Catholic bishops have scrapped their landmark welcome to gays, showing deep divisions at the end of a two-week meeting sought by Pope Francis to chart a more merciful approach to ministering to Catholic families.
The bishops yesterday approved a final report covering a host of issues related to Catholic family life, acknowledging there were "positive elements" in civil heterosexual unions outside the church and even in cases when men and women were living together outside marriage.
They also said the church must respect Catholics in their moral evaluation of "methods used to regulate births," a seemingly significant deviation from church teaching barring any form of artificial contraception.
But the bishops failed to reach consensus on a watered-down section on ministering to homosexuals. The new section had stripped away the welcoming tone of acceptance contained in a draft document earlier in the week.
Two other paragraphs concerning the other hot-button issue at the synod of bishops whether divorced and civilly remarried Catholics can receive Communion also failed to pass.
The Vatican spokesman, the Rev Federico Lombardi, said the failure of the paragraphs to pass meant that they have to be discussed further to arrive at a consensus at a meeting of bishops next October.
It could be that the 118-62 vote on the gay paragraph was a protest vote of sorts by progressive bishops who refused to back the watered-down wording and wanted to keep the issue alive. The original draft had said gays had gifts to offer the church and that their partnerships, while morally problematic, provided gay couples with "precious" support.
Francis insisted in the name of transparency that the full document including the three paragraphs that failed to pass be published along with the voting tally. The document will serve as the basis for future debate leading up to the October 2015 meeting of bishops which will produce a final report for Francis to help him write a teaching document of his own.
"Personally I would have been very worried and saddened if there hadn't been these ... Animated discussions ... Or if everyone had been in agreement or silent in a false and acquiescent peace," Francis told the synod hall after the vote.
Conservatives had harshly criticized the draft and proposed extensive revisions to restate church doctrine, which holds that gay sex is "intrinsically disordered," but that gays themselves are to be respected, and that marriage is only between a man and a woman. In all, 460 amendments were submitted.
"We could see that there were different viewpoints," said Cardinal Oswald Gracis of India, when asked about the most contentious sections of the report on homosexuals and divorced and remarried Catholics.
