2024-01-02 09:01:08
By EP
Published 9 minutes ago, Updated now
Monsignor Marc Aillet, bishop of Bayonne-Lescar-Oloron. NICOLAS MOLLO / AFP
In a note published on December 29, Mgr Marc Aillet invited the priests of his diocese to only give blessings “to each person individually”, by “calling them to conversion”.
The term “conversion» is not to everyone’s taste. The SOS Homophobia association particularly condemned this term in the press release from the Bishop of Bayonne-Lescar-Oloron, Mgr Marc Aillet, on the subject of the blessing of homosexual couples by the Church. In his press release published Friday, the prelate, reacting to the Vatican’s authorization to bless same-sex couples, invited the priests of his diocese to bless these people “if (they) ask for it” has “condition that it is to each person individually, calling them to conversion and inviting them to ask for the help of grace that the Lord grants to all those who ask him to conform their lives to the Will of God».
A declaration which, for the LGBT activist association, “legitimate” THE “conversion therapies », she reacted to France Blue et Franceinfo . These practices, banned in France and penalized since 2022, aim to cure homosexual people as if they were victims of an illness, to impose heterosexuality on them through interventions of all kinds, physical, psychological or psychoanalytic.
«It is a form of injunction to change one’s sexual orientation as if it were a choice.», a postulate «both hurtful and reductive», deplores Véronique Godet, co-president of SOS Homophobia, who interprets this text as a “denial of the person, almost blackmail“. Choosing to bless these people only individually amounts to “immediately deny the existence» of the couple, believes the activist. “It is individually that we will meet the person by weakening them», she regrets.
“Courage to speak the Truth clearly”
The statement “Begging for Confidence», broadcast on December 18 by the Vatican to authorize the blessing of same-sex couples, sparked an unprecedented rebellion among bishops around the world. Apart from the episcopal conferences of Germany and Belgium which rejoiced, many others publicly protested and announced that they would not apply this new regulation. Not out of homophobia, since the Church has long provided for the individual blessing of homosexual people, but because they fear a green light for gay marriage.
In the press release posted on the website of the diocese of Bayonne, Mgr Marc Aillet, known for his conservative positions, mentioned a declaration “hailed as a victory by the secular world, and in particular by LGBT lobbies”, but arousing “confusion and incomprehension» among many faithful and priests. The prelate thus wished to give “some keys to understanding» with a view to «welcome this declaration in a spirit of communion with the Holy Apostolic See (…) while respectfully questioning certain points“. Mgr Marc Aillet invites priests in particular to “have the courage, for the good of people and with the appropriate sensitivity, without judging them and by involving oneself personally in the pastoral relationship, to tell them clearly the Truth that the Church teaches about their situation».
Asked by our colleagues about the reaction of SOS Homophobia, the diocese simply explained that it was “of a call to the conversion of Jesus in the Gospel”, with reference to the Gospel according to Saint (1.15): “Repent and believe in the Gospel.”
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