Pope Francis has created controversy this morning over comments he made endorsing civil union laws for homosexuals in a new documentary called ‘Francesco’:
CNA – In a documentary that premiered Wednesday in Rome, Pope Francis called for the passage of civil union laws for same-sex couples, departing from the position of the Vatican’s doctrinal office and the pope’s predecessors on the issue.
The remarks came amid a portion of the documentary that reflected on pastoral care for those who identify as LGBT.
“Homosexuals have a right to be a part of the family. They’re children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out, or be made miserable because of it,” Pope Francis said in the film, of his approach to pastoral care.
After those remarks, and in comments likely to spark controversy among Catholics, Pope Francis weighed in directly on the issue of civil unions for same-sex couples.
“What we have to create is a civil union law. That way they are legally covered,” the pope said. “I stood up for that.”
Here is Pope Francis endorsing homosexual civil unions, in the new documentary 'Francesco' by Evgeny Afineevsky pic.twitter.com/Ptguo08iMX
— Catholic Sat (@CatholicSat) October 21, 2020
I don’t like the sound of that at all. By making these comments, Pope Francis is granting legitimacy to homosexual behavior, even if it is outside the realm of the Church. And that’s not good at all.
CNA provides the background on Pope Francis when it comes to this issue:
The pope’s direct call for civil union laws represents a shift from the perspective of his predecessors, and from his own more circumspect positions on civil unions in the past.
In 2010, while he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Pope Francis opposed efforts to legalize same-sex marriage. While Sergio Rubin, the future pope’s biographer, suggested that Francis supported the idea of civil unions as a way to prevent the wholesale adoption of same-sex marriage in Argentina, Miguel Woites, director of the Argentinian Catholic news outlet AICA, dismissed in 2013 that claim as false.
But the pope’s mention of having previously “stood up” for civil unions seems to confirm the reports of Rubin and others who said that then-Cardinal Bergoglio supported privately the idea of civil unions as a compromise in Argentina.
In the 2013 book “On Heaven and Earth,” Pope Francis did not reject the possibility of civil unions outright, but did say that laws “assimilating” homosexual relationships to marriage are “an anthropological regression,” and he expressed concern that if same-sex couples “are given adoption rights, there could be affected children. Every person needs a male father and a female mother that can help them shape their identity.”
Cardinal Bergoglio is Pope Francis, just to be clear.
Now here’s a former Pope’s view that I can get behind:
In 2003, under the leadership of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and at the direction of Pope John Paul II, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith taught that “respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behaviour or to legal recognition of homosexual unions. The common good requires that laws recognize, promote and protect marriage as the basis of the family, the primary unit of society.”
“Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behaviour, with the consequence of making it a model in present-day society, but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity. The Church cannot fail to defend these values, for the good of men and women and for the good of society itself,” the CDF added, calling support for such unions from politicians “gravely immoral.”
“Not even in a remote analogous sense do homosexual unions fulfil the purpose for which marriage and family deserve specific categorical recognition. On the contrary, there are good reasons for holding that such unions are harmful to the proper development of human society, especially if their impact on society were to increase,” the document said.
I love this line: “Respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behaviour or to legal recognition of homosexual unions.” That’s exactly right and should be the position of Pope Francis.
Also, for those of you who aren’t aware, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI after Pope John Paul II’s death. So essentially you have two predecessor Popes taking a strong stand on the issue of homosexual behavior and marriage, and it seems now that Pope Francis has significantly deviated from that position.
Dr. Taylor Marshall, a Catholic apologist, doesn’t pull any punches in how he sees this comment from Pope Francis:
The Infiltration of the Catholic Church is NOT a conspiracy theory. Francis calls for “civil unions” for same sex couples: https://t.co/yiGVARdYyr
— Dr Taylor Marshall 🙏🏻🇺🇸 (@TaylorRMarshall) October 21, 2020
Along these same lines, the Blessed Virgin Mary predict this in her apparition to Sister Agnes Sasagawa in Akita, Japan back in 1973:
The work of the devil will infiltrate even into the Church in such a way that one will see cardinals opposing cardinals, bishops against bishops.
As Patrick Madrid likes to say, these are strange times we live in. All we can do is pray for the Pope and the Church.