The University of Notre Dame in the United States has launched a pastoral plan for gay students — “for the support, holistic development and formation of students who identify as GLBTQ [gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, questioning], as well as their heterosexual friends and allies”.
Though the announcement follows years of petitions for an official “gay-straight alliance” club on campus, the university has chosen a more radical idea: It envisages creating a permanent student organisation grounded fully in Catholic social and moral teaching.
This solution from Notre Dame’s Office of Student Affairs “has both surprised and excited the campus and elicited praise from the local Catholic bishop”, reports the National Catholic Register.
“I believe there is a need at Catholic universities to provide pastoral care and support to persons with same-sex attraction,” said Bishop Kevin Rhoades of South Bend, Indiana. “This is what Notre Dame’s ‘Pastoral Plan’ is attempting to do.
“This pastoral care should help the students not to feel unwelcome or alienated in the community, but also help them to lead chaste and holy lives.”
“I think that people, especially youth, who feel isolated or alienated can be more susceptible to destructive unchaste behavior,” the bishop said. “Isolation, alienation, insecurity, etc. can lead to pleasure-seeking in sinful behaviour that ultimately brings unhappiness.”
However, Bishop Rhoades cautioned that pastoral plans and support groups for homosexual students and their friends cannot take a “morally neutral” position on homosexuality.
The Notre Dame plan declares that its “goals and objectives, as well as its programs and initiatives, are consonant with the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church”.
It dedicates eight paragraphs to making this point, repeatedly citing passages from the Catechism of the Catholic Church dealing with marriage, sexuality, friendship and the life of chastity.
The plan repeatedly notes that the new student organisation will uphold “the challenging, even though beautiful and life-giving, call to chaste relationships” and that “Student Affairs neither condones nor supports sexual activity outside the marital relationship or any sexual activities that ‘close the sexual act to the gift of life’ (CCC, 2357).”
Sources:
Text of Notre Dame pastoral plan
Image: The Blaze
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