The Church teaches that respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behaviour or to legal recognition of homosexual unions. The common good requires that laws recognize, promote and protect marriage as the basis of the family, the primary unit of society. Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behaviour, with the consequence of making it a model in present-day society, but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity. The Church cannot fail to defend these values, for the good of men and women and for the good of society itself.
The Sovereign Pontiff John Paul II, in the Audience of March 28, 2003, approved the present Considerations, adopted in the Ordinary Session of this Congregation, and ordered their publication.
Rome, from the Offices of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, June 3, 2003, Memorial of Saint Charles Lwanga and his Companions, Martyrs.
Joseph Card. Ratzinger
Prefect
Angelo Amato, S.D.B.
Titular Archbishop of Sila
Secretary
Pope Francis:
Pope Francis became the first pontiff to endorse same-sex civil unions in comments for a documentary that premiered Wednesday, sparking cheers from gay Catholics and demands for clarification from conservatives, given the Vatican’s official teaching on the issue.
The papal thumbs-up came midway through the feature-length documentary “Francesco,” which premiered at the Rome Film Festival. The film, which features fresh interviews with the pope, delves into issues Francis cares about most, including the environment, poverty, migration, racial and income inequality, and the people most affected by discrimination.
“Homosexual people have the right to be in a family. They are children of God,” Francis said in one of his sit-down interviews for the film. “You can’t kick someone out of a family, nor make their life miserable for this. What we have to have is a civil union law; that way they are legally covered.”
While serving as archbishop of Buenos Aires, Francis endorsed civil unions for gay couples as an alternative to same-sex marriages. However, he had never come out publicly in favor of civil unions as pope, and no pontiff before him had, either.
Go here to read the rest. Will Rogers used to say that he belonged to no organized political party, that he was a Democrat. Catholics can now say the same thing about Catholicism, unless the whim of the current Pope is regarded as an organizing principle, in which case we have ring binder Catholicism with teachings constantly flushed down the memory hole.
“Pope” Francis has introduced us to Vatican III–full Masonic secularism and global totalitarian Communist government—and the near total corruption of the Catholic Church.
I place my hope in God, Our Lady and in emerging presence of Archbishop Vigano as the true Catholic Church leader for our times.
Will there be an encyclical on homosexual “unions”?
The media may be trying to put yet another one over on us. In the original Spanish, the Pope said we (society) need to establish “un ley de convivencia civil”, which means something like “a rule of civil coexistence” so that they (persons with same-sex attraction) are not being cast out of their own families. The documentary makers decided to translate this into English in the subtitles as “civil unions”. I propose a corollary to Murphy’s Law: whatever the media can get wrong about Catholicism, it will.
I spend most of my too-long TV time clicking from one worthless channel to other useless channels. I hit on one where a speaker was saying PF is against laws criminalizing sodomy, etc. He spoke as if that was a good thing.
Hate the sin. Love the sinner. A crazy notion: “If you love the sinner, do you want her/him to burn in Hell?” Asking for a friend.
Orwell wrote an essay on the passing of Gandhi. He seems to identify the ‘issue’ with Pope Francis, and the so-called liberals subverting the Church for a hundred years. They are not as Phil Robertson would say, “Godly men.”
“. . .Gandhi’s teachings cannot be squared with the belief that Man is the measure of all things and that our job is to make life worth living on this earth, which is the only earth we have.”
“But it is not necessary here to argue whether the other-worldly or the humanistic ideal is ‘higher.’ The point is that they are incompatible. One must choose between God and Man, and all ‘radicals’ and ‘progressives,’ from the mildest liberal to the most extreme anarchist, have in effect chosen Man.”
“One does not have to be a theologian or a moral expert to know that such statements
are totally heterodox and constitute a very serious cause of scandal for the faithful.
