LUSAKA, Zambia (LifeSiteNews) — The Catholic bishops of Zambia have instructed their dioceses that they are not to implement the Vatican’s recent document on “blessing” same-sex couples.
Zambia Episcopal Conference. My neighboring country. pic.twitter.com/lJQAeE2oTC
— Fr. Edmond Nyoka (@ednyoka) December 20, 2023
The bishops noted in a statement issued Wednesday, December 20, that Rome’s new document, Fiducia supplicans, “has raised several questions, confusions and anxieties among the faithful and the people of good will, as it has now become an issue of allowing blessing of same-sex marriages.”
They went on to instruct that “based on Sacred Scripture which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,” “the Conference reaffirms the traditional teaching of the Church that declares ‘homosexual acts to be intrinsically disordered and contrary to natural law.’ Hence, ‘under no circumstance can they be approved.’”
READ: Malawi bishops forbid ‘blessings’ of homosexual unions amid confusion over Vatican document
“In order to avoid any pastoral confusion and ambiguity as well as not to break the law of our country which forbids same-sex unions and activities, and while listening to our cultural heritage which does not accept same-sex relationships, the Conference guides that the Declaration from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith of Dec 18th 2023 concerning the blessing of same-sex couples be taken as for further reflection and not for implementation in Zambia.”
The bishops concluded by calling those living in sodomy “to embark on the path of conversion with greater trust in God’s mercy and love.”
On Monday, December 18, Pope Francis and Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández issued Fiducia Supplicans, which allows “blessings for couples in irregular situations and for couples of the same sex” in contradiction to the unchangeable Catholic teaching that the Church cannot bless sinful relationships.
While Fernández makes clear in the document that such blessings must not be construed as blessings “proper to the sacrament of marriage,” he admits that the text’s “theological reflection, based on the pastoral vision of Pope Francis, implies a real development from what has been said about blessings in the Magisterium and the official texts of the Church.”
In 2021, the CDF stated clearly that the Church does not have the “power to give the blessing to unions of persons of the same sex.”
The CDF 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.”
In his first letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul states that homosexual actions are sinful, explaining that “neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers” will “inherit the kingdom of God,” but rather, according to his letter to the Romans, those who practice homosexuality will receive “in their own persons the due penalty for their error.”
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