What is in Kelvin's Head?

What the Pope said was depressing not liberating

29/07/2013

Here’s what the Pope said today according to the BBC:

Pope Francis said gay clergymen should be forgiven and their sins forgotten.

“The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains this very well,” Pope Francis said in a wide-ranging 80-minute long interview with Vatican journalists.

“It says they should not be marginalised because of this but that they must be integrated into society.”

But he condemned what he described as lobbying by gay people.

“The problem is not having this orientation,” he said. “We must be brothers. The problem is lobbying by this orientation, or lobbies of greedy people, political lobbies, Masonic lobbies, so many lobbies. This is the worse problem.”

Well, we might have a slight change in tone from Benedict but this is a depressing statement not a liberating one.

There’s nothing new here that is helpful and something that really isn’t.

The bits that are not new simply follow the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church Sections 2357-2359

The bit that is depressing is the suggestion that gay lobbying is the real problem. In other words, gay people exist but shouldn’t do anything about their lives, should not advocate a better world for gay people, try to improve the lot of gay people nor try to save the lives of gay people in parts of the world where they are under threat.

This is nasty stuff and I’m sorry to hear it.

I’m even more sorry that the headlines that this has engendered will make people think there is hope when there isn’t really much hope to be had.

Today the pope made an oppresive statement about gay people and the world’s media is reporting it as a great step forward for gay rights.

Tell me, is saying bad things in a nice way better than saying the same old things in the same old way?

I don’t think it is.

And while we are at it, note that he condemned political lobbying. That’s chilling for different reasons.

Of course, all this was in the context of being asked about the Vatican. (The existence of a “gay lobby” in the Vatican is currently much under discussion). All the same, these words are damaging words that will be read far from their original context. They do nothing to bring in the kind of world I hope for.

LGBT, Pope, Pope Francis

7 responses to “The Archbishop, the gays and their sins”

fakepete

25/02/2015

Nicely put, he seems to feel entitled to freedom from criticism. It’s a censorious attitude that I thought the CoE put behind it when most of us learned to laugh at the Life of Brian and it is contradicted by the church’s own call to participation in democracy.

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Andrew

25/02/2015

The poor old Arch. He really is an old school establishment man who cant really understand where the deference has gone. The Green Report, the other Reports on the ‘future’ of the Church of England and the ‘Conversations’ all speak of a deeply controlling man who is deeply frustrated that there is no control to be had any more. When the split comes he will probably want to make what is left into a more confessional and defined group (the evangelicals have always wanted that) but I suspect the Church that will emerge will be more liberal than he likes even if it is outwardly more evangelical and enthusiast than the Church of England has been for a very long time

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1. fakepete
  
  27/02/2015
  
  @Andrew I’d switch that around. Justin Welby is someone who does not show deference to what has in Western society become The New Orthodoxy (definitions on a postcard please), this is why he provokes such puzzlement, and thus consternation and anger.
  
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2. Daniel Berry, NYC
  
  03/03/2015
  
  Andrew, I don’t see how that can be, really: he hasn’t the pedigree to be “an old school establishment man.” He’s a late vocation who had been a high-power figure in the corporate world–meaning he’s undoubtedly accustomed to having the last word.
  
  As to his attitudes toward gay people, I’m disgusted with him and the many others who accept the natural sciences’ contradiction of bible, but just can’t bring themselves to the same place with the behavioral and social sciences, and even with medicine itself–ignoring along the way that homosexuality is found in upward of 450 animal species besides our own. Otherwise they seem perfectly comfortable with dispensing with the savagery found in much of “holy scripture.”
  
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Dharma Nicodemus Cuthbert

26/02/2015

I love the line “who am I to judge them for their sins, if they have sins” makes us seem angelic compared to those who have children. Only one problem we, according to the bible commit sin just by being together. Does this mean that he is disagreeing with orthodoxy, and we are not sinning by being together.
God bless all and may his words of love bring more, troubled, souls to him.

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1. JCF
  
  28/02/2015
  
  “Only one problem we, according to the bible commit sin just by being together.”
  
  I *think* you meant “according to false translations/interpretations of the bible…” (or should have meant).
  
  “Being together”: can we call sex, “sex”? If not, why not? [And can we call marital sex (same- or opposite-sex) “marital sex”?]
  
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Daniel Berry, NYC

03/03/2015

best line for me:

You say that stuff and you are going to get people observing that there’s a lot more archbishops who claim that gay people are their friends than gay people who claim archbishops are their friends.

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