UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian
Sadhbh Walshe
theguardian.com, Wednesday 31 July 2013
It’s hard not to be fascinated by the Catholic church’s relatively new Pope Francis. From his opening act washing the feet of Muslim women prisoners (three no-no’s in one) to urging young Catholics to break out of their “spiritual cages” and “make a mess” in their diocese, to his casual chat this week with reporters on the plane back from his triumphant trip to Brazil, this pope has demonstrated a charming willingness to shake up the conservative institution and to make it a more open and accepting place.
When it comes to making the church a more equal institution, however, where roughly half the population (that is women) are not actively discriminated against, Pope Francis is sadly proving to be as traditional and conservative as the best of them.
The big takeaway from the plane chat, or at least the big media takeaway, was the pope’s acknowledgement that gay priests exist and that they have as much right to their affinity with God as their heterosexual counterparts. When asked about the so called “gay lobby” within the Vatican, the pope replied:
When I meet a gay person, I have to distinguish between their being gay and being part of a lobby. If they accept the Lord and have goodwill, who am I to judge them? They shouldn’t be marginalized.
Considering that his predecessor, Pope Benedict, declared in 2005 that men who had deep rooted homosexual tendencies should not be priests, the new pope’s words can at the very least be viewed as a step towards cementing gay men’s rights to equal status and treatment by the church, including their right to be ordained. This step in the right direction would be easier to applaud, however, if it had not been followed by two steps backwards on the rights of women, straight or gay, to ever having a chance to enjoy the same equal treatment.
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