HONG KONG, November 13, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) — Cardinal John Tong Hon of Hong Kong has pitted himself against the spirit of the age, calling on voters in the November 22 district elections to vote for candidates opposed to pro-homosexual legislation. He has attracted critics who claim he is at odds with Pope Francis.
Most notably, York Chow Yat-ngok, head of the Equal Opportunities Commission, spoke up at the city’s seventh annual Gay Pride Parade to criticize “Politics getting involved in church beliefs.” “As a Christian, I see … our religion taught us to love people, have compassion for people, to be gracious, and we are taught not to discriminate [against] people,” he said.
Tong, whom some conservative Catholics believe was excluded from the recent Synod on the Family precisely for his orthodox views on sexuality, issued a pastoral letter last week urging the faithful to vote against candidates and parties who support a measure banning discrimination based on sexual orientation. “By doing so, the faithful will be helping to uphold marriage and the family as the foundation of society,” he wrote.
The cardinal wrote an even more toughly-worded cover letter to Church officials and volunteers to ensure the pastoral letter actually made it to his flock of 379,000. In it he described how “social trends and political movements, such as extreme libertarian attitudes, individualism, the ‘Sex Liberation Movement’ and the ‘Gay Movement,’” were challenging the “core values and key concepts of marriage and family … so the very foundation of society is being undermined.”
Tong also referred to a “workshop on love-making techniques” sponsored by university Christians, as more evidence that “twisted trends are no longer spreading in an obscure manner, but they have publicly and openly intruded into our daily lives and directly impacted our next generation.”
In response local politicians who support the ordinance, already defeated once by the city’s outgoing legislative council, claimed he was in opposition to the latest trend in Catholic, i.e., Papal, thinking.
The People Power party’s Raymond Chan Chi-chuen, whom Asianews calls “openly gay,” said Ton’s message “reflected a backward view of social movements and possibly deviated from the Vatican's line.” A Labour Party spokesman said Tong's message was “obviously different” from that of Pope Francis, who in 2013 said: “If a person is gay and seeks God and has goodwill, who am I to judge them?”
The Reverend Grace Bok Sha-lun, from the One Body in Christ church, criticized Tong for trying to “mobilise the Catholics not to vote for candidates” who are gay or supporters of “sexual minorities.”
“The statement is full of discrimination, and it's contradictory to our core values of our Christian faith … which should welcome everyone,” she said.
So much coverage of Tong’s remarks portrayed them as “anti-gay” that his second in command, Bishop Michael Yueng-Ming-cheung, issued a follow-up statement to insist the Church is not anti-gay. “The Church doesn’t have any enemy and it wouldn’t criticise anyone. It was only talking about a wrong doing.” Chueng likened Tong’s remarks to opposition to drug abuse. “We still love drug addicts.”
Asianews, an independent Catholic paper, reported that diplomats from France, Britain, Germany, United States, Sweden, Ireland, Canada, Switzerland, Australia, Finland, as well as the European Union attended Hong Kong’s Seventh Gay Pride and made obligatory comments against discrimination.