Thursday, 24 May 2018

'GOD MADE YOU THAT WAY' IS A LIE (Letter to Dom Post, May 25)



It’s scarcely credible that Pope Francis would say “God made you that way” (Pope resigned to getting things wrong, May 25). The Catholic Church exists to preach the truth, and that statement is a lie. Not just any old lie, but the one which arguably has proved the most harmful to its mission.
 
Last week the Pope’s withering critique of Chilean bishops’ handling of sex abuse resulted in their wholesale resignation. He quoted their “loss of prophetic strength”, meaning loss of courage in proclaiming the Gospel, which is the first task of any priest, especially the Pope.
 
The Gospel states that “God made them male and female” (Mt 10,6). He didn’t make them homosexual. There’s no ‘gay gene’. It’s painful to contemplate the societal influences – chiefly the absence of fathers in early childhood – that deceive people into believing homosexual inclinations are innate, and preaching that it’s a deception will not make priests popular. However, priests and popes are not meant to be popular, but truthful.
 
Pope Francis blamed the Chilean crisis partly on men in seminaries who have a history of active homosexuality. If God made them that way, why shouldn’t they be in seminaries?
 
 


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