Praise, Protest for Pope Francis’ Outreach to LGBTQ Persons

Pope Francis greets the crowd after praying the Angelus from the window of his studio overlooking St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican Sept. 8.

By Gina Christian

Pope Francis has evoked both praise and protest for his outreach to LGBTQ persons during his decade-long papacy, as he has offered warmth and welcome while upholding the Catholic Church’s teaching on human sexuality.

“My experience of Pope Francis has been hope-filled and also frustrating,” Ish Ruiz, a gay theologian and post-doctoral fellow in Catholic studies at Emory University, told OSV News.

Ruiz praised Pope Francis’ “breakthrough papacy,” which he said has helped remove barriers between the Catholic Church and LGBTQ persons.

At the same time, Ruiz told OSV News he “wishes the pope would go a little bit further with what he’s done” and “allow church doctrine to be transformed by the grace-filled witness” of LGBTQ persons.

Grace Doerfler, a graduate student in journalism at Stanford University, told OSV News that “as a lesbian Catholic, I think (Pope Francis is) really a pastor. … He has such an attitude of welcome, kindness and love, and I think his papacy has made a real difference in how I and other LGBTQ Catholics feel about the church, and about staying (in it).”

Yet Doerfler also said she “would love to see a church where I could have a church wedding someday, and where Catholic school teachers and other people in ministry could be openly gay and not lose jobs over it.”

Since the early days of his papacy, Pope Francis has offered an open hand to persons experiencing same-sex attraction and gender dysphoria, and recently condemned the criminalization of homosexuality in several parts of the world.

Asked by a reporter in 2013 about homosexual individuals among the clergy, the pope famously responded, “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?”

For Matthew — now a married father of two in the St. Louis area who asked his last name be withheld for privacy — that reply coincided with a growing awareness that he was sensing homosexual inclinations, which along with homosexual acts are regarded as “disordered,” according to church teaching as outlined in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

“The 10-year anniversary of Pope Francis really resonates with me, because I was a freshman in college exactly when I started to realize my experience,” he told OSV News. “This 10-year journey is very much my timeline of my first (recognition) and then realizing the beautiful grace (of) the Lord in my life.”

While stressing he remains “respectful” of the pope, Matthew told OSV News he wanted to “be real” about how Pope Francis’ approach to the topic of homosexuality “has hindered me.”

Specifically, Matthew pointed to “ambiguity and lack of clarity” in reports of the pope’s occasional statements to media on the subject, which he told OSV News could be misconstrued as support for same-sex unions.

Evgeny Afineevsky’s 2020 documentary “Francesco” created an uproar when spliced clips from a 2019 interview with Mexican broadcaster Televisa appeared to show Pope Francis broadly endorsing legal protections for such civil unions, while defending church doctrine that made it “a contradiction to speak of homosexual marriage,” said the pope.

Subsequent media coverage showed the film had not included key contextual information and caveats made by the pope in addressing the topic with journalist Valentina Alazraki.

Struggles to accurately understand Pope Francis on the topic of homosexuality often result from a failure to appreciate the fullness of his pastoral outreach to LGBTQ persons, said Father Philip Bochanski, a priest of the Philadelphia Archdiocese and executive director of Courage International, a Catholic apostolate that supports same-sex attracted men and women in living chastely according to church teaching.

Pope Francis’ approach seeks “to receive the person and accompany them mercifully, and having heard and received their story, to orient them in the teaching of the church,” Father Bochanski told OSV News. “It would be too simplistic to say that this pope says, ‘homosexual acts are sinful’ or ‘who am I to judge?’ That’s overlooking much of what Pope Francis has said on this topic. He always refers people back to the catechism.”

In his apostolic exhortation “Amoris Laetitia” (“The Joy of Love”), Pope Francis summed up that perspective in two back-to-back passages, acknowledging the challenges same-sex attraction presents to both parents and children, and calling for “respectful pastoral guidance” while upholding church teaching that views same-sex unions as not “even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family.”

