Long due thaw
17 Oct 2014 12:03 AM GMT
In a synod of two hundred bishops and lay officials from around the world at Vatican on the theme of family, nobody had anticipated that the Roman Catholic Church would change its stance towards homosexuality at least. But on 13 October when a Vatican document said that homosexual people had ‘gifts and qualities to offer’ and asked that if Catholicism could accept gay people and recognise positive aspects of same-sex couples, the tone of harsh criticism for gay relationships for years altogether seemed to be on the wane. For once the language used was less judgemental and the Church in its own words said that it should challenge itself to find a fraternal space for gay people without compromising Catholic doctrine on family and matrimony.
Pope Francis, right from the past year has been advocating the LGBT cause and the synod is an extension of his strong willpower to give equal rights to the gay community. This is an unprecedented development as even the immediate predecessors to Pope Francis, Pope Benedict XVI and Pope John Paul II were known to keep radical views on homosexuality. In fact the level of radicalisation at a point of time was such that in 1975, the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith issued a document called Persona Humana which stated that the acceptance of homosexual activity was against the Church’s teaching and morality.
This document was very famously based on the Bible’s indoctrination that people who indulged in homosexual activity were intrinsically disordered and homosexuality was never to be approved. The change that has come in was needed for an extremely long point of time now. The world needs to be a more inclusive place as the demographics of its population are dramatically changing every second.
Love is the manifestation of the purity of human thoughts and no entity, howsoever much powerful has the authority to challenge it. Gay people are as much a creation of God as heterosexual people are. It is a good thing that the Roman Catholic Church has decided to recognise homosexuality, albeit partially. This would certainly set an example for many other religious sects in the long run and hopefully the antipathy and antagonism that homosexual people across the globe are subjected to will finally come to an end.   Â
Pope Francis, right from the past year has been advocating the LGBT cause and the synod is an extension of his strong willpower to give equal rights to the gay community. This is an unprecedented development as even the immediate predecessors to Pope Francis, Pope Benedict XVI and Pope John Paul II were known to keep radical views on homosexuality. In fact the level of radicalisation at a point of time was such that in 1975, the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith issued a document called Persona Humana which stated that the acceptance of homosexual activity was against the Church’s teaching and morality.
This document was very famously based on the Bible’s indoctrination that people who indulged in homosexual activity were intrinsically disordered and homosexuality was never to be approved. The change that has come in was needed for an extremely long point of time now. The world needs to be a more inclusive place as the demographics of its population are dramatically changing every second.
Love is the manifestation of the purity of human thoughts and no entity, howsoever much powerful has the authority to challenge it. Gay people are as much a creation of God as heterosexual people are. It is a good thing that the Roman Catholic Church has decided to recognise homosexuality, albeit partially. This would certainly set an example for many other religious sects in the long run and hopefully the antipathy and antagonism that homosexual people across the globe are subjected to will finally come to an end.   Â
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