Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo of Africa, Will Not be Blessing Gay Couples By Peter West
Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo, president of the episcopal conferences for Africa and Madagascar, has composed a document detailing how African bishops will not be offering blessings for homosexual couples, a document which stands opposed to the Pope's Fiducia Supplicans which deals with the Catholic Church's response to "irregular relationships." As stated in that document:
"38. For this reason, one should neither provide for nor promote a ritual for the blessings of couples in an irregular situation. At the same time, one should not prevent or prohibit the Church's closeness to people in every situation in which they might seek God's help through a simple blessing. In a brief prayer preceding this spontaneous blessing, the ordained minister could ask that the individuals have peace, health, a spirit of patience, dialogue, and mutual assistance—but also God's light and strength to be able to fulfill his will completely.
39. In any case, precisely to avoid any form of confusion or scandal, when the prayer of blessing is requested by a couple in an irregular situation, even though it is expressed outside the rites prescribed by the liturgical books, this blessing should never be imparted in concurrence with the ceremonies of a civil union, and not even in connection with them. Nor can it be performed with any clothing, gestures, or words that are proper to a wedding. The same applies when the blessing is requested by a same-sex couple."
To my mind, this is incoherent; if someone or something is blessed, that is giving a positive affirmation to it, and homosexuality is still regarded, according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, to be a grave sin against chastity and homosexuality itself is "objectively disordered." That is from the document, not me:
The good news is that Cardinal Ambongo met with the Pope to put the African case, and after debate, the Pope caved in and let the Africa cardinals keep to Catholic tradition. I mean to say, it would have been a bit "racist" otherwise wouldn't it?
"Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo, president of the episcopal conferences for Africa and Madagascar, has revealed striking details of how he worked with Pope Francis and Cardinal Fernández to compose his document stating that African bishops would not offer blessings for homosexual couples.
In a recent talk, a portion of which was published January 18 by La Salon Beige, Cardinal Ambongo recounted the circumstances which led to his January 11 letter outlining how African bishops would not be offering the blessings of homosexual couples proposed by Fiducia Supplicans.
"In Africa, there is no place to bless gay couples," he said, to much applause from the crowd.
Ambongo's January 11 letter presented the continental rejection of the Congregation (now Dicastery) for the Doctrine of the Faith's December 18 text Fiducia Supplicans, which was written by prefect Cardinal Victor Fernández, and which proposed blessings for same-sex couples.
Ambongo's January 11 statement came as one of the most impactful instances of resistance the already much beleaguered Fiducia Supplicans had received, given that the entire continent was now rejecting the Vatican's text.
In his lecture, Ambongo revealed that, having collated the responses to Fiducia Supplicans which he had requested from African bishops, he flew swiftly to Rome.
Santa Marta meetings
The cardinal – one of Pope Francis' "C9" cardinal advisors – arrived in Rome in the early hours of January 9, and went to stay at Casa Santa Marta, the Vatican-based hotel where Francis resides.
Informing the Pope's secretary of his presence, Ambongo was granted an audience that same evening. The cardinal revealed that he then reached an "agreement" with Francis about the African rejection of Fiducia Supplicans, saying that "the solution to this problem is no longer to send us documents with theological and philosophical definitions of blessings."
"People are not interested in that," Ambongo said he told Francis, and added that he continued by saying "what matters now is a communication that reassures the people in Africa, calms the minds of the faithful."
According to Ambongo, Francis was upset by the rejections of Fiducia Supplicans, and that he was "affected" by the situation Ambongo relayed to him regarding Africa's bishops' stance.
Francis reportedly arranged a meeting that same evening between Ambongo and Cardinal Fernández, and a further meeting was arranged for the next day.
Consequently, on January 10, Ambongo sat down with Fernández and a secretary to draft the letter which was subsequently published on January 11. According to Ambongo, the process was conducted in such close collaboration with Francis that they regularly called the Pope as they wrote the letter to obtain his approval of the wording.
The resulting document has already been described by LifeSiteNews here. Ambongo stated that a private version was made for the Vatican archives, which was co-signed by Fernández – although the public version was signed by Ambongo only.
Expanding on his stance opposing the implementation of blessings homosexual couples, Ambongo told his loudly supportive audience that "in Africa, there is no place to bless gay couples."
He affirmed that "we must respect homosexual people because they are human beings. We should not look at them, treat them with contempt. They are creatures of God."
Ambongo also outlined that a blessing for an individual would not be problematic, noting that individuals of various backgrounds and states of lives – he cited criminals – ask for blessings:
If individually a homosexual asks for a blessing, we bless the person. We can bless you as a person… But why do we bless them? Hoping that the grace of blessing can help you convert.
Such a blessing over an individual "homosexual" would be "to tell him that his sexual orientation is not in accordance with the will of God, and we hope the blessing can help you change," said Ambongo.
He added that this desire for a "change" in the person's life is "because homosexuality is condemned in the Bible and by the magisterium of the Church. We cannot be promoters of sexual deviation."
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