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Vatican Nuncio to the Netherlands Called to Defend Church Teaching on Sexuality by Dutch Foreign Minister

By Hilary White
 
AMSTERDAM, January 9, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Vatican envoy to the Netherlands has been called to a meeting to defend the Catholic teaching on sexuality and marriage by the Dutch Foreign Affairs Minister. At the request of homosexualist activist groups, Maxime Verhagen, a Christian Democrat, has demanded that the Papal Nuncio to the Netherlands, Monsignor François Bacqué, respond to accusations that the Church opposes “gay rights.”
 
Verhagen said, “The Netherlands is unpleasantly surprised by the opposition of Pope Benedict XVI to a UN declaration on human rights and homosexuality.”
 
Verhagen noted that although there were points of agreement with the Vatican statements, the “judgments of the Pope on homosexuality” are cause for concern “because they are unnecessarily offensive, as can be seen, and do not contribute” to a worthy debate.
 
The announcement is part of a declared campaign by homosexualist activist groups who are furious that the Church continues to resist the movement to legitimise homosexual partnerships. A leading homosexualist group in the Netherlands, the Dutch Foundation of Friends of the Gay Krant (SVGK), is calling for an international campaign against the Pope.
 
The editorial staff of Gay Krant have claimed that “never before in such a short time were there so many angry phone calls, emails and letters.”
 
“On this first working day of the year we really were overwhelmed with responses,” reports SVGK editor Henk Krol, a leader in the international movement for homosexual “civil marriage.”
 
Krol wrote, “The results of a survey under readers the last few days have been clear. 90% believe that the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs Maxime Verhagen should protest against the pope.”
 
In December, the Vatican was attacked in the international press for refusing to endorse the UN motion claiming to “decriminalise homosexuality.” The motion, which is not legally binding, was introduced by Verhagen and by his colleagues from France, and has been signed by only 66 of the UN’s 192 member states. Thus far, although the United States, Russia, China, Guatemala, El Salvador and some African countries have also refused to endorse the resolution, only the representative of the Vatican has been publicly called on the carpet by Verhagen. 
 
The Vatican’s representative at the UN, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, said in December that although there was agreement that persons with homosexual inclinations should not be subject to arrest or other forms of unjust discrimination, the motion would lend support to the movement to create homosexual “marriage” or other legal recognition for homosexual unions.
 
The Vatican also opposed the use in the document of expressions such as “gender identity” and “sexual orientation,” saying they are not defined in international law but are only cultural concepts promulgated in the media and the homosexualist political movement.
 
“The Holy See appreciates the attempts made to condemn all forms of violence against homosexual persons as well as urge states to take necessary measures to put an end to all criminal penalties against them,” he said.
 
The press and homosexualist groups reacted with outrage again later in December when Pope Benedict XVI, in his address to the Papal Curia, indicated that the effort to encourage homosexuals to leave their sinful lifestyle is as important as the movement to save the environment.
 
Archbishop Migliore told the French news agency I.Media that the proposal is “sad and outrageous” and was a form of “modern savagery that will dismantle our society from the inside out.”
 
“If adopted, they would create new and implacable discriminations,” Migliore said. “For example, states which do not recognise same-sex unions as 'matrimony' will be pilloried and made an object of pressure.”
 
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

The Pope Had the Guts to Say We Need to Save Ourselves from Self-Destructive Sexual Lifestyles
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/dec/08122301.html

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