Francis stayed silent as country after country in Europe and the Americas legalized marriage for gays and lesbians over the past few years, in sharp contrast to his predecessor, Pope Benedict, who railed against Spain when it was out front on marriage equality in 2005; he even traveled there to speak out against it. And then came Francis’s “Who am I to judge?”response to a question about a gay priest, and several other comments that indicated his emphasis would be different.
Like an artful politician, however, Francis has seemed to play to his audiences. Six months into his papacy he told a fellow Jesuit interviewer for a Jesuit journal that he is not a “right-winger” and criticized those in the church who had become “obsessed” with gay marriage and abortion. But then in January of last year it was Francis who seemed obsessed with the issue while speaking to an audience in the Philippines, a traditional Catholic country, suggesting that gay marriage threatens families. [...]
As the Argentine government was moving to legalize marriage for gays and lesbians, Bergoglio was quietly lobbying for civil unions instead, having spoken to at least one gay activist, realizing that the rights gays were deprived of were real and knowing that he and the church couldn’t support marriage.
When that didn’t work, and the government made it clear it was moving forward on marriage, Bergoglio did what the Vatican expected of him and which, like a politician, he knew he likely had to do if he were ever to have a shot at becoming pope in Benedict’s Vatican: He issued an ugly, earth-scorching attack against gays, equating gay marriage and adoption by gay couples with the work of the Devil, and declared that gay marriage was a “destructive attack on God’s plan.”
Those kinds of words are the kind that killers of gay people take solace in. Those are the words that empower those who bash gays, and those who fire gays from their jobs. And those are the kinds of words that Francis clearly is saying the church must apologize for. If it’s not those words, after all, then what exactly is Francis referring to?
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