A yawning gulf between the stern doctrines preached by Pope Benedict and the advice offered by ordinary Roman Catholic priests has been exposed by an Italian magazine which dispatched reporters to 24 churches around Italy where, in the confessional, they sought rulings on various moral dilemmas.
One reporter for L’espresso claimed to have let a doctor switch off the respirator that kept her father alive. ”Don’t think any more about it,” she was told by a friar in Naples. ”I myself, if I had a father, a wife or a child who had lived for years only because of artificial means, would pull out [the plug].”
Another journalist posed as a researcher who had received a lucrative offer to work abroad on embryonic stem cells. With the extra cash, he said, he and his wife could think about starting a family. So should he take up the post?
”Yes. Yes. Of course,” came the reply.
The church’s official teaching is that homosexuality is ”disordered” and that homosexual behaviour is wrong. Yet a practising gay man in Rome was told: ”Generally, the best attitude is to be yourself — what in English is called ‘coming out’.”
On one issue alone — abortion — the priests all stuck firmly to official doctrine. A reporter who said his wife had discovered their child would be born with Down’s Syndrome, and that they were preparing to terminate her pregnancy, was told: ”I swear to God: if you do it, you’ll be a murderer.”
But on other issues, that ”moral relativism” so detested by Pope Benedict was the order of the day.
A journalist who said he was HIV-positive and used condoms to protect his partner was told it was ”more of a personal problem, one of conscience”. – Guardian Unlimited Â