Priests criticize church language on homosexuals

Published: 2003-12-31

CHICAGO (CNS) -- Twenty-three Chicago-area priests issued an open letter in December criticizing the language of some church officials and documents regarding homosexuals. "In the recent past, individual bishops, bishops' conferences and the Vatican have assumed a tone of such violence and abusiveness toward these sons and daughters of the church, we can no longer remain silent," the letter said. It focused especially on language from a Vatican document in July opposing gay marriages. The document calls homosexuality a "troubling moral and social phenomenon" and a "serious depravity." It characterizes the movement toward gay marriages as "approval or legalization of evil." The document is titled "Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons." In a Dec. 19 letter to the 23 signers, Cardinal Francis E. George of Chicago acknowledged the need for pastoral care of all God's children but said the church cannot compromise its moral teachings. While defending the "moral and doctrinal" language the church uses, he agreed that it poses pastoral difficulties.

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