Pope says gay sex not a crime; Phil Lawler confused again. Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome Vol. XXXII.

nother month, anoth­er papal inter­view, anoth­er spate of con­fu­sion,” Mr. Lawler writes at his usu­al plat­form, Catholic Cul­ture. There’s not a papal state­ment under the sun that does­n’t befud­dle him. Some peo­ple are addict­ed to anger, some to con­fu­sion. This time, the pope’s words were a mod­el of clar­i­ty. “It’s not a crime,” Fran­cis said (refer­ring to homo­sex­u­al acts). “Yes, but it’s a sin. Fine, but let’s first dis­tin­guish between a sin and a crime.” In fact, this is so sim­ple it’s banal. If I cheat on my wife with the next-door neigh­bor, I’ve com­mit­ted a sin. But no one’s going to arrest me for it. This every­day con­cept con­fus­es Mr. Lawler. Read his arti­cle; you will mar­vel, not at how con­fus­ing the pope is, but at how much effort Mr. Lawler makes to be con­fused.

IF I SEEM EDGY.

“What the pope said was not news,” he com­plains. His point seems to be: Why is Fran­cis both­er­ing with this?

Well, prob­a­bly, Mr. Lawler, because the pope was asked. The Asso­ci­at­ed Press print­ed a tran­script of the inter­view; and even though it’s in Span­ish, it would take one con­fused soul indeed not to know what “crim­i­nal­ización de la homo­sex­u­al­i­dad” means. The inter­view­er notes that, in some coun­tries, homo­sex­u­als are pun­ished by death (la pena de muerte), and that such laws con­tribute to una cli­ma de vio­len­cia, a cli­mate of vio­lence. And the AP asks the pope: “¿Cuál es la posi­ción de la Igle­sia?” What is the posi­tion of the Church?

So the pope is talk­ing about this because the pope was asked. I won­der whether Mr. Lawler would object if the pope spent a lot of time in the inter­view con­demn­ing abor­tion. Would he claim con­fu­sion and say, “This is not news”? Or is it only when the pope express­es char­i­ty to gay peo­ple that Mr. Lawler becomes agi­tat­ed and com­plains that Catholics have long known this?

Next, Lawler com­plains that the pope did­n’t ade­quate­ly dis­tin­guish between homo­sex­u­al­i­ty and homo­sex­u­al acts. The pope said homo­sex­u­ality was “a sin.” Lawler objects:

The Church has nev­er taught that being homosexual—that is, feel­ing a phys­i­cal attrac­tion to mem­bers of the same sex—is wrong. Homo­sex­u­al acts are moral­ly wrong. Because he does not dis­tin­guish between the homo­sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion and homo­sex­u­al acts, his state­ment could be interpreted—and no doubt has been interpreted—as a break from the Church’s con­dem­na­tion of homo­sex­u­al acts.

Here I’m confused—but by Mr. Lawler. Am I real­ly sup­posed to believe that a pos­si­ble read­ing of the pope’s words are that homo­sex­u­al feel­ings are a sin, but if you act on them, that’s okay? If I spend all day think­ing about how much I want to sleep with the woman next door instead of my wife, I’m guilty of grave sin; but if I actu­al­ly do it, I’m in the clear? It does­n’t appear to me that Mr. Lawler is try­ing to make sense of the pope’s words; it appears to me that Mr. Lawler is try­ing to make con­fu­sion of them. How else can one explain his strained effort to come up with a read­ing so ridicu­lous?

I’M JUST A SOUL WHOSE INTENTIONS ARE GOOD.

It’s worth not­ing here that Fr. James Mar­tin also noticed that the pope con­flates homo­sex­u­al­i­ty and homo­sex­u­al acts, and he per­son­al­ly asked Fran­cis for a clar­i­fi­ca­tion. Fr. Mar­tin sent the pope a dubia; imag­ine that. The pope respond­ed to the dubia; imag­ine that.

Fr. Mar­t­in’s con­cern was the sen­si­ble one—not that the pope was mak­ing Church stric­tures more loose but that he was mak­ing them more severe. Fr. Mar­tin did­n’t want it to be known that the Church con­demns same-sex attrac­tion as well as homo­sex­u­al acts. Unlike the chron­i­cal­ly con­fused Mr. Lawler, Mar­tin was­n’t wor­ried that the pope was trad­ing one con­dem­na­tion for anoth­er.

The pope wrote a let­ter to Fr. Mar­tin clar­i­fy­ing that his words—“it is a sin”—were refer­ring to homo­sex­u­al acts, not the homo­sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion. The pope said that, due to the “con­ver­sa­tion­al nature” of the inter­view, he mis­spoke. “When I said it is a sin, I was sim­ply refer­ring to Catholic moral teach­ing, which says that every sex­u­al act out­side of mar­riage is a sin.”

Lots of peo­ple con­flate homo­sex­u­al attrac­tion and homo­sex­u­al acts—some mali­cious­ly, some innocently—so it does­n’t alarm me that the pope would have done so too, an a care­less and impre­cise moment.

My guess is that the pope respond­ed to Fr. Mar­t­in’s dubia because he could tell the inten­tion was char­i­ta­ble. Fr. Mar­tin was not try­ing to trap him in his words, like oth­er con­coc­ters of dubia.

But Mr. Lawler is con­fused about one fur­ther thing, and it real­ly must be read to be believed.

The Church teach­es that homo­sex­u­al acts are sin­ful. Are they crimes? That is a ques­tion for sec­u­lar governments—not the Church—to decide. It is quite pos­si­ble that a grave­ly immoral act (say, abor­tion) could be legal in some soci­eties, and a vir­tu­ous act (say, pray­ing at an abor­tion clin­ic) could be defined as a crime. The crim­i­nal code set by a sec­u­lar gov­ern­ment does not change the Church’s moral teach­ings.

So, if I under­stand him cor­rect­ly, Mr. Lawler just said that the legal­i­ty of abor­tion should be left to the dis­cre­tion of “sec­u­lar gov­ern­ments.” In order to retain a gov­ern­men­t’s right to exe­cute gay peo­ple (don’t med­dle around with that, Peter), Mr. Lawler is will­ing to con­cede that the gov­ern­ment can leg­is­late as it pleas­es on abor­tion, with­out objec­tions from Rome.

That’s fas­ci­nat­ing. I want to send Mr. Lawler a dubia about this.

As some­one who’s pro-life, how­ev­er, I’m not con­fused at all when the Church insists that both the unborn and homo­sex­u­al per­sons have a right to life.