Pope's ‘Gay doesn’t matter’ remark
continues his ‘shadow magisterium’
It would be better if comments reportedly made by the Pope in private
remained private, not splashed around the world by news media.
[A most unrealistic expectation, in a world where
'the pope says...' still packs a lot of clout for most Catholics]
by Father Raymond J. de Souza, SJ
May 21, 2018
Pope Francis has pioneered a new form of papal teaching, massively influential but officially nonexistent. It is something of a shadow magisterium, but on occasion it shines a brighter light than the official magisterium.
The latest example regards the nature of homosexuality. Juan Carlos Cruz, one of the Chilean sexual-abuse victims who spent several days with Pope Francis in April, related the following from his conversations with the Holy Father about being gay.
“Juan Carlos, that you are gay doesn’t matter,” he said Francis told him. “God made you like this and loves you like this, and it doesn’t matter to me. The Pope loves you like this; you have to be happy with who you are.”
We do not know, of course, what Pope Francis actually said, much less what he meant by it. The Holy See Press Office, as it customarily does when private conversations with Pope Francis are reported by his interlocutors, neither confirms nor denies what was said and reiterates that private conversations have no magisterial standing.
While they have no standing, such statements fly around the world instantly. That the Holy Father endorsed the view that a homosexual orientation is a positive good, desired and approved by God is what was reported, broadcast, posted and tweeted around the world.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church makes three points about homosexuality: i) homosexual persons are created and loved by God and should be fully respected in their human dignity, ii) a same-sex orientation or attraction is “disordered” and therefore cannot be a positive good desired by God, and iii) homosexual acts, like all sexual acts outside of marriage, are sinful.
Does Pope Francis disagree with that? That’s unlikely, as he has repeatedly said in regard to homosexuality that he follows the Catechism.
But it is a possibility, at least until it is demonstrated that Juan Cruz is mistaken in his recollection, or that the Holy Father himself clarifies his meaning.
But clarifications are not offered in such situations. Meanwhile, officially nonexistent teaching becomes legitimate news, as it seems that the Supreme Pontiff is changing Catholic doctrine.
There have been at least five occasions in which Pope Francis has exercised this shadow magisterium to the effect of eclipsing Catholic teaching.
- In April 2014, a woman in Argentina claimed that Pope Francis telephoned her and told her that, despite being in an invalid marriage, she should disregard the instructions of her pastor and receive Holy Communion in another parish.
- In January 2015, Pope Francis telephoned a transgender man and reportedly told him something similar to what Cruz reported: “God loves all his children, however they are; you are a son of God, who accepts you exactly as you are. Of course you are a son of the Church!” Pope Francis invited the man and his fiancé to visit him in Rome.
- Pope Francis has given several interviews to journalist Eugenio Scalfari, which are neither recorded nor transcribed. The Holy See Press Office insists that Scalfari’s subsequent reporting cannot reliably be taken as the Holy Father’s words. Nevertheless, earlier this year, headlines around the world trumpeted the latest from the shadow magisterium — that hell no longer exists.
On two occasions, the Holy Father gave public answers that were ambiguous and seemed at odds with Catholic teaching.
- In November 2015, addressing the Lutheran community in Rome, Pope Francis was asked by a Protestant woman if she could receive Holy Communion together with her Catholic husband. Absent extraordinary circumstances, that is not permitted. Pope Francis replied in a partly affirmative and partly negative way, advising the woman to “ask the Lord” and then proceed. It was widely reported that Pope Francis had given approval to intercommunion, which he had not.
[Sandro Magister summed up Bergoglio's equivocation on that occasion as "No...yes...I don't know...you decide for yourself".]
- Earlier this year, Pope Francis was asked by a tearful boy whether his late father was in heaven, despite being an atheist. Pope Francis did not answer a clear yes or no, but left the grieving boy with the impression that his father had been saved without faith. That, too, was widely reported.
In all of the above cases, the Holy Father is addressing an individual case, yet his words are reported as proposing a general norm. Absent any clarification of the norm, it is reasonably assumed by many that the norm has been changed.
It is a common enough pastoral reality. Any good pastor has offered comforting words of an ambiguous nature to a suffering individual. A grieving daughter is told by her pastor that her recently deceased father, who abandoned her mother for another woman, really did love his children. The pastor is not proposing that the father was right to do as he did, or that he will not face judgment for that. The pastor is, in the moment, choosing to emphasize part of the truth of the situation, rather than the whole.
That is why pastors are careful that such words are not proposed as formal teaching. It can be difficult enough in a parish, where the pastor is asked whether what he reportedly is to have said to so-and-so has changed the Church’s teaching or practice. That moment allows for a clarification. In the case of the Holy Father, there are no such moments; the whole world hears at the same time.
Indeed, those preparing the Holy Father’s visits should not have allowed the grieving child to ask the Pope about whether atheists are in heaven.
[But not only did they allow it. It was obviously a set-up situation, so the boy could ask the question. I suppose Mons. Vigano - he was still the official grand panjandrum of communications at the time - thought it would constitute a Bergoglian outreach to atheists!] It would have been awkward and out of place to examine what exactly is required for salvation.
