Andrew Sullivan’s post on the life of Fr. Mychal Judge is heartbreaking–that anyone would conclude that the Catholic Church thinks that if Fr. Judge (the priest who died ministering at the World Trade Center on 9/11) was a gay man his life had “no social value.” The Catholic Church says no such thing.

This new document released yesterday from the Vatican says that “the Church, while profoundly respecting the persons in question, cannot admit to the seminary or to holy orders those who practice homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called ‘gay culture.’ ” That strikes me as neither a surprising nor a hateful position. If you practice homosexuality and support “the so-called ‘gay culture’” wouldn’t you expect that to be a barrier to the sacrament of the Catholic priesthood?

Not to be crass or flip about something so painful for many but the head of the Congregation for Catholic Education, Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, gets to the common sense of it in a Vatican Radio interview, relayed by the Washington Post this morning: “For the church, denying ordination to gay men is no more discriminatory than ‘if a person who suffers from vertigo is not admitted to a school for astronauts,’ the cardinal said.” If you don’t accept the Church’s teachings on sexuality, how would it make sense for you to be a priest? How would it make sense for the Church to have you serving as a priest? Why would you even want to?