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Homosexuality is considered by the Roman Catholic hierarchy to be "disordered" in the sense that it is said to be "ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil" and is not directed toward what the Catholic Church believes to be the unitive and procreative purposes of sexual activity. While "homosexual desires" are not in themselves considered sinful, "homosexual acts" are. The Catholic Church has said of homosexuality, "as in every moral disorder, homosexual activity prevents one's own fulfillment and happiness by acting contrary to the creative wisdom of God".

The Catholic Church believes the complementarity of the sexes to be part of God's plan, and holds same-gender sexual activities to be incompatible with this framework. These teachings are not limited to the issue of homosexuality, but form the philosophical underpinning for the Catholic teachings against, for example, fornication, sodomy, as well as contraception, pornography, and masturbation.

In a number of instances Catholic bishops have opposed, and sometimes actively campaigned against, same-sex marriage, adoption, and other LGBT rights issues, including the decriminalization of homosexuality in several countries and also, on one occasion, at the United Nations. The Catholic Church believes that homosexual unions are an unfavourable environment for the normal development of any children concerned and that they are "deprived of the experience of either fatherhood or motherhood". It also believes that legalizing such unions would radically alter the concept of marriage, with serious damage to society.

Many Catholics disagree with the official position of the Roman Catholic hierarchy on homosexuality, and in many locations, such as North America, Northern and Western Europe, as well as the Southern Cone, show growing and stronger support for gay rights (such as same-sex marriage, or protection against discrimination) than the general population.

Church teaching

DignityUSA, "the largest and most progressive gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Catholic organization in the United States", summarizes the Catholic Church's teaching on homosexuality: "The Catholic Church holds that, as a state beyond a person's choice, being homosexual is not wrong or sinful in itself. But just as it is objectively wrong for unmarried heterosexuals to engage in sex, so too are homosexual acts considered to be wrong."

John L. Allen, Jr. likewise speaks of Catholic teaching as considering homosexual acts gravely immoral, a condemnation of the acts, not the persons, who "must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity" and "every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided", in line with the traditional saying: "Love the sinner, hate the sin."Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page).

Persona humana

In 1975, the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued the document Persona humana dealing with sexual ethics. It stated that those who "have begun to judge indulgently, and even to excuse completely, homosexual relations between certain people" do so "in opposition to the constant teaching of the Magisterium and to the moral sense of the Christian people". It noted that "a distinction is drawn, and it seems with some reason, between homosexuals whose tendency comes from a false education, from a lack of normal sexual development, from habit, from bad example, or from other similar causes, and is transitory or at least not incurable; and homosexuals who are definitively such because of some kind of innate instinct or a pathological constitution judged to be incurable".

It criticised those who held that for the latter class of homosexuals the tendency "justifies in their case homosexual relations within a sincere communion of life and love analogous to marriage". It stated that in Scripture homosexual acts "are condemned as a serious depravity and even presented as the sad consequence of rejecting God", a condemnation that "attest to the fact that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered and can in no case be approved of".

Shortly afterwards, on 5 October 1979, Pope John Paul II praised the bishops of the United States for their recent pastoral letter on homosexuality. He stated that, instead of "holding out false hope" to homosexuals facing hard moral problems, the bishops had upheld "the true dignity, the true human dignity, of those who look to Christ's Church for the guidance which comes from the light of God's word".

On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons

On 1 October 1986, the letter authored by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith entitled, On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons was delivered in Rome by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and Archbishop Alberto Bovone. The letter gave instructions on how the clergy should deal with and respond to lesbian, gay, and bisexual people. It was designed to correct misunderstandings and misinterpretations of the 1975 document (Persona Humana).

The letter clarified that the Church's teaching on the sinfulness of homosexual acts was more nuanced than commonly believed by the media and some Catholics: "What is at all costs to be avoided is the unfounded and demeaning assumption that the sexual behaviour of homosexual persons is always and totally compulsive and therefore inculpable." Furthermore, the letter stated: "although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder." The letter also stated that: "It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the Church's pastors wherever it occurs."

