Archbishop Stankevics of Riga: Latvia's Bishops' Conference is the first in the world to call for the legalization of "gay marriage".
(Riga) The Latvian Bishops' Conference managed to set a record. Under the leadership of Msgr. Zbignevs Stankevics, Archbishop of Riga, it was the first bishops' conference in a country to call for the introduction of "gay marriage".
This unusual demand is justified with the call to “put all ideologies aside”. For the bishops, this obviously also includes the Catholic faith, which is incompatible with such a demand.
"It's unbelievable, but tragically true," said the Catholic online newspaper Nuova Bussola Quotidiana have surged ahead of the Latvian bishops. On December 15th they called on the Latvian parliament to legalize “gay marriage” and also “wild marriages”, what the Church calls “irregular connections”. The archbishop said it openly at a hearing in parliament.
In November the Constitutional Court made a distinction between marriage and family, stating that “family” includes a variety of different relationships, while marriage only means a relationship between a man and a woman. That was the call to introduce "gay marriage". The bishops have now seconded.
Archbishop Stankevics justified the initiative that it was a matter of "uniting society, not dividing it", and referred to John XXIII, albeit without context. The archbishop seems to have misunderstood some things. The basis on which an agreement is reached cannot be arbitrary. It is not an end in itself. Unity is a consequence of the natural order, not its opposite.
The bishops would “not question the traditional understanding of family,” said the archbishop. However, they decouple the Christian understanding of the family from the legal system of the country.
Last October, Pope Francis caused irritation when he declared that he had supported the introduction of registered partnerships in Argentina in order to prevent the legalization of "gay marriage". The Latvian bishops have surpassed this record by calling for "gay marriage" to "unite" society.
How can the family, under fire from all sides, withstand when even the bishops become their enemies, hollowing them out and undermining them?
Archbishop Stankevics made the request at the parliamentary hearing, but the other bishops in the country immediately supported his request. The Latvian Bishops' Conference wrote a letter to President Egils Levits and Parliamentary President Inara Munriece, in which they defined the maintenance of marriage as a union between a man and a woman, but at the same time recommended the legalization of other forms of union.
Launched in 2003, the CDF published under the direction of the then Cardinal Prefect Joseph Ratzinger, "Considerations Regarding Proposals of Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons," seem to have remained unknown to the Latvian episcopate.
The homosexualization train rolls on.
Text: Giuseppe Nardi
Picture: Igreja em Movimento (screenshot)
Trans: Tancred vekron99@hotmail.com
AMDG
