Fridae

Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, Archbishop of Manila in the Philippines has criticized the Catholic Church for its “harsh” and “severe” stance against gay people.

The Church has to learn lessons from changing social attitudes and a greater understanding of psychology and recognise the “wounds” its judgmental approach had caused in the past, said the Cardinal Tagle, according to The Telegraph.

He told the newspaper that the tone taken towards gay people had left many feeling “branded” and socially ostracised.

He also called on Christians to relearn the meaning of mercy, one of the basic tenets of the Christian faith.

The 57-year-old cardinal considered by many as a possible future Pope was addressing thousands of young British Catholics in London recently.

Cardinal Tagle told The Telegraph that the harsh words that were used in the past to refer to gays and divorced and separated people, the unwed mothers etc, in the past they were quite severe. “Many people who belonged to those groups were branded and that led to their isolation from the wider society.”

He added: “But we are glad to see and hear shifts in that.”

The cardinal’s remarks are significant because the Philippines is a Catholic country with over 80 percent of its 97 million people belong to that religion and where the Catholic Church has been active in opposing any civil rights legislation for the LGBT community.

The Catholic Church also has a great say in the political and social affairs of the country. It called the people to revolt and oust former president and dictator Ferdinand Marcos which they did in the 1986 “peoples power revolution.”

Recently, when Filipina singer Charice who made it big time with an international chart-topping single admitted on national television that she was gay, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines issued a statement saying Charice was having an “identity crisis” and that she should be guided accordingly, as her orientation was not yet “terminal.”

However, Cardinal Tagle is considered as part of a new breed of Church leaders who like Pope Francis as head of the worldwide Catholic Church ruffled the feathers of some conservative Catholics by refusing to condemn gay people despite the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaching that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered” and “under no circumstances can they be approved.”