Ireland is to host the Catholic Church’s 2018 World Meeting of Families next August – but has already run into problems because the programme for the event makes clear that homosexual unions can legitimately recognised.
The programme released under the oversight of Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin even contains a cropped version of the Getty image above.
The text immediately above the photo reads:
While the Church upholds the ideal of marriage as a permanent commitment between a man and a woman, other unions exist which provide mutual support to the couple. Pope Francis encourages us never to exclude but to accompany these couples also, with love, care and support.
Pete Baklinski, writing for LifeSiteNews, says the programme:
Contains explicit promotion of homosexual relationships as a form of family, saying that such relationships provide ‘mutual support’ for active homosexuals.
The World Meeting of Families is described on its official website as a major international event that:
Brings together families from across the world to celebrate, pray and reflect upon the central importance of marriage and the family as the cornerstone of our lives, of society, and of the Church.
The event will focus on Pope Francis’ controversial 2016 Exhortation Amoris Laetitia (Joy of Love), highlighting the theme “The Gospel of the Family: Joy for the World.” Pope Francis is expected to attend the event.
Since Amoris Laetitia’s release in April 2016, more than a thousand Catholic academics and clergy (cardinals, bishops, priests) have voiced concern about the exhortation’s seeming incompatibility with Catholic moral teaching. Catholic philosopher Dr Josef Seifert has demonstrated how the Pope’s teaching could be used to overturn Catholic teaching against contracepted sex and homosexuality.
Last month, dozens of Catholic clergy and lay scholars from around the world issued a Filial Correction to Pope Francis for “propagating heresy.” They asserted that Pope Francis has supported heretical positions about marriage, moral life, and the Eucharist that are causing a host of “heresies and other errors” to spread throughout the Catholic Church.
LifeSiteNews reached out to Archbishop Martin, above, who is overseeing the World Meeting of Families, and asked if the homosexual image and text was inserted into the programme by mistake. No response was given.
Baklinski concluded from this that:
The promotion of homosexuality at the World Meeting of Families by Irish bishops appears to be deliberate.
On Friday, October 13, Bishop Brendan Leahy of Limerick said homosexual couples must be welcomed at the World Meeting of Families.
Leahy, speaking to reporters after his diocese launched the pro-homosexual preparation programme, said it would be a missed opportunity if the Church failed to embrace “family” in all its variety.
We’ve had the referendum in favour of same-sex ‘marriage’ and a lot of people voted in that referendum and all are equally welcome to join in this celebration of family. We are living in changing times and family too is changing.
Baklinski pointed out that Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, above, in one of his last presentations before he died, called homosexuality a work of Satan that “denies entirely the truth of marriage” as it comes from the “mind of God the Creator.” He said Satan is attempting to use homosexuality as a battering ram to destroy one of the main “pillars of creation”.
Cardinal Caffarra told participants at a family conference in Rome last May that approval of homosexuality coming from all quarters shows that the “final battle”’ between God and Satan has come.
Anthony Murphy, founder and editor of Catholic Voice newspaper and the founder of Lumen Fidei Institute, said homosexuality is “anti-family” and has no place at a Catholic meeting of families.
Are homosexual acts sinful or not? Our Catholic faith teaches us that they are. They are among the most anti-family acts of all. So what on earth are our Catholic leaders doing promoting homosexuality in the programme that is supposed to help families prepare for the World Meeting of Families?
Murphy said that while the programme gives a nod to homosexual behavior, it entirely fails to address Catholic moral teaching on chastity, contraception, and abortion.
Leaving out any mention of abortion is a glaring omission at any time, but particularly in the Irish context, when we are about to have a referendum on whether or not our unborn can be legally killed.
Murphy said the organisers of the event are failing families.
To give implicit approval to homosexuality, which the Church has always taught to be one of the four sins that cry to heaven for vengeance, while failing to decry abortion, is nothing short of a dereliction of duty.
The last World Meeting of Families took place in 2015 in Philadelphia and was attended by Pope Francis. Philadelphia’s mayor used a platform given to him at the event in front of tens of thousands of Catholic pilgrims to promote the “rights” of homosexuals.
Meanwhile, it is reported here that the Catholic Church in Ireland is “an endangered species”.
IrishCentral said:
Pope Francis will see a very different Ireland, far more secular and less tolerant of Church promises. The sad fact for Catholicism is that the church has endeavored to bolt the stable door with a carrot and the horses have easily fled anyway.
Even a visit from the beloved Pope Francis may be unable to tempt the faithful back again.