Not sure who you mean by "they", but I think you are correct in many respects. Francis seems to be saying that focus on behavioral matters does not express the doctrines of the RCC. This is true. And, the Scriptures make it clear that attempting to alter sinful behaviors of a sinful world will not rescue them.
However, it seems, that there is confusion in the "welcome mat" he is putting out. The Apostle Paul made it clear that gross immorality excluded a man from fellowship with a gathering (I Cor.). So, is Francis saying that homosexuals are welcome as long as they are sincerely "searching for God"? Can they continue their behavior (and their attendance), as long as they are made aware that the RCC does not endorse? The ambiguity is confusing.
But, let me be clear...many of the doctrines of the RCC are not supportable by Scriptures, even if he decides to change the conversation. Nevertheless, no one should try to alter his intentions by twisting words.
By “they,” I meant the people who published this article. I don’t know who they are, or what their beef is, but obviously they’ve got one, because the title grossly misstates Pope Francis’s comments.
I suppose I could consider the possibility that they’re stupid, but I usually prefer to pay people the compliment of assuming they’re corrupt.
And I know you disagree with the Catholic Church. Whatever.
WHO REALLY IS POPE FRANCIS?
Pope Says Church Is ‘Obsessed’ With Gays, Abortion and Birth Control
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
Six months into his papacy, Pope Francis sent shock waves through the Roman Catholic Church on Thursday with the publication of his remarks that the church had grown “obsessed” with abortion, gay marriage and contraception, and that he had chosen not to talk about those issues despite recriminations from critics.
(“OBSESSION” in defense the unborn baby and opposing abortion, the “most abominable of crimes”, as stated in Vatican II, is not a sin but a virtue, and Pastors of the Church who disparage those who fight for the unborn, are betraying one of the main tenets of the Catholic Church.)
The BBC reported that Pope Francis turned down the red cape with ermine by saying this: “No thank you, Monsignore. You put it on instead. Carnival time is over!”
And he walked into the papal apartments and said “There’s room for 300 people here. I don’t need all this space.”
(ISN’T to brag about your own humility denoting a form of arrogance? Isn’t Pope Francis in fact belittling the virtues of previous Popes?)
Pope Francis: ‘I have never been a right-winger’
By Steve Ahlquist on September 19, 2013
In an almost direct rebuke to critics, including Rhode Island’s own Bishop Thomas Tobin, leader of the Providence Diocese, Pope Francis, in his first extensive interview since being elected to the head of the Roman Catholic Church, has said, we cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible. I have not spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded for that. But when we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context. The teaching of the church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.
(SHOULDON’T Bergoglio rather answer that a Pope must be above labels and state firmly and clearly that his duty is to defend unequivocally the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Magisterium of the Church?)
What was the position Bergoglio had then regarding Liberation Theology?
He was completely against it. In fact, as Theology students, we had never studied a single book by, for instance, Gustavo Gutiérrez, one of the founders of Liberation Theology, of by [Leonardo] Boff, or by Paulo Freire, with his studies on an education that is not a cultural “dependency” [of the “imperialistic powers”]. In Philosophy, we had read little, very little, of Heidegger and Kierkegaard, one single chapter of Thus Spoke Zarathustra... Not to mention Marx, Engels, Sartre, Foucault, the Post-Moderns, etc. Nothing that could contradict Catholic doctrine or dogmas. All that under strict orders of Jorge Bergoglio.
(BERGOGLIO was against Liberation Theology… before he was for it. Why, otherwise, Leonardo Boff, the Maryknolls, and all the main advocates of Marxist Liberation Theology, are elated with the new Pope?)
Note: (my commentaries in parentheses)