No one would find it easy to answer when the crying boy needed comforting, which the Holy Father immediately offered. He was not intending in such a moment to exercise his magisterium at all, shadow or otherwise.
It is commendable that the Holy Father has private conversations in which he offers pastoral care to those he meets. It would be better if those receiving such care would also respect the private nature of those conversations, not putting the Holy Father — and all who listen to him — in a difficult position.
It would even be better if Jorge Bergoglio realized, once and for all, that as pope, he cannot allow his individual persona to overshadow and even take over his institutional function. By definition, a pope cannot express private opinions that conflict with the teaching of the Church, otherwise he is in open dereliction of his primary duty to uphold and defend the faith.
A great commentary in THE CATHOLIC THING:
Good news:
God didn’t make our human mess
by Fr. Timothy V. Vaverek
THE CATHOLIC THING
May 23, 2018
Pope Francis is reported to have told a homosexual, “God made you that way and loves you.” In the last six months, I have responded to the miscarriage of a three-month-old baby, the sudden death of a hospice nurse due to an aneurism, and the terminal diagnosis of a middle-aged husband and father.
In these situations, I have continually insisted on God’s love and providence. I have never said God made it happen.
One of the most astonishing features of the Biblical creation account is that the entire cosmos is declared “very good.” This flies in the face of human experience. In fact, the creation myths of many cultures hold that good and evil are inherent elements of human nature and the world order. It is the way things are made.
Genesis corrects this error by revealing that
evil is not rooted in creation, but in humanity’s abusive decision to turn away from God, one another, and God’s created order through sin. At the same time, the account of the Fall of Adam and Eve unfolds in the context of God’s continual love and providential care in the face of sin and the evils unleashed by it.
The Scriptures tell the story of God opening a path to salvation that frees us from the effects of personal sin and the evils that befall us so that we might fully share His divine life through nuptial union with Christ. In Jesus, we discover that God foretold this saving union when He created the human race as sexually differentiated persons united in indissoluble marriage.
(Mt. 19:56, Gen. 2:24, Is. 62:5, Eph. 5:31-32)
Despite the fallen nature of the human race and the cosmos, therefore, we can still affirm that God created us and loves us. But we cannot simply say, “God made me this way.” If “this way” refers to the image and likeness of the Trinity and the calling to be a member of the body and bride of Christ, then the statement is true. If “this way” refers to the ill-effects of the messed-up world or of our personal sin, then the statement is false.
God loves sinners, the handicapped, the sick, the mentally ill, the imprisoned, the enslaved, the abused, the starving, the doubting, the grieving, the dying, etc. In some cases, these people contributed to their situation, in others they did not.
God loves them all, but He has not made them that way.
It can be said truly that God tolerates these situations since, evidently, He chooses not to enter into history to prevent these particular wrongs from happening.
The nature of this toleration, however, warrants our careful attention. It is not indifference, acceptance, or welcoming. It is a “bearing with” (Latin: toleratio) or a “suffering with” (Latin: compassio).
The full revelation of God’s compassionate toleration of sin and the effects of evil is found in the passion, death, and glorification of Jesus. Precisely because Jesus loved us with the Father’s love, He carried in his humanity the burden of all the ill that we do and that we bear. In doing so, He made our innocent and culpable sufferings a place of encountering God and his love, that is, a place of conversion, healing, and communion.
God brings about our salvation, our “well-being” (Latin: salus), not by preventing, denying, or eradicating evil at each moment, but by fundamentally altering our relation to it through our union with Christ. He thereby enables us to carry and suffer every form of evil that afflicts us and others without entering into further sin.
This is the Good News we have been sent to live and to proclaim: “God did not make us the way we are and He loves us. That is why He carried the burden of the sins and evils that distort our lives and invites us to carry that burden with him. He wishes to espouse us to himself so that we might share his divine life now and forever. And I love you enough to tell you this.”
Experiencing same-sex attraction, being divorced by a spouse, feeling a compulsion to abuse others, having an addiction, and the myriad of other troubles of body, psyche, and soul that we face as members of the fallen human race are not made better by being declared the handiwork of God. Nor, of course, are they helped by being treated as sins if we have not deliberately willed them or if we have repented of the sin that gave rise to them.
What is helpful, indeed the only thing ultimately able to sustain us, is the truth about our fallen, sometimes sinful, condition and the union that God offers us in Christ. That union requires, as Jesus said, that we take up the Cross daily. We do so by acknowledging our sins, our distorted inclinations, the burden of evil in our lives and the lives of those we love, and by carrying those with Christ who first carried them for us. Because of this union, we can carry these burdens without yielding to sin.
That is the Gospel. It is not something to hide or to evade. We are called to announce it unambiguously to the world. Consequently, when our witness to Jesus is misunderstood we are obliged to take reasonable steps to offer a correction.
