Catholic leader is hushed on gay rights

• New York Times

NEW YORK — The leading Roman Catholic advocate of a liberalized attitude toward homosexuality on the part of the church has been ordered by the Vatican to keep silent on the subject.

The priest, the Rev. John J. McNeill, was told last Saturday by his Jesuit superior about the action, by the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The Vatican also directed Father McNeill, 51, to ask the publisher of

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Groundbreaking for a new church addition and social center at the West Side Hungarian Reformed Church, 15300 Puritas Ave., will be at 10:40 a.m. Sept. 11.

his book on homosexuality to remove words indicating the church's permission from future editions. The book, "The Church and the Homosexual," was published last year by Sheed Andrew McMeel in Kansas City, Mo.

The Rev. Eamon Taylor, superior of the New York Province of Jesuits, who originally approved the work in 1974, confirmed that Father McNeill had been silenced on the subject.

Father McNeill, in a letter to delegates to a Convention of Dignity, and organization for homosexual concerns, said he would obey the ban, but insisted that the Vatican directive "does not in any way demand retraction or repudiation of my ideas or judgments in the book." Father McNeill was scheduled to address the organization, which he helped to establish six years ago, but canceled his plan to do so.

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The Parma Heights Baptist Church, 8971 W. Ridgewood Dr., Parma Heights, will host the Northern Ohio Prophecy Conference from Sept. 18 through 23. The conference will include lectures on the future of the church and the world.

In the book, Father McNeill contends that homosexuality can be morally good and should be measured by the same standards of love as heterosexuality. He also argued that negative views toward homosexuality had been fostered by a misunderstanding, of certain Biblical texts..

The latest major statement on sexuality by the Vatican, issued in 1976, specifically condemns homosexuality as "intrinsically disordered."

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But the church has also encouraged

more pastoral concern for homosexuals. The condition of homosexuality as such is not considered sinful, only homosexual acts are.

Father McNeill has said he considers himself "psychically identified" with homosexuals and has worked on their behalf for many years.

Father McNeill's book has sold 15,000 hard-cover copies and he has. been in great demand as a speaker on the subject. His colleagues regard him as a circumspect man who favors orderly change rather than radical protest.

Father Taylor said the silencing of Father McNeill did not mean the church was "abandoning efforts to help gay Catholics." He added that he believed the priest's book would continue to generate useful discussion.