A Belgian bishop has attacked the Vatican over its decree that the Catholic Church will not bless gay unions
BRUSSELS – A Belgian bishop has attacked the Vatican over its decree that the Catholic Church will not bless homosexual unions because God “cannot bless sin.”
Antwerp Bishop Johan Bonny wrote in an opinion piece on Wednesday that he felt “ashamed of my Church” and “intellectual and moral misunderstanding” after Pope Francis approved the “negative” answer to a question about whether the Catholic clergy have the authority to bless same-sex unions. The official answer said that God “does not bless and cannot bless sin.”
Bonny, who was part of a 2015 Vatican synod on marriage and the family, said: “I want to apologize to everyone for whom this is painful and incomprehensible.”
The Belgian bishops’ conference backed Bonny’s concerns, saying LGBT believers and their families saw the Vatican decree as “extremely painful”. The conference urged everyone to work on “a climate of respect, recognition and integration”.
The Vatican’s position thanked conservatives, disappointed lawyers for LGBT Catholics, and threw a key into a debate within the German Catholic Church, which has been at the forefront of opening talks on hot issues such as Catholic teachings about homosexuality.
Bonny said he was disappointed with the level of argument that went through the note from the Vatican’s Orthodox office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
“From an intellectual point of view, this does not even reach the high school level. You see these kinds of arguments, logic, right through it. These days, you don’t convince anyone that way, “Bonny said.
The note of the Congregation distinguished between the blessing of homosexual unions and the reception and blessing of the church by gay people, which it approved. He argued that such unions were not part of God’s plan and that any sacramental recognition of them could be confused with marriage.
The Vatican claims that homosexuals must be treated with dignity and respect, but that homosexual sex is “intrinsically disordered.” Catholic teaching says that marriage is a lifelong union between a man and a woman, which is part of God’s plan and is intended to create a new life.
The document from the Orthodoxy office claimed that same-sex unions cannot be blessed by the Catholic Church because they are not part of that plan.
God “does not bless and cannot bless sin: He blesses the sinful man so that he can recognize that he is part of his plan of love and allow himself to be changed by him,” the note reads.
In his opinion piece published in the Belgian newspaper De Standaard, Bonny countered that “sin is one of the most difficult theological and moral categories to define and one of the last to identify people and their way of living together.”
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a similar decree in 2003 stating that the church’s respect for homosexuals “cannot in any way lead to the approval of homosexual behavior or the legal recognition of homosexual unions.”
Belgium has historically been a strong Roman Catholic country with strong ties to the Vatican. But the number of believers and participation in church services has declined in recent decades.
The nation is strewn with churches large and small, but the announcements of their deaths are almost invariably greater than those for baptisms.