Santa Rosa bishop: Catholic doctrine not being changed (w/video)

Santa Rosa Bishop Robert Vasa was not among Catholic leaders gathered this week at the Vatican to discuss the church’s stance on a range of hot-button topics including marriage, divorce, homosexuality and birth control.

But Vasa said that if he had participated in the widely reported gathering, he would not have endorsed a preliminary document that signaled a shift in tone about the church’s accepting gay people, unmarried couples and the divorced.

Vasa, who defends the church’s traditional doctrines, on Tuesday downplayed the significance of the interim report. It thrilled progressives and gay rights groups, who have been encouraged by Pope Francis’ inclusive and welcoming message.

But Vasa said the working paper by an assembly of bishops is subject to change and does not alter any of the church’s long-held positions against homosexuality and divorce.

Vasa said if he were attending the bishops’ meeting, or synod, at the Vatican, he would probably have agreed with the criticisms by one church official, Cardinal Gerhard Müller of Germany, the Vatican’s doctrine czar. Vasa said Müller characterized the document as “weak and disgraceful.”

“The headlines say the church is more welcoming to the homosexually inclined person and the divorced. That’s true. It doesn’t mean (the church) is approving the lifestyle, or second marriages, or there is alteration of her doctrinal understandings,” Vasa said.

The document produced by bishops halfway through a two-week meeting on family life said gays had gifts to offer the church and that their partnerships, while morally problematic, provided gay couples with “precious” support.

It said the church must welcome divorced people and recognize the “positive” aspects of civil marriages and even Catholics who live together without being married.

Its message was one of near-revolutionary acceptance and understanding rather than condemnation, according to reports by the Associated Press.

But that message, however tentative, dismayed conservatives already uncomfortable with Francis’ aim to make the church what he has called a “field hospital” for wounded souls that focuses far less on the rules and regulations emphasized by his two predecessors.

The report was quickly criticized by conservative Catholic bishops who said it was an unacceptable deviation from church teaching and that changes would be made to the final version.

Vasa, head of the Santa Rosa Diocese since early 2011, released his own statement Tuesday, saying the report did not amount to evidence of any significant shift in church doctrine.

“Any attempts to view this interim report as an equivalent to a papal pronouncement or indicative of some looming change in the church teaching is simply not justified,” Vasa said in the written statement.

In an interview that followed, Vasa noted the sharp criticism the 12-page report triggered from church conservatives, who faulted it for not upholding traditional teachings on marriage or against homosexuality.

Vasa said the church teaches that marriage must be permanent, and focused on generating children and perpetuating the species.

“You can’t say the church upholds the permanence and sanctity of the first marriage and then uphold the permanence and sanctity of second marriage. The two are permanently contradictory,” he said.

Vasa said the church also believes homosexuals should be chaste.

When sex is used for some purpose other than reproduction, “it becomes ordered for something else, to which it is not intended. There is an inherent contradiction to that,” he said.

Christ’s grace, he said, “lifts people up from a fallen condition and gives them hope that ‘I can live chastely.’ There is peace and joy and light in that message.”

But he said he would be reluctant as a bishop in the United States to criticize the report from the synod himself.

“I have to be pastoral, what Pope Francis is calling us to be,” he said. “I don’t want to become a negative lightning rod, standing in the way of the discussion about family.”

Vasa acknowledged that Pope Francis, head of the Catholic Church since March 2013, is using language that is much more welcoming and inviting.

But he said the divorced and remarried have always been welcome in the Catholic Church as are “all sinners to seek reconciliation.”

He said he does not see anything to indicate Francis “is rejecting the doctrines of the church, or has a mind to change them.

“He knows he can’t,” he added.

“It’s exciting times in many ways to grapple with these things and have them publicly discussed, so the Church is not unduly restrictive. At the same time she must be faithful to that which she has been established to do.”

The Santa Rosa Diocese extends north to the Oregon border and is home to 165,000 Catholics.

Shortly after he took over, Vasa proposed that local Catholic schoolteachers sign a controversial morality clause as part of their employment contracts.

It would have required educators employed by the diocese to affirm that contraception, gay marriage and euthanasia are “modern errors” and “matters that gravely offend human dignity.”

Following the uproar over the proposal, Vasa agreed to table the morality clause requirement. He said Tuesday he remains in discussions with teachers, pastors and school principals about the proposal.

This report includes information from the Associated Press. You can reach Staff Writer Clark Mason at 521-5214 or clark.mason@pressdemocrat.com.