Last month, the Vatican made headlines after Pope Francis approved blessings for same-sex couples. It was a decision that marked a very public departure from the Catholic Church’s long-held stance against the union of same-sex couples. Very quickly, the announcement sparked controversy over the hypocrisy of weddings for heterosexual couples and blessings for gay couples. While the shift in Church policy remains significant, the Church has only accepted gay individuals, not same-sex love, or relationships. One must wonder if this is about welcoming everyone into the Kingdom of God or filling pews and offering plates.
As the dust settles in the aftermath of the Pope’s initial announcement, a new debate has ignited among advocates within the LGBTQ+ community. They question how long they should wait for this type of growth to occur and whether the Catholic Church can keep pace with society at large. It has taken many decades and even centuries for this small change to occur; how long must we wait before the Church acknowledges truth?
The Christian God made all beings. Yet, it is most interesting that despite the first estranged relationship between God the Father and Lucifer, God’s favorite angel, as a result of this dysfunctional love affair, these two outer world entities supposedly now have equal rights to punish or reward the children of the Earth. From scripture, we hear of a world tangled with incest while the Church condemns bisexual and homosexual behavior. Are we to believe that incestual stories of Cain and Abel’s love of their mother, or the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, to have the only righteous people from there end up having good sex and wine with their father to make more people on this planet. All of this, while still at this date the Pope wants to bless gay relationships but refuses to acknowledge that in the family of man and animal, gay genes and behavior have always been and will be the design of creation and not the domain or property of the Catholic or its latter Evangelical radicalism.
Historically, the College of Cardinals comprises older, elevated catholic priests who, like our parents, cling to traditional values. In a sense, Pope Francis, on the other hand, is from the future. He knows what’s coming, and on this, I add my voice to his; I predict a 7% rise in those who self-identify as something other than straight in the next ten years. In the 70s and 80s, our society suddenly realized what Dr. Kinsey knew all along: that 50% of our society is LGBTQ.
Pope Francis can’t say that; he can’t proclaim it. He is caged in by old men who believe that if you ate meat on a Friday, you’d go to hell and who still teach that innocent babies are born into damnation and sin. Until the Church acknowledges that human sexuality is beautiful in all its diversity and that love between consenting adults should be celebrated and blessed, it will continue to be nakedly hypocritical. The Pope is waking up, when will the rest of the Church?
I believe that all religions should stand together with all of humanity, to proclaim that “We are all children of the same universe.” We must deny the gatekeepers “of the Word;” their petty squabbles have fueled conflicts around the world, and now, they bring the chaos of doom to the world.