But pay careful attention: these words simply constitute the umpteenth provocation
by which the ‘ultra-progressive’ part of the Hierarchy wants to artfully provoke a schism,
as it has already tried to do with the Post-Synodal Exhortation Amoris Laetitia, the
modification of doctrine on the death penalty, the Pan-Amazon Synod and the filthy
Pachamama, and the Abu Dhabi Declaration which has now been reaffirmed and
aggravated by the Encyclical Fratelli Tutti.”
– Archbishop Viganò
https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/archbishop-vigano-responds-to-new-film-in-which-pope-endorses-homosexual-civil-unions
I’ll take the Pachamama coin over this any day!
Quite frankly, we need a Vatican III. Because it’s going to take a Church Council to sort the abdication of Benedict XVI, the subsequent conclave, and this papacy out.
He is no father.
Asking for clarification from Pope Francis is about as useless as life skills training for suicide bombers.
Clarification? You have to be kidding. When I definitely state that “black is white “, there is not anything to clarify. It is time for all who hold the Catholic Faith as taught for 2000 years to face the fact that an apostate Pope sits on the Throne of Saint Peter. As most Bishops support him, any Council would ratify his perfidy.
Pope Francis rarely makes statements which are as bad as the media portrays them to be. I would not be surprised if he did not literally call for civil unions (while I know Spanish, I don’t know legal terminology well enough to determine if the exact phrase used is a common way to describe civil unions in Spanish).
However, while the actual statements may not be as bad as they are reported, that doesn’t make things much better because Pope Francis never clarifies statements that are “misinterpreted” in a way beneficial to the theologically liberal. If he comments on them at all, it is only with more vague statements that do not clarify anything and can themselves be “misinterpreted.”
Contrast this with when he attacks the theologically conservative. Very little ambiguity there.
Out of morbid curiosity I checked out Shea’s take on this. I figured that he would be in the “Pope Francis didn’t really mean civil unions” camp, with a lot ambiguity about whether civil unions actually were acceptable or not so as to not alienate his leftist readership, especially since he has written many fierce attacks on gay “marriage” in the past.
But no, he’s 100% on board civil union laws. In fact he says that they are necessary because:
“And what he is saying is that the prudent thing–the thing that has in mind the good of the person who is gay–is that Caesar should protect the rights of that person as of any person to love who they love, to live where and with whom they wish, and to share their property as they see fit. Attempts to attack that wound their dignity as human beings.”
So if we prevent same-sex unions that is attacking the dignity of those involved as human beings. But he pretends that somehow he can hold this position and still be against same-sex “marriage” (which he still says is against Church teaching). Because you see we have to give both legal and social approval to same sex unions, but as long as we don’t call those relationships marriage there’s nothing heterodox about it.
Attempts to attack that wound their dignity as human beings
All that wounding by Church and State for thousands of years. Leftists are always Presentists who believe they are giants standing on the shoulders of nothing.
I’m in the “this probably isn’t as bad as it sounds” camp, but I’m sick of trying to square things that look very much like a circle. Whatever he’d intended to say, the damage has been done. Millions of people now have the wrong idea of Catholic teaching. Some may fall into sin without realizing its nature. Some more progressive types will think the Church can change with the times. Some more conservative non-Catholics will think the same thing, and be less inclined to consider conversion. It’s hard to think of a person whose soul will be put on a better path based on this statement.
Turns out he actually said something like don’t cast your homosexual family members out of your family, and they should be protected by the same laws as everyone else.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CGn08rdjvof/
Enough of the defending of the statements and confusions and heresies coming out of the Vatican. These things are not bad translations. Get real! The man from Argentina has surrounded himself with homosexuals and has done not one thing to clean up the terrible infiltration. Review the definition of heresy. And heretics suffer automatic excommunication.
One can spot the error a mile away, there is no such thing as:
– a heterosexual person (or a homosexual person).
Male and female .. HE made them.
The mistranslation card is half the size it was 7.5 years ago and the remaining half is badly frayed.
“It’s a mistranslation–but we do need a clarification” sounds more like ambiguity to me. And ambiguity is never the friend of orthodoxy.
