Last edited: January 23, 2005


Henry Refuses to Be Silenced

Calgary bishop under fire for letter on gay marriage

Western Catholic Reporter, January 19, 2005

By Ramon Gonzalez, WCR Staff Writer

Calgary—Despite a national furor over his recent pastoral letter, Bishop Fred Henry will continue his fight against same-sex marriage unbowed.

The outspoken bishop has received hundreds of letters in the last week, including hate mail, filled with accusations and vulgarity.

“I would say probably the letters are running eight to one in favour of what I’m saying,” he said in a Jan. 19 interview. “However those in the minority or dissenting camp are sometimes mean and vulgar and attempt to try and demonize me in order to kind of silence me.”

Henry’s letter on same-sex marriage was published in the Jan. 17 WCR and read in churches in the Calgary Diocese Jan. 16.

It ignited a storm of controversy across Canada for linking homosexuality with adultery, prostitution and pornography and saying the state should use its “coercive power” to curtail those practices.

One scathing editorial in The Globe and Mail called Henry’s views “odious” and “noxious,” and the bishop himself “a source of scandal and embarrassment.”

But while Henry said he hopes the publicity brings about wider discussion of the issue, he won’t budge in his views.

“I’m not going to change one iota,” he said. “I probably would have expanded upon one paragraph in my letter a little bit more because obviously some people misunderstood that, but by and large I stand by the letter. I’m not apologizing for it and I am not going to change it.”

Comments that his letter borders on hate and that he might face a hate crimes charge are incomprehensible, Henry said.

“There is nothing in what I have said that is hateful. I’m simply teaching the faith of the Catholic Church.” He invited his critics to check the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the issue.

“That’s just an attempt to demonize me and to silence me and all the threats in the world are not going to do that.”

Henry says the role of the government is to uphold morality and calls on it to suppress homosexuality and other behaviours deemed to hurt the family.

“There is no question that homosexual people must be treated with respect, with compassion and sensitivity and unjust discrimination should be avoided at all costs. But nonetheless there is the truth that homosexual acts are acts of great depravity and we would be doing violence to people if we hid the truth from them,” he said.

The state should treat homosexuality the same way it treats pornography, where the government has decided not everything is permissible, he said. “The state has, by its laws, built boundaries and fences around the whole issue of pornography and says you can’t go there, you can’t do that, that’s going too far.

“The question of homosexuality is similar. Because of the importance of the family, the state has an obligation not to cave in to do everything that the homosexual community would want it to do.

“Fundamentally what the government has to do is uphold public morality and it shouldn’t be bashful in terms of doing so.”

Henry repeated his assertion that same-sex “marriage” is simply not marriage.

“(Gay) marriage is not a physical union that transmits human life; it doesn’t produce children; it’s not the joining of two complementary natures; so by definition you cannot have a same-sex marriage.

“It just isn’t marriage and I don’t care how you sugarcoat it. You can call it whatever you want but it is not really marriage.”


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