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Cardinal Marx celebrates Mass marking ‘20 years of queer worship and pastoral care’

CNA Staff   By CNA Staff

Cardinal Reinhard Marx marks ‘20 years of queer worship and pastoral care’ at St. Paul parish church, Munich, southern Germany, March 13, 2022. (Image: erzbistummuenchen/Facebook.)

Munich, Germany, Mar 14, 2022 / 05:00 am (CNA).

Cardinal Reinhard Marx celebrated a Mass marking “20 years of queer worship and pastoral care” in Munich, southern Germany, on Sunday.

The archbishop of Munich and Freising offered the Mass on March 13 at St. Paul parish church, near Munich’s Theresienwiese, where the annual Oktoberfest is celebrated, reported CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German-language news partner.

Speaking at the Mass, the cardinal said: “I desire an inclusive Church. A Church that includes all who want to walk the way of Jesus.”

He added that a synodal Church means being open, learning, and always breaking out anew in faith, in the search for the “possibilities of God,” as well as “in the question of what we have to say about sexuality and what we have to say about people’s relationships.”

The 68-year-old prelate, who is a member of Pope Francis’ Council of Cardinal Advisers, also said: “The kingdom of God is to discover that God is Love — in all its dimensions.” This included the sexual dimension but was not limited to it, he added.

“All human relationships must be marked by the primacy of Love. Then they can be accepted by God,” he said.

Marx, who is also president of the Vatican’s Council for the Economy, criticized what he called discrimination “from Christians against the homosexual community,” saying he was “shocked that this is ongoing.”

Everyone had a right to their own views, the German prelate added, “but the recognition and the primacy of Love I cannot put at issue as a bishop.”

He called for a “dynamic of openness” that should characterize the “Synodal Way” of the Catholic Church in Germany, saying that this was what Pope Francis meant when he emphasized the value of going forward to “discover what the Spirit has to say to us today.”

After the Mass, a “non-public reception with representatives of the queer community and Cardinal Marx” was held, according to a March 7 press release.

The archdiocese noted that the “men’s pastoral care service of the archdiocese offers dedicated weekends for gay, bi and trans men, and there are other programs on offer in the area of the department of family and adult pastoral care such as retreats for LGBTI.”

The archdiocese quoted a project leader as saying: “Rainbow ministry sees itself as a service to the reconciliation of the Church with the LGBTI community. It works to resolve theologically those traditions and Church structures that in the past have led or still lead to the discrimination and devaluation of LGBTI persons, in order to overcome them.”

The Munich archdiocese’s goal, it said, was for “LGBTI people to experience appreciation throughout the parishes of the entire archdiocese” and find programs “about their life situation, in which they feel accepted and taken seriously as people and members of the Church.”

A number of German prelates have called publicly for changes in the Church’s stance on homosexuality. There have also been similar appeals in neighboring Austria.

German bishops who have so far publicly voiced support for blessing same-sex unions include Cardinal Reinhard Marx, Bishop Franz-Josef Bode of Osnabrück, Bishop Franz-Josef Overbeck of Essen, and Bishop Heinrich Timmerervers of Dresden-Meißen.

Bishop Georg Bätzing, the president of the German bishops’ conference, called in December 2020 for changes to the section on homosexuality in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which was promulgated by Pope John Paul II in 1992 as an authoritative guide to the teachings of the Catholic Church.

According to CNA Deutsch, Bätzing said that he believed a change to the Catechism was necessary, expressing openness to blessings of homosexual unions, saying “we need solutions for this.”

The Catechism states: “Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’ They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.”

It continues: “The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.”

It concludes: “Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.”


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26 Comments

  1. “It is not possible to have Sacramental Communion without Ecclesial Communion”, due to The Unity Of The Holy Ghost; it Is “Through Christ, With Christ, And In Christ, In The Unity Of The Holy Ghost”, that Holy Mother Church, outside of which there is no Salvation, due to The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, exists.

    I do not expect this German prelate to participate with our Holy Father, Benedict XVI, in The Consecration Of Russia to Our Blessed Mother’s Immaculate Heart, due to the fact that in denying The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, he denies The Divinity Of The Most Holy And Undivided Blessed Trinity, Father, Son, And Holy Ghost, and is hus, no longer in communion with Christ and His Church.

