Cardinal Robert Sarah, fast emerging as the major figure around which critics of Pope Francis are coalescing, has defended Church teaching on homosexuality in the Wall Street Journal, while critiquing a book by Jesuit priest and Vatican communications consultant Fr James Martin, calling for a more generous welcome to gay Catholics.
To those who want a shift in the Church’s approach and were heartened by Pope Francis' “who am I to judge” phrase regarding gay Catholics, the article will be a disappointment.
At the same time, Cardinal Sarah’s intervention reveals the “Francis effect” on this debate, and shows that subtle shifts are already taking place.
First, the cardinal - who is prefect for the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship - uses the term “LGBT community” when talking about gays, something very few senior prelates have done. He also refrains from using the phrase “intrinsically disordered”, catechism's description of homosexual acts.
His language is more conciliatory than the speech Cardinal Sarah made during the 2015 synod gathering of bishops on the family where he put together homosexual ideology and Islamist terrorism as major threats to humanity. These, he said, were “demonic” and “destroyers of family.”
Official Church teaching on homosexuality states that gay people should be treated with “respect, compassion, and sensitivity” while stressing that sexual acts between people of the same-sex are “contrary to the natural law.”
For years, gay people have felt hurt and alienated by the harsh language used by the Church, something that Fr Martin says should be softened. While Cardinal Sarah would naturally oppose such moves, he at least appears ready to call use different terms to describe gay people.
Responding to the article Fr Martin says the cardinal's use of LGBT is “a step forward,” pointing out that a number of traditional Catholics reject the term.
Second, the Guinean Prelate’s article accepts the need to debate if the Church is “reaching out effectively to a group in need.” What, in other words, is the pastoral care that should be offered to gay Catholics?
He wants to welcome the LGBT community but without compromising the counter-cultural message of Christianity that the Church should be wary of aligning itself with a specific group or movement. But he accepts Fr Martin's argument that gay people can end up singled out for condemnation while straight people have been given something of a free pass.
Cardinal Sarah says there should not be a “double standard with regard to the virtue of chastity” for gay and straight Christians, and that the gospel requirement is for all unmarried Catholics to refrain from sex.
“In her teaching about homosexuality, the Church guides her followers by distinguishing their identities from their attractions and actions,” Cardinal Sarah writes. “First there are the people themselves, who are always good because they are children of God. Then there are same-sex attractions, which are not sinful if not willed or acted upon but are nevertheless at odds with human nature.”
Fr Martin has pointed out the cardinal’s article misses some important points such as the failure to acknowledge “the immense suffering that L.G.B.T. Catholics have felt at the hands of their church” and that Sarah inaccurately claims the book is critical of Church teaching. The book, he stresses, is a call for a dialogue rather than a change to doctrine.
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