Pope “dashes hopes of gay Catholics.” Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome, Vol. XXIX.

ay Catholics appar­ent­ly have a remark­able abil­i­ty to keep being shocked and cha­grined by what they’ve heard over and over, as though they’ve been cru­el­ly mis­led. It’s not the pope’s fault. “Every­one already knows,” we always hear, “that the Church is against abor­tion and gay sex.” I’ve had occa­sion to say these words myself to a cer­tain fac­tion of heavy-hand­ed Reminders. But arti­cles like this one in the Wash­ing­ton Post make me sym­pa­thize with Catholics who spend their days and nights remind­ing. Pope Fran­cis says that the Church can’t bless same-sex unions—which pre­sum­ably every­one already knows—and gay Catholics wail that their “hopes” have been “dashed.” Of course every­one knows what the Church teach­es, but some peo­ple walk around with a misty notion that it might be changed. Remind­ing has a place.

CLINGIN’ TO A CLOUD

Sarah Pul­liam Bai­ley writes in the Post arti­cle:

The pro­nounce­ment, issued at a time when some cler­ics were inter­est­ed in per­form­ing such bless­ings, leans on the kind of lan­guage that LGBT Catholics have long found alien­at­ing—and that they had hoped Fran­cis might change. It says that same-sex unions are “not ordered to the Creator’s plan.” It says acknowl­edg­ing those unions is “illic­it.” It says that God “can­not bless sin.”

I’m try­ing to imag­ine a papal state­ment in which Fran­cis, or any oth­er pope, says: “You know what? Scratch that. God can bless sin.” Appar­ent­ly there are Catholics who are “alien­at­ed” by the notion that God does­n’t bless sin. Can’t God do all things? Isn’t every­thing pos­si­ble for God?

What do you say to that? Maybe some reminders are in order. Maybe shock is a good thing.

Of course, it could just be that they don’t think same-sex activ­i­ty is sin in the first place: God can’t bless sin, we all know this, amen dico tibi, but my gay sex isn’t sin, and I’m out­raged that you would say so when I’ve already known for lo these many years that the Church teach­es this wery thing.

But if, as the Post points out, “some cler­ics were inter­est­ed” in bless­ing same-sex unions, it real­ly does seem an apt time for a reminder. I don’t know where these “hopes” that were “dashed” came from apart from a notion that Pope Fran­cis was going to wil­ful­ly change Church teach­ing. In oth­er words, the shock is not in what the Church says so much as in the fact that the Church keeps say­ing it. Protes­tant denom­i­na­tions left and right keep chang­ing all sorts of teach­ings so they con­form to the infal­li­ble zeit­geist, but the Catholic Church goes on say­ing the same thing it always has, and that’s trou­bling. How can that be?

Pope Fran­cis made clear long ago that he was not going change a blast­ed thing. Here he is five years ago in Amor­is Laeti­tia:

52. We need to acknowl­edge the great vari­ety of fam­i­ly sit­u­a­tions that can offer a cer­tain sta­bil­i­ty, but de fac­to or same-sex unions, for exam­ple, may not sim­ply be equat­ed with mar­riage.

251. In dis­cussing the dig­ni­ty and mis­sion of the fam­i­ly, the Syn­od Fathers observed that, “as for pro­pos­als to place unions between homo­sex­u­al per­sons on the same lev­el as mar­riage, 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.”

“But Alt! But Alt! No one’s say­ing that these bless­ings would amount to mar­riage. We all under­stand that the unions must be celi­bate! It’s spir­i­tu­al friend­ship! No Church teach­ing would be undone by this!”

Right. I addressed all this last year. If that were true, why do same-sex-bless­ing (SSB) advo­cates like Fr. Ewald Volgger urge that the Church actu­al­ly rewrite the Cat­e­chism? If no Church teach­ing is being denied or changed, why rewrite any­thing? Indeed Fr. Volgger does not hide the desire of his heart:

[T]here are also a con­sid­er­able num­ber of bish­ops who would like to see a rethink­ing of sex­u­al moral­i­ty for the eval­u­a­tion of same-sex part­ner­ships. … A bene­dic­tion, as it is pro­posed from a litur­gi­cal-the­o­log­i­cal point of view, would also have an offi­cial char­ac­ter, through which the Church express­es the oblig­a­tion of fideli­ty and the exclu­sive­ness of the rela­tion­ship.

That’s mar­i­tal lan­guage. That’s a back-door way of try­ing to have same-sex mar­riage with­out call­ing it mar­riage. And what’s this talk of “rethink­ing sex­u­al moral­i­ty” about? I thought every­one under­stood the unions were sup­posed to be celi­bate. Not even Fr. James Mar­tin is buy­ing it:

If a priest stands up, in his col­lar espe­cial­ly, and says a prayer at a recep­tion, some peo­ple might come away and say, ‘Isn’t that great, that the Catholic Church approves this now? It would be mis­lead­ing to peo­ple and in a sense unfair to the cou­ple, too.

I’m sure Pope Fran­cis under­stands that some SSB advo­cates try to claim that it’s not real­ly the same thing as mar­riage, after all. That is why he is care­ful to say that same-sex unions are “not even remote­ly anal­o­gous” to mar­riage. Not even remote­ly. The pope already shut the door on bless­ings five years ago, but the CDF says the same thing in 2021, and gay Catholics every­where are shak­en to the core.