  2. As in the movie “Cool Hand Luke”: “what we have here is a failure to communicate!”

    Cardinal Marx conflates the fictive “homosexual COMMUNITY [?]” with an exhortation against “discrimination and devaluation of lgbti PERSONS [!].” Identity politics is one thing, the reality of persons is another…

    In an earlier posting, yours truly referred to Marx’s German “synodal way” as a decoy. What was meant by this is that Germania is serving as a lightning rod to possibly distract attention from “a church that is not new, but different.”

    Will this different (c)hurch be less corrupt than Marx or his agenda, but still smuggle in place of the perennial and universal Catholic Church something more pandemic and Lutheran? Less of the Eucharist than of communion; less of deepening spirituality than of a horizontal participation; less evangelizing of the deposit of faith than a more generic mission?

    The slogan for the Synodality: “Communion, Participation, Mission.” We notice that the Vademecum makes no mention of families, but appendix D curiously includes “married couples” (aka gay marriage?).

    Of course, the German synodal way will remain as the worst apple included (inclusive!) in the odiforous barrel of synodality. And, the luminary Cardinal Hollerich, relator general for the Synod on Synodality, will then bless a breathlessly waiting world with smoothed-over words for all this…

  3. This fellow appears to have re-made himself in the image of the dinosaur Barney. Like Barney, he is long on imagination, short on reality. Barney had common sense, so I suppose he has a model to emulate.

    Why do we continue to have news items about cartoon characters? May God have mercy and spare us, O Lord.

  4. However benevolent, wise, judiciously patient we might interpret His Holiness on the issue of Catholicism in Germany the glaring fact remains that error remains and flourishes like a deadly fungus.
    Death Caps [Amanita phalloides] Webcaps [Cortinarius species] Autumn Skullcap [Galerina marginata] are deadly poisonous fungi. Not easily distinguished in the forest. Whereas, white button, portobello, shiitake are delicious and healthy. Relations between a man and a woman are clearly distinct from relations between men and men women and women. The moral health of the former and the morally poisonous of the latter have become, for many of us, indistinguishable. Why? As long as Cardinals Reinhard Marx, Jean-Claude Hollerich, Christof Schönborn, O.P. are allowed free rein to express and implement their endearment of same sex abomination [who can ever forget a smiling Schönborn in attendance of a homosexual erotic musical dance display in the sanctuary of Vienna St Stephen Cathedral even frolicking on the communion rail some dressed in satanic attire] the poisonous variety will be perceived by the faithful as safe for consumption, with a bit of training in schools and libraries even a deliciously vagrant Vatican approved choice. Sort like FDA approval on the can label.
    Friends, Roman Catholics, Americans, et al I have commented here not to praise Caesar but to reprove him for most injurious inaction.

    • You speak with love in your heart and that nobility is a gift to all who love and honour the Lord.

      The baggage you refer to is alarming. Bergoglio must act or the bishops must act.

      Ezekiel 18:32 For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord God; so turn, and live.”

      Psalm 51:4 Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.

      James 4:8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

      2 Corinthians 7:10 For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.

      God bless you.

    • In my first formal lesson about the Catholic religion preparing to enter the Church after having overcome my youthful background of atheism, the good priest teaching us, did not talk at all about all the happy feel-good post VII thoughts popular at the time. He talked a great deal about the meaning of the sin of pride, emphasizing how all sins are derivative from pride, and told us how saints challenged themselves on a daily basis least they fall into a prideful manner of thought. I really needed to hear this because what had caused my delay in trying to cultivate a faith in the seventies was witnessing how so many foolhardy theologians in the Church were being hailed in the popular media as representing a “new Catholicism.” I now pray on a daily basis to be aware of my own sinful pride but also for such episodes where our clerics and prelates, in their desire to prove a superior sort of “love,” can overcome being so pridefully oblivious of such things as the meaning of such indisputable facts that 98 percent of gays are very supportive of not being “inclusive” of welcoming the lives of the preborn into the community of common concern.

