The Vatican on Thursday released a new
translation of a ground-breaking draft report by bishops welcoming
gays to the Roman Catholic faith.
The alterations come days after
conservative bishops in the United States and other English-speaking
regions criticized the report as error-ridden.
The original document, released Monday
by an assembly of bishops at the Vatican, suggested that the church
should be more accepting of gay people.
“Homosexuals have gifts and qualities
to offer to the Christian community,” the draft report stated.
“Are we capable of welcoming these people, guaranteeing to them a
fraternal space in our communities? Often they wish to encounter a
church that offers them a welcoming home. Are our communities
capable of providing that, accepting and valuing their sexual
orientation, without compromising Catholic doctrine on the family and
matrimony?”
According to the
AP, the original translation “accurately reflected the Italian
version in both letter and spirit” and the new version “provides
a different tone altogether.”
The new version replaces the title
“Welcoming homosexuals” with “Providing for homosexual persons”
and alters a reference to gay unions as constituting “precious
support in the life of the partners” to constituting “valuable
support in the life of these persons.”
As Equality Matters for America noted,
cable news outlets CNN and MSNBC devoted segments to the report,
while Fox News ignored it.
“It's not surprising that Fox News
would ignore a major story about religious acceptance of the LGBT
community,” the site's Carlos
Maza wrote. “The network has worked tirelessly to depict LGBT
equality as a threat to religious liberty, and has routinely excused
even the most extreme expressions of homophobia as nothing more than
mainstream Christianity. Highlighting a story about the Catholic
Church's efforts to embrace gay people would undermine the network's
'God vs gays' narrative.”