Above all, “Pope Francis has, through words and gestures, helped to open up the conversation around the Catholic Church and LGBTQ people,” said Jesuit Father James Martin, a consultor to the Vatican Dicastery for Communication who ministers extensively to LGBTQ persons.

Admitting that “many LGBTQ people in the West tell me that they wish (Pope Francis) would ‘go further,’” Father Martin told OSV News the pope’s outreach has “marked a sea change in the church’s approach to this community.”

Father Martin pointed out Pope Francis has even appointed Juan Carlos Cruz, an openly gay man who advocates for fellow survivors of clergy sex abuse, to the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.

“I don’t think we can underestimate how much more welcome LGBTQ people — and their families — feel in their own church, thanks to Francis,” said Father Martin.

The pope sees not ideologies but “individual people, and he wants to make some kind of path for them to come closer to God,” Eve Tushnet, author of “Gay and Catholic: Accepting My Sexuality, Finding Community, Living My Faith,” told OSV News.

In so doing, she added, Pope Francis provides a “desperately needed vision for some kind of good future” for LGBTQ persons in the church.

“The church has wisdom here,” said Tushnet. “The church gives guidance to shepherd these longings and desires, and a path by which they are made more chaste, and even more loving and giving, than your own desires.”

Complete Article HERE!

In accusing Cardinal McElroy of heresy, Bishop Paprocki was aiming higher

— The American episcopate’s anti-Francis faction takes it to a new level.

Cardinal Robert McElroy, from left, Pope Francis and Bishop Thomas Paprocki.

By

On Feb. 28, the Catholic bishop of Springfield, Illinois, Thomas Paprocki, accused the newest American cardinal, San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy, of heresy.

Not that Paprocki made so bold as to call out McElroy by name. In a Feb. 28 essay, “Imagining a Heretical Cardinal,” on the website of the magazine First Things, the bishop began by quoting directly from an article McElroy had published in the Jesuit magazine America a month earlier:

Imagine if a cardinal of the Catholic Church were to publish an article in which he condemned “a theology of eucharistic coherence that multiplies barriers to the grace and gift of the eucharist” and stated that “unworthiness cannot be the prism of accompaniment for disciples of the God of grace and mercy.”

Anyone who plugged the quotes into a search engine did not have to imagine for long.

Newly created Cardinal Robert W. McElroy, bishop of San Diego, attends a reception for relatives and friends in the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican on Aug. 27, 2022. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
Newly created Cardinal Robert W. McElroy, bishop of San Diego, attends a reception for relatives and friends in the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican on Aug. 27, 2022.

Paprocki then proceeded to a second imaginary: “Or what if a cardinal of the Catholic Church were to state publicly that homosexual acts are not sinful and same-sex unions should be blessed by the Church?”

Public statements along those lines have been made by Luxembourg Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, not McElroy — though a reader might think otherwise. In his America article, McElroy concerned himself with the question of whether access to the Eucharist should be permitted to the divorced and remarried and to sexually active LGBT people.

Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki in 2018. Photo courtesy of the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois
Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki in 2018.

McElroy took the position that members of both groups should be so permitted for the reasons of “eucharistic conherence” that Paprocki quoted in his response. The Springfield bishop pronounced the remarks heretical and proceeded to cite canon law indicating that those holding heretical views are automatically excommunicated from the Catholic Church.

But, Paprocki continued, since a cardinal can only be removed from office by the pope, one who is automatically excommunicated (i.e., McElroy) might get to vote for the next pope. “We must pray,” Paprocki piously concluded, “that the Holy Spirit will not let this happen, and will inspire anyone who espouses heretical views to renounce them and seek reconciliation with our Lord and his Church.”

I guess Paprocki figured there’s no way the present pope would himself avert the danger by removing the heretical cardinal in question from office. And with good reason.

