The BBC take on That Document

'But it treats homosexuality as a "tendency", not an orientation'

'Some Catholic theologians feel the document is not sufficiently clear, the BBC's Peter Gould says.
'That it refers to "tendencies" rather than orientation "has left many people scratching their heads," Jesuit scholar Father Thomas Reese told him.'

What's puzzling about this? I suppose I can see why certain sectors might prefer the concept of 'orientation' to that of 'tendency', but to use the term 'tendency' does not seem unclear to me.

It is rather bizarre that this is the main headline story on the World Service (not BBC News) front page. It really seems very far from the most significant thing happening in the world at present. The piece on Reporting Religion on the World Service at the weekend was sensible enough, though.

Oh well, this story is happier. (Though the headline doesn't strictly make sense... 'Vatican ordains Vietnamese priests'... I do wish that journalists wouldn't make 'the Vatican' the grammatical subject in every headline concerning clerical activity...)