Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome Vol. XIX. In which Fake Site News and CRISIS!!! misrepresent Pope Francis on civil unions.

rong infor­ma­tion is being giv­en out at Fake Site News. (The cred­u­lous call it Life Site.) That could be a lede on any day, but their lat­est non­sense about the Holy Father—that he some­how approves of same-sex civ­il unions—is so bad it spans par­al­lel uni­vers­es beyond what we’ve learned to expect from them. And now Cri­sis!!! has joined them in this false report.

Do I Have to Catch You Out

So here’s what hap­pened. A new book has come out, called Pol­i­tics and Soci­ety. It is an inter­view with Pope Fran­cis, con­duct­ed by French jour­nal­ist Dominique Wolton. Aleteia has excerpts. Among oth­er things, Wolton asked him about same-sex mar­riage. Here is what he said, in full, with noth­ing left out.

What can we think of mar­riage between peo­ple of the same sex? “Mat­ri­mo­ny” is a his­tor­i­cal word. Always, in human­i­ty, and not just in the Church, it was a man and a woman. It’s not pos­si­ble to change it just like that. … It’s not pos­si­ble to change it. It is part of nature. That’s how it is. Let us call it, then, “civ­il unions.” Let us not play with truths.

It’s true that behind all this we find gen­der ide­ol­o­gy. In books, kids learn that it’s pos­si­ble to change one’s sex. Could gen­der, to be a woman or to be a man, be an option and not a fact of nature? This leads to this error.

“Let us call things by their names. Mat­ri­mo­ny is between a man and a woman. This is the pre­cise term. Let us call the same-sex union a “civ­il union.”

Now, the pope says noth­ing more alarm­ing here than that we should not call same-sex unions “mar­riage.” Let’s find anoth­er term for them—“civil unions,” if you will, but not “mar­riage.” Words mean things. Two men can not mar­ry, two women can not mar­ry, because mar­riage is man and woman. Two peo­ple of the same sex are some­thing else. “Let us call things by their names”: That, and that alone, is what the pope means.

He’s Catholic. Shock­er.

Words Are Made to Bend

But now watch how Fake Site News twists the plain mean­ing, out of any sem­blance to truth, in order to engage in its typ­i­cal schtick of bash­ing the Vic­ar of Christ. The title of the arti­cle, by Pete Bak­lin­s­ki is: “Pope Fran­cis sig­nals sup­port for legal recog­ni­tion of same-sex ‘civ­il unions.’ ” To sup­port this false claim, Mr. Bak­lin­s­ki cites the very same pas­sage from the book inter­view.

No. Pope Fran­cis sig­naled noth­ing of the kind. He said noth­ing approach­ing it. There is noth­ing in Pope Fran­cis’s words quot­ed above (and Fake Site quotes no oth­er ones) that can fair­ly be read to mean any­thing approach­ing sup­port for civ­il unions. If I said, “Let us call mur­der what it is: mur­der,” that does not mean I am “sig­nal­ing approval” for mur­der. What Fake Site News claims is utter pop­py­cock. It is balder­dash, it is moon­shine, pif­fle, bunkum, codswal­lop, a typ­i­cal day at the scan­dalous rag I call Fake Site News.

The Fake Site arti­cle ran on Sep­tem­ber 7, and some­how they still have read­ers. Then, today, Cri­sis!!! picked up on it and ran a post by Fr. Reg­is Scan­lon. “If the trans­la­tion of the pope’s state­ment is accu­rate,” says Scan­lon, “(and it seems to be wide­ly accept­ed as accu­rate) the pope appears to be will­ing to rec­og­nize homo­sex­u­al cou­ples liv­ing togeth­er as legal ‘civ­il unions.’ ”

That is absurd. I mean, the quo­ta­tion is accu­rate; I don’t dis­pute the accu­ra­cy of the quo­ta­tion. But I most cer­tain­ly dis­pute Fr.‘s utter­ly non­sen­si­cal read­ing of it, aped from Mr. Bak­lin­s­ki. The pope says noth­ing—noth­ing—about “rec­og­niz­ing” or “accept­ing” any­thing. (Take your pick of verbs here.) If I said, “Let us call water­board­ing what it is: tor­ture,” that does not mean I “accept” tor­ture. I just mean don’t call it “enhanced inter­ro­ga­tion.” Don’t use words to lie. You see what the pope is say­ing?