Were a priest to be misquoted about the Gospel in the local paper or by a parishioner publicly recounting a private meeting, the priest would need to remedy the error. I have myself faced this situation.
The solution is simple and involves no accusation of deception or violation of confidence. A priest need only say, “The position attributed to me is mistaken. It mischaracterizes (or contradicts) the Gospel of Christ that I profess. I regret any misunderstanding and am happy to clarify the matter.” [Not that anyone expects Bergoglio to say that!]
To do less would harm those misled by the report. Besides, my brother, a priest, would charitably but firmly insist on it.
And then there's this quite realistic view of the situation:
Pope Francis's cunning long game
by Damon Linker
THE WEEK
May 23, 2018
Pope Francis'S stealth reform of the Roman Catholic Church shows no sign of slowing down — and may even be accelerating.
Stealth is key here. If the pope had declared earlier this month that henceforth the Roman Catholic Church would authoritatively teach that homosexuals should be happy being gay, that God made them homosexual, and that God himself (along with the pope) loves them just the way they are, it would have been a massive story in the history of Catholicism — and one that quite likely would have precipitated a major schism, with conservative bishops and priests (mainly in North America and Africa) formally breaking from Rome.
But because word of the pope saying these things comes to us second hand, in a report of a private conversation between Francis and a gay man named Juan Carlos Cruz who is also a victim of the clerical sex abuse crisis in Chile, the utterance will go down as just the latest example of the pope making unorthodox statements in settings in which he has plausible deniability and in which he can claim he was speaking as a pastor rather than as an expositor of the church's official dogmas and doctrines.
Most popes view themselves as caretakers of the church's authoritative teachings on faith and morals. When it comes to homosexuality, they would therefore be inclined to reaffirm the position laid out in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which clearly states that homosexual desires are "intrinsically disordered" because they are not oriented to the end of procreation. (The same is true of masturbation and other non-procreative sex acts.)
If Pope Francis were a straightforward reformer, he would seek to change church doctrine regardless of the potentially dire consequences for church unity. But Francis is well aware of the limits of his power and the danger of pushing too far too fast. So he has set out on a different, and distinctive, path.
We first saw it early in his pontificate when the pope spoke to reporters about his views on homosexuality. In contrast to Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), who declared in a 1986 letter to the bishops of the church that same-sex desires aim toward an "intrinsic moral evil," Francis told the press that "if someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?"
It continued in September 2014 with a marriage ceremony over which Francis presided at St Peter's. Some of the 20 couples involved had been previously married, while others had given birth to children out of wedlock or lived with their fiancées before marriage. That prior behavior placed them firmly out of step with the requirements of Catholic doctrine, and yet the pope participated and blessed the marriages.
And on it has gone, through the notorious footnote in the apostolic exhortation that was published at the conclusion of the 2015 Synod on the Family, seeming to give priests the pastoral leeway to offer the sacrament of communion to parishioners who have been divorced and remarried without receiving an annulment of their first marriages. It has made headlines most recently when an elderly Italian journalist asserted that in an interview with Francis the pope had denied the dogma of hell.
And now there is Francis'S apparent elaboration of his latitudinarian beliefs about homosexuality.
What unites all of these examples is a distinctive approach to church dogma and doctrine. Instead of acting as an expositor of these core teachings of the church, the pope selectively diverges from them in his actions and statements without deigning to change the teachings themselves. The implicit message is the same in every case: The pope himself thinks it's possible to be a member of the church in good standing while failing to abide by all of the institution's rules.
This is significantly different than the pope acknowledging that everyone is a sinner and will therefore break the rules from time to time. That standard view presumes that the divergence from the rule is a failing that requires repentance and reconciliation (the sacrament of confession), along with the intention on the part of the sinner to do better next time.
Francis'S position is different — implying that the lack of conformity to church teaching is acceptable, requiring no change or improvement in behavior.
Juan Carlos Cruz is gay, that's how God made him, and there's nothing wrong with that. But of course Church teaching contradicts this.
Which puts Pope Francis in the position of effectively promulgating two truths — implicitly affirming the official, harsher doctrine while subtly undermining it with a less stringent pastoral teaching.
Instead of seeking to change the underlying rules, which would risk divisiveness and even schism, he shows that it's perfectly alright for a priest or layperson to diverge from or ignore the rule in the name of welcoming as many people as possible to Christ's church.
Conservative Catholics like Ross Douthat (the author of a new book on this very topic) worry that Franciss' fudging of doctrinal truth will have bad consequences for the church because it simply defers a necessary debate about what the church actually believes. Better to have the argument sooner rather than later.
But I think the pope's strategy for a longer game displays greater psychological acuity — and Machiavellian cunning.
- Francis may be betting that once the church stops preaching those doctrines that conflict most severely with modern moral norms, the number of people who uphold and revere them will decline rapidly (within a generation or two).
- Once that has happened, officially changing the doctrine will be much easier and much less likely to provoke a schism (or at least a major one) than it is in the present.
[Dear Lord, spare us from further scheming by Jorge Mario Macchiaveglio!!!!]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 25/05/2018 02:36]