VATICAN, IT—Roman Catholic bishops are showing a never-before-seen openness toward accepting gay couples as well as unmarried couples who live together.
At an on-going two-week seminar on family issues last Monday, the church released a summary of the meetings so far. Although there was nothing specific in the way of changes in the document, there was a new tone of acceptance and love, rather than accusation and displeasure.
The bishops said gays had ‘‘gifts and qualities” to offer, according to the Associated Press, Furthermore, the bishops suggested that the church was ready to provide them a welcoming place, “accepting and valuing their sexual orientation without compromising Catholic doctrine on the family and matrimony.”
For a 2000-year-old institution that believes gay sex is “intrinsically disordered,” even posing the question is significant.
“This is a stunning change in the way the Catholic Church speaks of gay people,” Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit author, told Associated Press. “The Synod is clearly listening to the complex, real-life experiences of Catholics around the world, and seeking to address them with mercy, as Jesus did.”
While not going as far as recognizing gay marriage, the bishops apparently don’t mind the sacrifices done in the name of same-sex true love.
“Without denying the moral problems connected to homosexual unions, it has to be noted that there are cases in which mutual aid to the point of sacrifice constitutes a precious support in the life of the partners,” they said.
For heterosexuals, the bishops said they must grasp the “positive reality of civil weddings” and even cohabitation, with the aim of helping the couple commit eventually to a church wedding.
The bishops also called for a re-reading of the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae that outlined the church’s opposition to artificial birth control. The bishops said couples should be unconditionally open to having children, but that the message of Humanae Vitae “underlines the need to respect the dignity of the person in the moral evaluation of the methods of birth control.”
There has been much talk inside the synod about applying the theological concept of the “law of gradualness” in difficult family situations. The concept encourages the faithful to take one step at a time in the search for holiness.
Applying the concept to matters of birth control would be an acknowledgment that most Catholics already use artificial contraception in violation of church teaching. But it would encourage pastors to meet them where they are, and then help them come to understand the full reasoning behind the ban.
Bishops also called for “courageous” new ways to minister to families, especially those “damaged” by divorce. The document didn’t take sides in the most divisive issue at the synod, whether Catholics who divorce and remarry without an annulment can receive Communion.
The document said these Catholics deserve respect and should not be discriminated against, and then laid out the positions of both sides: those who want to maintain the status quo barring them from the sacraments, and those who favor a case-by-case approach, in which the couple undertake a path of penance.
Pope Francis has called for a more merciful approach to these couples, but conservatives have insisted there is no getting around Jesus’ words that marriage is indissoluble. Amid an outcry from hardline conservatives, organizers of the synod suddenly insisted that the document was merely a working paper that would be amended.
Several known conservatives who participated in the synod immediately came out against the report. The head of the Polish bishops’ conference, Cardinal Stanislaw Gadecki, called it “unacceptable” and a deviation from church teaching.
Hard-line American Cardinal Raymond Burke, the head of the Vatican’s supreme court, suggested that the Vatican was releasing “manipulated” information about the synod that didn’t reflect the “consistent number of bishops” who opposed its content with conviction.
