More from the USCCB Before Their Nov. Meeting

Bishops Draft Rules Ministering to Gays

Bishop Arthur J. Serratelli of Paterson, N.J., the chairman of the bishops doctrine committee, which wrote the new guidelines, said that although it was difficult to predict whether it would pass, “It’s a very sound document, a very clear document. My sense is that the bishops will readily embrace it.”

Gay Catholic leaders who had read the draft, however, predicted that it would only further alienate gays and their families from the church.

“There certainly is some lovely language that sounds welcoming in here,” said Sam Sinnett, president of DignityUSA, an organization for gay Catholics, “but essentially they’re repeating all the spiritually violent things they’ve been saying about gay and lesbian Catholics for a couple of decades — that we are ‘objectively disordered’ and our relationships are intrinsically evil.”