The letter asserted that, while Christians rightly oppose any violence against homosexual persons, it is wrong to then claim that the homosexual orientation is good or neutral: "But the proper reaction to crimes committed against homosexual persons should not be to claim that the homosexual condition is not disordered. When such a claim is made and when homosexual activity is consequently condoned, or when civil legislation is introduced to protect behaviour to which no one has any conceivable right, neither the Church nor society at large should be surprised when other distorted notions and practices gain ground, and irrational and violent reactions increase" Finally, "there can be no moral right to homosexual acts, even though they are no longer held to be criminal in many secular legal systems"."

The 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (para 2357) promulgated in 1992 said:

Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that 'homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered'. They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.

— The Catechism of the Catholic Church

However, while they are said to be disordered in the sense that they tempt one to do something that is sinful (viz. the homosexual act), temptations beyond one's control are not considered sinful in and of themselves. For this reason, while the Catholic Church does oppose attempts to legitimize same-gender sexual acts, it also urges respect and love for gay and bisexual people. "The Church cannot acknowledge amongst fundamental human rights a proposed right to acts which she teaches are morally wrong. Nevertheless, it is a fundamental human right of every person, irrespective of sexual orientation, to be treated by individuals and by society with dignity, respect and fairness."

The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.
Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.

The first provisional edition in 1992 containing the line "They do not choose their homosexual condition; for most of them it is a trial" was changed in the 1997 definitive edition to say instead "This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial".

Note by Cardinal Basil Hume

In April 1997, Cardinal Basil Hume issued A note on the teaching of the Catholic Church concerning homosexuality, which included the following statements:

"The Church recognises the dignity of all people and does not define or label them in terms of their sexual orientation. The pastor and counsellor must see all people, irrespective of their sexuality, as children of God and destined for eternal life."

"The Church has always taught that the sexual (genital) expression of love is intended by God's plan of creation to find its place exclusively within marriage between a man and a woman; and the sexual (genital) expression of love must be open to the possible transmission of new life".

"When the Church speaks of the inclination to homosexuality as being 'an objective disorder' (PC para.3), she does not consider, of course, the whole personality and character of the individual to be thereby disordered. Homosexual people, as well as heterosexual people, can, and often do, give a fine example of friendship and the art of chaste loving."

John Cornwell on Pope John Paul II

John Cornwell states that, as Pope John Paul II "approached the mid-point of his second decade in office", he saw homosexuality, alongside contraception, divorce and illicit unions, as a dimension of "the 'culture of death' against which he taught and preached with increasing vehemence".

Dissent from official Church position

A number of Catholics and Catholic groups oppose the position of the Catholic Church and seek to change it.

Clergy

There have also been some practical and ministerial disagreements within the clergy and hierarchy of the Catholic Church.

Two notable examples of an ordained Catholic and a Catholic religious who attracted controversy because of their actions and ministry to homosexuals are the Salvatorian priest Fr. Robert Nugent, and the School Sister of Notre Dame nun Jeannine Gramick, who established New Ways Ministry in 1977. This was in response to the Bishop of Brooklyn's invitation to reach out in “new ways” to lesbian and gay Catholics. In 1981, New Ways Ministry held its first national symposium on homosexuality and the Catholic Church, but Archbishop James Hickey of Washington, D.C. wrote to Catholic bishops and communities, asking them not to support the event. despite this more than fifty Catholic groups endorsed the program. In May 1999 they were formally disciplined when the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith permanently prohibited them from any pastoral work involving gay people, declaring that the positions they advanced "do not faithfully convey the clear and constant teaching of the Catholic Church" and "have caused confusion among the Catholic people".