After all, in his 2013 apostolic exhortation “Evangelii Gaudium” (The Joy of the Gospel), Pope Francis wrote:

The Eucharist, although it is the fullness of sacramental life, is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak. These convictions have pastoral consequences that we are called to consider with prudence and boldness. Frequently, we act as arbiters of grace rather than its facilitators. But the Church is not a tollhouse; it is the house of the Father, where there is a place for everyone, with all their problems.

In his 2016 exhortation “Amoris Laetitia” (Love’s Happiness), Francis declared that it “can no longer simply be said that all those in any ‘irregular’ situation are living in a state of mortal sin and are deprived of sanctifying grace.” And that “science needs to be better incorporated into the Church’s praxis in certain situations which do not objectively embody our understanding of marriage.”

And: “At times we find it hard to make room for God’s unconditional love in our pastoral activity. We put so many conditions on mercy that we empty it of its concrete meaning and real significance.”

Pope Francis speaks during an interview with The Associated Press at the Vatican, Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2023. Francis acknowledged that Catholic bishops in some parts of the world support laws that criminalize homosexuality or discriminate against the LGBTQ community, and he himself referred to homosexuality in terms of "sin." But he attributed attitudes to culture backgrounds, and said bishops in particular need to undergo a process of change to recognize the dignity of everyone. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
Pope Francis speaks during an interview with The Associated Press at the Vatican, Jan. 24, 2023.

Did I mention that, to the consternation of some conservative prelates and laity, the pope in fact did, in Chapter 8 of “Amoris Laetitia,” give bishops the power to grant divorced and remarried persons access to the Eucharist?

No one should have the slightest doubt that the McElroy remarks condemned as heresy by Paprocki convey precisely Francis’ magisterial teaching — indeed, that the pope’s injunction to “make room for God’s unconditional love in our pastoral activity” is clearly mirrored in McElroy’s advocacy of a “radical inclusion” of some people whose sexual activity outside of church-sanctioned marriage violates church doctrine.

If McElroy pushed the envelope, it was by extending the pope’s principles to sexually active LGBTQ persons. But that’s not where Paprocki brought his hammer down. He brought it down on the principles themselves — effectively applying the same automatic excommunication he assigned to McElroy to Francis himself.

It’s hard to imagine a bishop affronting any other pope in this way with impunity.

Complete Article HERE!

Pope intervenes again to restrict celebration of Latin Mass

— Pope Francis has intervened for the third time to crack down on the celebration of the old Latin Mass, a sign of continued friction with Catholic traditionalists.

Cardinal Arthur Roche walks after receiving the red three-cornered biretta hat from Pope Francis during a consistory inside St. Peter’s Basilica, at the Vatican, on Aug. 27, 2022. Pope Francis approved a new decree published Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2023, repeating that the Holy See must sign off on bishops’ decisions to designate new parish churches for the Latin Mass or to let newly ordained priests celebrate the old rite. The decree states that the Vatican’s liturgy office, headed by British Cardinal Arthur Roche, is responsible for granting such approvals.

By NICOLE WINFIELD

Francis reasserted in a new legal decree published Tuesday that the Holy See must approve new celebrations of the old rite by signing off on bishops’ decisions to designate additional parish churches for the Latin Mass or to let newly ordained priests celebrate it.

The decree states that the Vatican’s liturgy office, headed by British Cardinal Arthur Roche, is responsible for evaluating such requests on behalf of the Holy See and that all requests from bishops must go there.

For weeks, Catholic traditionalist blogs and websites have reported a further crackdown on the old Latin Mass was in the works, following Francis’ remarkable decision in 2021 to reimpose restrictions on its celebration that were relaxed in 2007 by then-Pope Benedict XVI.

Francis said at the time that he was acting to preserve church unity, saying the spread of the Tridentine Mass had become a source of division and been exploited by Catholics opposed to the Second Vatican Council, the 1960s meetings that modernized the church and its liturgy.

Roche’s office followed up a few months later to double down on the Vatican’s position with a series of questions and answers that made clear that celebrating some sacraments according to the old rite was forbidden.

