Maybe, just maybe, Pope Francis will be the one to lead the Catholic Church into a doctrinal acceptance of same-sex marriage. At least that is the theory put out by many liberal commentators these days.
In fact, reports leading up to the Catholic Church’s October Synod of Bishops on the Family implied a similar possibility that Pope Francis—a Pope who is so engaged with divine mercy—might finally be swayed by the popular opinion of those who view the Church’s teaching on marriage as burdensome or archaic.
And even after the Synod, when the final report disappointed these commentators because it not only removed language “welcoming homosexuals” but also reinforced the church’s stance that heterosexual marriage was “God’s plan for matrimony and the family,” the implication was still that Pope Francis had simply lost his battle to the more orthodox Catholics and that perhaps his battle wasn’t over.
These reporters must have been confused then by the words of Pope Francis on November 17th in his speech before the International Interreligious Colloquium on the Complementarity of Men and Women. There, as he addressed religious leaders, he spoke not only on the complementarity nature of man and woman as “the root of marriage and family,” but went on to state:
It is necessary first to promote the fundamental pillars that govern a nation: its non-material goods. The family is the foundation of co-existence and a remedy against social fragmentation. Children have a right to grow up in a family with a father and a mother capable of creating a suitable environment for the child’s development and emotional maturity. . . . I pray that your colloquium will be an inspiration to all who seek to support and strengthen the union of man and woman in marriage as a unique, natural, fundamental and beautiful good for persons, communities, and whole societies.
So are there simply just two, contradictory Pope Francises? Is he, on one hand, the radical Pope as Cardinal Kasper claims, aiming to unravel Catholic doctrines created by fussy old men, or is he another, who is just another disappointing Catholic traditionalist?
The answer, I suspect, is that Pope Francis is neither. But the misunderstanding stems not from Pope Francis’ words but from the inability to understand the heart of the Catholic Church and the mercy it offers.
In an online excerpt from the book Divine Mercy: A Guide from Genesis to Benedict XVI, Dr. Robert Stackpole, STD, summarizes divine mercy as follows:
Saint Thomas Aquinas defined mercy in general as ‘the compassion in our hearts for another person’s misery, a compassion which drives us to do what we can to help him’ (ST II-II.30.1). Divine Mercy, therefore, is the form that God’s eternal love takes when He reaches out to us in the midst of our need and our brokenness. Whatever the nature of our need or our misery might be — sin, guilt, suffering, or death — He is always ready to pour out His merciful, compassionate love for us, to help in time of need . . . .
Admittedly, any church that casts judgment against homosexuals but fails to offer them a helping hand does not reflect God’s divine mercy. Using church doctrine as a diving board to splash around in the waters of hatred about a group of people with homosexual inclinations nurtures little more than self-loathing among God’s children and division within the Church itself.
Any church that replaces God-given, absolute truths with a maybe, calling into question already revealed and established doctrine, however, falls equally short of offering mercy. The Christian solution to human frailty has never been to elevate that frailty into a virtue, and such attempts to turn sin into a celebration both undermines and negates the very point of Christ’s resurrection. Real mercy works in conjunction with God’s truth–and in conjunction with the redeeming power of Christ. It desires to find ways to lift the sinner towards Christ, not church doctrine toward sin.
So, when Pope Francis considers “welcoming” homosexuals inside the Catholic Church, it does not mean he is directing the Church towards some doctrinal change on its teachings about marriage and family. It simply means he comes at the hard issue of homosexuality with a merciful approach, whose aim is to let Christ’s love lead all of God’s children toward light and start a meaningful and relevant discussion about how the church can offer the necessary support to help its children actually stay there.
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