Opinions and Attitudes
Archbishop Aymond has been described as a "quiet pragmatist who prefers to promote Catholic values in and out of his church without the public confrontations some colleagues willingly accept."
A 2009 June 16 Times-Picayune editorial praised as "a promising way to begin" Archbishop Aymond's willingness to listen to his new flock.
He has a reputation for taking on controversial issues in a direct and vocal way. He has called the confrontations a necessary part of being a bishop. "I don’t feel I have a responsibility or an obligation to make people do what the church says," he said in 2008. “In fact, I think that would be wrong. But I do have an obligation to say, 'This is what the church’s teaching is.'"
Archbishop Aymond was one of more than 80 United States bishops who wrote to the University of Notre Dame (in South Bend, Indiana) to protest its award of an honorary degree to President Barack Obama whose support of abortion rights and embryonic stem cell research conflicted with Church teachings on the sanctity of life.
In October 2007 Archbishop Aymond was criticized for his objection to the dissident Catholic theologian Fr. Charles Curran's scheduled appearance at St. Edward’s University, a Catholic School in South Austin. Curran is a priest whose Catholic theologian title was stripped by the Vatican because he openly questioned the church's ban on artificial birth control and its teaching on human sexuality.
Archbishop Aymond is known as a strong proponent of the Catholic Church's position of opposing abortion, artificial birth control, and capital punishment. Aymond also believes that homosexuals should remain celibate.
Read more about this topic: Gregory Michael Aymond
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