The Bishops of New Zealand “Humbly” Apologize to the LGBT Community

That is what Cardinal John Dew, Catholic archbishop of Wellington and vice-president of the New Zealand Catholic Bishops’ Conference (NZCBC), declared on June 21, 2018, in response to recent research showing a heavy drop in the percentage of New Zealanders who consider themselves Christian.

The New Zealand prelate stated that the country’s episcopal conference “humbly acknowledges its shortcomings, especially with regards to particular groups in society, such as the LGBT community who have felt a very real sense of rejection through the Church, or perhaps in falling short in fully meeting the needs of our recent migrant communities.”

Cardinal Dew felt obliged respond to the results of a wide-ranging report entitled “Faith and Belief and New Zealand” that reveals that only one out of every three New Zealanders consider themselves Christian, as opposed to one out of every two twelve years ago, in 2006.

The report claims that the "Church's teaching on homosexuality is the biggest blocker to New Zealanders engaging with Christianity.”

Diminish or deny the moral requirements of Christianity in order to win over more believers? An over-used method that has not yet proven its merits, far from it….