2023-12-20 18:30:07
Since the Vatican announced authorization for its priests to bless homosexual couples, the reaction in the religious world, among Catholic and evangelical leaders, has been quite overwhelming. Among the critics of the measure is pastor Franklin Graham.
Evangelicals broke with the Catholic Church during the Protestant Reformation centuries ago, but because everything that happens in the Vatican has repercussions in society at large, pastors like Graham have reacted with concern against the liberal escalation of the papacy.
In a recent Facebook post in response to the Vatican, Evangelistic Association President Billy Graham recalled that “these so-called ‘blessings’ from religious leaders will not save anyone from God’s judgment!”
On Twitter, the evangelist cited the passage from Isaiah 5:20, where it says “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil…”. That is, they invert values, becoming complicit in sin.
“Pope Francis has now approved that Catholic priests ‘bless’ same-sex couples. But none of us, including the Pope, have the right to ‘bless’ what God calls sin,” commented Franklin Graham.
Media distortion
In an interview with the Catholic portal Aleteia, Father José Eduardo de Oliveira e Silva, from the Diocese of Osasco, who has a doctorate in Moral Theology, explained that the Vatican document does not change Catholic doctrine regarding marriage.
“Unlike an Instruction, which would have a more normative character, a Declaration is just a manifestation of the Magisterium on a controversial topic, but not with the force of a definition,” he said.
When talking about the blessing, Oliveira argued that it is something that anyone can request, and that this would be the Vatican’s intention. In other words, offering a “type of assistance” that “can be given to people who are not in morally regular conditions.”
Oliveira also says that the press distorted the Vatican document, making it seem like something that does not match reality. Asked about the doctrinal definition of marriage, the priest maintains that the declaration reinforces the current doctrine, rather than changing it.
“If we carefully read the text of the document, and not the news published by the media, we will see that the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith does exactly the opposite: ‘it is about avoiding recognizing something that is not marriage as marriage’, because marriage is ‘an exclusive, stable and indissoluble union between a man and a woman, naturally open to the generation of children’… ‘This conviction is founded on the perennial Catholic doctrine of marriage. Only in this context do sexual relations find their natural, adequate and fully human meaning. The doctrine of the Church, on this point, remains firm’”, concludes the Catholic.
For Pastor Silas Malafaia and Franklin Graham, however, authorization regarding the request for blessing constitutes a mistake, as it will give room for homosexual couples to request blessings not regarding the individuality of their lives, but regarding the type of union.
Thus, in practice, even if the Catholic Church does not officially recognize gay marriage, the act of blessing potential gay couples would be like endorsing the sin of homosexual practice, which goes against the doctrine of the institution itself.
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