The Vatican followed up in 2008 with a directive to implement psychological screening for candidates for the priesthood. The Belgian college of bishops elaborated that the sexual restrictions for seminary and priesthood candidates apply equally to men of all sexual orientations. There have been some questions on how distinctions between deep-seated and transient homosexuality, as proposed by the document, would be applied in practice: the actual distinction that is made might be between those who abuse and those who do not.
Two months before his death in 2005, Pope John Paul II, troubled by the sex scandals in the US, Austria, and Ireland, had written to the Congregation for Catholic Education: "Right from the moment young men enter a Seminary their ability to live a life of celibacy should be monitored so that before their ordination one should be morally certain of their sexual and emotional maturity." The document has attracted criticism based on an interpretation that the document implies that homosexuality is associated with pedophilia or with sexual abuse more generally. While the preparation for this document had started 10 years before its publication, this instruction has been seen as an official answer by the Catholic Church to several sex scandals involving priests in the late 20th/early 21st century, including the American Roman Catholic sex abuse cases and a 2004 sex scandal in a seminary at St. In the light of such teaching, this Dicastery, in accord with the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, believes it necessary to state clearly that the Church, while profoundly respecting the persons in question, cannot admit to the seminary or to holy orders those who practise homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called "gay culture". Consequently, under no circumstance can they be approved. . The Tradition has constantly considered them as intrinsically immoral and contrary to the natural law. Regarding acts, it teaches that Sacred Scripture presents them as grave sins. The Catechism distinguishes between homosexual acts and homosexual tendencies. As the title of the document indicates, it concerned exclusively candidates with homosexual tendencies, and not other candidates. No new moral teaching was contained in the instruction: the instruction proposed by the document was rather towards enhancing vigilance in barring gay men from seminaries, and from the priesthood. However, men with "deeply rooted homosexual tendencies" or who are sexually active cannot be ordained. According to the new policy, men with "transitory" homosexual leanings may be ordained deacons following three years of prayer and chastity.
Publication was made through the Congregation for Catholic Education. In November 2005, the Vatican completed an Instruction Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in view of their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders. Instruction Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations (2005) However, this was left to bishops to enforce and most did not, holding homosexuals to the same standards of celibate chastity as heterosexual seminarians. The 1961 document entitled Careful Selection and Training of Candidates for the States of Perfection and Sacred Orders stated that homosexual men should not be ordained.