Palavras: é Sodomita ou Gay? É Adúltero ou Divorciado?

O cardeal Luis Antonio Tagle, das Filipinas, está preocupado com uso de certas palavras. Ele argumenta que os tempos são outros, que no passado se usavam palavras muito fortes contra certos pecados, hoje deveríamos usar outras palavras.

É o que relata o jornal The Telegraph, do Reino Unido. Vejamos parte do texto.

The “harsh” and “severe” stance adopted by the Catholic clerics towards gay people, divorcees and single mothers has done lasting harm, one of the most prominent members of the Church’s new generation of Cardinals has acknowledged.

Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, Archbishop of Manila in the Philippines, said the Church had 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.

He said that the past approach in Catholic schools and other institutions had often been to dictate rules and tell people that they were “for your own good”.

“Now with our growing sensibilities, growth in psychology, we realise that some of them were not as merciful,” he said.

“Now with the growth of insights in child psychology we see some of the wounds inflicted with that – and so we learn.”

Asked whether clerics must find new ways of dealing with people once treated as outsiders, he said: “Yes, I think even the language has changed already, 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.

“I don’t know whether this is true but I heard that in some circles, Christian circles, the suffering that these people underwent was even considered as a rightful consequence of their mistakes, so spiritualised in that sense.

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

He insisted that the Catholic Church could not abandon its traditional teaching on sexual ethics but added: “Here, at least for the Catholic Church, there is a pastoral approach which happens in counselling, in the sacrament of reconciliation where individual persons and individual cases are taken uniquely or individually so that a help, a pastoral response, could be given adequately to the person.”

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As pessoas hoje estão mais sensíveis? Ou, usando outro termo, mais efeminadas?

Eu diria que sim, e o Cardeal Burke já disse exatamente isso.

Mas será que devemos esconder a verdade com receio dessas sensibilidades? A verdade não liberta? Existe meia verdade?

Será que perdemos a doutrina de que dizer a verdade é ser misericordioso?

Denominar de forma carinhosa um pecado ajuda ao pecador ou dar uma visão mais branda do inferno?

Será que perdemos o medo do inferno

Finalmente, será, então, que deveríamos também reescrever a Bíblia e mudar as palavras agressivas, inclusive as usadas por Cristo? Ele chamou São Pedro de Demônio, exigiu que a prostituta não pecasse mais, chamou os fariseus de sepulcros caiados, chamou divorciados de adúlteros, mandou que arrancássemos nossos olhos se eles nos fizessem pecar....



(Agradeço a indicação do texto do Telegraph a Patrick Archbold)