By Modesto P. Sa-onoy
The documentary “Francesco” featuring an interview of Pope Francis aired on October 21, included the Pope’s statement about the homosexual civil union. There were interpretations that he favors same-sex civil union but others say his statement in Spanish was misinterpreted in English.
Whether he was misinterpreted or not depends on the reader. Our purpose is to clarify the Church doctrine through Cardinal Raymund Burke who released a statement (October 22) explaining what the doctrine is. For brevity, I took the liberty of deleting some portions without deviating from his points.
“The worldwide communications media have reported with strong emphasis, as a change of course, the news that Pope Francis has declared that persons in the homosexual condition, as children of God, ‘have a right to have a family’ and that ‘no one should be thrown out or be made unhappy because of it.’ Moreover, they write that he has declared: ‘What we have to create is a civil union. In this way, they will be legally covered. I have defended this.’
“Such declarations generate great bewilderment and cause confusion and error among Catholic faithful, inasmuch as they are contrary to the teaching of Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, and of the recent Magisterium by which the Church guards, protects and interprets the whole deposit of faith contained in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. They cause wonderment and error regarding the Church’s teaching among people of goodwill, who sincerely wish to know what the Catholic Church teaches. They impose upon pastors of souls the duty of conscience to make fitting and necessary clarifications.
“First of all, the context and the occasion of such declarations make them devoid of any magisterial weight. They are rightly interpreted as simple private opinions of the person who made them. These declarations do not bind, in any manner, the consciences of the faithful who are rather obliged to adhere with religious submission to what Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, and the ordinary Magisterium of the Church teach on the matter in question.”
Simply put Catholics are not bound to agree to the private opinion of the Pope.
“Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, Tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered…inasmuch as they are contrary to the natural law, closed to the gift of life and void of a true affective and sexual complementarity.’ Therefore, they cannot be approved.
“The particular and sometimes deep-seated tendencies of persons, men and women, in the homosexual condition, which are for them a trial, although they may not in themselves constitute a sin, represent nonetheless an objectively disordered inclination…They are, therefore, to be received with respect, compassion and sensitivity, avoiding any unjust discrimination. The Catholic faith teaches the faithful to hate sin but to love the sinner.
“The faithful, and, in particular, Catholic politicians are held to oppose the legal recognition of homosexual unions…The right to form a family is not a private right to vindicate but must correspond to the plan of the Creator Who has willed the human being in sexual difference, ‘male and female He created them’, thus calling man, male and female, to the transmission of life.
“Because married couples ensure the succession of generations and are therefore eminently within the public interest, civil law grants them institutional recognition. Homosexual unions, on the other hand, do not need specific attention from the legal standpoint since they do not exercise this function for the common good. To speak of a homosexual union, in the same sense as the conjugal union of the married, is, in fact, profoundly misleading, because there can be no such union between persons of the same sex. In what regards the administration of justice, persons in the homosexual condition, as all citizens, can always make use of the provisions of law to safeguard their private rights.”
The Cardinal expressed “deepest sadness and pressing pastoral concerns that the private opinion…attributed to Pope does not correspond to the constant teaching of the Church and is guarded and protected and interpreted by the Magisterium.”
He also expressed sadness due to the turmoil, confusion, error, and scandal they cause among the faithful “by giving the totally false impression that the Catholic Church…has changed its perennial teaching regarding such fundamental and critical questions.”
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