ROME — The far-left National Catholic Reporter laid into Pope Francis on Friday for approving a Vatican ban on blessings for homosexual unions, calling the pontiff a “hypocrite.”
We “come to the point of absurdity — and hypocrisy — when a pope says he wants to welcome LGBT people into the church but then simply cannot countenance that they might want to pursue loving relationships, just like the rest of humanity,” states a March 19 op-ed by the paper’s editors.
As Breitbart News reported, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) reaffirmed Monday that the Church cannot grant blessings to homosexual unions, since they are not in accord with God’s plan for human beings.
Asked whether the Church has the power to give a blessing to same-sex unions, the CDF responded: “Negative.”
Blessings require both “the right intention of those who participate” and “that what is blessed be objectively and positively ordered to receive and express grace, according to the designs of God inscribed in creation,” the CDF stated, with the express approval of Pope Francis.
“Therefore, only those realities which are in themselves ordered to serve those ends are congruent with the essence of the blessing imparted by the Church,” it declares.
It is not licit “to impart a blessing on relationships, or partnerships, even stable, that involve sexual activity outside of marriage,” the document said, “as is the case of the unions between persons of the same sex.”
God Himself never ceases to bless each of his children in this world, it notes. “But He does not and cannot bless sin.”
In conclusion, the CDF declares that “the Church does not have, and cannot have, the power to bless unions of persons of the same sex in the sense intended above.”
To the National Catholic Reporter, the pope’s willingness to sign off on the text is incomprehensible.
“Where has that Pope Francis gone?” the paper asks, in reference to past outreach to homosexuals. “Surely, as the world stumbles to emerge from the greatest health and economic crisis in a century, there are more urgent issues for the Vatican to focus on rather than how God does or doesn’t view gay unions.”
“For Catholic LGBT couples and their families, the timing is especially unfortunate,” the editorial declares. “The forced distancing imposed by the pandemic has cut many off from their usual support structures, including their parishes.”
“And now the pope of ‘building bridges and not walls’ has erected another barrier,” it concludes.
Commenting on the Reporter’s op-ed, Catholic League president Bill Donohue noted Friday that many left-wing Catholics had confused the pope’s respect for the dignity of every person, regardless of their sexual proclivities, with approval for homosexual activity itself.
“For several years, these renegade Catholics have hyped every welcoming move by Pope Francis to homosexuals, hoping to push him to recognize gay unions and same-sex marriage,” Dr. Donohue wrote.
“However, the decree issued by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on this subject, done with the approval of the Holy Father, slammed the door shut when it reaffirmed the Church’s teachings on sexuality,” Donohue observed, and now the editors at the Reporter say that the Vatican decree gave them “whiplash.”