Pope Fran­cis Derange­ment Syn­drome has got­ten so far out of hand that peo­ple have plain lost their abil­i­ty to read.

Dear read­er, this is so bad that any pre­tense to cred­i­bil­i­ty that Fake Site or Cri­sis had left is gone now. And the pre­tense was already ethe­re­al­ly thin.

Twisted Truth and Half the News

Fr. Scan­lon con­tin­ues thus:

Accord­ing to … reports, the pope is will­ing to do this because he wants per­sons in homo­sex­u­al rela­tion­ships to be able to obtain med­ical and oth­er social ben­e­fits which can only be obtained if they are liv­ing in a “union” under the titles of “mar­riage” or “civ­il union.” So, the pope is choos­ing the title of “civ­il union” as the less­er of two evils for the sake of obtain­ing health and social ben­e­fits for homo­sex­u­al cou­ples. He wants to be kind and mer­ci­ful.

What “reports”? Fr. Scan­lon does not enlight­en us. Cri­sis!!! does not link to any. They sin, and repeat Rumor. The whole con­text of the pope’s words has to do with the true mean­ing of the word “mar­riage.” “Mar­riage” is between a man and a woman only, the pope says (he’s Catholic, remem­ber); so we can’t call a union between two peo­ple of the same sex “mar­riage.” We must call it some­thing else. End stop. The pope says noth­ing about med­ical ben­e­fits. Fr. Scan­lon invents this out of whole­cloth; or, he trusts Rumor, and reads Rumor into the pope’s dis­cus­sion of some­thing else.

“But there is an enor­mous prob­lem,” Fr. Scan­lon con­tin­ues, “with this attempt to accom­mo­date civ­il soci­ety.”

Fr., please. The pope says noth­ing about “acco­mo­dat­ing” any­thing. That is not in his words, that is not any­where in his words, it is utter­ly absent from his words, his words do not say that, his words say some­thing dif­fer­ent, you are not report­ing the true sense of his words.

“When the pope,” Fr. Scan­lon goes on, “rec­og­nizes the giv­ing of finan­cial help to homo­sex­u­al cou­ples under the umbrel­la of a ‘civ­il union,’ he unwit­ting­ly dis­par­ages chasti­ty.”

Except that the pope says noth­ing about “finan­cial help.” Where is that what the pope said? It’s not there. Fr. Scan­lon is mak­ing all this up; and there’s a word for that. But if the pope did say it, some­where else, Fr. Scan­lon will have to direct us to where we can find it and not appeal to vague “reports.” He does not do this, and so I am left to sur­mise that he is engag­ing in inven­tion. (There’s anoth­er word for that.)

Some You Can’t Disguise

Pope Fran­cis Derang­ment Syn­drome has got­ten so bad that Fr. Scan­lon and Mr. Bak­lin­s­ki can quote the pope accu­rate­ly but still attribute to those words a hereti­cal mean­ing vastly—and I do mean vastly—at odds with what they plain­ly say. They engage in calum­ny in plain sight, they wave it like a flag, and hope, per­haps not with­out rea­son, that their audi­ence won’t notice. The pope says, “Mar­riage is only between a man and a woman, a union between two men is some­thing else,” and Fake Site and Cri­sis!!! report: Pope approves of same-sex unions! This may go beyond mere derange­ment. It is trans­par­ent­ly false. It is so utter­ly absurd that any­thing fur­ther Fake Site or Cri­sis!!! has to say about Pope Fran­cis should be regard­ed with con­tempt and deri­sion. (If their arti­cles weren’t wide­ly regard­ed thus already, by all but their own dupes.)