Catholics follow Protestants?
LGBT drives deeper division among Catholics
This is a picture of Pope Francis at the Vatican in June 2021. Remo Casilli/Reuters/via NBC News.
Pope Francis likes being ambiguous on LGBT issues. He tries to please both sides because in one decade he’s gone from “who am I to judge?” to “it’s time to bless sodomy.”
He walks the tightrope of maintaining church teaching on LGBT issues over two millennia, but seeking to appease homosexuals. Pope Francis doesn’t want the intense blowback he would receive if he sanctioned same-sex marriages. After all, he had five cardinals from different nations write a letter to him in summer 2023 seeking clarity.
Pope Francis is making leftist Catholics happy, but too many traditional Catholics have concluded the Pope has abdicated his moral authority. The Catholic Church will bless same-sex marriages. It is a matter of time.
It will go the way of several Protestant denominations, including Anglicans, Disciples of Christ, Community of Christ, Episcopalians, Presbyterian Church USA, some Lutherans, United Methodists, and United Church of Christ, among others.
As Catholicism has suffered from the priest sex-abuse scandals, the controversy over same-sex marriages will only deepen the lack of confidence many Catholics have with the Vatican.
Francis’s recent comments on “blessings” related to same-sex couples who get married present the latest example of this spiritual fuzziness.
In July 2013, more than four months after ascending to the papacy, Pope Francis said the following: “If someone is gay and searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?”
This creates the impression that those who oppose the gay lifestyle somehow reject the spiritual sincerity of gays and lesbians. He’s wrong on that.
People who reject the gay lifestyle see the issue as sin, just as Scripture addresses the issue in the Old and New testaments. They also view it in the light of Jesus’ speaking gently, kindly, and lovingly to people in sin and always instructing them to “go and sin no more.” Those in the Catholic Church, and even Protestants, who adhere to the two millennia of biblical instruction–more than 2000 years if you go back to the Pentateuch–on homosexuality, see the sin issue as legitimate. It doesn’t mean homosexuals can’t sincerely seek God. It does mean that churches with fidelity to scriptural truth would not let someone knowingly in sin have the privileges as other church attendees and members. Even heterosexuals in knowing sin would be treated this way.
Protestant denominations have faced upheaval over same-sex marriages, ordination of gay clergy, and other aspects of this issue.
The “judgmental” argument attempts to quiet opposition by ignoring biblical truth.
The Pope shifted further in October 2014 when the Catholic Church declared that homosexuals have “gifts and talents to offer the Christian community." It further stated: "Without denying the moral problems connected to homosexual unions it has to be noted that there are cases in which mutual aid to the point of sacrifice constitutes a precious support in the life of the partners."
The 2014 and 2015 synods on the family produced directions related to divorced Catholics but not homosexuals. The document stated:
‘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.’ Nevertheless, men and women with a homosexual tendency ought to be received with respect and sensitivity. ‘Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.’
By September 2017, Pope Francis was now using the phrase “civil unions” for homosexuals. The Pope stated here:
But let’s say things as they are: Marriage is between a man and a woman. This is the precise term. Let's call unions between the same sex ‘civil unions.’
He would become the first pope to support same-sex civil unions in 2020.
Where have Americans seen this before? Numerous western nations have recognized the civil unions of homosexuals, only to move full throttle to same-sex marriages. In the U.S., countless Democratic politicians advocated “civil unions,” only to move to same-sex marriage. It even went to the point of some homosexuals suing Christian-owned businesses that don’t cater to their wishes.
If nations can do it and Protestant denominations can do it, don’t think Catholics will be the exception to the rule.
Pope Francis sits with delegates at the synod conducted at the Vatican in October 2023. Vatican Media via Catholic News Agency.
This brings us to Pope Francis’s most recent comments about “blessings” on same-sex couples after the Catholic synod last year.
On December 18, 2023, the Vatican released the “Fiducia Supplicans” declaration. The pope would emphasize with comments in late January that “one should neither provide for nor promote a ritual for the blessings of couples in an irregular situation.”
The Pope stated the following:
I would like briefly to underline two things, he added. The first is that these blessings, outside of any liturgical context and form, do not demand moral perfection in order to be received; the second, that when a couple approaches spontaneously to ask for them, one does not bless the union, but simply the people who have required it together. Not the union, but the people, naturally taking into account the context, the sensibilities, and the places where one lives and the most appropriate ways to do it.
The idea of “not the union, but the people” parses language to avoid the controversy that would come with “blessing the union” of gay men and lesbian women.
This 87 year-old pontiff, or his successor, will complete the Catholic Church’s doctrinal transformation on the issue of same-sex marriages.
Bank on it.
The controversy of gay marriages and gay clergy that has plagued–and split–numerous Protestant denominations–will be coming to a Catholic parish near you.
Once it happens, it won’t matter what African or Asian Catholic priests, bishops, or cardinals think.
They will be compelled to care–whether they like it or not.
