VATICAN (CNS/America Magazine): Two major news stories from Rome in the third week of October left Catholic discussions on media platforms with confused and critical reactions. First came the two-year extension to the Provisional Agreement between the Vatican and Beijing on the appointment of bishops in China. The second was about Pope Francis indicating support for the idea of same-sex civil unions in a clip from Francesco, an upcoming feature-length documentary by filmmaker, Evgeny Afineevsky. While the provisional agreement came along expected lines, Pope’s comments on civil unions was a surprise.
As portrayed in the documentary, Pope Francis says: “Homosexual people have a right to be in a family. They are children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out or be made miserable over it. What we have to create is a civil union law. That way they are legally covered.” Although the statements didn’t mention same-sex marriage or sexuality, they have been construed as some kind of earthquake in Church doctrine.
The pope had often has expressed openness to the idea of laws recognising civil unions, including for gay couples, to protect their rights. The pope’s comments echo remarks he has made in several interviews during his pontificate: Marriage is only between a man and a woman, but civil union laws could provide legal protection for couples in long-term, committed relationships.
Pope Francis had repeatedly said in the past that parents should not and must not disown a child who is gay and, on several occasions, he has spoken about the rights all people have to have a family. In a 2019 interview on with Televisa on Mexican television, he was asked about his opposition to gay marriage in Argentina and his openness to LGBT people as pope.
“I have always defended doctrine. It is a contradiction to speak of homosexual marriage,” … “Homosexual persons have a right to be in the family; persons with a homosexual orientation have a right to be in the family and parents have the right to recognise a son or daughter as homosexual; you cannot throw anyone out of the family, nor make life impossible for them.”
Pope Francis
“I have always defended doctrine. It is a contradiction to speak of homosexual marriage,” he said. But he also told the interviewer, “Homosexual persons have a right to be in the family; persons with a homosexual orientation have a right to be in the family and parents have the right to recognise a son or daughter as homosexual; you cannot throw anyone out of the family, nor make life impossible for them.”
While deliberating on tradition, modernity and truth in a book-length series of conversations with the French sociologist, Dominique Wolton, Pope Francis had spoken about gay marriage and civil unions in 2017. In the book titled A Future of Faith: The Path of Change in Politics and Society, he explains what he means by civil unions: “Forever, throughout humanity and not only in the Church, marriage has been between a man and a woman. You can’t change it just like that. It’s the nature of things. That’s how they are. So, let’s call them ‘civil unions’.”
“Marriage is between a man and a woman. Secular states want to validate civil unions to regulate different situations of cohabitation, driven by the need to regulate economic aspects between people, such as ensuring health care. These are cohabitation pacts of various kinds, of which I could not list the different forms,” he said.
“It is necessary to see the different cases and evaluate them in their variety,” the pope said, implying that some forms of civil unions would be acceptable. Accepting gay family members or accommodating same-sex partnerships in civil law, “does not mean approving of homosexual acts.”
According to The Great Reformer, a biography of Pope Francis by Austen Ivereigh, “He told a Catholic gay activist, a former theology professor named Marcelo Marquez, that he favoured gay rights as well as legal recognition for civil unions, but he was utterly opposed to any attempt to redefine marriage in law.”
For those who have been following the papacy Pope Francis and has become familiar with his thought and outlook, there is nothing unusual or remarkable about his comments in the documentary. The words were neither unprecedented nor inconsistent with what he has said in the past. Those who were hoping that this was a watershed moment or change in Church teaching on human sexuality will be disappointed. Those who imagined that these words somehow meant that Pope Francis had crossed an integral doctrinal line are also mistaken.
Critics of the pope’s statement have raised concerns that he is contradicting previous teaching on civil unions. Most point to a 2003 document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith stating that “respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behaviour or to legal recognition of homosexual unions.”
That document called politicians’ support of same-sex unions “gravely immoral” and said that “Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behaviour, with the consequence of making it a model in present-day society, but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity. The Church cannot fail to defend these values.”
At that time, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was run by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, who would become Benedict XVI, and was at the service of Pope John Paul II. Those who argue that Pope Francis has changed Church teaching also argue that he has departed from the teaching of the last two popes.
Boston’s Seán Cardinal O’Malley, a chief adviser to the pope, said in a statement that Pope Francis “strongly and consistently teaches that marriage is between a man and woman for a lifetime and that this is God’s plan for having and raising children.”
The pope’s “endorsement of civil unions is not an endorsement of homosexual activity,” the cardinal said, while also noting that Pope Francis is “very aware of the suffering and alienation of homosexual individuals, gay people, who are rejected by family and society.” The stand of the pope certainly calls for a change in the pastoral tone with which the Church approaches LGBT people.