The new decree doesn’t restrict the celebration further but merely repeats what was previously declared. Its insistence on Roche’s authority in the process appeared aimed primarily at quashing traditionalist claims that the cardinal had exceeded his mandate. Francis signed off on the decree Monday during a private audience with Roche.

Francis’ crackdown on the old Mass outraged his conservative and traditionalist critics, many of whom have also attacked him for his focus on the environment, social justice and migrants.

Francis says he preaches the Gospel and what Jesus taught, and has defended the restrictions by saying they actually reflect Benedict’s original goal while curbing the way his 2007 concession was exploited for ideological ends.

Complete Article HERE!

Pope Francis faces ‘civil war’ at heart of church

— From his reforms to his foreign relations, criticism of Pope Francis has intensified since the death of his predecessor Benedict XVI, revealing a climate of “civil war” at a time when the Catholic Church is engaged in a global conversation about its future.

Pope Francis told reporters on his plane back from South Sudan last Sunday that his critics have “exploited” Benedict’s death to further their cause

Benedict, a conservative German theologian who was pope for eight years before resigning in 2013, died on December 31 at the age of 95.

Within days of his death, his closest aide, Georg Gaenswein, revealed Benedict’s concerns at some of the changes made by his successor Pope Francis, notably his decision to restrict the use of the Latin mass.

The criticism was not new. Many in the conservative wing of the Roman Curia, which governs the Church, have long complained the Argentine pontiff is authoritarian and too focused on pastoral matters at the expense of theological rigour.

But it was followed by the death of Australian cardinal George Pell, and the subsequent revelation that he had authored an anonymous note published last year that directly attacked Francis.

The note had described the current papacy as a “catastrophe”, and among others criticised “heavy failures” of Vatican diplomacy under his watch.

Pell, a former close adviser to Francis, was jailed for child sexual abuse before being acquitted in 2020.

Then, at the end of the month, German Cardinal Gerhard Mueller published a book adding fuel to the fire.

The former head of the Vatican’s powerful congregation for the doctrine of the faith denounced Francis’ “doctrinal confusion” and criticised the influence of a “magic circle” around him.

– Civil war –

Mueller’s book caused consternation among some inside the Vatican.

“When you accept a cardinal’s cap, you agree to support and help the pope. Criticisms are made in private, not in public,” said one senior official in the Secretariat of State.

Pope Francis himself told reporters on his plane back from South Sudan last Sunday that his critics have “exploited” Benedict’s death to further their cause.

“And those who exploit such a good person, such a man of God… well I would say they are unethical people, they are people belonging to a party, not to the Church,” he said.

Italian Vatican expert Marco Politi said Mueller’s book “is a new stage in the unstoppable escalation by the pope’s adversaries”.

“There is a civil war in the heart of the church which will continue until the last day of the papacy,” he told AFP.

– Global consultations –

The tensions come as the Catholic Church conducts a vast global consultation on its future, the “Synod on Synodality” launched by Pope Francis in 2021.

Designed to decentralise the governance of the church, it has revealed key differences, with the German Catholic Church, for example, showing distinctly more appetite for reform than Rome.

Discussions include everything from the place of women in the church to how to handle the scandal of child sex abuse, from whether priests should marry to how the Church welcomes LGBTQ believers.

With the synod, which is due to conclude in 2024, “we will see the weight of the different currents within the Church”, Politi said.

He said critics of Pope Francis are already converging into a “current of thought capable of influencing the next conclave”, and by extension the next papacy.

A conclave, a global gathering of cardinals, would be called if Francis died or resigned.

The pope has said he would be willing to follow Benedict’s example and resign if his health stopped him doing his job.

But despite knee problems that have seen him use a wheelchair in recent months, he remains active and in charge — and extremely popular all over the world, as the crowds during his recent trip to Africa showed.

“This knee is annoying, but I go on, slowly, and we’ll see,” the 86-year-old said on Sunday, quipping: “You know that the bad weed never dies!”

Complete Article HERE!

The Catholic Church’s upcoming discussion of homosexuality

— The relaxation of doctrine for pastoral purposes is itself a Christian doctrine. Is Pope Francis headed that way?