Similarly, the American bishops Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit and Matthew Clark of Rochester, New York were criticized for their association with New Ways Ministry, and their distortion of the theological concept of the "Primacy of Conscience" as an alternative to the actual teaching of the Catholic Church. Furthermore, the insistence of Bishop Jacques Gaillot to preach a message about homosexuality contrary to that of the official church teaching is largely considered to be one of the factors that led to him being removed from his See of Evraux, France, in 1995. While bishop he had blessed a homosexual union in a "service of welcoming", after the couple requested it in view of their imminent death from AIDS.

In 1976, John McNeill, an American Jesuit, published The Church and the Homosexual, which challenged the Church's prohibition of same-sex activity. The work had received permission from McNeill's Jesuit superiors prior to printing. In 1977, McNeill was ordered by Cardinal Franjo Šeper not to write or speak publicly about homosexuality. McNeill stayed silent for nine years, but when he resumed his public advocacy the Jesuit order dismissed him for "pertinacious disobedience".

James Alison, another priest, followed later in the United Kingdom in 2003 and argued that the teaching of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons regarding gay people is incompatible with the Gospel, and states that "it cannot in fact be the teaching of the Church." In a Question of Truth, the Dominican priest Gareth Moore states that: "... there are no good arguments, from either Scripture or natural law, against what have come to be known as homosexual relationships. The arguments put forward to show that such relationships are immoral are bad."

In a letter of 25 July 1986 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith rebuked moral theologian Charles Curran for his published work and informed the Catholic University of America in Washington that he would "no longer be considered suitable nor eligible to exercise the function of a professor of Catholic theology". Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Prefect of the Congregation, expressed the hope that "this regrettable, but necessary, outcome to the Congregation's study might move you to reconsider your dissenting positions and to accept in its fullness the teaching of the Catholic Church". Curran had been critical of a number of the Catholic Church's teachings, including his contention that homosexual acts in the context of a committed relationship were good for homosexual people. This event "widened the gulf" between the Catholic episcopacy and academia in the United States.

More recently, in 2013 in England and Wales, 27 prominent Catholics (mainly theologians and clergy) issued a public letter supporting the Government's move to introduce same-sex civil marriage. The group included Fr James Alison, Tina Beattie, and Fr Kevin T. Kelly.

Lay opinion

A 2011 report based on telephone surveys of American Catholics conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute found 43% support same-sex marriage, 31% support civil unions, and 22% oppose any legal recognition of a same-sex relationship. 56% believe that sexual relations between two people of the same sex are not sinful. 73% favor anti-discrimination laws, 63% support the right of gay people to serve openly in the military, and 60% favor allowing same-sex couples to adopt children. The report also found Catholics to be more critical than other religious groups about how their church is handling the issue A 2012 Pew Forum survey which asked American Catholic respondents if they supported or opposed same-sex marriage found that 52% supported it and 37% opposed it. Catholic support of gay rights is thus higher than that of other Christian groups and of the general population. A spokesperson for DignityUSA suggested that Catholic support for gay rights was due to the religion's tradition of social justice, the importance of the family, and better education.

Movements

DignityUSA was founded in the United States in 1969 as the first group for gay and lesbian Catholics shortly after the Stonewall riots. It developed from the ministry of Father Patrick X. Nidorf, an Augustinian priest, and meetings were initially held in San Diego and Los Angeles before ultimately becoming headquartered in Boston. The organisation later spread to Canada. In 1987 at the height of the AIDS crisis a number of bishops banned chapters from meeting on church property.

It believes that gay Catholics can "express our sexuality physically, in a unitive manner that is loving, life-giving, and life-affirming". It also seeks to "work for the development of sexual theology leading to the reform of teachings and practices regarding human sexuality, and for the acceptance of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender peoples as full and equal members of the one Christ". In 1980, the Association of Priests in the Archdiocese of Chicago honored the Chicago branch of Dignity as the organization of the year.

