The other day, Pope Francis said something about gay priests that was marginally kind and not marked by the hatred common to the papacy. This led Catholic pundits to start backpedaling, to make sure everyone still understands that the Catholic Church is not at all accepting of gay people. America’s most discredited hate group leader, Scott Lively, a non-Catholic, is really upset, though, because the Pope used the phrase “a gay person.” This, to Scott, indicates that the Pope is somewhat cognizant of reality and moreover embraces it, which is anathema in the world of a fundamentalist whackjob hate group leader. Here’s Scott in Wingnut Daily:
This week, Pope Francis appears to have, at least in part, subtly embraced sexual-orientation theory in his comments about homosexuality in the Catholic Church. He said:
“I think that when we encounter a gay person, we must make the distinction between the fact of a person being gay and the fact of a lobby, because lobbies are not good. They are bad. If a person is gay and seeks the Lord and has goodwill, who am I to judge that person? The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains this point beautifully but says, wait a moment, how does it say, it says, these persons must never be marginalized and ‘they must be integrated into society.’”
Clearly, Pope Francis is NOT endorsing homosexual conduct as so many in the liberal media have dishonestly claimed. He affirms the Catholic Catechism, which is explicit on that point.
My concern is about his use of the phrases “a gay person” and “the fact of that person being gay.” Saying “a gay person,” instead of “a person who struggles with homosexual temptation,” or “a person who defines himself as homosexual” is on its face a major concession to sexual-orientation theory when used by a church leader about Christians.
Dang that Pope for not joining Scott Lively in his fantasy world bubble of seething fear and hatred, and for daring to acknowledge what every grown-up scientist in the world understands, namely that sexual orientation indeed exists and that some people are gay.
Further, in the context of the sentence, it implies a softening of church policy that those with a deep-seated homosexual identity, even if celibate, are unfit for the priesthood. The 2005 “Instruction Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocation with regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in view of their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders” forbids “those who practice homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called ‘gay culture.’”
What is “gay culture” if not the association of people based on a common self-identification as “gays”? Pope Francis has, wittingly or unwittingly, affirmed “gay” culture by his terminology, even while lamenting (and implicitly confirming the existence of) a “gay lobby” in the Vatican.
If the pope has conceded that “gayness” is an acceptable basis for self-identity, that suggests he is willing to integrate people into the priesthood who define themselves by their sin, rather than as sinners washed and transformed by the blood of Christ. When identification with sin is a present-tense basis for your identity, you are unrepentant about remaining unwashed and untransformed. That’s very dangerous for the priests themselves, and in the church community virtually guarantees that the “gay lobby” will continue.
Or that, even though he continues to view gay sex as sin, the Pope is enough of a well-rounded grown-up to stay away from the unhinged ramblings of men who have made their careers on inflicting their own inner demons on LGBT people by spreading wholly made-up “history” and “science” about us.
Whatever, Scott. Sorry your life’s work is going down the drain.
[h/t Joe]
