Dear shadeaud, I’m glad you're not being sarcastic, because you are really confused! Everything you mentioned in that paragraph is untrue!
The Pope didn't say that "homos won't go to hell" --- that is, if they engage in the sin of sodomy and don't repent, they will (like any other unrepentant sinner.) He did say that if a man just has an unbidden attraction to other men (a homosexual temptation) he won't be "judged" a sinner if he does not give in to the temptation, and does not sin! Make sense?
He also didn't say that you don't have to believe in God. In that much misquoted letter which he sent to the atheist editor of La Reppublica, Pope Francis said "You [the atheist he was writing to] can be saved if you turn to Him with a sincere and contrite heart."
It's possible that part wasn't quoted in whatever garbled version of it you might have read. The secular press tends to cut out that kind of thing.
Third, neither the Pope nor any other knowledgeable person in the Church ever said that "priests will be allowed to get married." That is NOT possible. Once a priest has made a vow of celibacy, he is not an 'eligible bachelor'!
As this article points out, in some of the Eastern Catholic Churches (e.g. the Maronites and Melkites in Lebanon, the Chaldeans in Iraq, etc.) they already have the practice that married men can become priests. In that order: first marry, then be ordained as a priest. But not in the reverse order: priest, then marry. That ain't happening. Nor has, never will!
It aggravates me that the Pope is so much misquoted, and so misconstrued. It means people like myself have to go around correcting the record,
| "This is what he said!" |
| and |
| "This is what he didn't say!!" |
| all over the blogosphere. :`:`sigh:`:` Any questions? Tagline. |
That quote always kind of puzzles me. Doesn't it mean the atheist isn't an atheist anymore? How else could one turn to Him in whom the atheist doesn't believe exists? I conclude that atheists who remain atheists probably won't be saved but those who do not might well be (in other words, same as what we have believed all along).
I suppose a priest could be defrocked, marry, and then become a priest again.
Did Martin Luther do that?