The Rainbow Sash Movement covers two separate organizations created by and advanced by practicing LGBT Catholics who believe they should be able to receive Holy Communion. It has been most active in the United States, England, and Australia. The Rainbow Sash itself is a strip of a rainbow colored fabric which is worn over the left shoulder and is put on at the beginning of the Liturgy. The members go up to receive Eucharist. If denied, they go back to pews and remain standing, but if the Eucharist is received then they go back to the pew and kneel in the traditional way.

In the United Kingdom, Quest is a group for lesbian, gay and bisexual Catholics with a purpose to "proclaim the gospel...so as to sustain and increase Christian belief among homosexual men and women." It was established and is led by lay Catholics.

In January 1998 Alfredo Ormando set fire to himself in St Peter's square, Rome as a political protest against the Catholic Church's condemnation of homosexuality. He died shortly after from his injuries.

Defense of official teaching

An essay taking a clear position against gay marriage, written by the French rabbi Gilles Bernheim, found a great echo in Catholic circles culminating in Pope Benedict XVI quoting him at length in his annual address to the Roman Curia, 21 December 2012.

Some Catholics who oppose gay rights and the acceptance of gay people regard the church's teaching on the matter as definitive, infallible, and unchangeable as a magisterial dogma of the Catholic Church. In an official brief called Rescriptum ex audientia of May 19, 2008 made by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone the Cardinal Secretary of State reaffirmed the norms in the "Instruction Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocation with regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in view of their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders", as being of universal value and without exceptions.

Chastity-promoting ministries

Terence Cardinal Cooke of New York City saw a need for a ministry which would assist gay Catholics to adhere to Catholic teaching on sexual behaviour. Cooke invited John Harvey to New York to begin the work of Courage International with Benedict Groeschel, of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal. The first meeting was held in September 1980 at the Shrine of Mother Seton in South Ferry. The group consists of laymen and laywomen usually under anonymous discretion, together with a priest, to encourage its members to abstain from acting on their sexual desires and to live chastely according to the Catholic Church's teachings on homosexuality".

The Catholic Medical Association has stated that same-sex attractions are preventable and a symptom of other issues. The goal of therapy should be "freedom to live chastely according to one's state in life."

Homosexuality and Catholic clergy

Homosexual clergy is not a modern phenomenon. In response to scandals among ordinary clergy, Saint Peter Damian wrote his Liber Gomorrhianus (1050), which denounced, in ascending order of gravity, four varieties of sexual practice: masturbation, mutual masturbation, interfemoral intercourse, and anal intercourse.

The 1961 Papal encyclical Careful Selection And Training Of Candidates For The States Of Perfection And Sacred Orders (Religiosorum institutio) stated that "Advantage to religious vows and ordination should be barred to those who are afflicted with evil tendencies to homosexuality or pederasty, since for them the common life and the priestly ministry would constitute serious dangers." Bishops had discretion in allowing the further instruction of offending but penitent seminarians, and held homosexuals to the same standards of celibate chastity as heterosexual seminarians.

In November 2005, the Congregation for Catholic Education under the direction of John Paul II, issued a document entitled an Instruction Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in view of their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders. It stated that, “’’the Church, while profoundly respecting the persons in question, cannot admit to the seminary or to holy orders those who practise homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called "gay culture"’’.

It was not a new moral teaching, but enhanced vigilance in barring homosexuals from seminaries, and from the priesthood. While the preparation for this document had started 10 years before its publication, this instruction is seen as an official answer by the Catholic Church to several sex scandals involving priests in the late 20th/early 21st century, including the American Roman Catholic sex abuse cases and a 2004 sex scandal in a seminary at St. Pölten (Austria).

The document has attracted criticism based on an interpretation that the document implies that homosexuality is associated with pedophilia. There were some questions on how distinctions between deep-seated and transient homosexuality, as proposed by the document, will be applied in practice: the actual distinction that is made might be between those who abuse, and those who don't.

