Pope Francis repeats calls for LGBTQ inclusion in new book

By Michael J. O’Loughlin / January 14, 2025
Outreach

Excerpt: "Reflecting on “Amoris Laetitia,” the 2016 apostolic exhortation on family life that opened the door to communion for Catholics living in irregular situations, including the divorced and remarried and people in same-sex relationships, Francis decried that “sexual sins tend to cause more of an outcry from some people.” 

“But they are really not the most serious. They are human sins, of the flesh,” Francis wrote. “The most serious, on the contrary, are the sins that have more ‘angelicity,’ that dress themselves in another guise: pride, hatred, falsehood, fraud, abuse of power.”

He laments the seeming double-standards when it comes to blessings offered by the church.

“It is strange that nobody worries about the blessing of an entrepreneur who exploits people, and this is a grave sin, or about someone who pollutes our common home,” he writes, “while there’s a public scandal if the pope blesses a divorced woman or a homosexual.”

“Opposition to pastoral open-mindedness often uncovers these hypocrisies,” the pope added."
Full article

Cardinal McElroy on ‘radical inclusion’ for L.G.B.T. people, women and others in the Catholic Church

Robert W. McElroy, January 24, 2023

America 

Excerpt: "The effect of the tradition that all sexual acts outside of marriage constitute objectively grave sin has been to focus the Christian moral life disproportionately upon sexual activity. The heart of Christian discipleship is a relationship with God the Father, Son and Spirit rooted in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The church has a hierarchy of truths that flow from this fundamental kerygma. Sexual activity, while profound, does not lie at the heart of this hierarchy. Yet in pastoral practice we have placed it at the very center of our structures of exclusion from the Eucharist. This should change...

It is a demonic mystery of the human soul why so many men and women have a profound and visceral animus toward members of the L.G.B.T. communities. The church’s primary witness in the face of this bigotry must be one of embrace rather than distance or condemnation. The distinction between orientation and activity cannot be the principal focus for such a pastoral embrace because it inevitably suggests dividing the L.G.B.T. community into those who refrain from sexual activity and those who do not. Rather, the dignity of every person as a child of God struggling in this world, and the loving outreach of God, must be the heart, soul, face and substance of the church’s stance and pastoral action.

The Italian synodal report stated “the church-home does not have doors that close, but a perimeter that continually widens.” We in the United States must seek a church whose doors do not close and a perimeter that continually widens if we are to have any hope of attracting the next generation to life in the church, or of being faithful to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We must enlarge our tent. And we must do so now."

Full Article

Cardinal McElroy responds to his critics on sexual sin, the Eucharist, and LGBT and divorced/remarried Catholics

Robert W. McElroy, March 02, 2023

America 

Excerpt: "In the weeks since my [January 24th] article was published, some readers have objected that the church cannot accept such a notion of inclusion because the exclusion of remarried women and men or L.G.B.T. persons from the Eucharist flows from the moral tradition in the church that all sexual sins are grave matter. This means that all sexual sins are so gravely evil that they constitute objectively an action that can sever a believer’s relationship with God.

I have attempted to face this objection head-on by drawing attention to both the history and the unique reasoning of the principle that all sexual sins are objectively mortal sins.

For most of the history of the church, various gradations of objective wrong in the evaluation of sexual sins were present in the life of the church. But in the 17th century, with the inclusion in Catholic teaching of the declaration that for all sexual sins there is no parvity of matter (i.e., no circumstances can mitigate the grave evil of a sexual sin), we relegated the sins of sexuality to an ambit in which no other broad type of sin is so absolutely categorized.

In principle, all sexual sins are objective mortal sins within the Catholic moral tradition. This means that all sins that violate the sixth and the ninth commandments are categorically objective mortal sins. There is no such comprehensive classification of mortal sin for any of the other commandments.

In understanding the application of this principle to the reception of Communion, it is vital to recognize that it is the level of objective sinfulness that forms the foundation for the present categorical exclusion of sexually active divorced and remarried or L.G.B.T. Catholics from the Eucharist. So, it is precisely this change in Catholic doctrine—made in the 17th century—that is the foundation for categorically barring L.G.B.T. and divorced/remarried Catholics from the Eucharist. Does the tradition that all sexual sins are objectively mortal make sense within the universe of Catholic moral teaching?

It is automatically an objective mortal sin for a husband and wife to engage in a single act of sexual intercourse utilizing artificial contraception. This means the level of evil present in such an act is objectively sufficient to sever one’s relationship with God.

It is not automatically an objective mortal sin to physically or psychologically abuse your spouse.

It is not automatically an objective mortal sin to exploit your employees.

It is not automatically an objective mortal sin to discriminate against a person because of her gender or ethnicity or religion.

It is not automatically an objective mortal sin to abandon your children.

The moral tradition that all sexual sins are grave matter springs from an abstract, deductivist and truncated notion of the Christian moral life that yields a definition of sin jarringly inconsistent with the larger universe of Catholic moral teaching."

Full article

Been Called a Heretic by Anti-LGBTQ Catholics?

What the actual definition of heresy is...

Excerpt: "The Church has a juridical process that examines accusations about heresy.  After a thorough study of a person's public statements and extended dialogue to discover what the person has really said, means, and believes, the Church will finally declare that a person has committed a heresy - or has not.  Until the Church has made that judgment, no Catholic should ever accuse another of heresy [my emphases].  When they do so they are inadvertently doing injury to our Catholic communion by inciting emotions rather than making a reasoned and justified statement."

Full PDF