Synod of Confusion

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During his opening intervention at the Vatican Youth Synod, the archbishop of Philadelphia is saying that people should not be lumped together according to their sexual proclivities.

In Rome on Thursday, Abp. Charles Chaput said secular terms like LGBT should be scrubbed from the synod's working document, Instrumentum Laboris.

"There is no such thing as an 'LGBTQ Catholic' or a 'transgender Catholic' or a 'heterosexual Catholic,'" warned Chaput, "as if our sexual appetites defined who we are; as if these designations described discrete communities of differing but equal integrity within the real ecclesial community, the body of Jesus Christ."

The term "LGBT," although never used before by the Church, was inserted into the synod's working document by Youth Synod organizer Cdl. Lorenzo Baldisseri. When asked Monday about the term, Baldisseri said it came from the pre-synodal document compiled by young people following their meeting with the Pope in March. After it was pointed out to him that the term "LGBT" was not in that document either, he still defended its use in the current working document.

This was reminiscent of the 2014 Midterm Relatio in which Abp. Bruno Forte inserted the phrase, "Homosexuals have gifts and qualities to offer to the Christian community." When asked at that time by Church Militant what he meant by the phrase, Forte sidestepped the question.

Catholic apologist Joseph Sciambra, who continually reaches out to those struggling with same-sex attraction, said categorizing people according to their sexual weakness is a grooming tactic used by homosexual predators.

When I was a confused and scared teenager, they always said in a reassuring and comforting voice: You are gay; You were born gay; God made you gay — right before they had sex with you. If the Synod chooses to label young people as LGBT — they are setting up an entire generation for sexual exploitation.

The inclusion of such a term in the Rome-based synod may be related to the fact that Fr. Dariusz Oko, who studied the homosexual network in the Church in 2012, estimates that about half of those working in the Vatican are active homosexuals.

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