The Pope and civil unions

In the news: the pope has called for secular governments to allow LGBTQ people to be in civil unions ....

Pope Francis, in Shift for Church, Voices Support for Same-Sex Civil Unions

Pope Francis, who since the beginning of his pontificate has taken a more tolerant tone toward homosexuality, appeared to break with the position of the Roman Catholic Church by supporting civil unions for same-sex couples, according to remarks Francis made in a new documentary that debuted in Rome on Wednesday.

Speaking about pastoral outreach and care for people who identified as L.G.B.T., Francis directly addresses the issue of civil unions in the film.

“What we have to create is a civil union law. That way they are legally covered,” Francis said amid remarks in which he otherwise reiterated his support for gay people as children of God. “I stood up for that.” ...

Before we start feeling all warm and fuzzy about the pope, we have to remember a few things ...

Francis has *not* suggested changing the Catholic church's stance on gay people, their actions, and their relationships. The Catechism still states ....

Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered." They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved .... Homosexual persons are called to chastity ....

And Francis has himself rejected the idea of marriage equality for gay people in his exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, writing ...

There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family ...

Francis likes to tell the secular world how to treat people, while he supports a church that treats them worse. What Francis has done is a kind of blame shifting, and he did it with women too. The Catholic church treats women like non-sentient breeding machines, while not allowing them to be priests, deacons, or to even have equality of opportunity in other Vatican jobs. Yet in Amoris Laetitia, he wrote ...

I would like to stress the fact that, even though significant advances have been made in the recognition of women’s rights and their participation in public life in some countries much remains to be done to promote these rights. ... I think of ... their lack of equal access to dignified work and roles of decision-making.

The irony is painful.

I guess we're supposed to be grateful that a guy who thought of gay marrige as the work of the devil is now ok with secular civil unions, but civil unions for gay people are already an anachronism in a world that has moved on to a truer equality - marraige for LGBTQ people. The pope's endorsement for civil unions, while sort of interesting, is so 'too little too late'.

It's time the Catholic chirch let go of their archaic teaching on LGBTQ people and joined not only the other Christian churches that support gay people and marriage equality, but also the actual Catholic people, a majority of which support that as well.

You might argue, "but the church's stance is based on the bible". It's not, actually, but that's a post for another day.