These days there remains much buzz about Pope Francis I's meetings with Kentucky County Clerk Kim Davis and his long time friend, Yayo Grassi. Davis is a vilified woman who, while not following U.S. law, actually adheres to the official teaching of the Church despite not being a Roman Catholic. Grassi is a former student of Pope Francis, and a gay man who has been in a same-sex relationship with his partner for 19 years. Conservatives and liberals are spinning these meetings like Boethius, the 6th century philosopher might spin fortune's wheel or chatter about Lady Philosophy.
But are meetings and gestures and kisses between old friends enough to reconcile the 2,000 plus years of anti-gay rhetoric and theology espoused by the Roman Catholic Church? This ex gay-Jesuit wonders what happens to humans who desire the fullness of human flourishing when the Pope endorses nothing. For instance did Pope Francis tell his former student, who is in a same-sex relationship, that he could receive the Eucharist at mass?
Furthermore, take for example the Church's official teaching on homosexuality, where homosexuality remains against nature and same-sex sexual acts are codified as sinful. As a consequence gay Catholics are told not to receive the fullness of Jesus in the Eucharist, they are prevented from being full members of their communion because they are labeled as fringe characters and safe outsiders. All too often these men and women are passed by, with only a few Good Samaritans out there to chide passersby.
It is too easy for the Pope to hug and kiss his old friend and former student. It is all too easy for the Vatican to spin away the Pope's encounter of Kim Davis. Didn't Pope Francis embrace her?
Those embraces are betrayals of their human dignity and worth as a person because the Pope is not endorsing anything -- he is not for the gay marriage of his friend nor is he for the intolerance and discrimination of Kim Davis. What is this Pope for when he isn't for anything when it comes to human relationships, sexual ethics and morality?
To me it feels like Judas kissing Jesus at the Last Supper, or Peter denying Jesus three times. Kiss encounters make for great photo ops!
Until the Pope sits down with a pen to reconcile Church doctrine with what is truthfully occurring in nature, much as he did with climate change, he endorses nothing and sets gay people up for even more betrayal -- because Pope Francis cannot assure the world that his successor will be as "gay friendly" or "gay affirming." As a former Jesuit I know all too well how the inside of the Church works, which is why I continue to call for the Pope to change doctrine, dogma and the tradition.
Is betrayal the new norm for Christianity? No it cannot be because Jesus redeems Judas, even Peter who also betrayed Jesus by denying him three times.
As America sobers up after Pope Francis' historic visit she can finally evaluate and assess what actually happened. Nothing: When it comes to human flourishing and the dignity and worth of persons the Pope endorsed nothing.
To do something for LGBT people, their families and their community, Pope Francis can:
1) ask parishes across the world to fully welcome and accept their GLBTQ members, which dispels the myth that these GLBTQ members must seek out ghetto faith communities, e.g., St. Cecilia's in Boston or St. Francis Xavier in New York City, to fully and freely experience their God who loves them unconditionally
2) fully recognize gay and lesbian and other sexual minority Roman Catholics as full members of the Church, e.g., allowing them access to sacramental marriage, allowing them to love and to have sexual intercourse with their husband or wife
3) stop calling gay and lesbian and other sexual minority Roman Catholics disordered, intrinsically evil or unnatural, or telling them that their desires are disoriented, that their sexually intimate (though non-procreative) actions are sinful and do not lead to the fullness of human flourishing, e.g., the fullness of the expression of heterosexual marriage, that their desires for human intimacy, love and affection must be resolved through abstinence and chastity
4) acknowledge the historical and present (homophobic and heterosexist) shame, pain and "Othering" of LGBTQ Roman Catholics, e.g., through structural discrimination and the employment of negative labels and stereotypes often used to describe the LGBTQ community; especially by expressing remorse and sorrow for the way these terms have fragmented and fractured traditional or even blended Roman Catholic families, and separated/distanced/stigmatized LGBTQ Roman Catholic and non-Roman Catholic youth from/with their parents
5) state clearly that pedophilia and ephebophilia are not the result of homosexuality
6) support Employment Non-Discrimination Acts to end workplace discrimination against gays and lesbians and other sexual minorities in the United States, albeit the world, especially those men and women who serve our students in Secondary Education and institutions of learning
7) stand mercifully against anti-sexual minority legislation and policies in countries across the world, especially in third world countries, like Uganda and Brunei that criminalize and penalize same-sex sexual relations, and therefore create second-class citizens without access to human dignity
Why do I consider these social issues consonant with Christian moral teaching and ethics?
Our Pope's is a "Pope Francis Effect" grounded in a hermeneutic of poverty, a legitimate redistribution of wealth, a Pope formed by Saint Ignatius of Loyola and Liberation Theology, a Pope who knows that the presence of systemic, social and personal evil is alive and real in our world, evil that distorts relationships with God, self and others.
Yes, Pope Francis' "embrace" of the gay community and his "gay friendly" pastoral approach feels better than the strongly homophobic papacy of Benedict XVI. But as long as Pope Francis endorses nothing, and maintains (politically savvily) the same official Church teaching, he betrays his friends and the gay world with kisses.