A surprise Vatican decision, announced 10 days earlier to make it easier for Anglicans to become Roman Catholics while retaining aspects of Anglican liturgy and identity, had left some wondering whether Rome would embrace married Anglican clergy in large numbers.

A Holy See statement Saturday quoted Cardinal William Levada, the Holy See’s guardian of doctrinal correctness, as saying the Vatican would consider accepting married Anglican priests into the Roman Catholic priesthood as it has in the past – evaluating each case on its own merits.

The Roman Catholic church requires its priests to be celibate, except in the case of the Eastern rite Catholics, who are allowed to be ordained if married. But over the last decades, it has also quietly allowed married Anglican clergy to stay priests when converting to Catholicism.

In no case could a married man become a bishop, and the new rules would exclude any married Anglican bishop from retaining that post.

As for possibly admitting married Anglican seminarians to the Catholic priesthood, Levada said “objective criteria about any such possibilities (e.g. married seminarians already in preparation) are to be developed” for approval by the Holy See.

Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi dismissed what he called some media speculation that there was “disagreement about whether celibacy will be the norm for the future clergy” among converting Anglicans.

He quoted Levada as saying “there is no substance to such speculation,” and that the only reason why the rules regarding the converting Anglicans haven’t been published yet was due to “technical” reasons. He predicted work on the new rules would be completed by the end of the first week of November.

Pope Benedict XVI has dedicated a good part of his papacy since 2005 welcoming traditionalists into Rome’s fold.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the spiritual leader of Anglicans worldwide, wasn’t consulted about the changes but will have the opportunity to discuss the state of Catholic-Anglican relations when he meets with Benedict on Nov. 21 during a visit to Rome.

The Vatican’s easing the way for Anglicans to convert might undermine decades of efforts between the Holy See and Anglican leaders over how they might possibly unite.

Anglicans split with Rome in 1534 when the Vatican refused to give English King Henry VIII a marriage annulment. The Anglican communion includes the Episcopalian Church in the United States.

Some Anglican faithful, unhappy over progressive reforms in their church, consider themselves Catholics although they have not yet officially joined the Roman Catholic church.

Anglicans have been divided over such issues as admitting women to the priesthood. The rift was torn wide open in 2003, when the Episcopal Church in the United States consecrated V. Gene Robinson, as the first openly gay bishop.

Also disenchanting Anglican conservatives has been the blessing of same-sex marriages.

But the ramifications of the conflict between the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England are broad and not yet completely clear, with details of the Vatican’s offer to help Anglicans convert still unpublished.

It is not yet known what part of the Anglicans’ liturgy and rites will be incorporated into Catholic worship under the surprise offer made earlier this week in a bold bid by Pope Benedict XVI to capitalize on sharp divisions within the Anglican community over the proper role of women clergy and the acceptability of openly gay priests.

Nor is it evident how many Anglicans will seek to switch churches because of the pope’s new policy. The Right Rev. John Broadhurst, the Bishop of Fulham, believes roughly 1,000 Church of England clergy will seek to join the Roman Catholic Church. He is chairman of Forward in Faith, a group of traditionalists opposed to the ordination of women.

He said this was not a direct result of the pope’s new policy but a reflection of widespread unhappiness with liberal Church of England policies.

“There are 1,000 priests who are totally disenchanted with the position on women bishops, and if there is no provision for them, they will inevitably leave the Church of England,” he said. “The Church of England is in a crisis because of its own internal policies and has been for a long time.”

Others predict the exodus will be smaller.

Some changes are certain: it will, for example, be possible for married Anglican clergy to become Roman Catholic clergy under the new rules, a prospect that some believe may open the door, slowly, to the acceptance of married Catholic priests.

The Rev. Thomas Reese, a Vatican expert at Georgetown’s Theological Center in Washington, predicted the Vatican announcement may have “significant and unforeseen consequences” for the Catholic Church.

“It may in fact provide the Catholic Church with a steady supply of married priests,” he wrote.

Several commentators have suggested that the Catholic Church will be increasingly pressured into relaxing its own celibacy rule for priests because of the expected influx of married Anglican priests. For years, there have been calls for so-called “viri provati” or tested men to perform priestly functions to help relieve the priest shortage in the United States and much of the developing world.

The Vatican has always rejected those calls, saying the celibacy rule is not up for negotiation.

Cardinal William Levada acknowledged that the influx of married Anglican priests into the Catholic Church could create problems. But he said he didn’t think the problem would be “insurmountable.”

