Cardinal's permission for gays' Catholic Mass dismays traditionalists
Pastor Dale Morgan
Cardinal's permission for gays' Catholic Mass dismays traditionalists*
By Jonathan Wynne-Jones, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 12:25am GMT 18/02/2007
Homosexual rights campaigners have gained permission from the head of
the Catholic Church in England and Wales to hold Mass for gay parishioners.
Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor will allow a gay group to hold fortnightly
Masses in his Westminster diocese
While the Church has allowed celibate gays to receive holy communion,
traditionalist Catholics believe that practising homosexuals should be
barred from the sacramental rite because their way of life defies Church
teaching.
Now, however, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor has taken the
controversial step of allowing fortnightly Masses in his Westminster
diocese specifically for homosexuals.
A statement from the diocese stressed that the move did not represent a
shift in Church teaching, which says that homosexual practice is a sin
and that non-celibate gay people should not be given communion.
However, traditionalists fear that by endorsing these services the
Cardinal has implicitly sanctioned "sacrilegious" Masses and that it may
make it far easier for practising homosexuals to take communion in
church. It is also thought that the move could act as a blueprint for
other dioceses to follow.
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"The mission of the Church is to minister to all people," said the
statement from the archdiocese. "The Church utterly condemns all forms
of unjust discrimination, violence, harassment or abuse directed against
people who are homosexual."
Sources close to the Cardinal said he was keen to authorise the services
in order to be more inclusive of the gay community. It represents an
attempt to end tension between the Cardinal's office and the Soho Masses
Pastoral Council, an influential group of gay Catholics who had
campaigned to have their own services formally recognised by the Church.
They will hold their first official service at Our Lady of the
Assumption in Soho, London, next month after having met for the past
eight years in an Anglican church in west London.
A leading gay Catholic campaigner claims that the Cardinal had to obtain
the backing of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome,
the most powerful of the Vatican's departments, before taking his
sensitive decision.
Mark Dowd, the chairman of Quest, a liberal group, said that the
statement issued by the Cardinal was repeatedly rejected before gaining
final approval.
Senior Catholics fear the Cardinal's decision will upset
traditionalists. He had previously received complaints that the
unofficial Masses held under the auspices of the Lesbian and Gay
Christian Movement were being used to campaign for a change in the
Church's teaching on homosexual practice.
"Homosexuals can attend their own parish church, so having a separate
and distinct Mass looks like they are trying to make a statement," said
Michael Akerman, of Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice, a traditionalist Catholic
group.