When I read a news report late last month that Pope Francis had publicly expressed his support for same-sex civil unions, my immediate reaction was gratitude and hope that the Catholic Church may finally be ready to make a significant move to truly welcome gay people into the fold of the church.
My second thought was that this sounds too good to be true, so I decided to do some more research before commenting on this news item.
As with many things that we hear about in the world, while the actual facts that are stated are true, we aren't always given the entire picture and the news we are given is often filtered through the biases and perceptions of the person presenting the story.
To put this in context, the statement of Pope Francis was made in a film that was recently screened at the Rome Film Festival about people whose lives have been affected by the pope. The director of the film obtained the quote in question from an interview Pope Francis gave in 2019 to a reporter for the Mexican broadcaster Televisa and approved by the Vatican.
To illustrate my point, the Vatican struck the pope’s entire quote about same-sex civil unions from the footage before releasing it to Televisa as if he had never made such a comment in the first place. The filmmaker incorporated this struck-out footage in his documentary but left out a significant sentence in which Pope Francis stated that while he approved of same-sex civil unions, "that does not mean approving of homosexual acts, not in the least" creating the impression that the pope was speaking against existing church teachings around homosexuality.
What we are left with is the reality that Pope Francis is trying to bring the church into the modern age when it comes to the treatment of gay people, while at the same time, placating the more conservative elements that continue to hold sway in the upper echelons of the organization.
Despite the incongruity in the two parts of the pope's statements on this issue, it does represent a step forward.
It creates a confusing and contradictory situation in which the church is saying that it’s OK to be gay but it’s a sin to physically act on these feelings within the context of a loving and intimate relationship. Therefore, to take the pope's full statement to its logical conclusion - same-sex civil unions are approved as long as the two people involved remain abstinent - it just doesn't make any sense and defeats the purpose for which legalization of same-sex unions was developed - to recognize the right of same-sex couples to form an intimate partnership that is legally recognized as a family unit.
Despite the incongruity in the two parts of the pope's statements on this issue, it does represent a step forward. That he did state support for same-sex civil unions publicly, on tape and in his role as the pope is very significant and represents a recognition that same-sex couples need to be included in the definition of family within our society, even if the church is not yet ready to endorse such relationships within its own walls. It is an incremental change and at some point in the future, the church will likely have to come to terms with the realities of human sexuality within the modern world.
In the world we live in, we would do well to consider the sources of where we get our news and take into account whether what we are reading reflects the whole story. Many people react to news stories that appear on social media sites and these are not always accurate; often, they can use snippets of true facts from a source and twist this to support a story that is misleading at best and can be totally the opposite of what is actually true. It is worth the extra effort to double-check with reliable sources before we click "share" on our social media accounts or we run the risk of adding to the growth of fake news that is sadly very common today.
Brian Hodder works in the field of mental health and addictions. He can be reached at [email protected].
