Pope Francis and Gay People

[Guest]

I think it has been agreed that we wouldn't raise lesbian and gay issue unless there was some new development. I bring news of just such a change articulated by Pope Francis during an 80-minute long Q&A session at the the World Youth Day in Rio.

Pope Francis has said that gay people should not be judged, and that gay men can be priests.

Pope Francis told reporters aboard the papal flight from Word Youth Day in Brazil: "If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?"

In his responses to journalists aboard the flight back to Rome from Rio de Janeiro last night, he referred to the Catechism, which does not permit homosexual activity. "The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains this very well. It says [gay people] should not be marginalised because of this [orientation] but that they must be integrated into society," he said.

But his tone was notably more conciliatory than the Catechism, which describes gay people as "objectively disordered", and a 2005 directive issued under Pope Benedict XVI that said men with "deeply rooted homosexual tendencies" could not be ordained.

http://www.thetablet.co.uk/latest-news/5548

The report refers to gay men but not to lesbians. Lesbians will not necessarily be surprised by their not being mentioned, as they are frequently subsumed into the collective gay people and never mentioned thereafter.

In accordance with the House Rules, please remember to treat the views of other members with respect, particularly when they differ from your own.

[Hornspieler]

I think it has been agreed that we wouldn't raise lesbian and gay issue unless there was some new development. I bring news of just such a change articulated by Pope Francis during an 80-minute long Q&A session at the the World Youth Day in Rio.

Pope Francis has said that gay people should not be judged, and that gay men can be priests.

Pope Francis told reporters aboard the papal flight from Word Youth Day in Brazil: "If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?"

In his responses to journalists aboard the flight back to Rome from Rio de Janeiro last night, he referred to the Catechism, which does not permit homosexual activity. "The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains this very well. It says [gay people] should not be marginalised because of this [orientation] but that they must be integrated into society," he said.

But his tone was notably more conciliatory than the Catechism, which describes gay people as "objectively disordered", and a 2005 directive issued under Pope Benedict XVI that said men with "deeply rooted homosexual tendencies" could not be ordained.

http://www.thetablet.co.uk/latest-news/5548

The report refers to gay men but not to lesbians. Lesbians will not necessarily be surprised by their not being mentioned, as they are frequently subsumed into the collective gay people and never mentioned thereafter.

In accordance with the House Rules, please remember to treat the views of other members with respect, particularly when they differ from your own.

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For God's sake drop it! Live and let live and let others do the same. Resurrecting this topic can only harm these message boards.

HS

[Mary Chambers]

You're on dangerous ground here, Ams!

I suppose it's a kind of progress, but it sounds patronising, and there's a very long way to go for both the RC and Anglican Church. I have no idea where non-conformist churches stand on this subject.

EDIT I've just seen Hornspieler's response. .I suppose he's right, but I still naively expect people to be polite to each other, in spite of evidence to the contrary.

[amateur51]

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For God's sake drop it! Live and let live and let others do the same. Resurrecting this topic can only harm these message boards.

HS

Did you not read my reference to changes at the top and to the House Rules the bottom of the thread?

[jean]

Lesbians will not necessarily be surprised by their not being mentioned...

We're used to it!

In this context, women in general are are nowhere near being ordained priests, so there's not so much need to consider what might or might not be a bar to the ordination of particular sorts of women.

(I think this is a new development, and worth celebrating - and it isn't about marriage anyway, so I'd say it justifies a thread!)

.

[amateur51]

You're on dangerous ground here, Ams!

I suppose it's a kind of progress, but it sounds patronising, and there's a very long way to go for both the RC and Anglican Church. I have no idea where non-conformist churches stand on this subject.

In my opinion it's a significant change Mary, as the Tablet article hints at.

I didn't choose the timing.

That's all.

[Flosshilde]

I suppose it's a kind of progress, but it sounds patronising, and there's a very long way to go for both the RC and Anglican Church.

