Krzysztof Charamsa, the Vatican priest who was sacked earlier this month after coming out as gay, said in a letter to Pope Francis that the Church is making the lives of gay Catholics “a hell”. He spoke of the “often paranoid homophobia” within the church & contended in that many church officers have been gay.
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As Pope Francis said at the beginning of the synod, Church doctrine on the meaning of marriage as a lifelong bond between one man and one woman open to having children was not up for debate. “It is another encouragement to remind people, especially remarried Catholics, that an informed conscience is, as the church has always taught, the final moral arbiter”.
The Vatican called Charamsa’s actions “irresponsible”, adding that he “will certainly be unable” to continue as a theologian at the Vatican.
He also said ‘it is important to understand that the synod document is not an end in itself’.
“It was also about laying closed hearts, which bare the closed hearts which frequently hide even behind the Church’s teachings or good intentions, in order to sit in the chair of Moses and judge, sometimes with superiority and superficiality, hard cases and wounded families”.
Charamsa, 43, had made similar comments about the Church on the eve of the synod, the assembly of bishops from around the world.
“The grace of the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony strengthens the abandoned spouse to live faithfully the marriage bond, continuing to seek the salvation of the partner who has abandoned the marriage union”.
The Vatican announced October 28 that Pope Francis will issue a document about the family as a follow up to the recently-concluded Synod on the Family, according to America magazine.
“For me”, Father Nicolàs said, “the ideal follow-up would consist of particular synods: each bishop when he returns home holds a synod with his people, both priests and laity, to discuss how to realize here the possibilities [opened by the synod on the family]”. “No one publicly said a word against those defamatory sentences”. Synod fathers recognized this, but found it hard to propose how the Church can meaningfully help these families.
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The bishops’ final report, which comprised 94 individually approved paragraphs, addressed a variety of issues affecting Catholic families, including poverty, immigration and “the pastoral needs of the handicapped, the elderly, widows and those in interfaith marriages”, Crux reported. But Monsignor Charamsa rejected any compromise, saying that by ignoring gays, lesbians and transgender people, the church is asking the faithful to believe that the Earth is still flat.
