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Vatican’s New Lexicon Joins War of Words 4/2/2003 Homosexual Activists Assail Document that Clarifies Loaded Sexual Terms
A new Vatican dictionary that says homosexuality is a condition “without any social value” and that people with “profoundly disordered minds” inhabit countries that allow gay “marriages” is drawing outrage from homosexual activists.
The new document, titled “Lexicon On Ambiguous and Colloquial Terms About Family Life and Ethical Questions,” also says that homosexuals have “not stopped proclaiming, often in disproportionate if not aggressive ways, their normality.”
Published Monday in Italian by the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Family, the 1,000-page glossary clarifies 78 key terms related to sexuality, abortion, genetic manipulation and birth control whose core meanings are antithetical to Church teaching. Translations will be published later this year.
The lexicon warns against concepts such as “safe sex”; “reproductive health,” a code word for abortion; "domestic economy," instead of reduction of births; and "sustainable family growth," which means contraception. It states that condoms do not protect against some sexually transmitted diseases, calling their use "an exercise in self-justification."
Italian homosexuals were quick to condemn the new dictionary. Franco Grillini, an Italian Parliament member and founder of the homosexual rights group Arcigay, said the dictionary exposes "the pathological homophobic obsession of the Catholic Church," according to news reports.
Referring to the lexicon’s statements about condoms, “gay” Italian TV host Fabio Canino said, "The Vatican, these imbeciles, are burning up years of work of professional doctors in a matter of seconds," adding, "The irony of this vicious message against homosexuality is that there are more gays per capita inside the Vatican than in most other countries."
“Everyone will see that it is a serious and systematic effort to engage in a clarifying dialogue," Cardinal Alfonso López Trujillo, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, told the Vatican news agency ZENIT in a January 28 interview.
"We do not engage in crusades nor do we go against institutions," Cardinal Trujillo said. "Rather, we try to use the instruments of truth that develop between faith and reason, and in this case, we wish to carry out a dialogue with everyone, educators, politicians and lawmakers."
The lexicon was born of a request by Catholic nongovernmental organizations and some governments that participate in U.N. conferences to clarify "ambiguous terms and concepts” that “impede a real understanding of the speaker's intentions," the cardinal explained.
The power of "ambivalent language"
On the issue of rights, one of the contributing authors wrote: “Taken individually these concepts seem fascinating. However, it is not a question of newness but more precisely of a true difference of language, that aims at removing certain human rights from every ethical norm, to relegate them to the realm of privacy by means of ambivalent language.”
In a section on "Homosexuality and Homophobia," the glossary echoes church teaching by saying that homosexuality stems from an "unresolved psychological conflict" and that people who want to give homosexuals special legal rights "deny a psychological problem [that] makes homosexuality against the social fabric," according to a report by 365Gay.com.
The lexicon continues, "Every criticism, every reflection on homosexuality is seen almost as blasphemy, compared to a crime: the crime of homophobia."
Father John Harvey, the founder of Courage, a Vatican-approved apostolate that ministers to people with same-sex attractions and their loved ones in accord with Roman Catholic Church teaching, told C&F Report on April 1 that he thinks the language of the new lexicon may be “a little too strong.”
However, Father Harvey added, those who promote homosexuality and civil unions “lack a basic understanding of natural law. You can argue against these unions simply on the basis that God made us male and female. We’re made in such a way that 98 percent of the human race has a natural attraction toward the opposite sex, so that eventually there will be marriage, and eventually there will be children born from those marriages.”
Unpacking the ‘anti-family ideology’
Louis Giovino, a spokesman for the New York City-based Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, said, “The Vatican is talking about something that is important: the use of language, and how you can use language such as ‘gender’ and ‘same-sex unions,’ which may sound neutral but really have a lot of anti-family ideology packed into them.”
During an address to Indonesian bishops on March 29, Pope John Paul II warned them that “serious concerns about growing threats to family life . . . must not be overlooked.”
The Pope added:
Writing in the Philippine newspaper Mindanao Times, Father Roy Cimagala welcomed the new Vatican glossary: “I have no doubt that it is going to be a very useful tool and powerful weapon in the struggle to foster what is truly good for man.”
Father Cimagala continued:
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