Estimates presented in Donald B. Cozzens' book The Changing Face of the Priesthood of the percentage of gay priests range from 23–58%; suggesting a higher than average numbers of homosexual men (active and non-active) within the Catholic priesthood and higher orders.

Homosexuality and the episcopacy

The existence of gay bishops in the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran and other traditions is a matter of historical record, though never, until recently, considered licit by any of the main Christian denominations. Homosexual activity was engaged in secretly. When it was made public, official response ranged from inaction to expulsion from Holy Orders. As far back as the eleventh century, Ralph, Archbishop of Tours had his lover installed as Bishop of Orléans, yet neither Pope Urban II, nor his successor Paschal II took action to depose either man.

Although homosexual sexual acts have been consistently condemned by the Catholic Church, a number of senior members of the clergy have been found to have had homosexual relationships. Archbishop Rembert Weakland, who retired in 2002, was alleged to have been in a relationship with a former graduate student; Juan Carlos Maccarone, the Bishop of Santiago del Estero in Argentenia, retired after video surfaced showing him engaged in homosexual acts; and Francisco Domingo Barbosa Da Silveira, the Bishop of Minas in Uruguay, resigned in 2009 after it was alleged that he had broken his vow of celibacy.

A number of Popes were rumored to have been homosexual or to have had male sexual partners. In the 11th century, Pope Benedict IX (1044–1048) was forced out of the papacy amidst a series of scandals, including his sexual orientation toward men. Pope Paul II (1417-1471) was said by detractors to have died while being sodomised by a page boy. Pope Sixtus IV (1414-1484) was called a "lover of boys and sodomites". Pope Leo X (1475-1521) was believed to have engaged in "unnatural vice". Despite having fathered a daughter, there were contemporary suggestions that Pope Julius II (1443-1513) was homosexual. The reputation of Pope Julius III (1487-1555), and that of the Catholic Church, were greatly harmed by his scandal-ridden relationship with his adopted nephew.

Recent developments

In recent years there has been increased media interest in a perceived "gay lobby" inside the Vatican. The BBC reported that shortly before the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI's in February 2013, the Italian media in particular used un-sourced reports to suggest that gay clergy had been collaborating to advance personal interests. This risked opening the Holy See to potential blackmail, and according to the BBC, had been one of the factors influencing Benedict's decicion to resign. The existence of this lobby was seemingly acknowledged by Pope Francis in remarks later that year made during a meeting held in private with Catholic religious from Latin America, and he was said to have promised to "see what we can do".

In July, Francis responded directly to journalists' questions concerning a reported insider lobby of gay men. He drew a distinction between the problem of lobbying, and the sexual orientation of people: "If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?" He quoted the statement by the Catechism of the Catholic Church that gay people should not be marginalised in society, but rather integrated. "The problem, he said, is not having this orientation. We must be brothers. The problem is lobbying by this orientation, or lobbies of greedy people, political lobbies, Masonic lobbies, so many lobbies. This is the worse problem." In relation to reports that a newly promoted Vatican official had had a homosexual relationship, Pope Francis drew a distinction between sins, which can be forgiven if repented of, and crimes, such as sexual abuse of minors.

Some LGBT groups welcomed the comments, noting that this was the first time a pope had used the word "gay" in public, and had also accepted the existence of gay people as a recognisable part of the Catholic Church community for the first time.

Political activity

Decriminalization of homosexuality

Country level

In the 1960s, the Catholic Church supported the call of the Wolfenden report to introduce legislation to decriminalise homosexual acts in England and Wales. In Australia, the Catholic Archbishop supported efforts begun in the 1970s to likewise change the law.

In Malta, however, Catholic bishops opposed efforts to remove homosexual acts from the criminal code; something which was finally achieved in 1973. In 1985, Cardinal Williams issued a statement opposing homosexual law reform in New Zealand, arguing that "to decriminalize homosexuality could suggest to some people that it was morally and socially permissible". Yet the Church declined to submit a formal resonse to the parliamentary enquiry. The Catholic Church has also opposed or taken action against the decriminalization of homosexuality in Belize and India in more recent years. Homosexuality remains illegal in Belize, but the law has been repealed in India.

