BRUSSELS (AP) – A Belgian bishop attacked the Vatican because of his decree that the Catholic Church would not bless same-sex unions, since God “cannot bless sin”.
Antwerp bishop Johan Bonny wrote in an opinion article on Wednesday that he feels “ashamed for my Church” and “intellectual and moral incomprehension” after Pope Francis approved the “negative” answer to a question about whether the Catholic clergy have the authority to bless same-sex unions. The official response said that God “does not bless and cannot bless sin.”
Bonny, who attended a 2015 Vatican synod on marriage and family, said: “I want to apologize to everyone for whom this is painful and incomprehensible.”
The Belgian bishops’ conference supported Bonny’s concerns, saying that LGBT believers and their families viewed the Vatican decree as “exceptionally painful”. The conference urged everyone to work in “a climate of respect, recognition and integration”.
The Vatican’s position appealed to conservatives, discouraged defenders of LGBT Catholics and launched a blow to a debate within the Catholic Church in Germany, which has been at the forefront of opening discussions on controversial issues, such as Catholic teachings on homosexuality.
Bonny said he was disappointed by the level of argument that ran through the note from the Vatican’s orthodoxy office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
“Intellectually, this doesn’t even reach the level of high school. That kind of argument, the logic, you see through that. Nowadays, you don’t convince anyone that way, ”said Bonny.
The Congregation’s note distinguished between blessing same-sex unions and the church’s welcome and blessings to gays, which it endorsed. He argued that such unions were not part of God’s plan and that any sacramental recognition of them could be mistaken for marriage.
The Vatican says that gays should be treated with dignity and respect, but that gay sex is “intrinsically disordered”. Catholic teaching says that marriage is a lifelong union between a man and a woman that is part of God’s plan and aims to create a new life.
The orthodoxy office document argued that same-sex unions cannot be blessed by the Catholic Church because they are not part of that plan.
God “does not bless and cannot bless sin: He blesses the sinful man, so that he recognizes that he is part of his plan of love and allows himself to be changed by him”, said the note.
In his opinion article published in the Belgian newspaper De Standaard, Bonny countered that “sin is one of the most difficult theological and moral categories to define and one of the last to attribute to people and their way of living”.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a similar decree in 2003, which said that the Church’s respect for gays “cannot in any way lead to the approval of homosexual behavior or the legal recognition of homosexual unions”.
Belgium has historically been a Roman Catholic country with strong ties to the Vatican. But the number of believers and attendance at religious services has declined in recent decades.
The nation is dotted with churches large and small, but its death announcements almost invariably outnumber those for baptisms.