In the greatest rebuke yet to Pope Francis, the Catholic bishops of Africa and Madagascar issued a unified statement Thursday refusing to follow his declaration allowing priests to offer blessings to same-sex couples and asserting that such unions are “contrary to the will of God.”
The statement, signed by Congolese Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo on behalf of the symposium of African national bishops conferences, marked the closest thing to a continent-wide dissent from the declaration Francis approved Dec. 18 allowing priests to offer such blessings.
That declaration from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith has sent shock waves through the Catholic Church, thrilling LGBTQ+ Catholics as a concrete sign of Francis’ message of welcome but alarming conservatives who fear core doctrines of the church are being ignored or violated.
This will be interesting! A new break away Pope?
When popes and antipopes collide, the popes destroy each other, with a huge energy release. Depending on the colliding popes, not only is there a great energy release, but new, different popes may also be produced (such as neutrinopes and various flavours of quarkpopes – see figure below). These new popes will have a lower mass than those in the original collision, due to the law of conservation of ecclesiastical energy and Einstein’s very famous equation E=mc2 – some of the energy goes into heat and light, some into forming the new popes.
Defying the choice of God seems like a bold choice. Almost like there are no actual rules or punishments. Weird.
New schism just dropped
What are they gonna do about it? It’s not like they can write down their grievances on a piece of paper and nail it to a cathedral door.
The same God’s Will was used to justify black slavery. It sure is a versatile tool.
