LEXINGTON, Kentucky (LifeSiteNews) — A pro-LGBT parish in Lexington is telling homosexual “couples” to contact the church’s pastor if they want to receive a “blessing.”
Historic St. Paul Church states on the “LGBTQ+ MINISTRY & FORTUNATE FAMILIES” section of its website, “Same-sex couples who would like a blessing, please contact Father Richard.”
The website also features a highly blasphemous so-called “Prayer to Our Mother of Pride,” accompanied by a poster depicting the Mother of God wrapped in a rainbow-colored coat holding a child, likely a depiction of Jesus Christ.
The Catholic Church infallibly condemns all homosexual activity as mortally sinful and “intrinsically disordered,” as well as a sin that “cries to heaven for vengeance,” and denounces homosexual tendencies as “objectively disordered.”
As LifeSiteNews previously reported, the Diocese of Lexington, headed by pro-LGBT Bishop John Stowe, repeatedly referred to a woman who calls herself a man and lives as a “diocesan hermit” as a man named “Brother Christian Matson.”
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Fr. Richard Watson, the parish priest of Historic St. Paul Church, is also known for his pro-LGBT heterodoxy. Shortly after the publication of the Vatican’s heterodox declaration Fiducia Supplicans on homosexual “blessings,” Watson hosted and publicized a “blessing” of two women who were civilly “married” for 22 years while wearing an LGBT rainbow stole. In 2022, Watson hosted a “Service of Atonement and Apology to the LGBTQ+ Community” in his parish.
A report by CatholicVote points out that scheduled homosexual “blessings” technically violate instructions in Fiducia Supplicans, which states that such “blessings” should be “spontaneous.” However, as Catholic journalist Michael Matt noted during the first same-sex “blessing” held in the parish in Lexington early in the year, “These are the optics they must have known would be populating around the internet as soon as the ink was dry on the papal signature. Out and proud in the sanctuary.”
Catholic philosopher Edward Feser made a similar point, insinuating that these “abuses” may have been the actual intended message of Fiducia Supplicans. “What was the actual intended message of Fiducia Supplicans?” Feser asked. “What is really going on in the minds of those who defend it?”
“One way to help determine this will be to compare responses to criticism of the Declaration with responses to abuses of the Declaration, such as this.”
In December 2023, Pope Francis approved the heterodox document Fiducia Supplicans, authored by Cardinal Victor Fernández, head of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. Because it endorses the “blessing” of homosexual “couples,” it has drawn condemnations from bishops around the world, including Cardinal Gerhard Müller, Cardinal Robert Sarah, and the majority of the African bishops.
As Cardinal Müller, the former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has noted, “blessing” a homosexual “couple” necessarily approves their relationship, in contradiction to Catholic teaching. “Indeed, if one blesses the couple qua couple, that is, as united by a sexual relationship other than marriage, then one is approving that union, since it is the union that constitutes them as such a couple,” he wrote.
Other prominent prelates, theologians, and canon lawyers have made similar statements, such as Cardinal Joseph Zen and Father Gerald Murray.
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