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Spain's Bishops Willing to Pay the Price to Give Catholic Teaching on Homosexuality

PAMPLONA, January 11, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In the many western countries where homosexual "marriage" is being pushed through courts and legislatures, pro-family groups have complained that the leadership of Catholic bishops has often been distressingly weak.

National Catholic bishops conferences in some of these countries and many individual bishops are contenting themselves with pronouncements and strategies focusing only on Catholic teaching about the beauty and worth of marriage while assiduously avoiding any mention of the agenda to force acceptance of homosexuality that is driving the same-sex marriage push. One Canadian bishop told LifeSiteNews.com that the Canadian Catholic public was "not ready to hear" the Church's teaching on homosexuality.

Such political correctness does not seem to be restraining the bishops of Spain however. Fernando Sebastian, Archbishop of Pamplona in northern Spain and Secretary of the Spanish bishops conference, has infuriated homosexual activists by referring to homosexuality as an "epidemic" and identifying it as a "fount of psychological problems and painful frustrations."

"Homosexuals, if they wish, and with well-targeted help, can change their situation," The bishop said on Saturday. He added, "For me, all are sons of God, and all deserve the same respect."

The comments come as Spain's socialist government continues to work to sever that country's historical connection with Catholicism. On January 3rd, the Zapatero cabinet voted to legalize homosexual unions and call them 'marriage.' Since coming to power last year, the new government has moved quickly to eliminate mandatory Catholic religious education in schools, legalize embryonic stem cell research, and promoted abortion. The Spanish socialists were among the first to ratify a European Parliament 94.03% of Spain's population remains Catholic.

The irony is that the socialists came into power only because of the election impact of the terrible train bombing by Islamic terrorists who, among other reasons, justify their actions because of moral corruption in the West.

In a pastoral letter, the current bishop of Avila, home of St. Teresa of Avila, one of Catholicism's most famous 16th century mystic saints and theologians, compared the violent shift away from Spanish traditions to a coups d'etat. Bishop Jesus Garcia Burrillo called the changes "a violent cultural earthquake," in his recent pastoral letter, as reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer. "It is not easy to find in history, in such a short space of time, so many changes affecting morality [except] in time of coups d'etat," he said.

It is perhaps, not surprising that Catholic bishops in other countries are afraid to speak out against homosexuality. One Spanish homosexual activist group, Popular Gay Platform, has launched a lawsuit against the Spanish Catholic primate, Cardinal Antonio Maria Rouco Varela, when he said in a sermon that homosexuality threatened the social security system.

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