Benedict and Francis don’t see eye-to-eye on most things but being forced to share a home has helped them realize how much their differing approaches to life complement each other.
They’re the Godd Couple.
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Oh, I’m not. If the Church hasn’t at this point, after literal decades of investigations, revelations, accusations and lawsuits, officially declared child abuse amongst its priestly classes to be an excommunicable offense and an offense against God, I have no hope that mere homophobia is ever going to be addressed that way. I’m just saying that he could.
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A 2,000-year-old institution is going to be slow to change by its very nature but I had a feeling this guy was going to start steering the Vatican in a better direction when I first saw how he was redecorating the place.
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It’s what i enjoyed about The Two Popes when i watched it last year, despite a lot of it being fictionalised.
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Franklin Graham utterly lost his shit over this
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It took about 2,000 years for the Catholic Church to start getting over homophobia, so I guess the Evangelical Christian movement should be ready to turn a new leaf by the mid-3700s or so.
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He can’t call for full marriage equality. Other Popes have spoken against it ex cathedra, so it’s fixed in place. And even so, this is a huge change. It represents a shift of titanic proportions for the largest sect of the Cult of the Blood Drinkers to change its position from “Homosexuality is sinful and evil. The only homosexuals who aren’t damned to the fires of Hell are lifelong celibates” to “They should have the right to legal protection for their families.”
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Hm. Not quite accurate:
This is a fairly modern interpretation that rests on very modern definitions of marriage.
Also, in ancient history…
Oh, and of course, Foucault’s arguments about sexuality:
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Any way you look at it, Jesus was the strongest advocate for change. Keep the ball rolling.
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Its a nonsense statement. The Pope’s opinion on any civil unions is worthless. People have them to avoid religious authority.
Anti-gay bigots/New Segregationists want ownership of the term marriage for themselves. They opposed civil unions initially and only came around to them when the marriage equality battle was long lost.
Fuck them.
Any call for civil unions now is strictly for a separate and inferior status for legally recognized gay marriages.
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Franklin Graham being up in arms over monogamous couples seeking legally binding relationships but silent over fellows who engage in extramarital affairs and threesomes with pool boys.
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Is this the same Catholic Pope, at the head of a Catholic church one of whose devout members is whatshername (rhymes very roughly with I’ma Moany Bigot) currently nominated to the US Supreme Court whose views on same sex marriage seem not to align with those of her doctrinal leader?
I thought so.
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Isn’t the Pope the Antichrist already as far as he’s concerned? Or am I mixing my fundamentalists up?
Do you have a citation for that? I though that a pope had spoken ex cathedra precisely twice, on both occasions concerning the Virgin Mary.
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In my view, a “Civil Union” is the one, and only thing, that any government should recognize. And “Marriage” can be left to the couple to define any way they want. The church can have it’s own church “marriage” with any rules about it they want, but the government would not recognize that. Any couple would need to get a separate Civil Union if they want to be legal unit in the eyes of the law.
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We already sort of have that with marriage licenses. They are a function of civil law. Officiates must meet civil legal requirements.
They can be clergy, judges, justices of the peace, ship captains, Elvises (Elvii?), friends with online certification (my cousin did this for her wedding)…depending on the state laws
The problem with civil unions are that they are marriages in all but name but an obvious inferior status. Intended to be perceived as less than marriage.
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Any talk of civil unions is a sort of admission of defeat in the subject of marriage equality. A weak concession nobody is really seeking.
Since marriage equality is becoming more commonly accepted, church objections are being ignored. It’s too little and far too late in the game.
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And I’m saying that all legal status, rights, and privileges should come from the paper that says “civil union”, and none what-so-ever from “marriage”. A “marriage” should carry no weight or status or anything, except when inside that church building. A civil union should not be inferior. It should be the only thing that matters at all to secular society. Sure, the church can deny the blood drinking or flesh eating or whatever it is they do on sunday to someone who is only legally civil unioned, but not “married” in the eyes of the church, but as far as the government is concerned, things like fitness to adopt, custody battles, inheritance, visitation rights, tax filing status, etc etc, should all be based on a legal civil union status.
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They come from the piece of paper which says marriage certificate issued by the state.
A religious wedding isn’t recognized unless a marriage license was signed by a licensed officiate. Nobody has to give a shit what a church says on the subject. The state still sets the rules here. Churches are unnecessary to marriages. So I feel no need to cede the term to them.
The whole idea of a “civil union” was to create an inferior status to marriage. Plus there is the cultural cachet of the term marriage.
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There are plenty of places that no protections for the LGBQT+ community where this could have an impact. It’s not all about the developed world.
The pope isn’t a puppet master. He can’t literally control all Catholics everywhere. Are you calling in the from the 19th century here?
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I don’t keep a running count of papal pronouncements, but they do this pretty frequently. Then later popes have to go into contortions to try to negate it without negating it.
