Clearly, McElroy believes Catholic doctrine focuses too much on sex, noted Stephen P. White, leader of The Catholic Project at The Catholic University of America.
“Were it not for the utter collapse of marriage in the West, the malformation and perversion of a whole generation of young people through pornography, the daily reminders that our gnostic culture promotes a view of the human person which renders the body meaningless and the Incarnation incoherent, and the Church’s own decades of failure to adequately address sexual abuse, he might have a point,” noted White, on The Catholic Thing website.
Criticism of McElroy’s essay is linked to debates about the Vatican’s ongoing Synod on Synodality, according to Michael J. O’Loughlin, national correspondent for America. For Americans, McElroy’s openness to reforms on homosexuality, divorce, female clergy and other issues “may feel like an outlier,” he wrote. But in some parts of the world, especially Germany, “calls to make the church more welcoming for L.G.B.T. people have been even stronger.”
For example, Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich of Luxembourg recently “called the church’s teaching on homosexuality ‘no longer correct,’ and stated, ‘I think it is time for a fundamental revision of the doctrine,’ ” noted O’Loughlin. Hollerich is a key synod leader, “which helps explain why some Catholics are fearful” this process could alter doctrines.
Indeed, many Catholics are asking questions, agreed Larry Chapp, a theologian who helps lead the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker Farm in Pennsylvania.
Here is one urgent question: Where does the pope stand?
“It is Pope Francis who has elevated McElroy to the rank of Cardinal,” he wrote, in Catholic World Report. “In so doing, he deliberately eschewed giving a red hat to more conservative prelates from large Sees normally associated with its bishop being a Cardinal. And it is Pope Francis who has made Cardinal Hollerich the relator general of the Synod, even though he too … seems cut out of the same cloth as the Germans and Americans like McElroy.”
SECOND IMAGE: The Pope Francis response, in Spanish, to Father James Martin of the Outreach.Faith ministry.