Elsewhere, in Nigeria, Cardinal John Onaiyekan was thought to have tacitly approved of a May 2013 bill criminalizing same-sex relationships and participation in gay rights organizations. In June 2012, Catholic bishops in Uganda, a country where 42% of the population is Catholic, participated in a joint Christian urging of Parliament in 2012 to pass the anti-homosexuality bill, which originally proposed the death penalty for "aggravated homosexuality", a provision said to have been removed from the bill by then. In that declaration, Archbishop Cyprian Kizito Lwanga joined other religious leaders calling on parliamentarians to make progress in enacting legislation that would broaden the criminalisation of same-sex relations. They asked Ugandan Christians "to remain steadfast in opposing the phenomena of homosexuality, lesbianism and same-sex union".

At the global level

The Holy See, an observer at the United Nations, opposed both informally and formally a 2008 proposed declaration urging the decriminalization of "sexual orientation" and "gender identity", which are punishable by law in many countries, including some where it incurs a death sentence. In an interview published on 1 December 2008, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Holy See's representative at the United Nations General Assembly, said of the proposed declaration that it "asked for the addition of new categories to be protected against discrimination without taking into account that, if adopted, these would create terrible new discriminations" such as, he said, pillorying and pressuring of states that do not recognize as marriage a union between persons of the same sex. or to provide adoption rights to gays and lesbians. Speaking on the floor of the General Assembly on 18 December 2008, he said: "The Holy See appreciates the attempts made to condemn all forms of violence against homosexual persons as well as urge States to take necessary measures to put an end to all criminal penalties against them", but added that its failure to define the terms "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" would produce "serious uncertainty" and "undermine the ability of States to enter into and enforce new and existing human rights conventions and standards". In Italy, the gay association Arcigay and the newspaper La Repubblica decried the stance of the Holy See. A strongly worded editorial in the mainstream "La Stampa" newspaper said the Vatican's reasoning was "grotesque.".

During discussion at the 16th session of the UN Human Rights Council in 2011 of a Joint Statement on Ending Violence and Related Human Rights Violations Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, the Holy See's representative, Archbishop Silvano Maria Tomasi, stated: "A state should never punish a person, or deprive a person of the enjoyment of any human right, based just on the person's feelings and thoughts, including sexual thoughts and feelings. But states can, and must, regulate behaviors, including various sexual behaviors. Throughout the world, there is a consensus between societies that certain kinds of sexual behaviors must be forbidden by law. Pedophilia and incest are two examples." He later said of that resolution that recognizing gay rights would cause discrimination against religious leaders and that he was concerned about opposite-sex marriages losing value.

Discrimination against homosexuality

In 1992, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published a statement under the title "Some Considerations Concerning the Catholic Response to Legislative Proposals on the Non-Discrimination of Homosexual Persons". It commented that some "municipal authorities made public housing, otherwise reserved for families, available to homosexual (and unmarried heterosexual) couples" and said that "such initiatives ... may in fact have a negative impact on the family and society", affecting "such things as the adoption of children, the employment of teachers, the housing needs of genuine families, landlords' legitimate concerns in screening potential tenants". After recalling what it had already stated in its 1986 letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the pastoral care of homosexual persons, it declared that, because of the moral concern that sexual orientation raises, it is different from qualities such as race, ethnicity, sex or age, and therefore taking account of it "in the placement of children for adoption or foster care, in employment of teachers or athletic coaches, and in military recruitment" and similar areas is not unjust. Limitation of rights is permissible, and sometimes even obligatory, in cases of "objectively disordered external conduct", even if the conduct is not culpable, as in the case of "contagious or mentally ill persons", the exercise of whose rights can justly, for the sake of the common good, be restricted.