“It’s a question of education, of the reasons for this kind of a disposition among our faithful,” he told a press conference earlier this week. “And I think that experience has already shown us that if an explanation is given, that people understand that and accept it as an exception.”

Part of the problem stems from the fact that, according to the new Vatican norms, Anglican seminarians will be trained alongside Catholic seminarians. It stands to reason that that the already difficult decision a Catholic seminarian must make to live a celibate life will be made even more difficult if his schoolmate is allowed to have a wife.

“I think for some people it seems to be a problem because as you know there have been many catholic priests who have left the priesthood to get married, and the question rises: ‘If these former Anglicans can be married priests, what about us?’” Levada said.

But he said the two circumstances are completely different. The Vatican grants an exception to Anglican priests as a way of respecting that their calling to be Catholic happened to have occurred after they were married.

Already, some Catholic groups that have long advocated making celibacy optional for priests are seeing the new ruling as a lever to be used to force the Roman Catholic Church to liberalize its policies on married clergy.

“We’re surprised and pleased to see Vatican flexibility in permitting married priests for Anglican converts, but we need the option of a married priesthood in the Latin rite of the Catholic Church too,” said Christine Schenk, director of FutureChurch, an Ohio-based coalition that favors liberalization of Church rules.

Other group members predicted that Catholic seminarians who wish to marry will likely join the Anglican branch to take advantage of the new situation. They say acceptance of married priests is a vital step needed to help combat the shortage of priests, both in the United States and around the world.

The number of priests in the US has dropped from about 58,000 in 1965 to 40,000 today. The number of priests worldwide has declined slightly since 1970, during a time when the number of Catholics in the world has nearly doubled to an estimated 1.1. billion, according to figures compiled by the Center for Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.

The shortage is caused not only by men leaving the priesthood, many in order to marry, but also by the difficulty of recruiting qualified candidates for the seminaries.

The surprise Vatican move, designed to make the Roman Catholic Church more attractive to Anglicans, seems to have caught senior Anglican officials flatfooted.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the spiritual leader of the global Anglican church, told followers in a letter that he only learned of the Vatican’s plans at the very last minute.

He seemed uncomfortable at a press conference announcing the change, and has said he is waiting for details to see how it will be put in practice.

In a new profanity-laced monologue making the rounds on YouTube in time for U.N. World Food Day on Friday, Silverman suggests that it’s time for the pope to “move out of your house that is a city” and use the proceeds to feed the world’s poor.

“On an ego level alone you will be the biggest hero in the history of ever!” she exclaimed. “Sell the Vatican. Feed the world.”

The Vatican clearly has no plans to follow suit. On Thursday, a spokesman declined to comment. But the Catholic League, the U.S. Catholic civil rights organization, denounced Silverman and cable broadcaster HBO for her “obscene” and “filthy diatribe.”

In a statement, it noted that such an attack would never have been leveled against, say, the chief rabbi of Jerusalem or the state of Israel and added that the “Catholic Church operates more hospitals and feeds more of the poor than any private institution in the world.”

Yet the Rev. James Martin, culture editor of the Jesuit magazine America, says Silverman may be onto something. In an online article, Martin noted that Jesus himself told his followers to sell what they had and give it to the poor.

“Of course Pope Benedict XVI could not ’sell’ any of the treasures of the Vatican, the same way that your local archbishop couldn’t sell off the cathedral at a whim; they are not his, they are the church’s,” Martin wrote. “And the church is not simply the hierarchy but the entire people of God.”

But he added: “Still, perhaps Ms. Silverman, in her postmodern, potty-mouthed way is on to something. Like Jesus was. Sell the Vatican? Well, maybe not everything but perhaps a statue or two?”

For the record, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, which just released its annual report on the state of world hunger, says global food output will have to increase by 70 percent to feed a projected population of 9.1 billion in 2050.

To achieve that, poor countries will need $44 billion in annual agricultural aid, compared with the current $7.9 billion, the Rome-based FAO said. Overall, an annual net investment in agriculture of $83 billion is needed to feed the world.

Even if the pope were to sell the Vatican, it wouldn’t be enough.

In 2004, the Vatican disclosed that the Holy See’s real estate was worth 700 million euros, or about $908 million at the time. That doesn’t include St. Peter’s Basilica and the Sistine Chapel, which the Vatican termed priceless and valued at a symbolic 1 euro.

While the Vatican’s artistic holdings are obviously worth millions, the institution itself doesn’t bring in a lot of cash. In 2008, it ran a euro0.9 million ($1.28 million) deficit, the second year of losses. Revenues were euro253.9 million and expenses euro254.8 million.

