As the Synod on Synodality in Rome races towards a debate on blessing homosexuality, a Polish Jesuit is calling on Pope Francis to offer clarity, not confusion. In a recent essay, Fr. Dariusz Kowalczyk addressed the prevalence of what he calls “homoheresy” invading dialogue and discussion within the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. The Polish Jesuit wrote, “Among the various problems that the Church is currently experiencing, the most disturbing is — in my opinion — the problem of homosexual ideology, which threatens the integrity of Catholic teaching. The situation is so serious that we can now talk about homoheresy sweeping through Catholic communities and institutions.”
Kowalczyk noted that the seemingly worldwide promotion of LGBT ideology encourages people to sin, since the rest of the world obviously endorses what the Polish priest called “the blatant corruption of morals, demoralization, and sick ideologies in public space.” He explained that the endorsement of LGBT ideology has become a pressing issue within the Catholic Church in Germany, where leaders of the nation’s dissident Synodal Way not only forged ahead with approving blessings for same-sex unions but insisted the topic be brought up during the global Synod on Synodality too, presenting the condemned practice as a boon for the whole Church. (READ MORE from S.A. McCarthy: Debunking the Myth of ‘Hitler’s Pope’)
While Jesuits across the globe seem to have been deeply-infected with this “homoheresy” and both implicitly and explicitly encourage the Pope to accept the morally-depraved ideology too, Kowalczyk called on the Holy Father to instead offer clarity. Referring to Pope Francis’s recently-published response to dubia submitted by several faithful Catholic cardinals, Kowalczyk commended the Pope for insisting that marriage is an immutable sacramental union between one man and one woman, but lamented his insistence that the Church “discern whether there are forms of blessing requested by one or more persons that do not convey an erroneous conception of marriage.”
This, the Polish priest warned, “constitutes consent to some blessing of homosexual couples in the Church, although Francis warns that this should not be made the norm.” He continued, “If we followed this path, it would become more and more common for homosexual and ‘open’ heterosexual pastors to bless homosexual couples in Catholic churches. Red carpet, all the lights on, the organ playing, the invited guests delighted. Homoheresy in all its glory!”
Kowalczyk raises an interesting point: the difference between what Pope Francis preaches and what he practices. For all the vitriol hurled at him by self-professed conservative or traditional Catholics, Pope Francis has, like his pontifical predecessors, always staunchly defended the sacrament of marriage and its fruit: the family. In the aforementioned dubia response, for example, the Pope definitively stated, “The Church has a very clear understanding of marriage: an exclusive, stable, and indissoluble union between a man and a woman, naturally open to procreation. Only this union can be called ‘marriage.’” He added that no blessing should be issued to any same-sex couple that might lead them to confuse their relationship for a marriage.
He said much the same thing in a diktat issued in 2021 by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s doctrine office. That letter, approved for publication by Pope Francis himself, declared that the Church “does not and cannot bless sin.” The letter further clarified the fundamental difference between a same-sex union and a sacramental marriage, explaining that the Church “does not preclude the blessings given to individual persons with homosexual inclinations, who manifest the will to live in fidelity to the revealed plans of God as proposed by Church teaching. Rather, it declares illicit any form of blessing that tends to acknowledge their unions as such.” (READ MORE: The Pope Is All Things to All Men)
Despite his penchant for ambiguity, Pope Francis has always taken every opportunity to defend marriage as the union of one man and one woman. And yet his actions don’t always correspond to his bold defense of unchanging Church doctrine. Recent evidence of this is the Pontiff’s meeting last week with New Ways Ministry, a dissident pro-LGBT coalition that has previously been condemned by both the U.S. Bishops’ Conference and the Vatican’s doctrine office, under the leadership of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI.
New Ways Ministry published a bulletin touting the visit with the Pontiff and co-founder Sister Jeannine Gramick thanked Pope Francis for “his openness to blessing same-sex unions, as well as for his opposition to the criminalization of LGBTQ+ people in civil society.” Under both Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, Gramick had been ordered by the Vatican to disassociate herself from New Ways Ministry and to stop publishing and speaking publicly. She outright refused.
In 2011, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) issued its own condemnation of New Ways Ministry, clarifying, “[I]n no manner is the position proposed by New Ways Ministry in conformity with Catholic teaching and in no manner is this organization authorized to speak on behalf of the Catholic Church or to identify itself as a Catholic organization.” Ten years later, Pope Francis wrote letters to Gramick to personally thank her for her pro-LGBT work with New Ways Ministries. (READ MORE: Why Dressing Well Matters in an Age of Disorder)
While Gramick and New Ways Ministries — and the rabidly pro-gay Jesuit James Martin — are granted special audiences and enjoy personal correspondences with the Pontiff, faithful Catholic prelates like cardinal Raymond Burke are ignored or sidelined and good shepherds like bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, are treated to apostolic interrogations. No matter the strength of Pope Francis’s statements on the sacrament of marriage, his actions simply do not correspond and “homoheresy” is at least allowed to fester. As Fr. Kowalczyk observed, “The question remains whether God will allow this to happen and for how long.”