Amy W. on The Doomsday Document, UPDATED

Amy Welborn says it all very well, commenting on the Vatican's Instruction regarding homosexual seminarians (there shall be no more of them...)

And while she's at it, she also comments very effectively on the debate in the Wisconsin Legislature regarding the "marriage amendment."

The bigger problem is that there seems to be a consistent connection between sympathy for the secular gay agenda and ethos and a disinterest or even antipathy to traditional Catholic teaching on sexuality and family, period. And we're not talking about little points of minutiae here: we're talking about the big picture, that big picture in which the relationship between male and female is an anaology for the relationship between God and humanity, and even a template for understanding creation, period. Disconnect from that, and you are slowly, but surely, disconnecting from Catholic Christianity as you depend on your own personal revelation, rather than the public revelation of Scripture and so on, to define your faith, and the faith which you are teaching, preaching, and being guided by in your pastoral ministry.

Supporters of the "marriage amendment" might wish to delete the adjective "Catholic" from the above paragraph--but they will still wind up with the essence: marriage is an analogy, and tradition going back 5,000 or so years is sufficient testimony.

As to the seminary situation: were homosexuality merely an orifice-selection dyslexia, the document may have been written differently. But it is not "merely" that. It is much larger, involving weltanschauung--the real relationship between men and women. THAT is the core.

UPDATE: As DomBet is predicting that there will be Op Eds "talking the seminarians off the ledge" from various Bishops in the next several weeks, here's an inoculation for one of the likely claims--that the Document was not signed off by Pope B-16:

That is true [that it was not issued in forma specifica, meaning the Pope has not officially invested it with his personal authority]—but the reason is important: “Instructions” do not normally promulgate new legislation (which would require the forma specifica approval of the Pope). Instructions rather provide greater specification to the way that the existing discipline of the Church is to be understood. That is what we have here: a restatement in more precise terms of the centuries old discipline of the Church.

As this document breaks no new ground legislatively, no forma specifica approval is warranted. In converse fashion, one may likewise conclude that the notions of the likes of [a prominent Log Cabin Dominican] are not only ruled out by this document, his ideas were never a part of authentic Catholic discipline (note esp., the letter of Card. Medina footnoted in this Instruction).

In other words, certain Bishops and Archbishops (and Cardinals) may wiggle, squirm, and apply Jesuitical hermeneutics--at the risk of their own souls and further damaging their credibility among the Faithful.

But don't buy their apples, Eve...