IRISH HOMOSEXUALITY ADVOCATES TARGET PAPAL VISIT TO ADVANCE THEIR CAUSE

Pope Francis’ scheduled visit to Ireland in August continues to foment discontent in the once-Catholic nation. 

An Irish group campaigning for reform in the Catholic Church has launched a petition calling on the Vatican to change its "theological language that is gravely insulting to LGBTQI people" --The initials stand for "lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex.

We Are Church Ireland is encouraging anyone offended or angered by the church's use of terms such as "objectively disordered" and "intrinsically evil" in relation to LGBTQI people to sign their petition.

Spokesman for the group, Brendan Butler, said the petition demands an end to the Vatican's "un-Christian language to describe our LGBTQI sisters and brothers."

"For an institution like the Catholic Church to teach that these words are an expression of the mind of God to describe her image in LGBTQI persons is not alone scandalous but blasphemous," Butler stated.

The petition is being spearheaded by former political correspondent at TV3 in Ireland, Ursula Halligan, along with Irish Senator David Norris and Pádraig Ó Tuama, leader of the Corrymeela peace community. 

Explaining their involvement, the trio have said that the Church's formal language makes the Catholic Church complicit in the marginalization of LGBTQI people.

"Under the guise of religion and faith, the church models intolerance, breeds prejudices, and attempts to justify discrimination," they criticized in a statement.

Senator Norris, a member of the Anglican community, campaigned for decades for the decriminalization of homosexuality which was achieved in 1993. He is highly critical of the Christian churches' treatment of LGBTQI people.

"As a believing and church-going Christian I have to say that the history of the Christian churches in relation to gay people is a shocking record of criminality and brutality," he said. "At the instigation of the churches, gay people have been routinely ostracized, tortured and murdered. It is unacceptable that there should be any continuation of the savage and insensitive language employed by some of the churches in dealing with gay people. It is salutary to remember that Jesus Christ not once mentions or condemns homosexuality."

Norris, Halligan and Ó Tuama feel it is "imperative" for them to "boldly speak out" against the Church's "continued insistence on calling the LGBTQI community's 'inclinations' as 'objectively disordered' (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2358), or even worse, 'ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil' (Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Person, 1986)."

The petition was launched June 7 but is being touted as only the first step in a much more far-reaching campaign for a change in the Church’s theology of human sexuality.

And the attacks upon the Church never cease in their frequency or audacity!