Vatican Continues to be In Disbelief Over Irish Gay Referendum

NEW DELHI: The Irish Gay Marriage Act consummated on May 23 has left deep wounds of frustration and gloom among the clergy, and has landed it's long sustained Puritan view of strictly dichotomous marriage in complete disarray.

Cardinal Raymond Burke termed the idea to allow marriage between same-sex as something which even pagans never indulged in. Speaking to Newman Society, the Oxford University's Catholic Organisation, he said, "I mean, this is a defiance of God. It’s just incredible. Pagans may have tolerated homosexual behaviours, they never dared to say this was marriage." The comments were reported by Tablet, a Catholic newspaper.

The Cardinal showed his disbelief when he said, "How can they term it as marriage?" He attributed the decline in the Christian values and ethics to the increasing use of Internet and the "poison" it hosts.

"The culture is thoroughly corrupted, if I may say so, and the children are being exposed to this, especially through the internet", he pontificated, then advised his cure-all by advocating for use of computers in public places so that children could be stopped from imbibing the poison that's there.

A day before during the same visit, Burke called marriage between man and woman as a "fundamental truth" which has been "ignored, defied, and violated".

On Saturday, 23 May, Ireland, a firm Catholic country, had held a referendum and voted for a change in the Constitution which allowed marriage between gays and lesbians. The Country had voted in favour of the act overwhelmingly, a good 62% of voters supported the act and had voted "yes".

The Act was immediately renounced by the papal authorities as not in consonance with Christian traditions and various denunciations and acceptance of "reality" were issued in the aftermath.

The Secretary of State for Vatican, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, on Tuesday, expressed his sadness over what has been termed as a historic step in gay rights history, and he said, "The church must take account of this reality, but in the sense that it must strengthen its commitment to evangelisation. I think that you cannot just talk of a defeat for Christian principles, but of a defeat for humanity.”

Earlier, Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin had modestly accepted the " need for a reality check" on the part of Vatican, over it's slipping sway over youth.