Manila (AsiaNews) - Through honest dialogue and pastoral accompaniment, it should be our goal to assist people with homosexual attractions to respond to the demands of chastity and that purity of body and heart that Jesus, in the Gospels, calls 'blessed'. Persons with homosexual orientation are sons and daughters of God; no less than any of us is. Discrimination against them is contrary to the Gospel spirit". This was the statement issued by the president of the Philippines Bishops' Conference at the end of the Extraordinary Synod on the family.
According to Msgr. Socrates Villegas "If these
people wish to make an offering to the life of the Church according to their
talents, abilities and gifts, the Church as mother provides for them". However, speaking to lawmakers, the
archbishop said that " there is no equivalence or even any remote analogy
whatsoever between marriage between a man and woman as planned by God and the
so-called same sex unions "
With regard to the question of divorced and remarried Catholics, the bishop has
no doubts: "We cannot presume to judge and condemn. Rather, the
presumption should be that there is a genuine effort on their part to live
according to the demands of our faith. The danger of scandal should never
stand in the way of genuine charity, and the Catholic faithful must be reminded
that much of what Jesus did was scandalous to the 'righteous' of his time".