Exclusive: Cardinal Ferrão Defends Controversial Amoris Laetitia Remarks on Changing Family Structures

The Synodalist heretics are showing their hand! “Changing understandings of gender”? For a sane man, there are two "sexes". Gender is a grammatical term.

From AdVaticanum

By Niwa Limbu

Ambiguous remarks by the Cardinal of Goa likely to further confuse the faithful, much like original Amoris Laetitia document

Cardinal Filipe Neri Ferrão has defended his Amoris Laetitia speech suggesting that the Church must discern how it should change in response to evolving family structures, after questioning over the speech in which he referred to “changing understandings of gender.”

The President of the Conference of Bishops of India made the remarks at Pope Leo XIV’s meeting marking ten years since the publication of Amoris Laetitia on 8 October.

Speaking to this publication’s Vatican correspondent afterwards, Cardinal Ferrão said the Church must accompany people living in different forms of partnership, including relationships outside the Church’s structures, while helping them to live happy family lives.

Before speaking to AdVaticanum, Cardinal Ferrão identified three lessons from the Church’s pastoral experience since Amoris Laetitia was published in 2016: that the Church must “be counter-cultural without losing touch”; move “from mission to families to mission among families”; and recognise that “fragility is not the absence of grace”.

He also spoke of the “beauty of relationship”, “the beauty of resilience and hope” and “the beauty of dialogue”, arguing that the challenges confronting families could reveal “the beauty of grace at work in the ordinary”.

Furthermore, the cardinal identified changes in “the identity, nature and composition of the family” as one of three major transitions affecting families in India and across Asia. He said that “new forms of partnership and cohabitation are emerging, amid changing understandings of gender and relationships in urban settings”.

“Pastoral work is itself a place of discernment,” Cardinal Ferrão said. “We don’t arrive with ready-made answers. We discern together with families and, in doing so, we learn how the Church herself is being asked to change.”

The remarks raised questions about what the cardinal meant by changing understandings of gender and the extent to which his call for the Church to change concerned its pastoral approach or its understanding of family relationships.

Asked directly what changes in the understanding of gender he had intended to identify, Cardinal Ferrão did not specify any change in the meaning of male and female. Instead, he referred to the emergence of different unions and the need for the Church to accompany those involved.

“No, there are different types of unions and so on that are happening,” the cardinal told this publication’s Vatican Correspondent, “This is a new reality, so we have to reflect how we can accompany them in this situation.”