{"id":1995,"date":"2013-03-23T10:20:00","date_gmt":"2013-03-23T10:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2013\/03\/pope-francis-i-and-gay-civil-unions.html"},"modified":"2013-03-23T10:20:00","modified_gmt":"2013-03-23T10:20:00","slug":"pope-francis-i-and-gay-civil-unions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2013\/03\/pope-francis-i-and-gay-civil-unions.html","title":{"rendered":"Pope Francis I and gay civil unions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
<\/a><\/div>\n

Where are the blog posts? \u00a0I\u2019ve been waiting for the Catholic Blogosphere to say something. \u00a0After all, the story continues to gain momentum in the secular press, as in\u00a0here<\/a>, and here<\/a>,\u00a0here<\/a>,\u00a0here<\/a>, here<\/a>,\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And so on. \u00a0I finally found Jimmy Akin\u2019s take on it<\/a>. \u00a0True to form, Mr. Akin takes the time to unpack the issue and cut through the spin. \u00a0His basic take is that then Cardinal Bergoglio was just trying to limit the impact of gay marriage. \u00a0Quoting various passages from recent Church documents, the picture is painted of a Cardinal in the last,\u00a0desperate\u00a0moment before the battle is lost, trying to claim some ground to limit the impact.<\/p>\n

I have no\u00a0doubt\u00a0that\u2019s exactly what happened. \u00a0But here\u2019s the thing. \u00a0I think Mr. Akin is wrong in saying it\u2019s spot on proper, at least as spot on proper has been defined in recent years. \u00a0There is nothing in the numerous passages he quotes that says the Church or Church leaders should ever \u2013 ever \u2013 condone and cooperate with something that is grave and mortal sin. \u00a0One of the\u00a0quotes\u00a0says just that.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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<\/i>.<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n
The common good requires that laws recognize, promote and protect marriage as the basis of the family, the primary unit of society.<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n
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. (Emphasis mine<\/b>)<\/span><\/div>\n

As for those quotes that instruct on how to deal with this issue as it gains momentum in a society, none of them say \u2018ah, go ahead and support the issue, just at a lesser level.\u2019 \u00a0They say that one could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/span>I admit,that\u2019s some pretty nuanced and fiberoptically thin reasoning that could create loopholes large enough to sail an oil tanker\u00a0through.<\/p>\n

But what gets me, what I see in this entire piece, is basically an argument that the Bishops, the Church, the\u00a0Magisterium\u00a0as we like to call it, are saying that there are just times when you have to go for the lesser of the two evils. \u00a0Slap down your seal of approval on lesser evil way. \u00a0That might not be what the various documents are saying. \u00a0But it\u2019s the out that Mr. Akin is giving to then Cardinal Bergoglio, that when pressed, you can dabble about with the lesser of two evils. <\/p>\n

I must admit, I don\u2019t know where Mr. Akin is on such things as \u2018voting for either party is cooperative with grave evil\u2019, or \u2018better that ten million babies be tortured to death than to tell a white lie to save them.\u2019 \u00a0I know he\u2019s run afoul of fellow bloggers over some of his stances in the past. \u00a0Perhaps he\u2019s been somewhat soft on such things, less legalistic, and willing to remember that the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath in things other than whether the Pope should wear a\u00a0miter\u00a0here or there.<\/p>\n

But there are those who have proudly staked a claim to being non-hyphenated\u00a0Catholics\u00a0on the virtue that they know there is never, ever a time in which you can budge an inch over the issue of condoning or supporting grave evil.<\/p>\n

Of course just what happened, and what Pope Francis did, will be open to endless debate. \u00a0The Catholic Church possesses what I call the gift of Catholic Unspeak: The ability at times to almost come darn close to saying \u00a0things in a\u00a0definitive\u00a0way yet never in such a way that at least three other\u00a0interpretations\u00a0couldn\u2019t be leaned upon in a pinch. \u00a0So I doubt this can be, for anyone paying attention, a \u2018Gotcha!\u2019 moment, whether you support gay marriage or are dead set against it. \u00a0The winners will likely be the Truth Today non-hyphenated Catholics, who are\u00a0busying\u00a0saying everything about Pope Francis is wonderful, he\u2019s the bomb, and only the vile hyphenated crowd thinks otherwise<\/a>. \u00a0There will be enough wiggle room, no matter how they\u00a0interpret\u00a0the story above, to declare Francis\u00a0the\u00a0greatest thing since paper\u00a0miters.<\/p>\n

FWIW, I admit there seems to be a tendency in the\u00a0Church\u2019s\u00a0teaching to say it\u2019s better that evil should triumph for a time than to do any thing wrong at all to save it, to refuse to use the Ring, period. Just to what level that is applied varies, of course, but those who insist that the slightest white lie is unacceptable even to save children from the Nazis definitely have the wind at their backs in most debates. \u00a0So the interesting thing will be to see, if this story continues to unfold as it is unfolding, just how they square \u201cFrancis is the greatest\u201d with \u201cvile\u00a0hyphenated\u00a0Catholics\u00a0who support evil to stop evil\u201d and the events as laid out by Mr. Akin. <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Where are the blog posts? \u00a0I\u2019ve been waiting for the Catholic Blogosphere to say something. \u00a0After all, the story continues to gain momentum in the secular press, as in\u00a0here, and here,\u00a0here,\u00a0here, here,\u00a0here\u00a0and here. And so on. \u00a0I finally found Jimmy Akin\u2019s take on it. \u00a0True to form, Mr. Akin takes the time to unpack the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2805,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nPope Francis I and gay civil unions<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Where are the blog posts?  I've been waiting for the Catholic Blogosphere to say something.  After all, the story continues to gain momentum in\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2013\/03\/pope-francis-i-and-gay-civil-unions.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Pope Francis I and gay civil unions\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Where are the blog posts? 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