Here’s the thing: he quoted a laudatory documentary about himself in his most recent encyclical: footnote 198. Here he is, in another laudatory documentary. He says he intends to “start processes.” In the absence of him makig a full-throated defense of the Church’s teaching on the subject, you can chalk this up to another fuse being lit.
Of course there are heterosexual and homosexual people. There are also adulterous people. It just doesn’t mean the stupid stuff that activists want to push into it– seriously, why should we accept the philosophy of people that think sexual attraction is unchangeable, but your actual sex isn’t?
Foxfier, I can believe that because the Pope’s statement included something unfavorable about the homosexual lobby. I don’t think it was intended as a change in teaching. Still, that whole suppression of the Jesuit order thing is looking better every day. If your pope never says anything ambiguous, people stop assuming ambiguity.
Well, I see the Papolatrists like Mark Shea and Dave Armstrong are rushing to tell us poor, ignorant laity that Francis didn’t really say what we thought he said. As a cult member four decades ago, I witnessed this kind of dishonest behavior by ministers and laity who tried to convince us we ‘misunderstood’ our leader. If we failed to ‘understand’, we were told we had carnal minds and under Satan’s influence. Gaslighting to the max is one of the ways that cults leaders and other unscrupulous people demean and control people.
Foxfier:
I found Fr. Agostino’s presentation helpful, but incomplete. As Carl Olson points out, the pontiff shortly thereafter made it clear he was talking about “civil unions,” noting that he had supported this option as Archbishop of Buenos Aires.
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2020/10/21/the-deeply-flawed-opportunism-of-pope-francis/
That part of the translation is not addressed by Fr. Agostino, and is crucial to understanding what he meant by “conviviencia.” I hope he addresses it, because it’s crucial.
Foxfire, once one goes down the path of defining persons as heterosexual, then homosexual persons too become part of ones thinking. And if person, then the thinking is – created as such. It’s a demonic trick.
There are only male persons and female persons.
That’s ridiculous.
Replace “heterosexual” and “homosexual” with any other behavior, good or bad.
If I describe someone as dying their hair, or owning a house, or committing adultery– I am not defining them as a person. I am describing their behavior.
I reject the attempt to act like describing behavior is defining the person– as do those folks living with same sex attraction who do not act on it, and who give the activists a headache because they are homosexual, ie, people attracted to the same sex– but they are not homosexual, ie, people whose entire life is centered around acting on that urge.
The attempt to reduce people to a single, accurate aspect of their description is demonic– dehumanizing, specifically. I don’t accept it in any other realm (such as when they try to tell me that I’m not “really” a woman, because I am pro-life) I’m not going to accept it for same sex attraction.
Dale-
your link cites itself for the claim of supporting civil unions, and when you click through that to the source you find their source is this:
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/claims-that-pope-supported-gay-civil-unions-disputed
Since Pope Francis’ election on March 13, media reports have circulated Rubin’s claim that the future Pope had supported homosexual unions as a possible political compromise in Argentinia. Rubin has been the only source used by the media for this claim.
Which makes me suspect that the phrase is being hijacked, kind of like “tolerance” meaning “you must say what I do is good,” has been hijacked.
Going to the documentary’s page on IMDB, I find that the fellow noted as being the source for that claim is also a top-liner in the documentary:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12356510/?ref_=nm_flmg_prd_1
If the interview actually said what is claimed, then it would’ve been brought forward before now.
I don’t think of the term “homosexual” as defining a person, or even necessarily their behaviour, just their leaning. Some people talk about a sliding scale, but I think of it as two sliding scales. I’m 0 out of 10 toward men, 8 out of ten toward women (which is to say I’m not obsessed like I was as a teen). Most people are almost zero toward same, and 7 or higher toward opposite. The next biggest group are very low toward opposite, very high toward same. That accounts for nearly everyone, although they’re both sliding scales, and some other levels do happen. All of that nets out to “everybody’s got problems”, though, and nobody’s bound to act on their preferences, and none of it diminishes the value of the person.
It’s a descriptive term that’s become normative. That’s the problem.