men than for stopping ordaining them.
In an editorial due to appear in the next issue of the magazine, Reese says the Church should ensure it ordains only psychologically healthy priests, whether they have heterosexual or homosexual inclinations.
"Healthy and dedicated gay men serving in the priesthood make an important contribution to the life of the Church," Reese said. "The burden of proof therefore lies with those who would seek to prevent such ordinations in the future."
But others say that, since the Church teaches that homosexual inclination is a disorder, it is a contradiction to allow those men to become priests.
They say that more should be done to screen them out at an early stage because they would be challenged to remain celibate in a mostly male environment.
A separate Vatican document will address how the Church should better use modern techniques such as psychological screening to choose future priests.
Writing in the same magazine in September, Father Andrew Baker, a member of the Vatican's Congregation for Bishops, wrote that homosexual tendencies were "aberrations" and that same-sex attraction was "disordered."
This, he wrote, should be enough to be included among the "prudent doubts" that Church law requires directors of seminaries to exercise when admitting candidates.
Earlier this year, Bishop Wilton Gregory, president of the U.S. Bishops Conference, expressed concern that heterosexual men might be put off from entering the priesthood if there was too much of a "homosexual atmosphere" in seminaries.