As ever, it is all happening here in Andalucia. A parish priest in the small Sevillano town of Villanueva del Río y Minas has faced sustained protest after explaining to a parishioner, who is in a civil same-sex marriage, that he could no longer receive the sacrament, because of what the Catholic Herald refers to as the ‘public and persistent nature of the union (which is) incompatible with the Church’s discipline for the Eucharist’.
Apparently on May 30, the priest, identified as Fr Manuel C, from the church of San Fernando, Villanueva del Río y Minas, asked parishioner José Antonio Hurtado to remain behind, and, according to Hurtado’s public account, told him he would no longer administer the Eucharist to him because his same-sex ‘marriage’ placed him in a state of manifest grave sin.
This is a difficult moment for the Catholic Church, which does not consider having same-sex attraction a sin, but in keeping with certain conservative Protestant denominations, teaches that marriage is strictly a union between a man and a woman, and therefore, entering a same-sex marriage or engaging in same-sex sexual acts is contrary to Church law and viewed as a sin.
We have recently seen a slight softening of this approach within Catholicism, a process for which the publicity that this case brings, will undoubtedly be made more complex. See our recent news story here.
Read this full article in the Catholic Herald here.
Picture above: Iglesia de San Fernando. Villanueva del Río y Minas, provincia de Sevilla, Andalucía, España. Este archivo está disponible bajo la licencia Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International.