Pope’s remarks about the “LGBTQ+ community” cause further confusion
Pope’s remarks about the “LGBTQ+ community” cause further confusion
Homosexual relations and sex outside of marriage, of any sort, have nothing to do with human love elevated by God’s grace.
March 19, 2024 Father Jerry J. Pokorsky Features, Opinion 48Print
Pope Francis at his general audience on Nov. 22, 2023. (Credit: Daniel Ibanez/CNA)
Good pastors must imitate the Good Shepherd and warn their sheep of ravenous wolves. When Cain murdered his brother, Abel, God said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground” (Gen. 4:10).
Particular mortal sins are so evil that they are said to be sins that cry to heaven for vengeance: homicide (Gen. 4:10), sodomy (Gen. 18:20-21), oppression of widows and orphans (Exod. 2:23), and defrauding workers of their just wages (Jas. 5:4).
Sins against the Holy Spirit are mortal sins that harden a soul by rejecting the Holy Spirit: despair, presumption, envy, obstinacy in sin, final impenitence, and deliberate resistance to the known truth.
In a passage in his upcoming autobiography, titled Life: My Story Through History, Pope Francis says that homosexual couples, even if they should not have access to legal marriage, should still be able to “live the gift of love” with legal support.
Excerpts of the autobiography, which was written with Italian journalist Fabio Marchese Ragona, have been published by the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, including the following:
Same-sex marriage is not possible, but civil unions are: “It is right that these people who live the gift of love can have legal coverage like everyone else. Jesus often went out to meet people who lived on the margins, and that is what the Church should do today with people from the LGBTQ+ community, who are often marginalized within the Church: make them feel at home, especially those who have received baptism and they are, to all intents and purposes, part of the people of God. And whoever has not received baptism and wishes to receive it, or who wishes to be a godfather or godmother, please be welcomed.”
Pope Francis also says about the blessings to irregular couples: “I just want to say that God loves everyone, especially sinners. And if brother bishops decide not to follow this path, it does not mean that this is the antechamber of a schism, because the doctrine of the Church is not called into question.”
Accurate or not, the autobiography as a personal memoir has zero magisterial value, regardless of authorship. The trademark ambiguity is unmistakable, and its pronounced heterodox implications require a pastor’s commentary to protect the integrity of his confessional.
As many have noted, these remarks by Pope Francis are at odds with the 2003 document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons,” which makes some very strong statements:
There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family. Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law. … In those situations where homosexual unions have been legally recognized or have been given the legal status and rights belonging to marriage, clear and emphatic opposition is a duty. One must refrain from any kind of formal cooperation in the enactment or application of such gravely unjust laws and, as far as possible, from material cooperation on the level of their application. … The Church teaches that respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behaviour or to legal recognition of homosexual unions.
The violence of homosexual relations has nothing to do with Christian love. Various types of sodomy in no way are loving acts. Jesus did not condone the lives of sinners; he elicited their conversion. We are all sinners, including those who do not act on immoral sexual inclinations. However, those who act on immoral sexual inclinations do not participate in authentic human love. Promiscuous–same-sex or heterosexual—activity has nothing to do with human love elevated by God’s grace.
The phrase “LGBTQ+” is unscientific and morally mendacious. “Gay” is a homosexual activist term. “Bisexual” celebrates promiscuous sodomy and fornication. A person can’t be “transgendered.” Hormonal treatment and genital mutilation cannot change a person’s sex. The chromosomes remain male or female. “Queer” is a slovenly and politically-charged term for promiscuity. The + sign opens the door to every perversion, including pederasty and bestiality.
The Church is our mother and welcomes us all to conversion and worship. But unrepentant manifest grave sinners should not present themselves for Communion or be approved as sponsors for the Sacraments. The suggestion that sinners–like those suffering from dysfunctional sexual inclinations–are “judged by us” suggests we ourselves are without sin. But, again, every Christian is a sinner. As the saying goes, we judge the sin, but not the sinner. But if there is sufficient evidence of a sinful lifestyle, we must judge evil behavior.
No thoughtful Christian turns his back on sinners. We must acknowledge common-sense reality and fundamental moral truths. We also pay attention to the correct meaning of words. There are no “transexuals,” “gays,” “queers,” “bisexuals,” or “transgendered” individuals. We are children of God and must not define ourselves by sinful proclivities. But if we dare, we promote and politicize unrepented sins with those words and even deny reality. In matters of human sexuality, there are only violations of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments calling for repentance and the healing that comes with the sacraments.
Self-interest partially drives this painful critique. A good confessor must not allow these errors to compromise his duties in the confessional. Faithful witnesses to the Ten Commandments are never schismatic. But those who depart from the Ten Commandments and suggest changes in Church teaching are guilty of grave error and even schism (under the right conditions).
Let’s not call into question the authentic doctrines of the Church or deny the reality of human sexuality.
These apparently private opinions of Pope Francis, published as an autobiography or recorded in interviews, have no doctrinal authority. Because of his history of causing doctrinal confusion, we must carefully compare the Pope’s utterances to the traditional teaching of the Catholic Church. When not in accord with that teaching, we must reject or ignore them.
