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Catholic Priest Speaks at Quebec Gay Activist Conference

Rev. Raymond Gravel has often contradicted Catholic teaching on homosexuality and abortion

By Hilary White

OTTAWA, April 18, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Catholic priest and Bloc Quebecois Member of Parliament for Repentigny, Rev. Raymond Gravel, gave a speech this week at a conference in Hull at the invitation of the Quebec homosexual activist group, Groupe gai de l'Outaouais (GGO).

"I do not know the gay community of Outaouais, but if I can reconcile this community with the Church, all the better. It is my goal. I do not want them to feel rejected, rather, loved," said Father Gravel to Le Droit before the lecture.

Still a priest in good standing with his diocese of Joliette, Fr. Gravel has been allowed by his bishop to continue in pastoral work at his parish despite years of openly contradicting Catholic teaching on homosexuality and abortion. In 2004 he told a radio host, "I am pro-choice and there is not a bishop on earth that will prevent me from receiving Communion, not even the Pope."

Fr. Gravel told le Droit, "Yes, there are members in the Church that are rough and condemning. But it is not all the Church. You can not put everyone in the same boat."

"It is as if there was no more room for the act of welcoming. We have to put (more) accent on accompanying than on condemning. On the pastoral care side of things, the Church has an opening to accompanying people."

Two years ago Gravel ran for political office and won for the Bloc. At the time his bishop, Gilles Lussier, said only that Gravel was not to endorse policies that went against Church doctrine while holding public office, an instruction that Gravel has since repeatedly ignored. 

He has said that he is opposed to the Unborn Victims of Crime bill submitted by Conservative MP Ken Epp because he believes it is the first step towards making abortion a crime. "I also think this bill will open the door to a re-criminalization of women who have abortions, and that's not to be desired," he said.

Gravel told le Droit, "There are some priests who reject homosexuals. But on the other side, there are priests that welcome them and make room for them in the parish."

Father Gravel named the parish of Saint-Pierre-Apôtre of Montréal as being particularly friendly to the "gay community". "It means that we do not reject them (homosexuals) and that we do not stop them from practicing their faith. Christ's attitude in the Gospel is to accept people how they are."

But while Rev. Gravel's beliefs about accepting and loving persons with homosexual tendencies is in line with Church teaching, his presentation of an acceptance of homosexuality as consistent with Catholic doctrine is misleading at best. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, the definitive statement on what the Catholic Church actually teaches, says that everyone is equally called to chastity, either in natural marriage or as single persons.

Calling chastity "an apprenticeship in self-mastery which is a training in human freedom" the Catechism goes on to say, "[T]radition has always declared that 'homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.' They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved."
 
The Catechism goes on to say that the "objectively disordered" condition of homosexuality, "constitutes for most [homosexual persons] a trial". It calls upon the person so afflicted to "fulfill God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition."

Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

Catholic Priest/Politician About "Recriminalizing Abortion - I don't Ever Want to See that Happen"
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/dec/07121305.html

Editorial: Canadian Catholic Priest Politician Condemns LifeSiteNews.com Founders in Parliament
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/mar/08030410.html

To respectfully communicate concern:

The Most Rev. Luigi Ventura, Apostolic Nuncio
724 Manor Ave.
Ottawa, ON K1M 0E3
Phone: (613) 746-4914
FAX: (613) 746-4786

Diocèse de Joliette
2, rue St-Charles-Borromée Nord
C.P. 470
Joliette, Qc
J6E 6H6

Telephone: (450) 753-7596
fax: (450) 753-7933
e-mail:

Mail or fax (most effective):
William Cardinal Levada
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
Piazza del S. Uffizio, 11,
00193 Roma, Italy
Fax: 06.69.88.34.09
E-mail:

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