Northern Ireland: Priest Gives Pro-Gay Homily After WMOF

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NEWRY, Northern Ireland (ChurchMilitant.com) - After the 2018 World Meeting of Families (WMOF), a priest in Northern Ireland is vocally supporting the normalization of same-sex "marriage."

The Emerald Isle is split between the Republic of Ireland and U.K. member-state Northern Ireland. At the Cathedral of Saint Patrick and Saint Colman in Newry, Northern Ireland, a priest gave a pro-gay homily at Sunday Mass, citing the pro-gay messaging of the WMOF in Dublin.

He began the sermon, "I think it is fair to say that contemporary understandings of marriage have changed considerably since our second reading by St. Paul was written."

It seems that the priest was alluding to the reading from chapter five of St. Paul's Letter to the Ephesians, which calls on wives to be subordinate to their husbands, and on husbands to love their wives as Christ loves His Church.

The priest giving the homily has been identified as Fr. Desmond Loughran, the acting administrator of the cathedral parish.

Father Loughran's homily continued, "It is not now seen as a union between a man and a woman. The gay community wanted to have marriage too, and I believe that all loving relationships should be acknowledged, respected and treasured."

"This week, we have been celebrating all that makes the family wonderful," he said.

"And we need to be celebrating all the different types of families that we have," he added. "And I feel we also need to recognize how as a Church we should be acknowledging all the different types of relationships, too, that make up families."

This pro-gay homily followed on the heels of the pro-gay messaging at the 2018 WMOF. Notably, pro-gay American Jesuit Fr. James Martin gave a speech about how parishes should be more welcoming to members of the LGBT community.

"I believe that the love between two people should be acknowledged under God," Fr. Loughran preached. "After all, we are taught and told by the Church that we are created in the image and likeness of God Himself."

Loughran recalled how he once baptized the baby son of a lesbian couple and discussed other things he did to be more "inclusive" to LGBT people.

He asked rhetorically, "Why does it matter who is gay or who is straight or who is black or who is white?"

He went on to say, "Our sexuality is God's gift to us as the person we are, that we should have the freedom to be the sexual person that we are, and not be judged on our sexuality by having to identify as gay, straight or bi, or whatever."

Father Loughran attacked conservatives by conflating sexual morality with racism, saying, "You cannot say you are pro-life, or you cannot say you love your neighbor, if you are anti-gay or anti-black people or anti-Muslim or anti-any life form — because all life is created in the image and likeness of God."

In what sounds like an argument for veganism, the priest preached, "[W]e have no right to prevent or deprive any form of life from living or loving or being loved — or being part of a family either."

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