The Vatican began publishing its finances in 1981, when Pope John Paul II ordered financial disclosure to debunk the idea that the Vatican was rich.

Silverman, who is no stranger to religiously and racially charged slurs, gained international attention with her 2008 “The Great Schlep” campaign in which she exhorted Jews to go to Florida to convince their grandparents to vote for Barack Obama.

The brief announcement, keeping to Vatican tradition, did not say why the staunchly conservative Monsignor Joseph Martino, 63, Bishop of Scranton, Pennsylvania, had submitted his resignation. He took up the post in 2003.

Under canon law, which contain the “rules” of the Catholic church, bishops are expected to offer their resignation when they turn 75, but the pope sometimes asks bishops to stay on beyond that age.

The Vatican said that the pope had accepted the resignation under a provision of canon law in which a bishop due to illness or “some other grave reason, has become unsuited” to carry out his duties, in which case the bishop is “earnestly requested to offer his resignation from office.”

A spokesman for the Vatican declined to elaborate on the resignation because the Diocese of Scranton had announced it will hold a news conference later in the day.

The resignation came as no surprise. A local newspaper reported last week that workers removed furniture from Martino’s residence in Scranton.

The pope also accepted the resignation of Scranton’s auxiliary bishop John Dougherty for reasons of age. No new appointments were announced.

2. Anti-gay marriage people are not going to listen, but they need to stay away from hysteria, hyperbole, and homophobia. And they should use Stanley Kurtz more. He is their best advocate and you better read him if you want to see gay marriage a reality.

3. I’m willing to bet the majority of Americans have no trouble with torture if it keeps the country safe.

4. Aside from a university, decent coffee-shop, and bookstore, what’s the point of Princeton, New Jersey ?

5. Wendy, formerly of Prince and the Revolution, called the stiletto heeled man a “fancy lesbian.” My auntie said the same thing back in the day.

6. Who knew the folk in the Vatican had a sense of humor? Intimidation?Is that what it is? Really?

7. One of these days I’m going to go to a GLAAD Media Awards dinner. Of course, I’ll have to lose 20 pounds. My fat tummy better cooperate. It won’t but a brother needs to have goals.

8. Yes that’s me in the attached photo looking funky. I was helping out at a book reading by T Cooper. Read his stuff. The previous photo I used was some random guy. Loved his hair and his “I can’t believe you just said that nonsense to me” look.

9. I’m going to use my fame just once: Dear Beau Breedlove. Call me baby! I’m in love (and yes a 365gay.com writer said the word fame).

10. No cherry pie yet. Have no clue on what I’m waiting on.

Pope Benedict XVI said last month that condoms weren’t the answer to Africa’s AIDS epidemic and could make the problem worse.

France, Germany, the U.N. AIDS-fighting agency as well as the British medical journal The Lancet criticized the comments as irresponsible and dangerous. The Belgian parliament passed a resolution calling them “unacceptable” and demanding that the government officially protest.

Belgium’s ambassador to the Holy See lodged the formal protest April 15, prompting the strongly worded Vatican statement Friday.

Criticizing the Belgian vote, the Vatican said it deplored “the fact that a parliamentary assembly should have thought it appropriate to criticize the Holy Father on the basis of an isolated extract from an interview, separated from its context.”

It said the remarks had been “used by some groups with a clear intent to intimidate, as if to dissuade the Pope from expressing himself on certain themes of obvious moral relevance and from teaching the Church’s doctrine.”

It wasn’t immediately clear which groups the Vatican was referring to. The Belgian resolution, which passed April 2, said Benedict’s comments ran against numerous international declarations and actions taken by the United Nations and others who have been fighting AIDS and other transmittable diseases such as malaria.

It said they were “unacceptable” and that the Belgian government didn’t share them.

A similar resolution is under consideration by the Belgian Senate.

In its statement, the Vatican decried what it said was an “unprecedented media campaign” in Europe that was unleashed by the pope’s remarks about condoms, while ignoring Benedict’s fuller message about the need to care for those suffering from AIDS.

The Vatican said it was consoled that Africans and “the true friends of Africa” had praised and appreciated the pontiff’s remarks.

The 82-year-old pope, who marks his fourth anniversary as pontiff on Sunday, has faced enormous criticism recently. In addition to the uproar over his condom comments, his decision to remove the excommunication of a bishop who denied the Holocaust sparked outcry, even within his own church.

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an association that gathers the leaders of most of the country’s women’s congregations, said it was informed of the “doctrinal assessment” in a letter from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s orthodoxy watchdog.

