9 REASONS to CALM DOWN: Pope Francis is still Catholic

Hello All! And God bless you! Just a quick response to the recent kerfuffle concerning Pope Francis and “civil unions” for homosexual couples. Because this one is really quite simple, I can do this in eight short points.

1. We don’t know what Pope Francis actually said, or meant. By “said,” I mean we only have three sentences. We need a context. In human discourse, folks, we should give people the benefit of the doubt. That is not just being charitable. That is being human. Don’t make definitive conclusions without knowing all that was said. If it were anyone other than Pope Francis, or Donald Trump, this would be a given. But in these cases, the world seems to condemn first and ask questions never.
2. We have to consider translation. Sometimes the pope’s Spanish gets poorly translated.
3. Pope Francis was giving an opinion that is not a magisterial teaching. If he was wrong, he was wrong. We just cannot make a conclusion that he is wrong from what we have at present.
4. As far as his statement about homosexuals having a right to be in a family, that one is really obvious. He seems to have been speaking about throwing homosexuals out of families. Don’t do that! Love them! Bring them to Jesus!
5. There are multiple possibilities concerning the main point, which is “civil unions” for homosexual couples. First, it may be that Pope Francis is speaking in the context of tolerating an evil in order to avoid a greater evil. Pope St. John Paul II taught this with regard to abortion. As a Catholic (or as a person of good will), one may vote for a law that permits abortions, say, up to 20 weeks, if you are voting for it in order to limit the harm done (see Evangelium Vitae, 73), e.g., voting to lessen a previous law that allows abortions for all nine months. And, if your read section 73 carefully, you will see Pope St. John Paul II said this does not only apply in voting for laws after a bad law has been passed. It can also be done in negotiations when passing a law in the first place.
6. St. Thomas Aquinas spoke also of times when, in very immoral cultures, passing laws that absolutely prohibit a vice—he used prostitution as an example—may not be wise. If the culture is not ready for it, it can cause greater evils up to and including a disdain for and loss of respect for law itself, which can lead to anarchy. It may be the Holy Father is speaking in a context like this. If we do not allow for this evil, a greater evil will follow.
7. The above are just a couple examples as to why it may be permissible to vote for “civil unions” if it is in the context of voting for it over losing all of marriage to the immorality of homosexual marriage. At least, we could preserve “marriage” as what it has been since Adam and Eve. And when we consider that as Cardinal Bergoglio, our pope supported “civil unions” as a negotiated compromise and as a way to keep marriage from being utterly destroyed, that is most likely what he is speaking of here. But we don’t know from three sentences as I said.
8. The fact that we have a record of Pope Francis teaching and saying explicitly things like his statement in 2015 on the day after a “Gay Pride” march in Rome that children need moms and dads. And he defended marriage. https://www.ncronline.org/news/world/children-need-heterosexual-parents-pope-francis-says-after-gay-pride-march We have his statement on January 18 of 2015, saying, “the family is threatened by growing efforts on the part of some to redefine the very institution of marriage” and he condemned it. Two days earlier he said homosexual so-called marriage “disfigures God’s plan for creation.” Given this and his well-known declarations calling the adoption of children into gay “households” “child abuse,” I cannot imagine this being anything more than the above. He is clearly Catholic, folks! Yes, I said it. The pope is Catholic!
9. The real question may well be in what context can we vote for “civil unions” as a way of limiting the harm done by “homosexual marriages.” That would be an interesting discussion and I would defer to the Holy See as to the final outcome. It may just be that the Holy See will open up the discussion on that point. Whether it can actually be used real-time in a real life situation is another matter. That would have to be considered on a case by case basis as to whether or not the strategy could or should be employed.

There are other possibilities, but for brevity’s sake, I will leave it at this. As Bishop Strickland just said on Catholic Answers Live the other day, everybody take a deep breath. We are in this thing for the long haul. These things will be clarified. The Holy See will clarify, folks. In the meantime, I wish folks would stop with the “heretic” bombs. Stop with concluding the absolute worst possible scenario when there is no real evidence to do so. Jesus is still Lord. And Francis is still his Vicar. I, for one, can’t wait to see how our Blessed Lord is going to work this out! And isn’t it good to know Jesus said, “I will build my Church and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it?”

It’s so good to be Catholic!