Author: Richard Wagner

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In Pope’s homeland, ex-priest leaves church over gay unions

Former Catholic Priest Andres Gioeni, right, sits with his husband Luis Iarocci and their dog Boris after they got home from the bishopric where he started the process of apostasy in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Wednesday, March 17, 2021. Gioeni, who left the priesthood 20 years ago and married in 2014, said he has decided to formally leave the church after the Vatican decreed that the Catholic Church cannot bless same-sex unions since God ‘cannot bless sin.’

By DÉBORA REY

A former priest and LGBTQ activist who has blessed same-sex unions in Pope Francis’ home country, Argentina, is leaving the Roman Catholic Church after the Vatican issued a pronouncement this week that priests may not perform such blessings.

Andrés Gioeni delivered a letter disavowing his faith to the bishopric in a Buenos Aires suburb on Wednesday, the anniversary of his ordination as a priest in 2000 and two days after the declaration from the Holy See.

“I do not want to continue being an accomplice to this institution, because I realize the harm they are doing to people. I am not renouncing my faith in God but rather I am renouncing a role and a rite,” said Gioeni, 49.

He spoke in an interview with The Associated Press at the home he shares with his husband, 50-year-old Luis Iarocci, and their three dogs, a few blocks from the cathedral in San Isidro north of the capital.

Like other LGBTQ Catholics, Gioeni was shocked by Monday’s proclamation, which argued that clergy members cannot bless same-sex unions on the grounds that they are not part of the divine plan and God “cannot bless sin.”

The Vatican says LGBTQ people should be treated with dignity and respect, but that gay sex is “intrinsically disordered” and same-sex unions are sinful.

The declaration from the Holy See’s orthodoxy office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was authorized by Francis, who prior to assuming the papacy supported legal protection for gay people in civil unions in the country as Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires.

“There is no mention in any book (of the Bible) of consensual love between two people of the same sex and God telling them no,” said Gioeni, who has blessed at least four such unions.

Born in Mendoza province some 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) west of Buenos Aires, Gioeni pursued a religious vocation as a young man despite being tormented by doubts about his sexuality. He even “outed” to his superiors three fellow seminarians who had confessed attraction to him.

“All throughout seminary I was terribly homophobic,” Gioeni said. “It was a defense.”

After ordination he rose quickly in the provincial church, while secretly exploring chatrooms for the local gay community. He had his first sexual encounter with another man, broke it off to continue the priesthood, but then saw the man again. Gioeni told the bishop he needed to leave.

The church did not offer him psychological help, just a room next to the organ of the Buenos Aires cathedral where he was to confront his supposed crisis of faith.

“That was my descent into hell. … There I realized that I was considered like the Hunchback of Notre Dame — a defective being who could not go out into the world because he would be criticized and singled out,” Gioeni recalled.

Gioeni’s superiors became aware of his sexual identity in 2003, when he appeared nude on the cover of a gay magazine, and barred him from exercising priestly ministry.

He studied acting and worked as a waiter in a disco, where he met Iarocci. Together for 17 years now, they wed after Argentina became the first Latin American nation to legalize same-sex marriage in 2010.

In recent years Gioeni has become an LGBTQ activist lobbying for a more open Catholic Church.

Severing formal ties with the institution doesn’t change his faith in God, he said.

“I continue believing in God and He will be my God. In that, my spirituality is unchanged,” Gioeni said. “I no longer have a label. ‘What religion are you?’ I believe in God.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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McAleese criticises pope as populist who raises then dashes hopes

Document on same-sex blessings shows that Pope Francis ‘toes the old hard line’

Mary McAleese spoke of the document’s ‘unbearably vicious language which can only have brought more heartache to our gay children and to us their families.

BY Patsy McGarry

Former president Mary McAleese has criticised Pope Francis as a populist who raises expectations only to dash them, following a Vatican document published on Monday which sustained a ban on same-sex blessings.

She described the document, approved by the pope, as “withering”.

About Francis himself, Ms McAleese said his “chummy words to the press often quite reasonably raise hopes of church reform which are subsequently almost invariably dashed by firm restatements of unchanged church teaching”.

While raising hopes, “he is the pope who toes the old hard line”, she said.

She has also written to Ireland’s Catholic bishops asking that they challenge language used about gay people in the document, published by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). She asked “if there is even one among you willing to acknowledge publicly that the language used in this most recent document from CDF is gratuitously cruel in the extreme”.

‘Vicious language’

In the letter to Catholic Primate Archbishop Eamon Martin, she spoke of the document’s “unbearably vicious language which can only have brought more heartache to our gay children and to us their families. Heartache and hurt fired like a missile from the centre of governance of the Church.”