The doctrinal investigation is separate from another Vatican-ordered study looking into the quality of the life in more than 400 U.S. women’s religious institutes. That study was launched as the church grapples with the dramatic decline in the number of American nuns and sisters over the past several decades.

In a statement, the Leadership Conference said the new doctrinal study would look into its activities and initiatives, but it provided no details.

Calls to the Vatican spokesman were not returned late Wednesday. A spokeswoman of the conference, Sister Annmarie Sanders, declined to comment beyond the statement.

The National Catholic Reporter, an independent newspaper, said the Vatican ordered up the probe because the sisters had not addressed problems raised by the Vatican in 2001 about their promotion of church teaching on homosexuality, salvation and the priesthood, which the Vatican says is reserved for men.

The newspaper cited a letter from the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Joseph Levada, to the conference saying the Vatican had concluded that the problems raised in 2001 remain based on the “tenor and the doctrinal content” of speeches given at the conference’s annual meetings.

The conference said it was confident going into the investigation, saying it believed it had been faithful to its mission of serving leaders of women’s orders “as they seek to further the mission of Christ in today’s world.”

The conference says it has more than 1,500 members, who represent about 95 percent of the 59,000 women religious in the United States.

The April 22-23 vigil is being organized by Soulforce which regularly demonstrates at colleges and universities that deny admission to LGBT students.

Last month, the Obama administration formally endorsed the U.N. declaration that calls for the worldwide decriminalization of homosexuality, a measure that former President George W. Bush had refused to sign.

To date, almost 70 of the 192 member countries of the UN have signed the declaration.

Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Vatican’s Ambassador to the United Nations, was among the first to criticize the declaration, claiming it could be used to pressure countries to recognize same-sex marriage.

“If adopted,” said Migliore, “they would create new and implacable discriminations. For example, states which do not recognize same-sex unions as ‘matrimony’ will be pilloried and made an object of pressure.”

Being gay or lesbian is illegal in nearly 80 countries and subject to the death penalty in at least seven.

Migliore has not replied to a letter from Soulforce, calling on him to take a personal stand against the denigration of LGBT people and to work with the Vatican on respecting the human rights of everyone.

The vigil in New York City will coincide with similar Soulforce actions in Little Rock, Dallas, Phoenix, Detroit, Los Angeles and New Haven, the group said in a statement.

“We want to remind the Vatican,” said spokesperson Haven Herrin, “that the only path to justice is dignity and respect for all people.”

For several years, Soulforce has held the Equality Ride, where members attempt to visit campuses of universities and colleges that refuse to enroll openly gay students.

More than 200 U.S. colleges and universities have explicit policies that discriminate against LGBT students.

The Vatican also says seminaries are doing well in teaching about celibacy and are generally effective in screening candidates for the priesthood.

The Vatican ordered the seminary review in response to the clergy sex abuse crisis to see whether the schools had contributed to the problem.

The Vatican also directed evaluators to look for “evidence of homosexuality” in the schools.

Some Catholics blame gay clergy for the abuse scandal. Experts on sex offenders say gays are no more likely than others to molest children.

The demonstrators, including some Italian politicians, gathered just outside Vatican City’s borders.
The proposed UN declaration condemns “discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity” and will be presented at the General Assembly on Wednesday by France.

Dec. 10th was chosen to present it to the General Assembly because the date marks the 60th anniversary of the UN declaration of human rights.

The declaration already has been signed by the member states of the European Union. It was drafted by France, which currently holds the rotating EU Presidency.

The Vatican in a statement said the declaration would force countries to legalize same-sex marriage.

Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Vatican’s permanent observer at the UN, said in the statement last week that the declaration would discriminate against states which support traditional marriage.

“If adopted, they would create new and implacable discriminations … For example, states which do not recognize same-sex unions as ‘matrimony’ will be pilloried and made an object of pressure,” Migliore said.

The Vatican has long been an opponent of LGBT rights – especially marriage.

It fought hard against same-sex marriage rights in Holland, Belgium, Spain, Canada and South Africa, all of which went on to legalize gay unions.

In the U.S., the Catholic Church was heavily involved in the fight against gay marriage in Massachusetts and Connecticut, both of  which now allow gay marriage, and was instrumental in the passage of Proposition 8, which overturned the California Supreme Court ruling allowing same-sex marriage in that state.

In October, the Church said it was considering psychological testing for prospective priests to screen out candidates “with strong homosexual tendencies” and heterosexuals “unable to control their sexual urges.”

More than 80 nations have laws denying or limiting LGBT civil rights. Some Muslim countries impose the death penalty on homosexuality while others have lengthy prison sentences.