In an extraordinary pushback against Pope Francis, some Catholic bishops in Africa, Poland and elsewhere say they will not implement the new Vatican policy allowing blessings for same-sex couples.
Others downplayed the policy approved this week by Francis as merely reaffirming the Vatican’s long-standing teaching about marriage being only a union between a man and a woman.
The reactions show how polarizing the issue remains and how Francis’ decade-long effort to make the church a more welcoming place for the LGBTQ+ community continues to spark resistance among traditionalist and conservative Catholic leaders.
Some of the strongest responses came from bishops in Africa, home to 265 million Catholics, or nearly a quarter of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics. Many of those Catholics live and their churches operate in societies where homosexuality is condemned and outlawed.
I thought they had already split and there’s a bunch of non-conformers leaving and forming the racist, sexist, and every other -ist denomination “Global Methodist Church”?
The UMC had a vote to make same sex marriage legal in the church. SSM lost. The antigay side then voted on a provision to “let those with differing options leave the church”. When the progay marriage side didn’t leave, and actually just ignored the rules and started to marry people anyway, the antigay side started to use the escape hatch they built for their opponents to form the GMC.
Fun fact: any UMC member can accuse any pastor of being gay or marrying gays, but the jury pool for the church trial is always the other local pastors in that area. Local pastors just got together and formed pacts to never convict. Pre-jury nullification!