Remem­ber Mar­i­anne Dud­dy-Burke? She’s the exec­u­tive direc­tor of Dig­ni­tyUSA, which the Post describes as “Amer­i­ca’s largest spir­i­tu­al com­mu­ni­ty of gay Catholics.” We’ve met her before on this blog, back in 2016, just after Amor­is Laeti­tia was pub­lished. In that doc­u­ment, you may remem­ber, Pope Fran­cis crit­i­cized the “ide­ol­o­gy of gen­der.” He said that it “denies the dif­fer­ence and reci­procity in nature of a man and a woman.” He said men and women are bio­log­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent. He said peo­ple need to learn to accept their bod­ies as God made them. Dud­dy-Burke was dole­ful. She said she had “no joy.” She had “hoped for so much more,” but the pope “sim­ply reiterate[d] the long-stand­ing teach­ings of the Church.” How dare he.

But four months lat­er, when the pope crit­i­cized gen­der ide­ol­o­gy again dur­ing a meet­ing with bish­ops, MDB was shocked anoth­er time. “It is very trou­bling that the pope would say this,” she said, as though she had some­how devel­oped amne­sia and for­got­ten the month of April.

Now in 2021 she’s shocked again, accord­ing to the Post. She feels “betrayed and wound­ed.” It’s uncan­ny. It’s no won­der The Reminders think they must keep remind­ing, if there are Catholics out there who keep express­ing hor­ror and shock to hear the same things they’ve heard many times before.

CAN’T YOU SEE THAT YOU’RE LEADING ME ON?

Some, accord­ing to the Post, think Pope Fran­cis is a tease:

The decree shows how Fran­cis, rather than rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing the church’s stance toward gays, has tak­en a far more com­pli­cat­ed approach, speak­ing in wel­com­ing terms while main­tain­ing the offi­cial teach­ing. That leaves gay Catholics won­der­ing about their place with­in the faith, when the cat­e­chism calls homo­sex­u­al acts “dis­or­dered” but the pon­tiff says, “Who am I to judge?”

A few things here. “Wel­com­ing terms” is the “offi­cial teach­ing.” Pope Fran­cis likes to remind us that the Church is a hos­pi­tal for sin­ners, but that’s far from nov­el (St. Augus­tine said so too) and implies that sin­ners are sup­posed to be treat­ed. You don’t go to the hos­pi­tal with can­cer expect­ing that the doc­tor will affirm the can­cer and tell you it’s not real­ly an ill­ness. If you’re not sick, you stay home. If you have no sin, you don’t need the Church. If your sin has­n’t wound­ed you and dis­fig­ured you and marred the image of God in you, you don’t need a priest. You don’t need a bless­ing.

As for “wel­com­ing,” the Cat­e­chism (§2358) already teach­es that the Church must wel­come gay Catholics. Pope Fran­cis says noth­ing new or rev­o­lu­tion­ary.

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.

And “who am I to judge?” has got to be Pope Fran­cis’s most mis­rep­re­sent­ed state­ment. When he said that, he was speak­ing about a hypo­thet­i­cal gay priest “who is of good will and seeks the Lord.” He was not talk­ing about gay per­sons, or the actions of gay per­sons, in the aggre­gate. I don’t know what you pre­sume, but I pre­sume a priest “of good will” who “seeks the Lord” is obe­di­ent to his ordi­na­tion vows. A priest ought to obey them whether he’s gay or not. One must not con­flate the pope’s words about judg­ing with the ques­tion of gay sex, or gay mar­riage, or gay “unions.” Even if you are a het­ero­sex­u­al priest, you should not be hav­ing sex, get­ting mar­ried, or find­ing a girl­friend. The pope declined to judge celi­bate peo­ple.

“But Alt!” some will say. “What about when the pope advo­cat­ed for civ­il unions?”

Did he? In fact, though it was wide­ly report­ed that way, the quo­ta­tion was from a doc­u­men­tary that took the pope’s words out of con­text. Reuters report­ed the cor­rec­tion last Novem­ber. Accord­ing to the Vat­i­can, the pope was not advo­cat­ing for laws to allow gay peo­ple to con­tract civ­il unions but instead for laws to pro­tect gay chil­dren from being dis­owned by their fam­i­lies and thrown out.

In fact, there’s no con­tra­dic­tion at all between affirm­ing the human dig­ni­ty of gay per­sons and say­ing that sin—any sin—is con­trary to human dig­ni­ty. Sin dis­fig­ures us. It is a stain upon human dig­ni­ty, and that’s why there can be no “bless­ing” upon it. Catholics need a hos­pi­tal. The Church is not a self-affirm­ing, I’m-okay-you’re-okay ther­a­py group. Pope Fran­cis is con­sis­tent. Church teach­ing is con­sis­tent. Gay per­sons have dig­ni­ty by virtue of being human beings made in the image of God, end stop.

What’s caus­ing all the shock here is not Pope Fran­cis. What’s caus­ing shock is fail­ure to rec­og­nize that “We want the Church to affirm the dig­ni­ty of gay per­sons” does not mean “We want the Church to affirm gay unions.” What’s caus­ing shock is the idea that the lat­ter might even con­tra­dict the for­mer, and that that’s why no pope could ever approve of it.