The United States Conference of Bishops wrote to all members of the Senate Committee for Health, Education, Labour and Pensions in 2013 to register its opposition to a proposed Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). The proposed legislation would prohibit discrimination in hiring and employment on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity by civilian, nonreligious employers with at least 15 employees. While they expressed their belief that "no one should be an object of scorn, hatred, or violence for any reason, including sexual inclination", the bishops declared: "We have a moral obligation to oppose any law that would be so likely to contribute to legal attempts to redefine marriage".

In July 2013, Cardinal Nicolás de Jesús López Rodríguez referred to President Obama's nominee for Dominican Republic’s ambassador by the anti-gay slur maricón. In 2011 a Catholic bishop in Peru, Luis Bambarén, was forced to apologize for using the same word in commenting, when answering journalists' questions on plans to legalise same-sex marriage, on the use in Spanish of the English word "gay": "I do not know why we talk about Gays. Let's speak in Creole or Castilian: They're faggots. That's how you say it, right?" He later apologized, saying: "It is an offensive word, and deserve respect."

The Catholic Church's teaching on the use of offensive language regarding homosexuals was expressed in a letter to all its bishops in 1986:

It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the Church's pastors wherever it occurs. It reveals a kind of disregard for others which endangers the most fundamental principles of a healthy society. The intrinsic dignity of each person must always be respected in word, in action and in law.

Campaign against same-sex marriage and civil unions

In recent years, the Catholic Church has resisted legislative efforts by governments to give equal rights to gay men and women through the establishment of either civil unions or same-sex marriage.

On 3 June 2003, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published a document with the agreement of Pope John Paul II called "Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons" opposing the very idea of same-sex marriage. This document made clear that "legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behaviour ... but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity". Catholic legislators were instructed that supporting such recognition would be "gravely immoral", and that they must do all they could do actively oppose it, bearing in mind that "the approval or legalisation of evil is something far different from the toleration of evil". The document said that allowing children to be adopted by people living in homosexual union would actually mean doing violence to them, and stated: "There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and family. Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law."

On 9 March 2012, Pope Benedict XVI, denouncing "the powerful political and cultural currents seeking to alter the legal definition of marriage", currents that the Washington Post described as a "cultural shift toward gay marriage in U.S.", told a group of United States bishops on their ad limina visit to Rome that "the Church's conscientious effort to resist this pressure calls for a reasoned defense of marriage as a natural institution consisting of a specific communion of persons, essentially rooted in the complementarity of the sexes and oriented to procreation. Sexual differences cannot be dismissed as irrelevant to the definition of marriage."

North America

In the United States, the leadership of the Catholic Church has taken an active and financial role in political campaigns across all states regarding same-sex marriage. It was reported that the church spent nearly $2 million in 2012 toward unsuccessful campaigns against gay marriage in four states (Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington), representing a significant share of the contributions used to fund anti-gay marriage campaigns, although a 2012 Pew Research Center poll indicated that Catholics in the United States generally who support gay marriage outnumber those who oppose it at 52 percent to 37 percent

In addition to financially supporting political campaigns against same-sex marriage, the church has also urged its followers to campaign and vote against it, distributing anti-gay-marriage DVDs and asking parishioners to write to lawmakers and urge them to oppose the Religious Freedom and Marriage Fairness Act. Bishops and archbishops have described same-sex marriage as against nature and a risk to spiritual well-being, and discouraged supporters from taking communion or attending same-sex weddings.

In July 2003, the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in Canada, the country's plurality religion, protested the Chrétien government's plans to include same-sex couples in civil marriage. The church criticisms were accompanied by Vatican claims that Catholic politicians should vote according to their personal beliefs rather than the policy of the government. Amid a subsequent backlash in opinion, the church remained quiet on the subject until late 2004, when the Bishop of Calgary, Frederick Henry, wrote a pastoral letter calling homosexual behaviour "an evil act" and seeming to call for its outlaw by the government, saying "Since homosexuality, adultery, prostitution and pornography undermine the foundations of the family, the basis of society, then the State must use its coercive power to proscribe or curtail them in the interests of the common good."

