Please. This is not about liking or not liking Pope Francis. He is the pope and I’m no sedevacantist. This is an issue relating to the public acceptance of homosexuality as being “normal and acceptable” behavior. And tragically, Catholics in this country and across the globe are buying into it. And it’s no wonder. When the bishops of this country had the opportunity to face it head on with the same sex marriage debate in many states, they wouldn’t even say the word “homosexuality”––much less teach that to engage in it was mortally sinful.
And this pope is doing the exact same thing as those American bishops. But what never ceases to amaze me is that he still manages to find Catholic apologists along the way that defend every word that comes out of his mouth. When the homosexual marriage bill was being debated in Venezuela, as an Archbishop, he proposed to his local conference that they offer a same-sex union bill as a compromise. The suggestion was completely rejected by his fellow bishop in their conference. You must know that the news of his position has been reported by countless sources since he was elected; but not once has the pope come out to deny it. Of course he doesn’t have to. He has his apologists that do it for him. But do think about it; if he was for it then, why is there such shock that he might be for it now?
Nevertheless, this particular post was an attempt to focus on just another one of the many statements that this pope has made that are inconsistent with Catholic teaching or worse. Predictably, the defenders of the pope (and I don’t mean the defenders of the teachings of the Catholic Church), man their battle stations and start blaming everyone else but the man who always creates the furor with his weak Catholicism or his confusing and ambiguous language (take your pick). His defenders then demand that those Catholics, who are desperately begging for a pope or bishop to defend the true teachings of the Church, prove the negative––prove that he didn’t mean what he appeared to say.
If this were simply a question about the popes’ stand on homosexuality, it might not be so bad. But it’s not. It’s much much more. It is about the pope’s responsibility to be faithful to all of the teachings of the Catholic Church. And if you honestly believe that he has been, and that all of the incredibly destructive problems that our Church has been having over the years is because the progressive media is taking a pope out of context, then I’ve been giving you far more credit than may have been warranted. This pope and all the previous popes following Pius XII (along with the bishops) are the very reason the wheels are coming off. But unless faithful Catholics speak out forcefully and demand that the bishops and popes of our time abandon their Modernism, we will continue to see a further degradation of what once was a great and powerful institution that fulfilled its mission of leading all souls to salvation.
“he proposed to his local conference that they offer a same-sex union bill as a compromise”
No he didn’t and the story has been discredited many times. You need to quit buying into the liberal spin being spread about Francis. He NEVER said he was for same-sex unions in Argentina or in the recent interview that’s being floated around. Prove your allegations.
“It is about pacts of cohabitating of various natures, of which I wouldn’t know how to list the different ways. One needs to see the different cases and evaluate them in their variety”.
The above words need to be read carefully. The Pope needs to see the “different cases” before he’ll say anything. In other-words if 50 year bachelor Tom wants his 80 year old mother on his insurance policy that will be one of the cases he would approve of. If Tom and Arnie are two homosexuals that want their civil union blessed by the Church, well then Tom and Arnie are out of luck.
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/pope-francis-will-never-approve-homosexual-civil-unions
Specifically on the matter of homosexual civil unions, the Church’s teaching is laid out in a 2003 document approved and ordered published by Pope John Paul II and written by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was is currently Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.
That document Considerations Regarding Proposals to give Legal Recognition to unions between Homosexual Persons, leaves no room for doubt on the teaching of the Church regarding homosexual unions. It says:
There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family. Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law. Homosexual acts “close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved”.
In those situations where homosexual unions have been legally recognized or have been given the legal status and rights belonging to marriage, clear and emphatic opposition is a duty. One must refrain from any kind of formal cooperation in the enactment or application of such gravely unjust laws and, as far as possible, from material cooperation on the level of their application. In this area, everyone can exercise the right to conscientious objection.
The Church teaches that respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behaviour or to legal recognition of homosexual unions
And what weight does this Vatican document ordered published by the Pope carry? Could the thrust of it be reversed by a future Pope?
To answer that I spoke with Professor Scott Nicholson, the Chair of the Theology at Our Lady Seat of Wisdom Academy, ranked one of the most faithful Catholic colleges in North America by the Cardinal Newman Society.
Professor Nicholson said that the document in question, issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, expressly approved by the Pope has the same status as the Catechism. (see ref. Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium 25, and On the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian, AAS 82, pp. 1550-1570) In theological parlance, they “participate in the ordinary magisterium of the successor of Peter.”