Outreach to Gay Couples Not on Agenda for Vatican Meeting

Reuters via Yahoo News ^ | 6/23/15 | Philip Pullella

[marshmallow]

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - A working paper for a major Vatican meeting on the family this autumn indicated on Tuesday that organizers do not want the issue of how the Church should reach out to homosexual couples to be a key topic.

Gay rights activists had hoped the working document, the final one before the October meeting, might resurrect at least some of the conciliatory language on the pastoral care of gay couples that surfaced during a preparatory meeting last year.

The keenly awaited gathering of world bishops, or synod, will be held at the Vatican October 4-25. Its preparations have been peppered with debate about possible reforms, particularly on issues concerning gays and divorced Catholics.

The document also indicated that there would be no change anytime soon to the rule that bans Catholics who have divorced and remarried outside the Church from receiving communion unless they abstain from sexual relations.

In an interim report half-way through a two-week preparatory meeting last October, bishops spoke more positively of homosexuals than ever before in Church history. But that wording was watered down or eliminated at the end of that meeting after a backlash by conservatives.

The 80-page "Instrumentum Laboris," a road map for issues to be debated by the assembly, repeated the Church's opposition to gay marriage and to adoption of children by gays but made no specific reference to the pastoral care of gay couples.

It also re-stated the Church's stand that "everyone, regardless of their sexual tendencies, should be respected in their dignity and welcomed with sensitivity and tact".

[pgkdan]

It also re-stated the Church's stand that "everyone, regardless of their sexual tendencies, should be respected in their dignity and welcomed with sensitivity and tact".

Men who engage in anal copulation with other men and brag about it have no dignity.

[Petrosius]

sexual tendencies

Unfortunately this is an ambiguous phrase. If "sexual tendencies" means those who have same sex attractions but struggle to be chaste, yes, they should be respected. If it means those who willfully engage in acts of sodomy, no, they should not be respected and welcomed with sensitivity. Their activities should be condemned as the grave sinful acts that they are and they should be called to repentance.

[piusv]

Wait, so this isn’t on the Vatican website yet, but Yahoo somehow got ahold of it?

[markomalley]

>>>>Wait, so this isn’t on the Vatican website yet, but Yahoo somehow got ahold of it?

It is there... In Italian.

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/synod/documents/rc_synod_doc_20150623_instrumentum-xiv-assembly_it.html

[ebb tide]

The general secretary of the Synod of Bishops noted that it makes reference to “the family and ecclesial accompaniment, the streamlining of procedures for causes for annulment, the integration of faithful in irregular situations, the eventual introduction of a penitential route, the pastoral problems regarding mixed marriages and disparities of worship, as well as questions related to responsible procreation, reduction of births, adoption and fostering, respect for life from conception to natural end, and education of future generations.

Presentation of the Instrumentum Laboris of the Synod: “The vocation and the mission of the family in the Church and contemporary world”

[NKP_Vet]

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/synod-guiding-document-families-need-the-churchs-message-of-mercy-71531/

[piusv]

Thanks for all of the links.