BERLIN, Germany – A big majority of German bishops on Friday supported providing blessing ceremonies to gay {couples} in defiance of the Vatican.
Some 38 bishops voted in favor of the proposal in Frankfurt at Synodal Path, a high-level convention organized by the Catholic Church in Germany.
Nine bishops voted towards the proposal and 12 abstained.
The end result was welcomed by the pinnacle of the German Bishops’ Conference Georg Baetzing as a “very good” consequence.
The Church considers that marriage is completely the union of a person and girl, and the problem of homosexuality is very controversial.
Most just lately, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), the highly effective Vatican workplace chargeable for defending church doctrine, handed down a ruling in 2021 that same-sex unions couldn’t be blessed regardless of their “positive elements”.
However, in lots of nations, together with Germany, the blessings are already supplied in observe.
In 2021 and 2022, German church buildings participated in nationwide days of motion the place they held blessings for gay {couples}.
The observe relies upon to a big diploma on the angle of the native bishop. The implementation of the choice of the Synodal Path convention rests wholly with the bishops.
At 23 million followers, the Catholic Church stays Germany’s largest spiritual neighborhood.
But its pews are more and more empty on Sundays and it struggles to recruit new clergymen.
Pope Francis is himself ambivalent over the delicate topic of homosexuality.
The pontiff has stirred controversy together with his comparatively liberal angle in the direction of sexual orientation, which is at odds with the beliefs of many conservatives within the Church.
“If a person is gay and seeks the Lord with good will, who am I to judge him?” Francis mentioned quickly after he grew to become pope in 2013.
Yet the pope sticks firmly to Catholic educating that marriage is the union between a person and a lady to be able to procreate.
The Synodal Path is a two-year undertaking that goals to resume the Church and regain the general public’s belief, tackling controversial themes together with a dangerous little one abuse disaster. — Agence France-Presse
Source: www.gmanetwork.com
