For centuries the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy has clung to ignorance based dogma when confronted with modern knowledge - e.g., the Church resisted knowledge that the Earth was not flat and revolved around the Sun - until a breaking point comes when it becomes no longer possible to cling to ignorance without losing all credibility. Now, Germany's bishops may be poised to force the Vatican to finally begin discarding 12th century dogma on sex and sexuality, especially on the issue of homosexuality. Right wing elements within the Church that seem to have a desperate need to condemn others (much like hypocrisy-filled evangelicals) will no doubt be foaming at the mouth and shrieking "heresy" as antiquated, myth based dogma confronts the reality of science and modern knowledge. I for one will never return to the Catholic Church in light of the continued cover ups of sexual abuse of children and minors. That said, if the German bishops can help end the Church's harmful mistreatment of LGBT people, perhaps fewer lives will be harmed or destroyed by dogma that should have been jettisoned ages ago. The Catholic News Service looks at this development:
The German bishops’ conference has committed to “newly assessing” the universal Church’s teaching on homosexuality, sexual morality in general, as well as the sacraments of ordination and marriage. The commitment comes at the beginning of a controversial two-year “Synodal Process” by the German hierarchy.Following consultations in Berlin last week, the chairman of the Marriage and Family Commission of the German bishops’ conference declared that the bishops agreed that homosexuality is a “normal form” of human sexual identity.
“The sexual preference of man expresses itself in puberty and assumes a hetero- or homosexual orientation,” Berlin’s Archbishop Heiner Koch asserted in a statement released by the bishops’ conference.
“Both belong to the normal forms of sexual predisposition, which cannot or should be be changed with the help of a specific socialization”.
Archbishop Koch, together with diocesan bishops Franz-Josef Bode of Osnabrück, Bishop Wolfgang Ipolt of Görlitz, Bishop Peter Kohlgraf of Mainz, as well as several auxiliary bishops from the Faith and Family Commission of the bishops' conference consulted with a number of invited medical specialists, theologians and canon lawyers during the event.
Calling for a "solid discussion supported by human sciences and theology" Koch and Bode said that Amoris Laetitia already provides for noticeable "developments" of both Church doctrine and practice, adding that a sexual relationship for divorced and remarried couples after Amoris laetitia "was no longer always to be qualified as grave sin," and that wholesale “exclusion from the reception of the Eucharist" of such couples could no longer be justified.
And since sexual orientation was to be considered unchangeable, “any form of discrimination of persons with a homosexual orientation” was to be rejected, as was “explicitly stressed by Pope Francis” in Amoris laetitia.
According to a press release issued by the bishops, there was also discussion on whether the prohibition of homosexual acts by the Church’s magisterium was "still up-to-date" – and whether artificial contraception should still be condemend by the Chuch for “both married and unmarried” couples.
Coinciding with the opening of the Synodal Process, several diocesan and national Catholic associations funded by the German Church tax, or Kirchensteuer, have made public demands for changes to the Church’s teaching and practice on similar issues.
Calls for “reform” range from the blessing of homosexual unions to the priestly ordination of women . . . Agnes Wuckelt, deputy chairwoman of the German Catholic Women’s Association (KFD), demanded that women be ordained to the priesthood, asserting that a “sacramental ordination of women as deacons” would be a welcome first step in that direction.
