Not really a surprise I guess
What I really admire is the profound moral courage that it took to advocate for civil unions.
Which really is just another name for Separate but Equal.
While I can’t speak for the rest of the world, the US tried that, found it lacking, and did away with it.
Nearly 70 years ago.
Well to be fair, it wasn’t 70 years ago when we got around to recognizing full marriage equality for gay people.
True enough.
I never had any difficulty with the concept of “consenting adults.”
When marriage equality was being violently thrashed around in the comments sections of news outlets, the inevitable slippery slope argument would be invoked: what about polygamy ? Marrying my pre-pubescent daughter ? My labradoodle ?
It’s a contract. Consenting adults. Personally, I never cared about polygamy or incest among consenting adults. We shouldn’t generally be managing to exceptions.
Some people seem to pine for the romance and utopia that was the Dark Ages. It’s not my thing, but …
If marriages were only the church ceremony and all government-sanctioned partnerships were civil unions, I’d be 100% for it.
But we call those partnerships marriages in respect to the government, so we call them all marriages.
Pope Francis is perfectly fine with civil unions, marriages, or hargle-bargle, whatever you want to call them, as a government “contract”. The Catholic Church just won’t perform a religious sacrament for same-sex unions.
Actually, there appears to be some real backtracking going on. He’s now calling same-sex relationships a “sin”, meaning you’d better cut it out or endure well-deserved eternal punishment.
I suspect that this is a response to backlash from the establishment of the Catholic Church. I remember a few years ago when some of the Catholic high schools here tried to establish clubs called “the gay-straight alliance” in response to the marginalization and sometimes even suicides of gay students, whose intent was to create an inclusive and supportive community for them. Catholic bishops rose up in arms, fulminating about this horror, and demanding that these clubs be disbanded at once!
Even if Francis were, personally, 100% in favor of gay marriage, he couldn’t just say so. Theoretically, he wields near-absolute power over the Catholic Church, but in reality, that power is limited by the fact that membership in the Church is fluid. If the Pope were to make a pronouncement fully recognizing and blessing same-sex marriage, the result would be an immediate schism in the Church, likely with the Pope as head of the smaller portion. Heck, there’s already some schism just from him saying dangerous revolutionary things like that black people shouldn’t be murdered, that just laws should be followed, and that we should care for the poor. Changing a millennia-old institution is a slow process.
Well, it depends on where you were during the Dark Ages…
Strange. Wasn’t Francis a progressive?
But those clubs still exist, and will, as long as they’re necessary.
And is anyone really surprised by all of this? Did anyone really believe Francis would single-handedly transform the Church?
No more Mr. Nice Pope.
I didn’t even know someone had proposed!
There’s a difference in what’s being discussed - religious doctrine and legal matters. Pope Francis is and, from what I’ve read, always has been against same-sex unions in a religious manner. It’s a sin, as far as the Catholic Church is concerned, and he’s felt that way for as long as I’ve been able to find. That doesn’t affect the LEGAL considerations, which are an entirely separate issue that he has still spoken on, though he directly contradicts John Paul II’s Considerations that “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.”
Even John Paul II admitted that legal recognition of same-sex unions by government may be necessary to avoid discrimination, “Moral conscience requires that, in every occasion, Christians give witness to the whole moral truth.” That said, he can get fucked.
Unlikely. He hasn’t got a prayer.
In some ways, I believe so, particularly in (broadly) social justice for the poor and repressed.
But, “progressive,” in this case, means “to the left of Benedict, and the rest of the cardinals,” which isn’t saying much.
I do think the RCC is in a position that’s tantamount to many news outlets – relying on data to understand why its revenues and demographics are shrinking.
And, like Fox, they are trying hard to avoid getting primaried, either from OANN, Newsmax, demographics, Atheism (G-d forbid), or any other suitor.
And a bombshell like “the Bible really doesn’t condemn homosexuality in any significant way” could result in Cataclysmic Conservative Cancel Culture in response.
So … maybe a touch ironically … the Pope has his finger in … the wind ?
And like a recent Pope, maybe he’s more Pole-driven than we’d like [triple entendre intended, if not achieved] to acknowledge.
This is the least surprising news I’ve heard all day. I mean, he’s wrong, but then again, he’s Catholic.
(Hey, I was born and raised Catholic; I’m allowed to say that.)
Right. I don’t know why people are surprised. Francis has always been against same sex religious marriage, ever since he was a Bishop in Argentina (he even campaigned against the same sex marriage law in Argentina). He says we should treat gay people better and people think he’s going to declare for gay marriage. He’s never gone that far before.
Yeah, he’s progressive for a pontiff, but to think he was going to come out in favor of same-sex marriages performed by the Catholic Church it’s pretty much la-la-land thinking. It would have been incredibly shocking (and divisive within the Church) to say the least, maybe enough for another great schism.
ISTR that a number of US states tried the civil union gambit to avoid calling homosexual marriage “homosexual marriage”. And that was a lot more recent than 70 years ago.