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To all priests, deacons,
Pastoral and community advisors and assistants in the Diocese of Speyer
Speyer, November 2nd, 2023
Wine from the devastated vineyard
of Bishop Wiesemann
Dear fellow brothers,
Dear pastoral care staff!
At the last meeting of the Synodal Path in March of this year, it was decided with a majority of 93% to enable “blessing celebrations for people who love each other”.
In the meantime, a Working Group set up by the Bishops' Conference and ZDK was set up to prepare a handout in this regard. After the discussions and reflections on the entire synodal path as part of the autumn bishops' conference, I would like to address you on this important pastoral question.
For some time now, we have been striving in our diocese to provide pastoral care, touched and moved by God's humanity, for couples who, for various reasons, cannot or do not want to receive the sacrament of marriage. Based on my own long-standing pastoral experience, I am also moved by the great need and the deep longing of many, not infrequently, deeply religious people for God's blessing and the church's benevolent encouragement for their life together with all the searching, failure, new departures and happy finds - that is , with what makes human life so deeply fragile and precious at the same time. For me, Jesus' instruction from the middle of the Sermon on the Mount "Judge not, lest you be judged." (Mt 7:1) has increasingly become an essential key for a pastoral ministry based on the Gospel of Jesus, as I also see it in this the oft-quoted words of Pope Francis, “Who am I to judge him?”
Both with regard to believers whose marriages have broken down and who have remarried, and especially with regard to same-sex oriented people, it is urgently time - especially against the background of a long history of deep hurt - for a different perspective To find a pastoral attitude inspired by the Gospel, as many of you have been practicing for a long time. That's why I campaigned for a reassessment of homosexuality in church teaching in the Synodal Path and also voted for the possibility of blessing ceremonies for same-sex couples. I stand by that. I hope that on the path of the World Synod this urgent question of our time can also experience good further development.
- 2 -
Continued below.
cathcon.blogspot.com
Pastoral and community advisors and assistants in the Diocese of Speyer
Speyer, November 2nd, 2023
Wine from the devastated vineyard
of Bishop Wiesemann
Dear fellow brothers,
Dear pastoral care staff!
At the last meeting of the Synodal Path in March of this year, it was decided with a majority of 93% to enable “blessing celebrations for people who love each other”.
In the meantime, a Working Group set up by the Bishops' Conference and ZDK was set up to prepare a handout in this regard. After the discussions and reflections on the entire synodal path as part of the autumn bishops' conference, I would like to address you on this important pastoral question.
For some time now, we have been striving in our diocese to provide pastoral care, touched and moved by God's humanity, for couples who, for various reasons, cannot or do not want to receive the sacrament of marriage. Based on my own long-standing pastoral experience, I am also moved by the great need and the deep longing of many, not infrequently, deeply religious people for God's blessing and the church's benevolent encouragement for their life together with all the searching, failure, new departures and happy finds - that is , with what makes human life so deeply fragile and precious at the same time. For me, Jesus' instruction from the middle of the Sermon on the Mount "Judge not, lest you be judged." (Mt 7:1) has increasingly become an essential key for a pastoral ministry based on the Gospel of Jesus, as I also see it in this the oft-quoted words of Pope Francis, “Who am I to judge him?”
Both with regard to believers whose marriages have broken down and who have remarried, and especially with regard to same-sex oriented people, it is urgently time - especially against the background of a long history of deep hurt - for a different perspective To find a pastoral attitude inspired by the Gospel, as many of you have been practicing for a long time. That's why I campaigned for a reassessment of homosexuality in church teaching in the Synodal Path and also voted for the possibility of blessing ceremonies for same-sex couples. I stand by that. I hope that on the path of the World Synod this urgent question of our time can also experience good further development.
- 2 -
Continued below.
Full text of letter from Bishop of Speyer defying Catholic teaching on homosexuality
cathcon.blogspot.com