Pope Francis speaks during an interview with The Associated Press at the Vatican, Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2023. Francis acknowledged that Catholic bishops in some parts of the world support laws that criminalize homosexuality or discriminate against the LGBTQ community, and he himself referred to homosexuality in terms of “sin.” But he attributed attitudes to culture backgrounds, and said bishops in particular need to undergo a process of change to recognize the dignity of everyone.

By

Pope Francis stirred the pot last week by calling for an end to criminal penalties for homosexuality. “Being gay is not a crime, it’s a human condition,” he told the AP in a wide-ranging interview in Spanish.

Harking back to his famous “Who am I to judge?” remark, Francis imagined an exchange with an objector:

We are all children of God and God loves us as we are and with the strength that each one of us fights for our dignity. Being homosexual is not a crime. It is not a crime.

Yes, but it’s a sin.
Well, first let’s distinguish sin from crime. But the lack of charity with the neighbor is also a sin, and how are you doing?

In other words, who are you to judge?

It’s possible Francis was sending a message to the bishops of Africa, where he is visiting this week and where 35 of the 54 countries have anti-gay criminal laws. Bishops who support such laws, he said in the interview, “have to have a process of conversion” and should apply “tenderness, please, as God has for each one of us.”

As has almost always been the case, Francis gave no indication that he intends to change church doctrine in order to advance his inclusive vision of the church. The sole exception has been his allowing (on a case-by-case basis) people who are divorced and remarried to have access to the Eucharist. The question is whether a similar opening might be made for those in same-sex unions.



According to the Catholic Catechism, while homosexual persons “must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity,” they are “called to chastity” — i.e. no licit sex for them. As for same-sex unions, the church will not bless them because, the Vatican declared two years ago, God “does not and cannot bless sin.”

Those teachings are likely to be up for discussion in the church-wide Synod on Synodality that will bring bishops to Rome for October sessions this year and next. Per the pope’s instructions, the preparations for it have entailed extensive consultations with ordinary Catholics.

Last September, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a report on the consultations that highlighted criticism of the church for not doing a better job of including those suffering from “the wound of marginalization.”

Among these are members of the LGBTQ+ community, persons who have been divorced or those who have remarried without a declaration of nullity, as well as individuals who have civilly married but who never married in the Church. Concerns about how to respond to the needs of these diverse groups surfaced in every synthesis.

In October, the Vatican issued a synthesis of reports from around the world that noted, “Issues such as the Church’s teaching on abortion, contraception, ordination of women, married clergy, celibacy, divorce and Holy Communion, homosexuality, LGBTQIA+ were raised up across the Dioceses both rural and urban.”

Last week, San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy, whom the pope made a cardinal last year, wrote an article in the Jesuit magazine “America” that openly questioned the exclusion of sexually active people who are not in what the church considers a legitimate marriage.



Calling such exclusion “pre-eminently a pastoral question, not a doctrinal one,” McElroy took direct aim at the church’s refusal to concede to gay people a right to same-sex sexual expression.

The distinction between orientation and activity cannot be the principal focus for such a pastoral embrace because it inevitably suggests dividing the L.G.B.T. community into those who refrain from sexual activity and those who do not. Rather, the dignity of every person as a child of God struggling in this world, and the loving outreach of God, must be the heart, soul, face and substance of the church’s stance and pastoral action.

“We must,” wrote McElroy, “examine the contradictions in a church of inclusion and shared belonging that have been identified by the voices of the people of God in our nation and discern in synodality a pathway for moving beyond them.”

It’s important to recognize that the relaxation of doctrine for pastoral purposes is itself a Christian doctrine — known in Eastern Orthodoxy as the principle of oikonomia. Based on the idea that in a fallen world there are circumstances that require doctrinal relaxation, the principle is employed within Orthodoxy, for example, to permit divorced people to be married in church a second and even a third time.

Under Francis, the synodal path appears to be leading in that direction. Whether it gets there is another question.

Complete Article HERE!