Europe

Catholic Church figures have also criticized attempts to legalize same-sex marriage in Europe. Pope John Paul II criticized same-sex marriage when it was introduced in the Netherlands in 2001, and cardinals in Scotland and France said that it was a danger to society.

In Spain and Portugal, Catholic leaders led the opposition to same-sex marriage, urging their followers to vote against it or to refuse to implement the marriages should they become legal. In May 2010, during an official visit to Portugal four days before the ratification of the law, Pope Benedict XVI, affirmed his opposition by describing it as "insidious and dangerous".

In 2010 in Ireland, Sean Brady (the Archbishop of Armagh) unsuccessfully asked Irish Catholics to resist government proposals for same-sex civil partnerships, and the Irish episcopal conference said that they discriminated against people in non-sexual relationships. In April 2013, when the legalization of same-sex marriage was being discussed, the Irish Bishops Conference stated in their submission to a constitutional convention that, if the civil definition of marriage was changed to include same-sex marriage, so that it differed from the church's own definition, they could no longer perform civil functions at weddings.

In the predominantly Catholic countries of Italy and Croatia the Catholic Church has been the main opponent to either the introduction of civil unions or marriage for same-sex-couples. In July 2013, 750,000 signatures (a fifth of Croatia's total population) were collected by Church leaders for a petition calling on law-makers to ensure the prohibition on same-sex marriage was embedded in the national Constitution.

South America

In response to efforts to introduce same-sex marriage in Uruguay in 2013, Pablo Galimberti, the Bishop of Salto, on behalf of the Uruguayan Bishops Council, said that marriage was "an institution that is already so injured" and that the proposed law would "confuse more than clarify". The proposal nevertheless became law, with strong public support.

Africa

In Cameroon, Victor Tonye Bakot, the Archbishop of Yaounde, urged parishioners in 2012 that: “Marriage of persons of the same sex is a serious crime against humanity. We need to stand up to combat it with all our energy”. At the start of 2013 the National Episcopal Conference of Cameroon followed this up by issuing a public statement urging "all believers and people of good will to reject homosexuality and so-called ‘gay marriage’".

Acceptance of civil unions

There has been some dissent expressed in recent years by figures in the Catholic Church on whether support should not at least be given for homosexual civil unions. Most notably in this respect has been Christoph Schonborn, the Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna; but also the former Papal Master of Ceremonies, Piero Marini, and Godfried Danneels, the former Primate of Belgium in 2013. It has even been suggested that when Pope Francis, as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, urged fellow Argentine bishops in 2010 to signal support for civil unions, this was a compromise response to calls for same-sex marriage.

Over 260 Catholic theologians, particularly from Germany, Switzerland and Austria (including Hans Kung), signed in January and February 2011 a memorandum, called Church 2011, which called for more ecclesiastical respect for gay couples who live in civil unions.

See also

• DignityUSA
• Instruction Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in view of their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders
• List of sexually active popes
• Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination

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Bibliography

• David Berger (2010-11). Der heilige Schein. ISBN 978-3-550-08855-1. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• Kate Saunders (1992-04-06). Catholics and sex. Vintage. ISBN 978-0-434-67246-2. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Elizabeth Stuart (1993-07). Chosen. Geoffrey Chapman. ISBN 978-0-225-66682-3. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• Atila Sinke Guimara̋es (1999-12). The Catholic Church and homosexuality. TAN Books. ISBN 978-0-89555-651-6. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• Randy Engel (2006). The Rite of Sodomy. ISBN 978-0-9778601-3-5.

External links

• Why Marriage Matters: A Statement of the Irish Bishops' Conference on the Civil Partnership Bill
• Christian Anthropology and Homosexuality

• Homosexuality and Catholicism
• Catholic theology and doctrine
• Catholic theology of the body