“Church Unity” Should Not Be Used to Tolerate LGBTQ+ Discrimination

Reactions to Pope Leo XIV’s recent comments that sexual morality is not the church’s most important issue have started to come in, and many, though not all, Catholic LGBTQ+ advocates are pleased with the pontiff’s comments. In the coming week, Bondings 2.0 will try to provide our readers with a representative sampling of different opinions.

Fr. Burkhard Hose

Today, we’ll look at the opinion of Father Burkhard Hose, a German priest and theologian, who launched a petition among pastoral workers opposing the Vatican’s 2021 statement forbidding blessings of same-gender couples, a directive which was eventually overturned by Fiducia Supplicans,  the 2023 Vatican document which permitted such blessings to take place.

Pope Leo’s comments on sexual morality were a response to a reporter’s question about the difference between the German bishops’ support of formal, ritualized blessings for same-gender couples, and the Vatican’s more limiting rule which says such blessings should not be formal or ritualized, and instead be spontaneous and extemporaneous.  In his response to the question, Leo downplayed the differing opinions, and adding that sexual morality is not an issue which could cause disunity in the church.

In an article for Katholisch.de entitled “There can be no unity in the church as long as there is discrimination,” Fr. Hose disagreed with the pope, saying that Leo misses the point about the issue of blessing ceremonies, stating:

“I do not think it is right for the Pope to give the impression that the issue of blessing ceremonies and the Church’s recognition of queer realities is not also essentially about justice and correcting the traditional Church view of gender, according to which there are only men and women in the divine order of creation.”

Hose goes on to say that Leo’s comments :”create the impression that blessing ceremonies are a fringe issue, merely a European fad,” and that his remarks actually suggest that blessings are “partly responsible for the division of the Catholic Church.”  Hose says this cannot possibly be true:

“Surely, a greater emphasis on justice cannot be blamed for the division of the Catholic Church! Justice may irritate those who have previously benefited from injustice, but discrimination and exclusion are destructive and divisive.”

Hose’s argument concludes with a categorical statement:

“Neither within the Church nor in society as a whole can there be true unity based on discrimination, not even on the basis of slightly less discrimination.”

During the same in-flight interview, Pope Leo was forthright and unwavering about condemning the death penalty, “despite the fact that in several countries, such as the USA, there are still ardent supporters of the death penalty among devout Catholic Christians.”  Why then should disagreement in the church on queer issues prevent the pope from speaking out in a similar clear and absolute way against injustices that LGBTQ+ people suffer? Hose offers the following hope for the church: