Because the early days of Pope Francis’s pontificate, activists have urged him to take a stand against laws in dozens of nations that criminalize homosexuality, arguing that support for them from local church leaders puts lives in danger. At the identical time, some Catholics expressed hope that the pope’s early words of qualified support for L.G.B.T. people might signal a broader change, with a more welcoming church on the horizon.
Comments this week, from the pope and a U.S. cardinal, showed progress on each fronts.
Pope Francis, in an expansive interview with The Associated Press—that also covered gun violence, his health and church reform efforts—said the Catholic Church should fight against the criminalization of homosexuality.
“Being homosexual isn’t against the law,” the pope said.
In line with the Human Dignity Trust, 67 countries or jurisdictions punish homosexual behavior, with 11 jurisdictions making it punishable by death. In some instances, Catholic leaders have supported laws that punish homosexuality, pointing to the church’s teaching that condemns homosexual behavior.
In his interview, conducted Tuesday in Rome, Francis stated unequivocally, “Being homosexual just isn’t against the law.”
Because the start of his pontificate, Pope Francis has undertaken a fragile and, at times depending on one’s viewpoint, frustrating approach to L.G.B.T. Catholics.
A part of Francis’ interview caused some confusion, during which he appeared to be answering his own rhetorical query that articulated homosexuality is sinful. In truth, church teaching holds that a homosexual orientation just isn’t sinful in itself. Within the Seventies, theologians, including the previous Jesuit John J. McNeill, argued that homosexuality was a morally neutral orientation, resulting in arguments that the church had no basis for condemning sexual acts between two people of the identical sex. That line of considering was quashed in a 1986 letter written by the longer term Pope Benedict XVI.
“Although the actual inclination of the homosexual person just isn’t a sin, it’s a roughly strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil,” wrote the then-head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, “and thus the inclination itself have to be seen as an objective disorder.”
Within the interview, Pope Francis appeared to be suggesting a retort to his assertion that homosexuality just isn’t against the law, stating, “Yes, but it surely’s a sin.” The pope then said, “Fantastic, but first let’s distinguish between a sin and against the law.”
“It’s also a sin to lack charity with each other,” he added.
Because the start of his pontificate, Pope Francis has undertaken a fragile and, at times depending on one’s viewpoint, frustrating approach to L.G.B.T. Catholics.
He famously asked, “Who am I to guage?” when asked about gay priests in 2013, a phrase he referenced on this week’s interview, acknowledging that his assertion “bothered” some people. Francis has also met, with some regularity, L.G.B.T. Catholics, and he has encouraged them to proceed to be energetic of their faith. At the identical time, he has defended traditional church teaching on the topic, reminding Catholics that the church considers homosexual acts a sin and that marriage is reserved for one man and one woman.
“The pope is reminding the church that the best way people treat each other within the social world is of much greater moral importance that what people might do within the privacy of a bedroom.”
Still, his comments in the brand new interview were viewed by secular and Catholic advocates for L.G.B.T. people as a step forward in recognizing their inherent dignity.
Writing at Outreach, James Martin, S.J., said that Francis is framing the persecution of L.G.B.T. people through a pro-life lens and said his comments stand out because so few other bishops have taken similar stands.
“Overall, though, despite pleas from LGBTQ people suffering persecution, few bishops or bishops’ conferences have condemned the criminalizing laws that the pope rejected today, although that is, in spite of everything, a life issue,” Father Martin wrote. “As ever, Pope Francis is siding with life, with human dignity and with the idea that every one of us are created within the image and likeness of God.”
“This call for decriminalization will help save lives and promote respect for LGBTQ+ people, particularly in areas where law or social norms make them victims of fear, hatred, violence, and death,” Francis DeBernardo, the top of Recent Ways Ministry, said in an announcement. “The pope is reminding the church that the best way people treat each other within the social world is of much greater moral importance that what people might do within the privacy of a bedroom.”
Pope Francis: Bishops should seek to steer with “tenderness, please, as God has for every one in all us.”
Fabrice Houdart, an advocate for greater L.G.B.T. representation in the company world, wrote in his newsletter in regards to the pope’s comments: “That is positive and inspiring news because the Catholic Church—particularly in sub-Saharan Africa—was proactively fighting decriminalization until recently.” (Mr. Houdart took issue with the language about sin, saying that the pope’s comments were “not a panacea.”)
Within the interview, Pope Francis said that bishops who support discriminatory laws against L.G.B.T. people should as an alternative deal with God’s love.
“These bishops must have a means of conversion,” the pope said. Bishops should seek to steer with “tenderness, please, as God has for every one in all us.”
Earlier this week, a U.S. bishop wrote an essay arguing along those very lines.
In a lengthy essay in regards to the ongoing synod process published this week at America, Cardinal Robert McElroy, the bishop of San Diego, writes about among the challenges that the continuing dialogue has identified, which include Catholic outreach to L.G.B.T. people.
Cardinal McElroy, who at 68 is the nation’s youngest cardinal, rejects in his essay the notion that divorced and remarried Catholics, in addition to L.G.B.T. Catholics, must be excluded from receiving the Eucharist.
Cardinal McElroy: “The church’s primary witness within the face of this bigotry have to be one in all embrace fairly than distance or condemnation.”
But Cardinal McElroy, who previously served as an auxiliary bishop in San Francisco, also recognized that the synodal conversations identified challenges facing L.G.B.T. Catholics extending beyond the so-called Communion wars.
“It’s a demonic mystery of the human soul why so many men and ladies have a profound and visceral animus toward members of the L.G.B.T. communities,” Cardinal McElroy continued. “The church’s primary witness within the face of this bigotry have to be one in all embrace fairly than distance or condemnation.”
Perhaps essentially the most remarkable a part of Cardinal McElroy’s essay, along with calling homophobia “demonic,” is that he rejects the notion that L.G.B.T. Catholics who abstain from sexual intercourse are someway more deserving of God’s love than those that don’t.
“The excellence between orientation and activity can’t be the principal focus for such a pastoral embrace since it inevitably suggests dividing the L.G.B.T. community into those that refrain from sexual intercourse and people who don’t,” he writes.
Cardinal McElroy continues: “Relatively, the dignity of every one as a baby of God struggling on this world, and the loving outreach of God, have to be the guts, soul, face and substance of the church’s stance and pastoral motion.”
Church teaching is evident that gay and lesbian people have to be treated with dignity and respect, and most reasonable people wouldn’t view imprisonment for one’s sexual orientation as following that teaching.
Taken alone, the pope’s comments calling for the decriminalization of homosexuality, together with the exhortation for Catholics to fight such laws, perhaps don’t feel all that revolutionary, especially when read from a Western context. In any case, church teaching is evident that gay and lesbian people have to be treated with dignity and respect, and most reasonable people wouldn’t view imprisonment for one’s sexual orientation as following that teaching. What may be more remarkable is that no pope before him had so clearly challenged these laws.
Still, the pope’s comments are remarkable because they stand in sharp contrast to the rhetoric L.G.B.T. Catholics have turn into accustomed to hearing come from Rome over the past several many years.
In 2000, Rome played host to World Pride, an event that then-Pope John Paul II said filled him with “bitterness” and which he described as an “offense to the Christian values of a city that’s so dear to the hearts of Catholics the world over.” During Benedict’s papacy, in 2012, he included same-sex marriage in an inventory of threats to the family that would “threaten human dignity and the longer term of humanity itself.”
Francis, against this, has praised priests and Catholic sisters for his or her work with L.G.B.T. Catholics, expressed support for same-sex civil unions and now called on Catholics to fight laws that criminalize homosexuality. That, when paired with the insights from Cardinal McElroy, makes clear that larger changes within the church’s approach to those issues continues.
The pope’s willingness to talk thoughtfully about topics until very recently considered taboo within the church has given bishops the liberty to explore these topics even further. It’s difficult to assume a cardinal writing an essay denouncing homophobia as “demonic” and reframing the controversy around homosexuality not as one about rules but fairly as one about love without the tacit permission granted by the pope by the use of his previous comments and gestures.
Some critics have said that until the church changes its doctrinal teaching related to homosexuality, welcoming words remain empty gestures. But Francis, and a few bishops, seem determined to seek out a middle way during which they work throughout the church’s tradition with a view to champion God’s love.
