Very mixed feelings about the Pope's latest pronouncement this morning.
It is so very little. There is no real doctrinal change anywhere in Roman Catholic dogma about family life. What has changed is the tone, and it is worth noting that even that tiny little crumb met with fierce opposition from much of the Roman hierarchy. It is very little, but it is something, an incremental shift away from the rigid legalism that dominated Roman Catholic teaching on family life for decades, at least since Paul VI. The current Pope seems less willing to force the complicated mess of individual relationships into an iron template of dogmatic idea.
The Pope's perceived shift on homosexual relations would have more credibility with me if the Roman Catholic Church dropped their opposition to all civil rights legislation for LGBTQs and stopped their resistance to local and international efforts to decriminalize same sexuality. Rome would have more credibility with me if they publicly opposed the violence and persecution directed at gays and lesbians in Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Muslim world. To do so would cost them nothing. They would not have to change any of their doctrines on marriage or family. The Roman Church might even gain a little of the credibility that it lost after decades of crime and scandal, that it might once again look like a moral authority and less like an international pedophile protection ring.
Douglas Blanchard - artist of The Passion of Christ: A Gay Vision
Douglas' depiction of the encounter at Emmaus - or an alternative vision of Christian family.
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