Sir, —
I read with interest the article on the Vatican LGBTQ Report and the predictable objections to it by the hard-line traditionalists, in the June edition of the Gazette. That report is the fruit of the synodality introduced by Pope Francis. Also in the June edition was the wonderful, gracious, uplifting article by Dr Scott Golden, which expresses, I believe, the kind of sentiments Pope Francis was hoping to come out of synodality. Of course the Holy Spirit has been quietly leading these reflections for a long time.
I met my first same-sex couple in 1980 when I was working in Brussels — a Dutch couple who had met each other at a reception hosted by Cardinal Willebrands, the then Archbishop of Utrecht and Primate of the Netherlands. Both were fully involved in Church life, Leo being the theological adviser to the Dutch Trade Union Movement and Peter a lay pastoral worker in a parish. They graciously hosted me in their home in Utrecht a number of times, and we have remained in regular contact by mail and email to this day.
In the 1990s the Bishop of Orleans in France, whom I had known in other contexts for twenty years, told me that his way of serving same-sex and divorced-and-remarried couples was to invite them to his study for a personal, private blessing. I subsequently adopted that practice in my own pastoral ministry.
The Roman Catholic Bishop of Antwerp, His Excellency Johann Bonny, has for many years been calling for a change in the Church’s teaching on sexuality. He said that it was the experience of being invited to dinner by a lesbian couple and their children that completely changed his attitude to homosexuality and same-sex couples. More recently, the Cardinal Archbishop of Brussels and the whole conference of Flemish bishops not only called for a change in the Church’s teaching on sexuality, but drafted a liturgy which could be used in the blessing of same-sex couples, like the liturgy which now forms part of the Book of Common Prayer of the Church in Wales. In 2024 Pope Francis published a Declaration on the pastoral meaning of blessings in which he gives the green light for the blessing of same-sex couples, provided it is not called marriage and not done in a way that looks like marriage (such as a stand-alone service with all the trappings of a wedding). For some that was a step too far, whilst for others, like the Flemish bishops and the German bishops, it didn’t go far enough. No doubt the discussions on sexuality will continue for a long time in the synodality of the Roman Catholic Church and the Synods of the Anglican Communion, but in the end the Holy Spirit will prevail and thanks to believers like Gamaliel (Acts 5:34-39) same-sex couples will become a normal, ordinary part of Church life. Come, Holy Spirit!
Yours, etc.,
The Reverend Paul Symonds
(Belfast)