    • Something tells me Luther, Marx and Nietzsche cast a long shadow over Germany.

      Not to mention that fellow with the strange mustache..

  5. Walking with Jesus is taking up our cross and denying ourselves. We follow Jesus because He is a correct guide for our soul. We follow, for He laid down His life for the forgiveness of sin.

    God finds the sin of homosexuality especially egregious. We all have our besetting sins and our faith in Christ causes us to confess and repent. To openly promote homosexuality in the church, is an abomination to the Lord.

    A prince of the church should have an excellent mind as to discern the will of the Lord. Prayer and denial of ones ungodly proclivities should be the goal of all Christians. To replace godliness with a personal penchant gains no one anything. The aim is to highjack the church and lower it the the baseness of mankind. Scripture uplifts the soul of the godly man and sets us on the right track, the path to helpfulness and ultimately to heaven to be with the Lord.

    Leviticus 20:13 If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them.

    Romans 1:26-27 For this reason God gave them up to dishonourable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

    Jude 1:7 Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.

    Some will say they don’t believe this, yet God’s word is eternal He is unchanging. We can count on Him totally and if we repent, Jesus’s death for our sins is active and we are forgiven. Let the love we have for our fellow man cause us to speak the truth. Truth is the domain of God. Love is from God and when we love Him we proclaim his truth.

    • Agree wholeheartedly. The problem is that the gay lobby in the Church is very powerful ( obviously).Many bishops are homosexual. Several cardinals as well as we have seen over the years in the media. He has typically a very powerful position in the Vatican. And his diocese is extremely rich.

  6. If his Excellency were referring to racists, as opposed to homosexuals, I suspect the reception would be different. Despite the fact that the former is an amorphous term, abused these days, and even though Mit Brennender Sorge recognizes race as “necessary and honorable [in] their function in worldly things,” one suspects that “racist” replaced for “homosexual” would garner a different response.
    Some people may be born with a homosexual inclination. Others may be born with a sadistic inclination. What is Cardinal Marx’s point?

  7. As the late Fr. Paul Mankowski SJ asked of “Rev.” James Martin SJ, we are all free to ask Pontiff Francis:

    “Is sodomy a sin?”

  8. I honestly think any Catholic living there would be fully justified in attending an SSPX parish.

    The whole concept of “full communion” must run far deeper than mere institutional unity.

  9. The Bergoglio papacy is a rare opportunity.

    satan’s minions are feeling emboldened. They are throwing off their disguises as faithful Catholic leaders and calling openly for evil, defilement and debasement.

    It is up to the faithful — in the pews and in the ambos — to stand up and reject the distortions and the diminutions, the exploitations and the degradations.

  10. It’s a remarkable tendency, that active homosexuals, usually consistent with their preference are proabortion. Then if we study the preference it’s by its nature the indulgence of displaced sensual desire at the expense of life.

  11. The only icons in a church environment should be holy. The secular/sexual totem placed before the altar is certainly not in that category.
    A true expression of love is the ability to tell people that the path they take is wrong. Telling them that they might have a case is modernistic, neo protestant obfuscation, decidedly not in the intellectual rigour of Catholic teaching.
    The secular notion of «don’t be judgmental» does not apply here. Particularly in the light of the clerical scandals about which the secular world has chosen to be «judgmental», regardless of evidence.

  12. Christ Himself said, “If anyone comes to Me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” Apparently, Cardinal (Karl) Marx likes not being Christ’s disciple because he insists you can love anything and everything before loving Christ. He preaches that any love, in any form, takes precedence over placing Christ first in our lives. Love of same sex, love of animals, love of sin, love of the anti-christ, love of your own feelings, love of killing fetuses, love of yourself…it’s all ok, he claims. He’s nothing short of a heretic and a dangerous man. To me he’s not worthy of Cardinal. He’s not even Catholic. He’s in the same boat as Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi. Anything is permissible, even murder…even placing Christ second or worse, last. Just as long as you blame it on love, no problem. I am disgusted that the Pope allows this message to flourish. It’s clearly in opposition to Christ’s own teaching.

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