BCP: Was Pope Francis a public heretic or not? Part 8

The response of African bishops to Fiducia Supplicans

Bishop Martin of Malawi:

“Dear faithful, I would like now to briefly give our response or our reflection on the declaration from the Holy See entitled Fiducia Supplicans. … Our stand as bishops in Malawi here, but my stand also, because I am talking to you, the faithful of Karonga, we, in this diocese and certainly in Malawi, are not going to allow the recommended blessings of same-sex unions in our dioceses. It is very sad for me that for the first time in the history of the Church a document released from the Holy See, signed by the Holy Father, is rejected by his fellow bishops. And publicly rejected. It is sad, because the Catholic Church is old, as old as Christianity itself. This has never happened before. But we have no choice. We cannot allow such an offensive and apparently blasphemous declaration to be implemented in our dioceses…

The document asks us to bless two people of the same sex as individuals, but not as a couple. So these two people of the same sex who the previous night slept together as a couple and present themselves to us as a couple are blessed as individuals, but they leave our presence as a couple… How could this not be changing the authentic teaching of the Church?!

Those who have seen our rejection of this document have accused us of many things. First of all that by sticking to rules of the Church, all the Scripture and the Tradition of the Church we prevent carrying out our responsibility as pastors effectively. Some have told us that we should be willing to explore new paths and new roads in governing the local churches, such as blessing same-sex unions. Some have said that we should not be ideologically rigid in our faith and in our pastoral work and in teaching of our faith. Instead we are being told and encouraged to allow our doctrine of the faith to change alongside ideological changes taking place in the world, social and political changes taking place in the world, so that the faith might be modern, so that the Church might be modern. In other words, we are told that in fulfilling our responsibility as successors of the apostles, leading people to God, we should be fashionable. To all these accusations, our response is clear: Please keep your lies for yourself. You must judge for yourself, whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to such advice, ill advice, and to obey you rather than God, for we on our part cannot stop telling the faithful entrusted to our pastoral care by God through the Holy Father that they should follow and do what is rooted in Scriptures and in the Tradition of the Church. All those who ill-advise us like this: our response is that we are not idiots. We know your ultimate goal, which I will not mention here; but we are not accepting this declaration. Our appeal to our offended and scandalized faithful: you, my brother and sister Christians and all of you across the diocese, please don’t leave the Church as some of you have threatened to do because of being very offended and scandalized (by the declaration)…”

Declaration of the Bishops of Cameroon:

Faced with the semantic abuses designed to distort the value of realities and the true meaning of the notions of family, couple, spouse, sexuality and marriage;

Faced with the wave of indignation, questioning and concern that the Declaration “Fiducia supplicans” on the question of the blessing of same-sex couples has aroused among the people of God;

For the sake of human dignity and the salvation of all humanity in Jesus Christ;

We, the Bishops of Cameroon, unanimously declare the following on the subject of homosexuality and the blessing of “homosexual couples”:

1. In conformity with our 2013 Declaration on Homosexuality, we strongly reaffirm the truth of the Church, Mother and Educator, which teaches the sacredness of the sexual identity of man and woman created in the image of God (Gn 1:26), of the dignity of their sexuality and of marriage which is the foundation of the family. The human person is created male and female: “Male and female he created them” (Gn 1:26). This invariable difference, which is the foundation of their relationship and their complementarity, is fulfilled in the bonds of marriage.

2. Homosexuality falsifies and corrupts human anthropology and trivializes sexuality, marriage and the family, the foundations of society. … It is a flagrant violation of the heritage bequeathed to us by our ancestors. In the history of peoples, the practice of homosexuality has never led to societal evolution, but is a clear sign of the imploding decadence of civilizations. In fact, homosexuality sets humanity against itself and destroys it.

3. The profound identity of sexuality is misunderstood, hijacked and perverted outside the conjugal relationship between man and woman. Consequently, homosexual acts are not “sexual”, but “acts against nature” (Rom 1:26).

4. Marriage is an institution that legitimizes sexual relations and procreation for the foundation of a new family. It is the union of a man and a woman who commit themselves to the life of a couple, to found a family and to live together in love. Homosexual unions are not marriages. They distort the meaning of marriage by reducing it to a sterile, pleasure-seeking and perverse bond: “infamy between man and man” (Rom 1:26).

5. Homosexuality is not a human right. It is an alienation that seriously harms humanity because it is not based on any value proper to the human being: it is a dehumanization of love, “an abomination” (Lev 18:22). Rejecting it is in no way being discriminative: it is a legitimate protection of the constant values of humanity in the face of a vice that has become the subject of a claim to legal recognition and, today, the subject of a blessing.

6. Literally, “to bless is to speak well of” (bene-dico). And to “speak well of” in order to gain grace through the gesture of blessing a “homosexual couple” would be tantamount to encouraging a choice and a practice of life that cannot be recognized as being objectively ordered to the revealed designs of God. What is more, differentiating between liturgical and non-liturgical contexts in order to apply the blessing to same-sex “couples” is hypocritical. The act of blessing, whether performed in a liturgical assembly or in private, remains a blessing. We therefore declare non-compliant any form of blessing, public or private, that tends to recognize “same-sex couples” as a state of life.

7. Faithful to the constant teaching of Ecclesial Tradition which declares acts of homosexuality intrinsically disordered and contrary to the natural law (Catechism of the Catholic Church n. 2357), we, the Bishops of Cameroon, reiterate our disapproval of homosexuality and homosexual unions.

8. Consequently, we formally forbid all blessings of “homosexual couples” in the Church of Cameroon.

9. Since God does not want the death of the sinner, but his/her conversion to eternal life, we recommend those who are inclined to homosexuality … their radical conversion. We also invite them to turn away from their mentality of victimization in which they take pleasure in considering themselves as “victims”, “weak”, “minorities”; in order to seize the opportunity for conversion that God gives them in the many exhortations of His Word.

Download: BCP: Was Pope Francis a public heretic or not? Part 8