Cardinal Pell, in a statement from his office released on Tuesday, condemned the stances of Jesuit Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, president of the European Bishops’ Conferences (COMECE), and Bishop Georg Bätzing, president of the German Bishops’ Conference, on whether or not the Catholic Church should accept the secular view of homosexuality.
The bishops secular ideas promote homosexuality at all levels of the Church
Both bishops have promoted a change in the Church’s teachings on homosexuality. “I believe that the sociological-scientific foundation of this teaching is no longer correct,” Hollerich stated, adding, “I have homosexuals among my priests.”
“I believe that we have to assess homosexuality and lived partnerships outside of marriage differently,” said Bätzing. He continues, “We can no longer proceed solely from natural law, but have to think much more in terms of care and personal responsibility for one another.” “In this regard, I would like to see a further development of Catholic teaching on sexual ethics.”
The traditional teachings of the Church leave no room for homosexuality
The Catholic Church has always taught that homosexual acts are perverse and the attraction itself “is objectively disordered. “Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered,’” states the Catholic Catechism, adding that under no circumstances “can they be approved.”
Cardinal Bell vehemently protests the erroneous beliefs of these two bishops. “Not one of the Ten Commandments is optional; all are there to be followed, and by sinners,” Cardinal Pell said in his statement. “We cannot have a special Australian or German version of the Ten Commandments.”
The position taken by Cardinal Hollerich and Bishop Bätzing represents a “wholesale and explicit rejection of the Catholic Church’s teaching on sexual ethics,” Pell said.
According to Cardinal Pell, the stance taken by Hollerich and Bätzing “is a rupture, not compatible with the ancient teaching of Scripture and the Magisterium, not compatible with any legitimate doctrinal developments.”
Pell added that the only acceptable response is “a clear Roman reprimand” from the Vatican’s doctrinal office.