Who am I to Judge was Gospel Truth

Anybody can make mistakes. I’ve made them myself, and I know, no matter how hard I try to source things  I write and get them straight, I will continue to make mistakes. 

The only honest thing to do when that happens is to go back and correct the mistake. If it’s a big mistake, one that attacks a person incorrectly, or misleads people into harm, I must acknowledge the mistake, apologize and correct it. Anything else would turn an honest mistake into a sinful act of deliberate slander. 

I am loathe to get into the business of correcting  people’s honest mistakes, but I just read something that really needs addressing. I am not going to name the person who did this because I have absolutely no axe to grind with them. I just want to correct what I hope and believe was an honest mis-interpretation of an often-misinterpreted quote of something Pope Francis said early in his pontificate. 

Not long after we heard “Habemus Papem” and Pope Francis walked out onto the balcony and asked us to pray for him, he was asked in an informal press conference while he was traveling on an plane about a a priest who had become something of a scandal because his homosexual orientation was publicly known. 

The press was pushing the pope, hoping for yet another headline about the intolerant and unloving Catholic Church. But Pope Francis gave them a bigger headline than that, and by doing it, he rocked the Catholic world.

Here’s what he said: If a person is gay and seeks out the Lord and is willing, who am I to judge that person? 

Ok. Tell me what’s wrong with that? Explain to me how that violates the Gospels. Because I don’t see it. 

If you are a sinner, and you

seek out the Lord, and you are willing to follow Him, would any true priest tell you that Jesus will not forgive you and love you and accept you? 

Furthermore, if you are a member of the laity, or, God help you, of the clergy, and you are going around singling out groups of people and telling them Jesus does not want them and does not love them and will not accept them simply because of what they are, then you are a liar. Worse, you are driving people away from Christ. You are in danger of murdering their souls with your malice. 

The mistake — and I do believe it was a mistake — that I am seeking to correct in this post is one of the most ham-handed misinterpretations of what Pope Francis said that I have had the displeasure to read. 

The individual — who I will not name because I have zero problem with them, but only want to address this terrible injustice to our late Holy Father — pulled this quote entirely out of context. They had gotten their hands on an edited down version of just the last half of what Pope Francis actually said. They then shoehorned it into a discussion of the clergy sex abuse scandal. 

The individual wrote a paragraph talking about this horror show of sin and depravity by many of our priests and bishops and ended it with a claim that Pope Francis responded to the rape of children by Catholic clergy and the subsequent cover-up of this crime by their bishops by saying “Who am I to judge?”

That is such a blatant misrepresentation of what the Pope said that it would be laughable except that many people are ignorant enough to believe it. 

In truth, Pope Francis removed bishops and laicized priests over the sexual abuse scandal. He even went so far as to remove every bishop in Chile because of their conduct in this matter.

The real comment that he actually made in the matter of homosexuality itself simply acknowledged the obvious: It is not a sin to be homosexual. The Catechism plainly teaches this. Same sex attraction is not in itself a sin. 

The Church’s teaching is hard. It says that homosexual sexual acts are “disordered” and that engaging in them is sinful. However, it does not teach that homosexual people themselves are in any way inherently sinful, dirty, bad or outside the mercy and love of Christ. 

I have no doubt that some of the bishops who will vote in the upcoming Conclave are homosexual. 

I also have no doubt that some of the priests who have given me communion, forgiven my sins and counseled and consoled me in dark times are homosexual. I trusted them with my self. And they were worthy of my trust. 

I have felt the Holy Spirit reach right through a homosexual priest and into me. They are conduits of grace, mercy and forgiveness just as any other true priest. 

I don’t care that some of the cardinals who will vote in the upcoming Conclave are homosexual. I do care — and I pray — that all those who will be voting, regardless of their sexual orientation, do not stifle the Holy Spirit with thoughts of ambition, money and power. 

I pray that they elect a holy pope who can stand for the Cross and Christ Crucified against the vast evil that is spreading across our world on a flood of billionaire money and greed. 

I pray that they give us a Jesus pope, a Sermon on the Mount pope, a pope of the Beatitudes. 

I pray that they will elect a pope who tells people that the mercy of Christ is available to anyone who seeks Him in repentance. 

My salvation was a free gift from the real God who loves me; not because of what I had done, but in spite of it. 

If the next pope preaches and teaches any other God, any other Jesus, he will be lying.