Church in the World

Leaders display opposing faces of Church

Belgium

A row over a bishop's blunt comments on gay people has soured the upbeat message that Belgium's Catholic Church issued for Easter. A day after Brussels Cardinal Godfried Danneels presented a brochure stressing the positive side of Catholicism, the Bishop of Namur, André-Mutien Léonard, criticised homosexuals as abnormal, Belgium's gay marriage laws as irresponsible and condom use as "Russian roulette". Bishop Léonard ranks as a possible successor to Cardinal Danneels as Archbishop of Malines-Brussels, when the cardinal reaches 75 next year.

Presenting the brochure "Can't You Read the Signs of the Times?" just before Easter, Cardinal Danneels, a leading moderate, said most people knew only what the Church forbade. He called this "a culture of saying nyet". But when the Church says no, "it doesn't do it just for the sake of it, but because there is a positive value behind it". The brochure called Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical Deus Caritas Est "a breath of fresh air" that "speaks positively about erotic love". It said the Church's defence of life also included values such as disarmament, peace, ecological responsibility, fair commerce and road safety.

Speaking on Flemish radio VRT, Cardinal Danneels added his own view about remarried Catholics and Communion. "People who divorced but are not the guilty party according to their own conscience cannot be denied Communion, because you can't sin against your own conscience," he said.

The next day, Holy Thursday, the magazine Télémoustique ran Bishop Léonard's decidedly more conservative message. He described homosexuals as "abnormal", criticised the Belgian parliament for allowing gay marriage and easing divorce laws and said condoms were not 100 per cent reliable and could let viruses pass through. Bishop Léonard also described the Belgian Catholic Church as "one of the weak links" in worldwide Catholicism.