Rome — Pope Francis opened an enormous meeting Wednesday on the long run of the Catholic Church, where contentious topics shall be discussed. The three-week General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the Vatican, sometimes called the Super Bowl of the Catholic Church, has drawn bishops from world wide to debate hot button issues including whether priests ought to be allowed to get married, if divorced and remarried Catholics should receive communion, whether women ought to be allowed to turn out to be deacons and the way the church will handle matters across the LGBTQ community.
Even before it kicked off this yr’s synod was already historic: It’s the primary time that ladies and laypeople are being allowed to vote — though 80% of participants are still bishops, and thus men. But the most important bombshell dropped earlier this week, when Francis opened the door for the possibility of Catholic priests blessing same-sex unions.
His remarks, published Monday, got here with caveats: Francis stressed that blessings should not be seen as elevating same-sex unions to the sacred place of heterosexual marriage, but until now, the church’s position had been that same-sex unions couldn’t be blessed, because “God cannot bless sin.”
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In his statements — issued in reply to cardinals who had requested clarity on the church’s position on the matter — Francis said, “we can’t be judges who only deny, reject, and exclude.”
In his opening homily Wednesday for the synod, the pope said that “everyone, everyone, everyone,” have to be allowed in.
LGBTQ organizations welcomed the change in tone, while church conservatives blasted Francis for appearing to dilute Catholic doctrine and sow confusion.
Jaime Manson, a women’s rights activist and devout Catholic, said the change opens the church tent for LGBTQ couples like her and her partner of 4 years.
“Affirming and embracing everyone only makes the church stronger,” Manson told CBS News. “It is a really slim minority of Catholics who’re against same-sex unions.”
Father Gerald Murray, a conservative priest from Manhattan, disagreed.
“For the pope to say that priests and bishops can discover a technique to do that, it’s incorrect,” Murray said. “He shouldn’t do it.”
“The harm is that it contradicts Catholic teaching,” Murray said when asked in regards to the harm in making the tent “larger for more people.”
All this, and the synod has only just begun.
