VILLACH, Austria (LifeSiteNews) — An Austrian Catholic diocese has officially supported a local LGBT “pride” parade.

The Diocese of Gurk-Klagenfurt openly expressed its support for the Pride Parade in Villach, which took place on July 4.

“On the eve of the Pride Parade in downtown Villach, the team from the diocesan Rainbow Ministry hosted a prayer service at St. Michael’s Chapel in Villach Sankt Martin,” the diocese said on its website.

During the service, it was emphasized that “You are you!”, implying that no repentance was needed from people who engage in same-sex relations or who identify as the opposite sex.

“At the Pride Parade and the subsequent Pride Village at Hans Gasser Platz, the Office for Youth Ministry—led by Michael Kröndl and Youth Center Director Eva Wutte—was represented with a booth,” the statement by the diocese said.

It was the first Pride Parade in Villach, organized by a youth group led by Franziska Müller, “who has had close ties to Catholic Youth for years.”

The Diocese of Gurk-Klagenfurt has a pro-LGBT “Rainbow Pastoral Ministry.”

READ: Pope Leo appoints German bishop who endorsed homosexual ‘blessings,’ claimed sodomy ‘not sinful’

“Rainbow colors on church steeples and buildings, blessing ceremonies, and other initiatives visibly demonstrate solidarity with lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans*, and inter* people—LGBTIQ* or queers,” the website section about the Rainbow Ministry states. “These are positive signs, but how can we move forward? How can Christian communities as a whole become even more open to the diversity of identities, ways of life, and forms of love?”

“Gay men, lesbian women, bisexual, trans*, and inter* people—they have all always been part of God’s creation,” the website claims. “Yet LGBTIQ* people are often marginalized—even within the Church. Even the loved ones of queer people feel left in the lurch by the Church’s official stance and long for more support and acceptance.”

An “LGBTIQ*-friendly parish” should incorporate “the lived realities of LGBTIQ* people into the design of worship services” and hold LGBT friendly events to create “growing acceptance of diversity,” according to the diocese’s website.

The Gurk-Klagenfurt diocese is under the jurisdiction of Bishop Josef Marketz, who has supported female deacons and blessings of same-sex “couples.”

Catholic teaching is incompatible with the idea of affirming someone in their “queer” or LGBT “identity,” as if certain behaviors were innate and unchangeable in the nature of man.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) states that God created humans “male and female.” “Physical, moral, and spiritual difference and complementarity are oriented toward the goods of marriage and the flourishing of family life. The harmony of the couple and of society depends in part on the way in which the complementarity, needs, and mutual support between the sexes are lived out,” the Catechism continues.

The Catholic Church also has clearly condemned homosexual acts as “acts of grave depravity” and “intrinsically disordered” as well as “contrary to the natural law.” The CCC furthermore states that they “close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.” It adds that the homosexual inclination is “objectively disordered.”

Share