A notable case of the latter occurred in
November when the Illinois legislature passed a bill making the state the
sixteenth in the nation to legalize “homosexual marriage.” Several Catholic
lawmakers who were initially undecided about the bill cited Pope Francis’
remarks as the deciding factor that led them to vote in favor. Rep. Linda Chapa
LaVia told the Chicago Tribune: “As a Catholic follower of Jesus and the pope,
Pope Francis, I am clear that our Catholic religious doctrine has at its core
love, compassion and justice for all people.” Catholic Speaker of the House
Michael Madigan told the Tribune: “For those that just happen to be gay—living
in a very harmonious, productive relationship but illegal—who am I to judge
that they should be illegal?”
This despite the fact that Pope Francis
and the Roman Catholic Church consider homosexual acts to be “intrinsically
disordered,” are “contrary to the natural law,” and “under no circumstances can
they be approved.” (The Catechism of the Catholic Church, #2357)
So what did Pope Francis really say?
Let’s take the radical approach of reading his entire quote in its context.
Pope Francis fielded questions from
reporters aboard his airplane on the way back to Rome from World Youth Day
activities in July. For nearly an hour and a half he took questions on any
topic, refusing to answer none. His answers to the final two questions have
drawn the most attention.
The first of these concerned claims that
Msgr. Battista Ricca, whom Pope Francis had chosen to head the Institute for
the Works of Religion (more commonly known as the Vatican Bank) had engaged in
homosexual activity years ago. According to a transcript by Andrea Tornielli of
Vatican Insider, this was the Pope’s answer:
“I have acted in accordance with Canon
Law and ordered an investigation. None of the accusations against him have
proved to be true. We haven’t found anything! It is often the case in the
Church that people try to dig up sins committed during a person’s youth and
then publish them. We are not talking about crimes or offenses such as child
abuse which is a whole different matter, we are talking about sins. If a lay
person, a priest or a nun commits a sin and then repents of it and confesses,
the Lord forgives and forgets. And we have no right not to forget, because then
we risk the Lord not forgetting our own sins. I often think of St. Peter who
committed the biggest sin of all, he denied Jesus. And yet he was appointed
Pope. But I repeat, we have found no evidence against Msgr. Ricca.”
The final question concerned the Pope’s earlier
confirmation of the presence of a “gay lobby” in the Curia. This was his response
(emphasis added):
“There is so much written about the gay
lobby. I haven’t met anyone in the Vatican who has ‘gay’ written on their
identity cards. There is a distinction between being gay, being this way
inclined and lobbying. Lobbies are not good. If a gay person is in eager
search of God, who am I to judge them? The Catholic Church teaches that gay
people should not be discriminated against; they should be made to feel
welcome. Being gay is not the problem, lobbying is the problem
and this goes for any type of lobby, business lobbies, political lobbies and
Masonic lobbies.”
Pope Francis first of all made a clear
distinction between merely having a same-sex attraction, which the Church
acknowledges is beyond one’s control, and a “lobby,” which is an organized
effort to pursue homosexual activity and agendas. Note the sentence I
underlined, where he is clear that when he says “being gay” he is referring
merely to having same-sex attraction, and “lobbying” as promoting homosexual
activity. He clearly condemned the latter: “Lobbies are not good…. Being gay
[simply having the attraction] is not the problem, lobbying [acting upon the attraction in various
ways] is the problem.”
Regarding those he says he should not
judge, it is a gay person (meaning one having same-sex attraction) who is “in
eager search of God,” meaning they are trying to live according to the Gospel
by, among other things, resisting the temptation to act on their unnatural sexual
impulses.
In other words, Pope Francis said that
he will not judge someone to be a member of a gay lobby simply because that
person has a same-sex attraction. That would be stereotyping all persons with same-sex
attraction as gay lobbyists, which would be unjust.
(Note also in his answer to the first
question, about alleged homosexual activity by Msgr. Ricca, that he refers to
such activity as “sin.” The issue was not whether or not Msgr. Ricca’s alleged
homosexual activity was sin, but whether it actually occurred and, if it did,
had he repented of this sin.)
Of course all of this is basic Catholic
teaching, as spelled out plainly in The Catechism of the Catholic Church:
“The number of men and women who have
deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. They do not choose their
homosexual condition; for most of them it is a trial. They must be accepted
with respect, compassion and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination
in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s
will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of
the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.
“Homosexual persons are called to
chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at
times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental
grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian
perfection.” (#2358-2359)”
Reporting on the media frenzy these
remarks caused last summer, Scott P. Richert made this astute observation:
“The most ridiculous part of this media
frenzy is that Pope Francis’s remarks are no different than remarks that Pope
Benedict himself made many times during his pontificate, remarks that simply
reflect (as the Holy Father noted) the teachings of the Catechism of the
Catholic Church. Like the media circus in 2010 over Pope Benedict’s remarks on
condoms, this sudden ‘controversy’ tells us more about the sexual obsessions of
modern man—and the willingness of the media, both secular and Catholic, to play
to those obsessions—than it does about Pope Francis.”
