Priest: Blessing homosexual couples in Germany is a ‘sacrilegious … diabolical act’

May 12, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — Clergy who openly defied Rome by blessing homosexual couples in Germany earlier this week engaged in a “truly sacrilegious act” that is also a “diabolical act of pride and immorality,” a priest from Mexico said.

Fr. Hugo Valdemar, canon penitentiary of the Archdiocese of Mexico, told Catholic World Report on Tuesday that such a blessing is an act of “indiscipline and rebellion against the pope and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.”

Earlier this week, Catholic clergy in Germany openly defied the Vatican’s ban on same-sex blessings by offering blessing services across the country in over 100 locations as part of a campaign titled “Love wins, blessing service for lovers.” The campaign was launched in response to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith asserting in a March 15 declaration that the Church cannot bless same-sex relationships since God “does not and cannot bless sin.”

Fr. Valdemar commented that “persons can always be blessed, even if they are sinners, but that which is in itself a serious sin and offensive to God, such as homosexual acts, cannot be blessed.” He called upon Catholics in Latin America to pay attention to the situation in Germany “so as not to allow ourselves to be enveloped by this perverse mentality of gender ideology that is slowly permeating society.”

News of the rebellion of the German priests was picked up favorably by mainstream media outlets such as the New York Times, the Associated Press, the CBC in Canada, and others.

The way the blessing services were performed varied from place to place. One participant who attended a homosexual blessing service in Cologne told CNA Deutsch that the event was more “political” than anything else. “After some political statements, the Gospel was read aloud, followed by a speech. Finally, the song Imagine by John Lennon was played,” Catholic News Agency reported.

The New York Times reported about one blessing service performed by openly homosexual priest Bernd Mönkebüscher who last month created a social media post to protest the Church ban on blessings for homosexual couples that received the support of over 500 German priests:

During the ceremony, Father Mönkebüscher walked around the nave, approaching couples who sat in pairs, socially distanced and masked. They rose as he placed a hand on their shoulders and spoke a blessing as they bowed their heads. After one lesbian couple had received their blessing, they dropped their masks and shared a kiss, wiping away tears.

Fr. Jan Korditschke, a Jesuit in Berlin who will lead a blessing ceremony for homosexual couples on May 16, told the Associated Press that it is his belief that homosexual acts are not sinful.

“I am convinced that homosexual orientation is not bad, nor is homosexual love a sin,” he said, adding: “I want to celebrate the love of homosexuals with these blessings because the love of homosexuals is something good.”

U.S.-based Jesuit priest James Martin, the editor-at-large of the Jesuit-run America Magazine who openly campaigns for the normalization of homosexuality within the Catholic Church, tweeted the above quote on May 10 without comment.

Fr. Ronald Vierling, an Oblate of Mary at the Foot of the Cross who is the former rector of the University of Notre Dame’s Morrissey Manor, called out Fr. Martin for tweeting the above dissident quote to his 300,000 followers.

“This lamentable situation demands prayers of reparation, not Tweets of celebration,” he said. Fr. Vierling in a subsequent tweet offered an Act of Reparation to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.

The Catholic Church, basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, 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 (CCC 2357). 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.

When Catholic journalist Sachin Jose tweeted on May 10 that the German priests who blessed same-sex unions have “acted contrary to the Church teachings,” asking that “all the Church leaders around the world including the US bishops should speak out on the issue,” Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler Texas responded: “As the Vatican recently said ‘we can’t bless sin.’”

“[L]et us pray for a conversion of heart for all involved … the faith is beautiful if we will only share it with clarity & joy. To truly love is to desire the good of the other & to assist them in attaining that good,” Strickland added.

Last week, Bishop Emeritus of Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen joined Kazakhstan Bishop Athanasius Schneider and Switzerland Bishop Marian Eleganti along with a dozen priests in asking Pope Francis to intervene to stop the Catholic church in Germany from falling into “schism.” They highlighted in their appeal the German bishops’ “Synodal Path” that appears to be leading the German church to a place where it will depart from Catholic teaching on the male priesthood, priestly celibacy, marriage, and sexuality. They pointed out as evidence of their concern the fact that so many clergy see no problem in defying Rome by blessing homosexual couples.

Bishop Schneider told LifeSiteNews in a report published earlier this week that from a “human point of view” there is “little hope” that anything can be done to stop the church in Germany from sliding into schism. But, he said, there is always hope for God’s intervention.

“To save the Catholic Church in Germany, there is first the need of prayer and reparation for the sins against the Catholic faith and the sanctity of the sacraments, committed in the past decades in first place by many representatives of the hierarchy, cardinals, bishops and priests. There is a need of a Divine intervention that will raise some new apostles of the Catholic faith in Germany,” Schneider said.

The Bishop encouraged faithful Catholics in Germany, who are witnessing schism unfolding right before their eyes, to pray and to continue to remain faithful to the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic faith. “Firstly, they should self-assuredly and joyfully confess the fullness of the Catholic faith, which they know from the Catechism and from the ever-valid documents of the Magisterium of the Church,” he said.