The Diocese of Poitiers, France has published a pro-LGBT article in the latest issue of its diocesan journal. The article, entitled “Parents of Children who are ‘Different’, Homosexual” was written by “parents of homosexual children.”
They write:
We are trying to love our children, by not judging them, by trying to understand them and accept them as they are. Thanks to them, we have changed our attitude. They have taught us tolerance, how to come out of our conformism, to be in the truth. They have opened us to the Spirit of the Word of Christ, “Love one another,” by accepting their differences. Our children have the right to live an ordinary life. Just because they are different one must not imagine that they are to be treated differently. Pope Francis shows the way, he who says, “Who am I to judge?” What matters most to us … is the happiness of our children.
The article continues by declaring categorically that the Church has not supported them:
Unhappily, the Church has not helped us, since its positions, especially its position on the law regarding marriage for all, has revolted us. Society has just taken a big step forward, and, yet again, many Christians are lagging behind this evolution. It is difficult to be comfortable in a Church which does not recognize one part of its members. Will she ever be able to recognize her past errors?
They say they are waiting for the day when other Christians will ask them to share their experiences and acknowledge how they have suffered because of the intolerance of other Christians.
When priests will remember that our children are loved by God, and that God is with us, as they proclaim in the Liturgy, ‘The Lord be with you!’ Less [sic] long sermons and more concrete steps!
The signatories invoke the oft repeated words of Pope John Paul II, “Do not be afraid!,” and ask that the Church become a place where every person will be welcome “without distinction, without judgment. We wish for our homosexual children what Jesus always did, he who welcomed Zaccheus, Mary Magdalene, the Good Samaritan, the lepers whom he held in his arms.” In order to accomplish this change, “it is enough to return to the sources of the Gospel, getting rid of the straitjacket of fear which gave birth to a rigid morality, petrified over the course of history. May our local communities not reproduce this schema of guilt and judgment, but instead, may their priority be openness, respect, listening, compassion – in brief, welcoming all.”
The article concludes by thanking the local bishop for having dared to open the door and “explode the straitjacket” (of traditional Catholic moral teaching).
The French website Riposte-catholique comments on this article, saying:
It seems unacceptable to read such an article in an official Catholic journal denigrating the actions of its brothers who mobilized themselves against the Taubira law [purporting to redefine marriage to include sodomitical pairs in France in 2013]; the LMPT movement [against same] had nothing scornful to say against homosexuals. The author of the article (“12 parents of homosexual children”) voluntarily employs a rebel tone and considers himself, just like the action of the diocese, to be in rupture with the doctrine of the Holy Catholic Church … and he is probably right.
There is manifest secularization in the Diocese of Poitiers that drifts toward a humanist conception of the Church adoring an impersonal god and relativized in a religion without any requirements, therefore without any sin. This diocese of Poitiers has been taken over by the left and is always living out the legacy of [former bishop] Joseph Rozier [1975-1994]; the last archbishops pursued the same politics.
The diocese now has almost no vocations. The few remaining candidates for the priesthood have for a long time preferred to go elsewhere for their formation, in order to receive a better quality of teaching.
Editor’s note: The material quoted herein was translated by Giuseppe Pellegrino.