She noted how the church “runs 90 per cent of our primary schools and 50 per cent of our second-level schools” and of “the right of our children not to be exposed to cruelly-worded teachings that conduce to homophobia”.

Referring to Catholic bishops elsewhere, some of whom have taken issue with the language in the CDF document, she asked: “Is there any vestige of such episcopal courage here?”

‘Breathtaking’

Meanwhile, the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) has said the CDF document is “unfortunate and unwise”, and described as “breathtaking” the certainty with which the CDF assumed “what God can and cannot do” .

The “judgemental and discriminatory statement” left ACP leaders “saddened and disappointed”, and feeling “it is increasingly difficult to remain hopeful of an inclusive church”, they said.

The CDF document said it was “not licit” for Catholic priests to give blessings to same-sex couples as it was “necessary that what is blessed be objectively and positively ordered to receive and express grace , according to the designs of God inscribed in creation, and fully revealed by Christ the Lord”.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Rebel priests defy Vatican, vow to bless same-sex couples

Father Helmut Schueller

By Reuters Staff

A dissident band of Roman Catholic priests leading a disobedience campaign against the Vatican said on Tuesday they would carry on blessing same-sex couples in defiance of Church orders.

The Vatican said on Monday that priests cannot bless same-sex unions and that such blessings are not valid, in a ruling that disappointed gay Catholics who had hoped their Church was becoming more welcoming under Pope Francis.

In some countries, parishes and ministers have begun blessing same-sex unions in lieu of marriage, and there have been calls for bishops to institutionalise de facto such blessings. Conservatives in the 1.3 billion-member Roman Catholic Church have expressed alarm over such practices.

“We members of the Parish Priests Initiative are deeply appalled by the new Roman decree that seeks to prohibit the blessing of same-sex loving couples. This is a relapse into times that we had hoped to have overcome with Pope Francis,” the Austrian-based group said in a statement.

“We will — in solidarity with so many — not reject any loving couple in the future who ask to celebrate God’s blessing, which they experience every day, also in a worship service.”

The Parish Priests Initiative led by Father Helmut Schueller has long been a thorn in the side of the Vatican. The group wants Church rules changed so that priests can marry and women can become priests.

It has said it will break Church rules by giving communion to Protestants and divorced Catholics who remarry.

Founded in 2006 by nine priests, the initiative says it now has around 350 members from the ranks of the official Church and more than 3,000 lay supporters.

The Vatican in 2012 cracked down on Schueller, stripping him of the right to use the title monsignor and saying he was also no longer a “Chaplain of His Holiness”.

Schueller, a former deputy to Vienna archbishop Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, had been given the honorary title in his capacity as head of the Austrian branch of the Catholic charity group Caritas.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Same-sex marriage exposes ‘cavernous divide’ between Vatican, Catholics

by Cornell University

The Vatican’s orthodoxy office has issued a formal response to a question about whether Catholic clergy have the authority to bless same-sex unions, saying the Catholic Church won’t bless same-sex unions since God “cannot bless sin.”

Landon Schnabel, assistant professor of sociology at Cornell University, says while the Vatican’s announcement is in keeping with the views of the church, it does not reflect the opinions of many everyday Catholics.

Schnabel says:

“The Pope’s pronouncement against same-sex marriage is consistent with Catholic tradition, but inconsistent with Catholic public opinion, especially in countries like the United States where about three in four Catholics support same-sex marriage.

“This distinction highlights the ongoing tension between elite pronouncements from institutional religious leaders and what everyday adherents believe, which is present across religions but is particularly pronounced in Catholicism as a diverse and global religion with one set of official rules from on high and yet a wide range of beliefs and practices on the ground. Especially on issues of gender and sexuality, there is often a cavernous divide between what the Vatican says and what everyday Catholics think and do.”

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Kim Haines-Eitzen, professor of religious studies at Cornell University, says the announcement continues a legacy of conflicts over human sexuality.

Haines-Eitzen says:

“Christianity has been interwoven with debates about gender, sexuality, and the human body from the very beginning. The latest news from the Vatican against blessing same-sex unions continues a historical legacy fraught with conflicts over, in particular, human sexuality.

“From its inception, Christians argued about whether it was better to be married or celibate, whether women could hold positions of ecclesiastical authority, and about rules for sexual relations.

“At stake in this long and troubled history is the paradox of tradition, which is at once conservative and dynamic. Church traditions developed in part through the interpretation of biblical texts, the need for church unity in the face of diversity, and increasingly through the establishment of ecclesiastical law. The decree issued today stands in marked tension with recent efforts toward a more inclusive and expansive Catholicism.”