The Vatican this month is showing unprecedented outreach on issues of human sexuality, using what's believed to be for the first time the term LGBT in a planning document for a huge upcoming bishops meeting.
"And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities." Revelation 18:4,5 (KJV)
EDITOR'S NOTE: I went to the web site of the Catholic Church where I grew up, and was surprised/not surprised to see a prominent graphic announcing that St. Mary's Church was now a proud, LGBTQ welcoming church. I clicked on the link to that graphic, and it brought me to a site called the Tri-State LGBTQ Interparish Collaborative. A tab on that site invited me to attend the St. Francis of Assisi Pride Mass on June 28th. I think you see where I am going with all of this. Pope Francis has been acquiring by stealth the LGBTQ community for years now. And Catholic Churches all over the world have been following his lead with 'under the radar' outreach to the LGBTQ community. Not an outreach to give them the gospel, mind you, but an outreach to confirm them in their lifestyle choices and to comfort them with the false hope that God accepts you as you are and will leave you that way. The message of the pope to the LGBTQ community is loud and clear - God made you gay, be proud and embrace it. Will the Vatican change their official position on homosexuality? They already have.
Vatican officials also invited to speak at a second global meeting a prominent advocate for LGBT people, something some gay Catholic groups say has never been done. The two moves, announced in the last 10 days, are being seen by church-watchers as largely an effort to speak in a more respectful way with a younger generation of Catholics who are confronting the church on topics from female priests and abortion to sexuality - but who are clearly not ready to totally walk away from the faith.
The efforts related to the
Synod of Bishops on Young People (in October) and the World Meeting of Families (in August) are part of an explicit push by
Pope Francis' church to say "we have to pay attention to this whole LGBT reality, especially for those who have chosen to remain in the church," said the Rev. Thomas Rosica, who has often served as an English assistant to the Vatican press office.
On Tuesday, the Vatican released the details of the upcoming bishops' synod, or meeting, the third in a series of major global gatherings about the family. The others were in 2014 and 2015. While the document was released only in Italian, the National Catholic Reporter noted that it was the first time the acronym was used. The Catholic Church "has in the past formally referred to gay people as 'persons with homosexual tendencies,' " the Reporter said.
Rosica agreed it was a first, but said "they're just using the lingo young people use. There's nothing earth-shattering." Vatican spokeswoman Paloma Garcia Ovejero declined to comment on the reason for the adoption of the acronym beyond saying, "I guess there's no specific answer ... it's just the result of so many proposals and will be used as a 'tool' for discussion."
Vatican spokesman Greg Burke did not return request for comment.
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Catholic Cardinal in Washington Accused of Sex Abuse
The Vatican has also asked retired Washington, D.C., Archbishop Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, to
cease public ministry after finding he was credibly accused of sexually abusing a teenager almost 50 years ago, the archdiocese and McCarrick said on Wednesday.
McCarrick is among the highest-ranking of the more than 6,700 U.S. Roman Catholic clerics to be accused of sexually abusing children since the church's sex abuse scandal broke in 2002, according to
BishopAccountability.org, a private group that tracks the allegations.
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