Yes, it is progress. I think that when people/organisations that have been vehemently anti-gay (or anti other groups of people, for that matter) start to move along a path towards greater acceptance/acknowledgement it almost inevitable that they will sound patronising; they still have a long way to progress, and part of that progress is learning how to address people without being patronising.

But any progress is to be welcomed - cautiously, perhaps, but still welcomed.

[Richard Tarleton]

In my opinion it's a significant change Mary, as the Tablet article hints at.

I didn't choose the timing.

Ams old friend, with the best will in the world, for pity's sake, drop it. This isn't a "development". A man on a plane said something, a minority interest magazine with a circulation of 20,000 said something else. You didn't have to start another thread on it. We have just survived one crisis. ff must be in despair. Your reference to the house rules is, if I may say so (with great reluctance) disingenuous in the extreme. I'm honestly thinking of packing it in, and I'm sure this must be having a similar effect on many more.

[Mr Pee]

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For God's sake drop it! Live and let live and let others do the same. Resurrecting this topic can only harm these message boards.

HS

Quite right, HS.

[jean]

This isn't a "development".

No, really, it is.

It's important to quite a lot of people. And it has nothing whatsoever to do with the definition of marriage.

I'm astonished that posters should think that anything at all to do with gay people is not to be spoken about here.

[Richard Tarleton]

I'm astonished that posters should think that anything at all to do with gay people is not to be spoken about here.

No, jean. It is solipsistic in the extreme not to reflect, just for a moment, on the (utterly predicatable) effect such discussions have on this forum. I'm talking about the forum, not gay issues. I'm sure there are other forums.

PS there are lots of aspects of sexual and gender politics, mores, whatever, you name it, that I would not necessarily expect to be discussed here. Just ask yourself where "here" is.

[amateur51]

No, jean. It is solipsistic in the extreme not to reflect, just for a moment, on the (utterly predicatable) effect such discussions have on this forum. I'm talking about the forum, not gay issues. I'm sure there are other forums.

PS there are lots of aspects of sexual and gender politics, mores, whatever, you name it, that I would not necessarily expect to be discussed here. Just ask yourself where "here" is.

For me, "here" is the Third programme and it precisely these sorts of issues that I would expect to be discussed on the Third Programme at a time of huge social change.

As I write this, Radio Three is broadcasting John Le Carré talking about Germany and the Cold War and how barely-hidden Nazism still hung around the neck of post-War Germany. I don't see much difference with what I'm reporting in this thread.

[jean]

No, jean. It is solipsistic in the extreme not to reflect, just for a moment, on the (utterly predicatable) effect such discussions have on this forum.

Don't be ridiculous. The discussions that caused so much trouble were all on the subject of marriage.

[amateur51]

Ams old friend, with the best will in the world, for pity's sake, drop it. This isn't a "development". A man on a plane said something, a minority interest magazine with a circulation of 20,000 said something else. You didn't have to start another thread on it. We have just survived one crisis. ff must be in despair. Your reference to the house rules is, if I may say so (with great reluctance) disingenuous in the extreme. I'm honestly thinking of packing it in, and I'm sure this must be having a similar effect on many more.

The man in question is the world head of the Roman Catholic Church, making a rather dramatic announcement to a planeful of journalists. Why did he speak in this way to journalists unless he wanted maximum coverage of the story?

I deliberately chose the reference in The Tablet because it is a Catholic journal. If I had chosen the Guardian or the [I]BBC [/I website I might predictably have been mocked for these choices. :erm:

[eighthobstruction]

No, jean. It is solipsistic in the extreme not to reflect, just for a moment,

Isn't that just another kind of insult RT....I'm sure you did not mean it that way, but if put in daily parlance it's something like "you are selfish and can only see your point of view".

You have to put history aside, as Am51 wrote "I didn't choose the timing". Two people wanted to say this Popes pronouncement seems to be a sea change,and I'm pleased by that.

If we are not insulting.....or impatient....or petulant etc etc about what they say the thread should go fine.