An American Archbishop has hit back at allies of Pope Francis who recently attacked US conservative Catholics and evangelicals for their 'ecumenism of hate,' with the Archbishop arguing that the groups are 'merely for fighting for what their Churches have always held to be true'.
As Christian Today reported last week, Antonio Spadaro and Marcelo Figueroa condemned 'Manichaean language that divides reality between absolute Good and absolute Evil' in an article they wrote together on the 'surprising ecumenism' between the two groups.
Spadaro is a Jesuit priest who edits La Civiltà Cattolica and Marcelo Figueroa is a Presbyterian pastor who is editor-in-chief of the Argentinian edition of L'Osservatore Romano. Spadaro's paper is considered the official voice of the Vatican and its contents are approved before publication by the Vatican secretary of state.
Now the Archbishop of Philadelphia, Charles Chaput, has written that the article was 'an exercise in dumbing down and inadequately presenting the nature of Catholic/evangelical cooperation on religious freedom and other key issues'.
Writing on Catholicphilly.com, the Archbishop argued that 'progressives' who are 'wary' of religious liberty that religious freedom is what allows faith communities to serve the poor and 'those in need'.
He wrote: 'The divide between Catholic and other faith communities has often run deep. Only real and present danger could draw them together. The cooperation of Catholics and evangelicals was quite rare when I was a young priest. Their current mutual aid, the ecumenism that seems to so worry La Civilta Cattolica, is a function of shared concerns and principles, not ambition for political power.
'It's an especially odd kind of surprise when believers are attacked by their co-religionists merely for fighting for what their Churches have always held to be true.'
Chaput noted that earlier this month, one of the main funders of the LGBT movement said that he wants to 'punish' those who oppose the pro-gay agenda.
'It doesn't take a genius to figure out whom that might include,' he wrote. 'Today's conflicts over sexual freedom and identity involve an almost perfect inversion of what we once meant by right and wrong.
'There's no way to soften or detour around the substance of Romans 1:18-32, or any of the other biblical calls to sexual integrity and virtuous conduct,.'
Romans 1:18-32 says that the wrath of God is 'revealed from heaven against every impiety and wickedness of those who suppress the truth by their wickedness'. The passage laments those who 'exchanged the truth of God for a lie and revered and worshiped the creature rather than the creator, who is blessed forever' and goes on to talk about 'males' having given up 'natural relations with females and burned with lust for one another. Males did shameful things with males and thus received in their own persons the due penalty for their perversity'.
Chaput wrote that trying to 'soften or detour around the substance' of that message 'demeans what Christians have always claimed to believe'. 'It reduces us to useful tools of those who would smother the faith that so many other Christians have suffered, and are now suffering, to fully witness.
'This is why groups that fight for religious liberty in our courts, legislatures, and in the public square – distinguished groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom and Becket [formerly the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty] – are heroes, not "haters",' he continued.
Chaput concluded that if these groups' 'efforts draw Catholics, evangelicals and other people of good will together in common cause, we should thank God for the unity it brings'.
