The Pope Puts His Foot in It

I'm doing a little catching up on this one (it's been one of those weeks). You may have run across a story on the Pope's comments on legalizing civil unions for same-sex couples:

Pope Francis is calling for same-sex couples to be “legally” protected by civil union laws.

“Homosexuals have a right to be a part of the family,” the Pope says in a new documentary, Catholic News Agency reports. “They’re children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out, or be made miserable because of it.”

Later, Pope Francis defended his remarks in the film, saying, “What we have to create is a civil union law. That way they are legally covered.”

As you might imagine, the reaction has been less than positive among the "faithful".

Franklin Graham's response (not that anyone asked him to respond) is noteworthy for its lack of -- well, call it Christian compassoin:

Graham sees the Catholic Church’s new regard for supporting LGBTQ people in law – not religion – as so dangerous to the Christian faith he says it would mean Jesus died for nothing.

“For Pope Francis to attempt to normalize homosexuality is to say that Holy Scriptures are false, that our sins really don’t matter, and that we can continue living in them,” Graham told his nine million Facebook followers. “If that were true, then Jesus Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection wouldn’t have been needed. The cross would have been for nothing.”

Apparently, in Graham's eyes the whole point of Jesus' life was to deny gays and lesbians the right to live with dignity and self-respect -- to be treated like normal human beings.

The response from the Catholic hierarchy is no less scathing. Here's Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano:

Bergoglio is a candidate for ‘pontiff’ of a new religion, with new commandments, new morals, and new liturgies. He distances himself from the Catholic religion and from Christ, and consequently from the Hierarchy and the faithful, disavowing them and leaving them at the mercy of the globalist dictatorship. Those who do not adapt to this new code will therefore be ostracized by society and by this new ‘church’ as a foreign body.

Vigano doesn't seem to have twigged to the fact that the "faithful" are already being ostracized. (And as Joe notes in his comment, Vigano uses the Pope's birth name, not "Pope Francis" or any of the honorifics normally used to refer to the pontiff.

This one's choice. From Bishop Thomas Tobin:

“The Holy Father’s apparent support for the recognition of civil unions for same-sex couples needs to be clarified.

“The Pope’s statement clearly contradicts what has been the long-standing teaching of the Church about same-sex unions.

“The Church cannot support the acceptance of objectively immoral relationships. Individuals with same-sex attraction are beloved children of God and must have their personal human rights and civil rights recognized and protected by law.

“However, the legalization of their civil unions, which seek to simulate holy matrimony, is not admissible.”

The part about "objectively immoral" relationships is, as far as I'm concerned, a real howler. Given that the basic moral dictum is "take care of each other", all these arbitrary rules cherry-picked from the tribal taboos of Bronze Age Middle-Eastern nomads can hardly claim to be any sort of standard for moral behavior. (In that vein, Tobin is credibly accused of ignoring child sexual abuse complaints when he was auxiliary bishop of Pittsburgh.)

There are other resonses, of course. What's most noteworthy of the lot is that their reference is to Catholic dogma and not to the teaching of Christ -- who had nothing at all to say about homosexuality or same-sex relationships.