German Catholic Church defies the gay taboo
On 9 May 2021, a dozen German Catholic churches celebrated gay unions, in violation of the recent note from the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (ex-Inquisition).
German priests acknowledged unions that the Vatican views as sinful.
Historically, Catholics have been unflinching throughout antiquity. While Judeo-Christians in Jerusalem condemned same-sex relationships, Pagano-Christians in Damascus exalted same-sex couples as the society of their day.
They distinguished between heterosexual couples to whom they reserved marriage and homosexual couples to which they reserved adelphopoiia (literally “brother making”).
At the end of the 3rd century, Christians elevated the couple Sarkis and Bacchus to the rank of saints (illustration). They were two Greek soldiers in the guard of Roman Emperor Maximilian. Sarkis was the leader and Bacchus was his aide-de-camp. The two men refused to submit to the Roman gods and were successively condemned to death and executed. Sarkis was beheaded in Raqqa, the future capital of Daesh [1].
Shrines were erected in their honour in Maaloula, the first Christian city in history, not far from Damascus. In 1969, Vatican Council II removed Sarkis and Bacchus from the list of saints considering them to be fictitious characters.
During the recent war against Syria, Al-Qaeda twice attacked the city of Maaloula, a historical symbol of Christianity. The attackers, commanded by Turkish and French officers [2], were repulsed once by the Christians of the city and a second time by the Shiites of Hezbollah. The sanctuaries of Sarkis and Bacchus were partially destroyed, as well as the statue of the virgin Mary (central character of the Koran) which overhangs the city and the tomb of Saint Thècle (disciple of Saint Paul of Tarsus). These attacks aroused deep emotion in the Middle East, but were ignored by the Western press.
- Source : Voltaire Network
