VATICAN CITY — Roman Catholic bishops on Saturday reversed a historic acceptance of gays, dropping parts of a controversial document that had talked more positively of homosexuals than ever before in Church history.
The document, issued at the end of a two-week assembly, or synod, of some 200 Roman Catholic bishops from around the world, pointed to deep divisions within the Church on issues such as reaching out to homosexuals and Catholics who have divorced and remarried in civil services.
After an initial draft was released on Monday, conservative bishops vowed to change the language on gays, cohabitation and remarriage, saying it had created confusion among the faithful and threatened to undermine the traditional family.
Gay rights groups expressed deep disappointment with the final version, while the conservative Catholic blog Rorate Caeli hailed it as “a considerable setback for the revolutionaries.”
The two-paragraph section of the final document dealing with homosexuals was titled “Pastoral attention towards persons with homosexual orientations.” The previous, three-paragraph version had been called “Welcoming homosexuals.”
The earlier version spoke of “accepting and valuing their (homosexuals’) sexual orientations” and giving gays “a welcoming home.” The final version eliminated those phrases and most of the other language that church progressives and gay rights groups had hailed as a breakthrough.
The new version used more vague, general language, repeating earlier church statements that gays “should be welcomed with respect and sensitivity” and that discrimination against gays “is to be avoided.”
GAYS DISAPPOINTED
Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, a Catholic gay rights group in the United States, said it was “very disappointing that the synod’s final report did not retain the gracious welcome to lesbian and gay people that the draft of the report included.”
“Instead, the bishops have taken a narrow view of pastoral care by defining it simply as opposition to marriage for same-gender couples,” he said.
The final version stressed that “there is no foundation whatsoever” to compare homosexual marriage to heterosexual marriage, calling heterosexual marriage “God’s plan for matrimony and the family.”
The earlier version said the church should acknowledge that couples in same-sex relations offered “mutual aid” and “precious support” for each other in times of difficulty.
“People who found hope in the respectful, welcoming tone of the midterm report will be crushed by the removal of that language in the final document. It’s just gone, replaced with the same off-putting phrases we’ve heard for decades,” said Marianne Duddy-Burke of DignityUSA, a Catholic gay rights group.
Voting counts released by the Vatican showed that controversial articles, including the final version of one of the two on gays, failed to get the two-thirds majority needed for a consensus.
This indicated that progressive bishops may have voted against them because they felt the language had become too restrictive or watered down.
Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said the entire document would now serve for further reflection among Catholics ahead of another, definitive synod next year.
In his final address to the gathering, Pope Francis, who had called on the bishops to speak their minds frankly, said he would have been “worried and saddened” if there had not been such heated, honest discussion during the gathering.
The pope also warned against both “hostile rigidity” by traditionalists as well as “destructive good will” by progressives who wanted change at any cost.
Meanwhile, Rome’s center-left mayor on Saturday recognized the validity of 16 gay marriages performed outside Italy, the first such ceremony in the capital, sparking an angry reaction from the interior minister and the country’s Roman Catholic Church.
“Today is a splendid day,” Mayor Ignazio Marino said in Rome’s city hall where he registered the marriages of 11 male and six female couples who had wed abroad.
Although gay marriage is illegal in Italy, some cities have allowed gay couples who legally wed in other countries to register their unions in city halls when they return, just as heterosexual couples who marry outside Italy can do.
The recognition is significant because it can help a partner inherit the other’s estate and it also affects health benefits, insurance and pensions.
The issue is highly charged in a country where the church holds considerable sway over politics, and it divides the left-right coalition government of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.
The ceremony in Rome was by far the most high-profile recognition so far. It was applauded by members of Renzi’s center-left Democratic Party who said it was time for Italy to legislate to give legal status to same-sex partnerships, but it was seen on the right as deliberate provocation.
A poll taken last year showed gay marriage was supported by just a quarter of the population in Italy. The same survey showed more than 85 percent backed the recognition of so-called “civil unions” to give same-sex partners more rights.
Interior Minister Angelino Alfano, from the small New Center-Right party, said that in transcribing the documents Marino was doing no more than “signing autographs.” Maurizio Gasparri, a senator from former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s opposition Forza Italia party, said he was “defying the law” and should resign.
Italy’s Episcopal Conference, the national association of bishops, issued a statement in similar tones.
“Such arbitrary presumption, put on show right here in Rome at the present time, is unacceptable,” it said, in an apparent reference to a major assembly of bishops from around the world which has been going on at the Vatican for the last two weeks.
A small group of protesters outside the city hall shouted “Shame” and “Buffoons” and held up placards saying “No to Gay Marriage.”