UNITED STATES
Los Angeles Times
By Michael McGough
September 19, 2013
It’s a familiar cycle: Pope Francis says something that seems to soften the Roman Catholic Church’s attitude toward hot-button issues; liberals (Catholic and otherwise) rejoice; conservative Catholics rush to remind gleeful Francisphiles that the pope really didn’t depart from orthodoxy.
But that sort of spin has become progressively more difficult.
This summer, Francis unforgettably said: “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?” A writer for the National Catholic Register first offered a “nothing new here” gloss, speculating that the pope was referring to “people with same-sex attraction who strive to live chastely (even if they sometimes fail).”
But the Register acknowledged that the pope might also have been extending a hand to “individuals who are not living chastely but who are not actively lobbying a homosexual agenda.” The Register added, “It would be nice if he’d said a little more to clarify the point further.”
Well, the pope’s interview with a Jesuit publication that hit the Internet on Thursday does provide some clarification, but not the kind conservative Catholics were hoping for. Francis made it clear that he thought the church was hurting itself with an excessive emphasis on moral issues such as same-sex marriage, abortion and contraception.
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