source:  clashdaily

Written by Wes Walker on October 25, 2020

The Pope threw a grenade into a church already dealing with a number of other controversies by coming out in support of same-sex unions.

If he was going to issue a change on the Catholic Church’s stance on marriage you might have expected it to be a reconsidering of the prohibition on priests taking a wife, seeing as 1 Timothy 3 references ‘husband of one wife’ among the criterion of leadership.

Obviously, it doesn’t preclude unmarried service — see the Apostle Paul — but it allows for traditional marriage.

Imagine everyone’s surprise when the Pontiff instead weighs on marriage in an entirely different direction…

 

Within the film, Pope Francis addressed how pastoral care for those in the LGBTQ community should work, saying “homosexuals have a right to be a part of the family.”

“They’re children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out, or be made miserable because of it,” the pope said.

“What we have to create is a civil union law. That way they are legally covered,” Pope Francis added. “I stood up for that.”

“Francesco” covers the life and ministry of the pope and premiered as part of the Rome Film Festival. It is scheduled to premiere in North America on Sunday, according to the CNA. –TheHill

That’s what the Pope had to say.

The reaction was swift and brutal. One Bishop openly questioned whether the Pope was even a Christian Convert!

The Catholic Faith in the voice of the Magisterium of all times, the sense of the faith of the faithful (sensus fidelium) as well as common sense clearly reject any civil union of two persons of the same sex, a union which has the aim that these persons seek sexual pleasure from each other. Even if persons living in such unions should not engage in mutual sexual pleasure — which in reality has been shown to be quite unrealistic — such unions represent a great scandal, a public recognition of the sins of fornication against nature and a continuous proximate occasion of sin. Those who advocate same-sex civil unions are therefore also culpable of creating a kind of structure of sin, in this case of the juridical structure of habitual fornication against nature, since homosexual acts belong to sins which cry to heaven, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church says (see n. 1867). Those who advocate same-sex civil unions are ultimately unjust and even cruel against those persons who are living in these unions, because these persons will be confirmed in mortal sin, they will be solidified in their interior psychological dichotomy, since their reason tells them, that homosexual acts are against reason and against the explicit will of God, the Creator and Redeemer of men.

Every true Catholic, every true Catholic priest, every true Catholic bishop must with deep sorrow and a weeping heart regret and protest against the unheard fact, that Pope Francis, the Roman Pontiff, the successor of the apostle Peter, the Vicar of Christ on earth, uttered in the documentary film “Francesco” that premiered on October 21, 2020, as part of the Rome Film Festival, his support for civil same-sex unions. Such support of the pope means support for a structure of sin, for a lifestyle against the Sixth Commandment of the Decalogue, which was written with the fingers of God on stone tables on Sinai (see Ex. 31:18) and delivered by the hands of Angels to men (see Gal. 3:19). What God has written with His hand, even a pope cannot erase nor rewrite with his hand or with his tongue. The Pope cannot behave as if he were God or an incarnation of Jesus Christ, modifying these words of the Lord: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Mt 5:27-28) and instead of this say, more or less, the following: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery’, ‘if a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination’ (Lev. 20:13), ‘men who practice homosexuality will not inherit the kingdom of God’ (1 Cor. 6:9); ‘the practice of homosexuality is contrary to sound doctrine’ (1 Tim. 1:10). But I say to you that for persons who feel same-sex attraction “we have to create a civil union law. That way they are legally covered”. –LifesiteNews

Cardinal Raymond Burke, an American prelate of the Catholic Church, patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, and former Archbishop of St. Louis, said that the Pope’s endorsement of same-sex unions sows “error and confusion” among the faithful with words that “do not correspond to the constant teaching of the Church.”

Cardinal Burke’s statement said that the Pope was giving his opinion and not speaking ex cathedra — with the full power of his office, therefore the Catholic faithful are not bound to adhere to them.

‘They are rightly interpreted as simple private opinions of the person who made them.

‘These declarations do not bind, in any manner, the consciences of the faithful who are rather obliged to adhere with religious submission to what Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, and the ordinary Magisterium of the Church teach.’

Burke goes on to say that all Catholics are commanded to ‘hate the sin but love the sinner’, and that his remarks are not an endorsement of homophobia.

But, he adds: ‘To speak of a homosexual union, in the same sense as the conjugal union of the married, is… misleading, because there can be no such union.’

Source: Daily Mail

For anyone interested, here’s an eleven-minute recap over what the reaction by top-level clergy both here and elsewhere looked like, courtesy LifeSiteNews: