Laymen support Swiss Bishop under fire for defending marriage
A Swiss Catholic bishop who was sued earlier this
month by homosexual activists for defending the Catholic Church's teaching on
homosexuality has made a second public apology for not putting quotes from the
Old Testament he used in sufficient context. Bishop Vitus Huonder explained
that he did not intend to invite violence against homosexuals but to uphold the
teaching of the Catechism of the Catholic Church on homosexuality. Bishop
Huonder said:
I wanted to show that in [the book of ] Leviticus, there is to be found
a drastic rejection of homosexual acts and that we as Christians have to be
aware of it. When within the Church there is now a search for a “pastoral
change,” then it is appropriate to reflect – and without censorship – upon this
question in the context of the Old Testament – at least also in order to make
sure that we see what Christ, what the New Testament, and what the Tradition of
the Church had brought to us.
Despite his humble self-accusation of deficient
comment on the quotation of the Old Testament, and his apology for presenting
some passages from the Old Testament without sufficient explanation, he is
being harshly criticized by Swiss media. And by some of his brother bishops in
the nation. The Swiss Bishops' Conference's website kath.ch even published an
intro to a secular news report which characterizes Bishop Huonder's comments as
offensive to Jesus. A link to the full report has a photo which shows a grafitti
on a wall next to the Bishop's residence, saying: “Dear Vitus, I am done with
you! Your Jesus.”
In the face of harsh rejection by the media and
even some fellow bishops, Bishop Huonder received courageous and touching
support from Catholic laymen in Switzerland and Germany.
Dr. Gerd Weisensee, a Swiss pro-life activist and
President of the Swiss Association of Journalists of Francis de Sales, defended
Huonder in a press release from his organization. Weisensee insists that Bishop
Huonder did not call for violence against homosexuals. The idea that it is
forbidden to quote from the Old Testament “which is a Holy Text also for the
Jews,” is in the eyes of Weisensee “nearly absurd, even if one rejects the
content and its interpretation.” Weisensee sees the law suit against Bishop
Huonder –initiated by Pink Cross – to be “a problematic development.” He
wonders: “When will an organization of homosexuals sue the Opera house of
Zurich because it displays the 'Magic Flute,' where Papageno and Pamina praise
man and woman as the most noble, even divine bond?” Dr. Weisensee concludes:
“Pink Cross conducts itself in the same unjustly fundamentalist and
anti-liberal manner as those circles against which the organization ostensibly
fights.”
On August 11, the Austrian Catholic website
kath.net published an Open Letter to the President of the Swiss Bishops'
Conference, Markus Büchel, who publicly rebuked Bishop Huonder for his defense
of the Faith. The letter was penned by Michael Hageböck, a man who moved his
family to France in order to legally homeschool his six children. He is a
member of the conservative lay-initiative, Forum Deutscher Katholiken (Forum of
German Catholics), and the headmaster of a Christian school in Freiburg
(Breisgau), in Germany.
Hageböck's open letter is entitled: “I Wish You
Would Apologize to Bishop Huonder!” In the midst of the pressures coming from
the State to accept behaviors which contradict God's Commandments, Hageböck
says, the President of the Swiss Bishops conference seems to be defending these
promiscuous forces, rather than the loyal Catholic ones fighting the deeper
cultural battle.
In the midst of turmoil, this German layman expects
from bishops a strong defense, and that they place themselves “in a protective
way – in front of the children, and thus contradict this planned and forced
ideologization! To force everybody to accept such a super-dogma in a
pluralistic-liberal society is, in my view, also a scandal.” Hageböck bemoans
that, today, it is hard to find Catholic bishops “who even defend the Church's
[moral and doctrinal] positions, instead of [dubiously] re-interpreting them.”
Hageböck insisted that Bishop Huonder himself,
during his highly criticized talk in Fulda, Germany, did not speak in a harsh
way about homosexuality. Hageböck was there and remembers the talk well,
saying:
He proclaimed, in a fatherly and loving way, the words of Holy
Scripture. That the media would stab him in the back, was to be expected.
However, that you, Your Excellency, would have the need to secure the applause
from the false side, is sad! Nobody needs such an adapting Church. She would
thereby make herself become superfluous.
The Catholic layman concludes his Open Letter with
the request that Bishop Büchel apologize to Bishop Huonder and even take him as
a good example for “how one should today proclaim the Catholic Faith with love
and clarity, without being cramped, and without any false and obsequious
ingratiations.”
