The Vatican issued a document Friday morning that called for the Church to stop taking a “penitential path” of scrutiny and prayers for people in same-sex civil unions.
The document, titled “The Joy of Love,” goes even further than the current trend in the American church that gives qualified support for gay marriage. In 2011, Francis reached a different conclusion from his predecessors, saying that society must show “more courage” in dealing with homosexuality.
While much of the leadership of the U.S. church has supported gay marriage, some prominent American prelates and scholars have begun issuing formal statements affirming that gay couples are not to be held to the same standard as heterosexual couples. There was no formal statement or statement about gay civil unions from the Vatican on Friday.
The new document, which was issued as a conference took place in Rome on family life, noted that the idea of love or of “the joy of love” are “both mentioned here in different ways and with different connotations, an ‘extraordinary way,’ a ‘tradition,’ a pastoral tradition.”
It is the first document on love issued by Pope Francis’s office since his election in 2013. It is intended as a teaching document for all Catholics, and says that the party of life should be “free” in the way it bonds up to the others in a union, not give up love or emotional support.
It also says that the Church is “a whore, just as we all have made other women our wage slaves.”
Read the full story in The New York Times.
Related
Pope Francis: ‘The opposite of gay is not straight’
‘No permission’ to Catholics who wish to marry same-sex partners, pope says
Pope Francis defends marriage as the ‘union of a man and a woman’
