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Bishop Hermann GlettlerAlumniUNIgraz / Youtube screen grab

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INNSBRUCK, Austria, March 19, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – An Austrian Catholic bishop, reacting negatively to the Vatican’s rejection this week of blessings for homosexual couples, stated that the Church must welcome and provide a spiritual home for active homosexuals.

“As a church, we would like to offer all people who are gay, lesbian, or insecure about their sexuality a welcome and a spiritual home in the church – and not only at the point when they are celibate,” said Bishop Hermann Glettler of the Austrian Diocese of Innsbruck in a March 15 interview with Kathpress.

Glettler said that accepting active homosexuals in the Church “requires even more openness, a willingness to get to know each other and to approach one another.”

The Catholic Church, however, basing itself on Sacred Scripture, teaches 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,” states the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

St. Paul in one of his letters warns the Corinthians that “homosexuals” along with others such as “idolaters” and “adulterers” will “not inherit the kingdom of God.”

The Catholic Church furthermore teaches that the homosexual inclination is also “objectively disordered” since God created sexual attraction for the purpose of drawing a man and a woman together to become husband and wife in marriage.

The Church calls all baptized persons, including those with same-sex attraction, to chastity.

Pro-LGBT Jesuit priest Fr. James Martin tweeted Glettler’s comment specifically about the Church welcoming active homosexuals. 

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The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) announced Monday that the Catholic Church cannot bless homosexual relationships since God “does not and cannot bless sin.” A question to the CDF about whether or not the Church has the “power to give the blessing to unions of persons of the same sex” was answered in the “negative” by the congregation’s prefect, Luis Cardinal Ladaria Ferrer. The congregation’s statement was assented to by Pope Francis.

The Congregation stated that it is “not licit to impart a blessing on relationships, or partnerships, even stable, that involve sexual activity outside of marriage (i.e., outside the indissoluble union of a man and a woman open in itself to the transmission of life), as is the case of the unions between persons of the same sex.”

“The presence in such relationships of positive elements, which are in themselves to be valued and appreciated, cannot justify these relationships and render them legitimate objects of an ecclesial blessing, since the positive elements exist within the context of a union not ordered to the Creator’s plan,” the statement read.

Pro-homosexual Catholic bishops and priests reacted with sadness, disappointment, and even shame over the statement. Some went as far as stating publicly that they will defy the teaching and continue blessing homosexual couples.

A group of about 350 priests in Austria organized by Pastor Helmut Schüller stated in a “Call to Disobedience 2.0″ that they will “continue to bless same-sex couples.” The group stated that it “vehemently protests against the assumption that same-sex loving couples are not part of the divine plan. Here the attempt is made to undermine the reality of creation with dogmatizing presumptions.”

In his interview with Kathpress, Bishop Glettler, who is responsible for marriage and family in the country’s conference of bishops, called the CDF statement a “disappointment for all who have hoped for a clearer sign of acceptance of homosexual couples.”

Glettler has a history of opposing Catholic teaching. He said last year that the Church’s doctrine that women cannot be ordained as priests is an “inequality” that is “difficult to justify.” In 2019, he hosted seminars for divorced and “remarried” couples living in adultery in which he allowed the couples to receive Holy Communion and a “celebration of reconciliation and of blessing.” 

In 2019, the bishop allowed a “Jesus clock” made from an upside-down corpus with broken arms to be installed in a church.