Priests annoyed with Church stance towards homosexuality

The group singled out Vatican documents that use language referring to homosexual acts and gay marriage as “intrinsically disordered,” “a troubling moral and social phenomenon” and “harmful to the proper development of society.” Such language is driving gays from the church, the pastors said.

Cardinal Francis George received a copy of the letter Friday and issued what he acknowledged was a rare response.

“The church speaks, in moral and doctrinal issues, a philosophical and theological language in a society that understands, at best, only psychological and political terms,” George wrote in a letter to the pastors.

“Our language is exact, but it does not help us in welcoming men and women of homosexual orientation,” he wrote. “It can seem lacking in respect. This is a pastoral problem and a source of anxiety for me as it is for you. It would be good to discuss together.”

But George went on to say that pastors must “mediate the tension between welcoming people and calling them to change.”

If “you cannot resolve that tension between welcoming people as they are and still calling them to leave their sinfulness and become saints, or if you yourself do not accept the Church’s moral teaching on the moral use of the gift of sexuality, it would be all the more important for us to talk,” he wrote.