Rhetoric Race and Religion
That Time named Pope Francis “Person of the Year” was not a surprise. But for The Advocateto follow suit is a big bag of whut? for this liberal Catholic. Perhaps the venerable LGBT magazine thought this would be an appropriate birthday present for the pontiff, but the gift, as well as the thought behind it, is misplaced.
In case the editors of The Advocate did not notice, the Pope’s statement flying back from Brazil for World Youth Day was not a change in Catholic teaching, but in tone.
The Pope’s “If someone is gay and seeks the Lord with good will, who am I to judge” is not an encyclical, but a statement. Granted, it was a statement that shocked the world with its compassion, but the follow-up proved that it was not a change in church teaching.
In September of 2013, in an interview with Rev. Anthony Spadaro, Pope Francis made clear that he is a “Son of the Church” on matters regarding the Church’s catechism on homosexuality, abortion and contraception—but that “the dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently.”
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