The bishops’ pastoral letter was read aloud at Masses the weekend of March 25 and 26 at Catholic churches in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland.
Varden said the bishops were surprised by the range of interest the letter provoked.
“The letter is longer than the average homily, so it was a bit of a Lenten mortification for the faithful” to have it read at Mass, he said. “But they accepted it very graciously.”
He said questions about sexuality are on everyone’s mind these days, especially given their prevalence in the media. Part of the reception of the letter was “a sense of relief that we could talk about it.”
“Part of our desire was to create an environment in which to talk about it without polemics,” he explained. The discussion, he added, has to be “grounded in faith, in Scripture, in Christology,” the study of the person of Jesus Christ.
“From a Christian point of view, anthropology divorced from Christology limps and is incomplete. And when the Church speaks about these issues, she needs to speak from what is her particular treasure of insight, which is a Christocentric insight.”
Though the Church’s teaching on sexuality is not always an easy thing to bring up, Varden said he hopes people will nonetheless talk about it around the dinner table.
“That’s another really important thing,” he said, “that we talk across generations about these things. Different generations speak different languages, but when it comes to issues of sexuality, when there’s a massive culture shift, there’s a risk we talk past each other.”
He said the bishops cannot force people to have these conversations, but they can invite them to.
“It’s hard to talk about, that’s why we need to practice,” he underlined.
“There’s a spiritual motif of the opportune time, and it is important to try to find the opportune time,” the bishop advised, also encouraging the use of tact.
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He also said the discourse should be rooted in what it means to be a human and what it means to be the Church.
“Our times try to isolate this topic and discuss it in a bubble. This ends up being both complicating and limiting. As we point out in the letter, a purely secular take on sexuality is necessarily different from a Christian take on it because we’re dealing with very, very different understandings of what it means to be alive and what it means to be a human.”
“We have to be at the same time lucid and delicate. That’s the balance to aim for,” he said.
What’s next
Varden said when issuing the letter, the bishops hoped it would be a catalyst for further discussion in families, groups, and parishes.
“A lot will depend on local initiatives,” he said. “There’s a bit of a risk that pastoral letters from bishops aren’t what people will keep reading during the year.”