"This looks like a diversionary tactic to deflect public attention away from the Vatican's real problem which is child sex abuse by clergy," said Peter Tatchell of the British gay pressure group OutRage!

"The Pope should be tackling pedophiles within the Church, not witch-hunting gay people," he told Reuters.

The document re-enforces standing policy that many in the Church believe has not been properly enforced. Its urgency has been highlighted by the 2002 sexual abuse scandal in the United States, where some 80 percent of the victims were boys.

While the Vatican has said the document was drafted to deal with the scandals, some critics saw it as a diversionary tactic.

"At a time when the Church should be taking responsibility for the harm created by a devastating sex abuse scandal, they are instead using gay people as scapegoats," said Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, a U.S. gay rights group.

"This decree is a diversion that neither keeps children safe nor holds criminals responsible," he said.

CONSERVATIVES CHEER

Conservative Catholics have cheered the document, as did some sectors of the Anglican Church, which itself has been split by over the issue of ordaining openly gay clergy.

"That's a policy that we have been promoting and that we support whole-heartedly," said Canon Tunde Popoola, director of communications for the Anglican Church of Nigeria. "It gladdens my heart to hear others coming up with such a policy."

But Father Tom Reese, a U.S. Jesuit scholar and author, said the Vatican had not necessarily done its homework on the issue.

"The Vatican is making decisions about the appropriateness of ordaining homosexuals in total ignorance of how many current priests are homosexuals, how well they observe celibacy and how well they do ministry," he said.

Reese, who lost his job as editor of the U.S. Jesuit weekly America because the journal displeased Pope Benedict, said the Vatican appeared to be missing the point.

"If someone is called to the priesthood by God but denied it by church officials, then it is not a violation of a human right, it is a violation of a divine right--the right of God to call whomever he chooses to the priesthood," he said.

The document does not affect those men who are already priests, but some said it could hurt future vocations.

"If these regulations had previously existed, many existing archbishops and cardinals would have never been allowed to enter the priesthood .... this edict is pure hypocrisy," said Tatchell. "The Church will not survive without its gay clergy."

The document, an "instruction" by the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education which has been approved by the Pope, distinguishes between "deep-seated" homosexual tendencies and what it calls "the expression of a transitory problem."

But John Allen, a columnist for the National Catholic Reporter in the United States, said this would give seminary directors latitude to continue to make individual judgments.

"Canon (Church) lawyers have told me you can slice and dice this thing a thousand different ways," Allen said.