Former British prime minister Tony Blair has condemned the Vatican's 'entrenched attitude' to homosexuality.
Former British prime minister Tony Blair has condemned the Vatican's "entrenched attitude" to homosexuality, saying the Pope is out of step with ordinary Catholics.
The Vatican officially insists that gays are "intrinsically disordered" and that homosexual sex is a sin.
In remarks likely to cause controversy, Blair said ordinary Catholics did not feel the same way about homosexuality but the Church was afraid of making any major doctrinal concessions.
His public disagreement with the Pope on homosexuality, published in gay magazine Attitude, is likely to irritate the Vatican.
"There is a huge generational difference here," he said.
Blair said organised religions "face the same dilemma as political parties when faced with changed circumstances". "There's probably that same fear amongst religious leaders that if you concede ground on [homosexuality], because attitudes and thinking evolve over time, where does that end? You'd start having to rethink many, many things," he was quoted as saying by Attitude, Britain's biggest-selling gay magazine.
"If you went and asked the [ordinary Catholic] congregation, I think you'd find that their faith is not to be found in those types of entrenched attitudes," he added.
During his time in Downing Street, he was famously told not to 'do God' because it would put off voters but has spoken out on faith increasingly since his departure.
Blair, who converted to Catholicism soon after leaving office two years ago, suggested that the Church should reform itself on similar lines to how he re-organised the Labour Party in the 90s.
82-year-old Pope Benedict XVI, when he was still a cardinal in 1986, described homosexuality as "an objective disorder." Last year, the Pope sparked outrage by suggesting homosexuality was as big a threat to humans as the destruction of the rainforests. He had said that homosexuality is "a more or less strong tendency ordered towards an intrinsic moral evil".
Last year the Labour leader launched his think tank Tony Blair Faith Foundation, which aims to fight extremism, organize faith groups against poverty and illness, and educate people worldwide about religions other than their own.
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