by Stephen Wynne • ChurchMilitant.com • October 25, 2018
Bishops appear to reinforce Church teaching on homosexuality
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ROME (ChurchMilitant.com) - Pro-gay language has reportedly been dropped from the Rome Youth Synod.
On Wednesday, Vatican expert Sandro Magister reported that discussions among synod fathers did not include changing Church teaching on homosexuality — even among the most aggressively pro-gay cardinals.
Though assembly discussions were closed to the public, according to small circle reports, any mention of homosexuality referred back to the traditional teaching in the Catechism, which states that homosexuals "are called to chastity" because their "inclination" is "objectively disordered."
The development is surprising some, given that the synod's the Instrumentum Laboris — the synod's starter document — seemed to indicate a different direction could be expected, as it included the politically charged term "LGBT." In paragraph 197, the document stated:
Some LGBT youths, through various contributions that were received by the General Secretariat of the Synod, wish to "benefit from greater closeness" and experience greater care by the Church, while some BC ask themselves what to suggest "to young people who decide to create homosexual instead of heterosexual couples and, above all, would like to be close to the Church."
"And instead nothing," Magister wrote. "When it came time to discuss this paragraph in the third week of the synod, not even those synod fathers known as innovators came out into the open."
Even the group headed by Chicago Cdl. Blase Cupich — one of the Church's most left-leaning prelates — explicitly referenced doctrinal teaching on homosexuality.
Cdl. Luis Antonio Tagle of Manila
Concerning youth "who experience same-sex attraction," the group ("Anglicus B") declared: "We propose a separate section for this issue and that the main objective of this be the pastoral accompaniment of these people which follows the lines of the relevant section of the Catechism in the Catholic Church."
Other gay-friendly cardinals discussed the question, but according to their written accounts, affirmed "the goodness of the Church's traditional vision" and insisted on the need for the "conversion" of homosexuals to chastity.
At a press conference Tuesday, Manila Cdl. Luis Antonio Tagle was asked whether the final synod document would follow the Instrumentum Laboris by including a passage on "LGBT young people." Tagle replied that "the issue will be present in the document, in what form and with what approach I do not know."
This, Magister noted, implied that "there will be no repetition of the acronym LGBT, which had raised so many protests even before the beginning of the synod."
With these premises, it therefore appears unlikely that the final document of the synod, which has been under discussion since October 23 and will come to the final vote on Saturday the 27th, would mark a turning point on the issue of homosexuality.
Wednesday, Cdl. Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising — a leading leftist and adviser to Pope Francis — reiterated this idea. "The question of homosexuality was never among the central topics of the synod," he asserted. "We must not allow ourselves to be influenced by ideological pressure, nor to use formulas that can be exploited."
Cdl. Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising
"With these premises, it therefore appears unlikely that the final document of the synod, which has been under discussion since October 23 and will come to the final vote on Saturday the 27th, would mark a turning point on the issue of homosexuality," Magister suggested.
He added that because "the ones who hit the brakes" included those cardinals who are closest to Pope Francis, "it is plausible that this de facto flop was not a failure of the pope's expectations, but on the contrary was the fruit of his decision."
Magister theorized that this decision "was probably made while the work was underway" and in light of "the dramatic moment that the Catholic Church and the papacy itself are going through on the world stage, in the thick of a cataclysm that has its peak precisely in the disordered homosexual activities of numerous sacred ministers."
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