With his open and easygoing manner, Pope Francis charmed the media as
much as the faithful during his successful visit to Brazil, the first
international pilgrimage of his pontificate.
But it was the pope’s remarks about gay priests, made during a
free-wheeling press conference on the return trip to Rome, that drew the
most headlines, raising questions about whether the pontiff was
signaling a change in the church’s approach to this volatile issue.
When asked by reporters about rumors of a “gay lobby” of clergy in
the Vatican who were exposing the Holy See to blackmail schemes and
scandal, Francis at first joked that while there’s a lot of talk about
such a lobby, “I have yet to find on a Vatican identity card the word
‘gay.’ ”
Then, in a more serious vein, he added: “I think that when we encounter a gay person, we must make the
distinction between the fact of a person being gay and the fact of a
lobby, because lobbies are not good. … If a person is gay and seeks the
Lord and has good will, who am I to judge that person?”
Francis also cited church teaching to argue that gays should never be
marginalized: “The problem is not that one has this tendency (to
homosexuality); no, we must be brothers. This is the first matter.”
Blogs and social media immediately exploded with commentary that
either hailed — or lamented — the pope’s words as a shift in Catholic
teaching on the role of gays and lesbians in the church.
But did Francis really signal such a change?
As far as church teaching, the pope said nothing that would indicate
that there would be any change in the tenet that homosexuality is, as
the Catholic catechism states, “objectively disordered.” Church teaching
holds that because same-sex relations cannot lead to children they are
against the natural moral law, and homosexuality has been condemned in
Scripture.
Yet no one really expected Francis to announce any change to that
doctrine, even if he could, and certainly not during an off-the-cuff
exchange with journalists.
What the pope did appear to do, however, was to push back against a
2005 policy instituted by Pope Benedict XVI, his immediate predecessor,
which stated that men with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” could not
be ordained.
In a 2010 interview, Benedict again underscored that view,
saying “Homosexuality is incompatible with the priestly vocation.”
Francis took a different tack on Sunday (July 28) night.
“Pope Francis seems to feel that as long as a gay priest is not
acting out sexually, he should not be judged,” said Richard Gaillardetz
of Boston College, president of the Catholic Theological Society of
America. “And he apparently sees no impediment to that priest serving
the church well.”
It’s also notable that during his news conference, Francis defended
one of his first major appointments, that of Monsignor Battista Ricca to
help oversee the scandal-plagued Vatican Bank. Since his promotion,
Ricca has been the target of an intense whispering campaign that accuses
Ricca of having had at least one gay affair years ago.
Francis instead denounced such witch hunts and added that “if a
person, or … priest or a nun, has committed a sin and then that person
experienced conversion, the Lord forgives and when the Lord forgives,
the Lord forgets.”
But the biggest message that Francis sent, and the most substantial change he made, was in tone.
Throughout his discourse there was none of the clinical, distancing
talk of gays and lesbians as “objectively disordered.” Nor did Francis
say, as Benedict did, that homosexuality “is one of the miseries of the
church.”
As the Rev. James Martin noted, Francis even used the word “gay,” and
in a positive sense, whereas popes and Vatican officials have
traditionally spoken only of “homosexuals.”
“This is a sea change,” said Martin, a U.S. Jesuit and popular author.
“This may be a matter of ‘style’ in some sense, but in this case
style matters,” Gaillardetz explained in a statement that echoed the
poet Robert Frost. “One can appeal to our doctrinal tradition in order
to justify moral rigidity and exclusionary attitudes or one can appeal
to our doctrinal tradition as a call to be instruments of mercy and
compassion. Francis has chosen the latter course and it has made all the
difference!”
Observers have already detected an effort by Vatican officials to
soft-pedal the pope’s comments, while some Catholics on the right were
trying to explain them away — a campaign that Ross Douthat, a
conservative and Catholic columnist for The New York Times, rejected as
undermining the pope’s clear intention.
“Conservative Catholics suggesting there’s no news in the pope’s
remarks are parsing the words, downplaying their context and spirit,”
Douthat tweeted.
Francis’ openness with the media marks another difference from his
predecessor, who answered only scripted questions by the Vatican’s chief
spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi.
During the 80-minute conversation, Francis touched on several other issues of Catholic doctrine:
* Francis reaffirmed the church’s ban on ordaining women to the
priesthood, saying the issue had been definitively resolved by Pope John
Paul II. “That door is closed,” he said, though adding that Catholic
theologians needed to reflect more on the role of women in the church.
* On the other hand, the pope advocated “mercy” for divorced and
remarried Catholics, who are currently banned from receiving Communion
if they do not have a church annulment.
* Answering a question about the scandal-ridden Vatican Bank, the
pope referred to the investigation he launched on the bank’s activities
and status, stressing that all options were on the table for its future,
including its outright closure.