The Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference has restated its support for the Promotion of Proper Human Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill, 2021; popularly known as the Anti-LGBT Bill.
In a communiqué dated Monday, 11 December 2023, and signed by Most Rev. Mathew Kwasi Gyamfi, Catholic Bishop of Sunyani and President of the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference, the bishops laid out the Biblical stance of the Church towards same-sex relations.
They quoted copiously from the Old and New Testaments to drive home the point that that act was untenable and against the foundational basis of marriage and procreation.
The Bishops, however, stressed that the Church drew a clear distinction between homosexual acts and or the tendency to engage in such as against the individual engaged in the act.
Under the sub-topic "Biblical teaching on homosexuality,” the statement quoted verses from across the Bible, some explicit and others implied to buttress the fact that homosexuality and its variants were unacceptable and were an anathema to the essence of marriage, procreation.
“Homosexuality may be defined as sexual interest in and attraction to members of one’s own sex, the statement read in part.
Read Biblical aspects of the communiqué below:
COMMUNIQUE ISSUED BY THE GHANA CATHOLIC BISHOPS’ CONFERENCE ON “THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THE STATE ON HOMOSEXUALITY”
Biblical Teaching on Homosexuality
The Catholic Church’s teaching on homosexuality is based primarily on what the Bible says on this matter. The Bible, which is foundational to Christian beliefs and practices, condemns the practice of homosexuality.
In the Old Testament, this practice was seen as a perversion and a pagan abomination.
In Lev 18:22 we read, “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination”. Similarly, in Lev 20:13 we read, “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death, their blood is upon them”.
Another passage relevant in this discussion is Gen 19:1-28. While admittedly the text of Gen 19:1-28 does not deal with homosexual people, it does not deny the fact that what the men of Sodom intended to do with the two male guests of Lot constituted homosexual acts (cf. Gen 19:5: the Hebrew verb “yada’” is a biblical euphemism for sexual relations).
Lot’s offer to give his two virgin daughters in place of the two male guests shows that he perceived the desire of the men of Sodom as perverted lust.
While the idea of intolerance and hostility towards the stranger is present in the text, it is certainly sexual perversion, i.e., their desire to engage in homosexual acts, which is at the root of the crimes of the men of Sodom.
Most of the references to homosexuality in the New Testament occur in the letters of Paul. The clearest is Romans 1:26-27. In the context, Paul is portraying the moral disorder that accompanies the rejection of the knowledge of God in the pagan world.
He says, “For this reason God gave them up to dishonourable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error” (Rom. 1:26-27).
Rom 1:26 thus addresses the particular issue of homosexual behaviour between consenting females. Rom. 1:27 is the clearest statement in the New Testament regarding the issue of homosexual behaviour between consenting adult males.
Some interpreters suggest that Paul has in mind here sexual relations between men and boys in particular; however, Paul’s indictment seems to include all kinds of homosexual practice, female as well as male, and was not directed against one kind of homosexual practice in distinction from another.
In 1 Cor. 6:9; 1 Tim. 1:10 Paul speaks of homosexuality. These two verses may be discussed together. In 1 Cor. 6:9 Paul says, “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor sexual perverts”.
In 1 Tim. 1:10 he speaks of “immoral persons, sodomites, kidnappers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine”. The terms “sexual perverts” and “sodomites” in the two passages translate the same Greek word (arsenokoitai) which denotes practitioners of homosexuality.
However, it needs to be added that Paul does not single out samesex intercourse as specially perverted or monstrous. He lists it alongside theft, drunkenness and perjury, as well as adultery and murder. It is nevertheless a safe conclusion that, whatever might be said about individual orientations or dispositions, Paul could only have regarded all homosexual erotic and genital behaviour as contrary to the creator’s plan for human life, to be abandoned on conversion (cf. 1 Cor 6:11).
Homosexuality is also incompatible with the creation stories about man and woman in Genesis. In the opening chapters of Genesis, the creation of the sexes by God is presented as having a twofold purpose: men and women are meant to come together in a one-flesh unity of life (Gen 2:24) and to beget children (Gen 1:28).
Since sexual activity was seen to be ordered to procreation and the continuance of the human race, any form of sexual activity other than heterosexual intercourse is against nature and is a clear violation of right reason.
For the Church, to choose someone of the same sex for one’s sexual activity or for marriage is to annul the rich symbolism and meaning, not to mention the goals, of God’s sexual design.
Homosexual activity is not a complementary union, able to transmit life, and so it thwarts the call to a life of that form of self-giving which the Gospel says is the essence of Christian living.
SARA
Read the full statement below:
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The Catholic Bishops in a group photo