Replies

Just the impression Associate Press wants you to have. Imagine my surprise.

"Pope Francis, in some of the most compassionate words from any pontiff on gays, said they should not be judged or marginalised and should be integrated into society, but he reaffirmed Church teaching that homosexual acts are a sin."
July 29, 2013
Agence France-Presse

All of which is also in the Catechism.

"Ya could look it up." Paragraphs 2357-59 (Link). Worth reading, actually.

I agree that any conclusion that he does not approve of judging homosexuals as wrong for practicing it is not warranted but requires taking his words out of context,* which was the gay lobby.

Also, at face value, his words that "gay people should not be discriminated against; they should be made to feel welcome," are made to be at odds with Benedict's teaching that gays should not be RC priests (actually no one should, as NT pastors were not distinctively called priests or distinctively function as such), but in context the pope is affirming grace should be shown to such as are "in eager search of God," and thus that would live celibate lives at least versus engage in homosexual activity.

The "gay" lobby which is the issue, is that of foisting homosexual relations upon the world, from young to old, as healthy and normal and requiring affirmation of it.

However, this is a pope who seems somewhat more relational than doctrinal in focus, and his statements often emphasize mercy and a reaction against lack of it more than express doctrinal clarity.

As an evangelical i can appreciate his humility, heart and preference for the simple life and common man, and candor, while i oppose his inherited unscriptural traditions. One example is that, as said in the same interview,

"the Virgin Mary is the most important out of all the apostles."

I do not think the pope is making Mary an apostle, for RCs hold that the Church teaches that it cannot ordain women because Jesus willingly chose only men as his apostles, and which is true. Yet he prays to Mary and promotes the same hyper exaltation of her beyond what is written, and which has been the subject of recent threads .

*“There is so much being written about the gay lobby. I haven’t met anyone in the Vatican yet who has “gay” written on their identity cards. There is a distinction between being gay, being this way inclined and lobbying. Lobbies are not good. If a gay person is in eager search of God, who am I to judge them? The Catholic Church teaches that gay people should not be discriminated against; they should be made to feel welcome. Being gay is not the problem, lobbying is the problem and this goes for any type of lobby, business lobbies, political lobbies and Masonic lobbies.” - http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/the-vatican/detail/articolo /gmg-26831//pag/4/