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VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- In strikingly conciliatory language on situations contrary to Catholic teaching, an official midterm report from the Synod of Bishops on the family emphasized calls for greater acceptance and appreciation of divorced and remarried Catholics, cohabitating couples and homosexuals.
"It is necessary to accept people in their concrete being, to know how to support their search, to encourage the wish for God and the will to feel fully part of the church, also on the part of those who have experienced failure or find themselves in the most diverse situations," Hungarian Cardinal Peter Erdo of Esztergom-Budapest told Pope Francis and the synod Oct. 13.
"Homosexuals have gifts and qualities to offer to the Christian community," the cardinal said. "Often they wish to encounter a church that offers them a welcoming home. Are our communities capable of providing that, accepting and evaluating their sexual orientation, without compromising Catholic doctrine on the family and matrimony?"
The statement represents a marked shift in tone on the subject for an official Vatican document. While the Catechism of the Catholic Church calls for "respect, compassion and sensitivity" toward homosexuals, it calls their inclination "objectively disordered." A 1986 document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith called homosexuality a "more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil." In 2003, the doctrinal congregation stated that permitting adoption by same-sex couples is "gravely immoral" and "would actually mean doing violence to these children."
While Cardinal Erdo said that same-sex unions present unspecified "moral problems" and thus "cannot be considered on the same footing" as traditional marriage, he said they also can exemplify "mutual aid to the point of sacrifice (that) constitutes a precious support in the life of the partners."
He noted that the "church pays special attention to the children who live with couples of the same sex, emphasizing that the needs and rights of the little ones must always be given priority."
The cardinal said a "new sensitivity in the pastoral care of today consists in grasping the positive reality of civil marriages and ... cohabitation," even though both models fall short of the ideal of sacramental marriage.
At a news conference following the synod's morning session, Cardinal Erdo said no one at the synod had questioned church teaching that Jesus' prohibition of divorce applies to all Christian sacramental marriages.
Also at the news conference, Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle of Manila, one of the assembly's three presidents chosen by Pope Francis, said Cardinal Erdo's speech "is not to be considered a final document from the synod," but a pretext for the further discussion, which concludes Oct. 18.
The synod is not supposed to reach any definitive conclusions, but set the agenda for a larger world synod to be held Oct. 4-25, 2015, which will make recommendations to the pope. Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, general secretary of the synod, announced Oct. 13 that the theme of next's year assembly will be: "The vocation and mission of the family in the church and in the modern world."
Read the original news story here:
Family synod midterm report: Welcome gays, nonmarital unions
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