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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Breaking New Ground or Too Little, Too Late?
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
So apparently this is a thing that happened:
quote:
Pope Francis: Church could support civil unions
Pope Francis reaffirmed the Catholic Church's opposition to gay marriage on Wednesday, but suggested in a newspaper interview that it could support some types of civil unions.
The Pope reiterated the church's longstanding teaching that "marriage is between a man and a woman." However, he said, "We have to look at different cases and evaluate them in their variety."
States, for instance, justify civil unions as a way to provide economic security to cohabitating couples, the Pope said in a wide-ranging interview published Wednesday in Corriere della Sera, an Italian daily. State-sanctioned unions are thus driven by the need to ensure rights like access to health care, Francis added.
This is obviously a big change, given the Catholic Church's past stance of opposing any form of legal recognition for same-sex couples. On the other hand it seems a bit smarmy to suggest to gay people that they should go backwards from the full equality they have in many places (including the Pope's native Argentina) to a kind of Separate-but-Equal status marking them as second-class families. In other words, a move that would have been compassionate and generous in the 1980s or 1990s now looks like the desperation of the losing side trying to claw back a compromise they'd rejected making years ago.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
Well, it's a start, in that it's accepting that the church shouldn't control an institution it doesn't own.
The NEXT trick will be them figuring out that civil marriage is another thing they don't own. Especially not in the myriad of countries, I believe including his own home country, in which a religious marriage has no legal status.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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Callan
Shipmate
# 525
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Posted
Frankly, its a step in the right direction but it's not enough. Ten years ago the idea of civil partnerships was enough to fill your average conservative fundamentalist with unspeakable rage against the forces of homosexuality and secularism. Now the same people are lining up to say that we support civil partnerships but gay marriage is a bridge too far. Screw them. Either we treat gay people like human beings (a clue, this is the right answer) or we don't. If we do we acknowledge that they love one another. If we don't then we should have the courage of our convictions and support the sort of thing going on in Uganda. But the whole J.C. Flannel bit needs to be dropped down a pit and abandoned. Either Jesus calls us to love our gay brothers and sisters or he doesn't. But we are not called to be a leetle bit homophobic. The whole thing is existential bad faith on a weapons grade scale.
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How easy it would be to live in England, if only one did not love her. - G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 9757 | From: Citizen of the World | Registered: Jun 2001
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Palimpsest
Shipmate
# 16772
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Posted
To quote Dan Savage "That f****** ship has f****** sailed.
I am curious if the upshot of the synod is that Francis also proposes that state back away from marriage for the divorced and only offer them some "civil union". He needs to recognize that the state is performing marriages and not civil unions.
Posts: 2990 | From: Seattle WA. US | Registered: Nov 2011
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stonespring
Shipmate
# 15530
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Posted
This is not new - it is only the first time a Pope has said it while Pope.
When it looks like there is a chance that neither civil unions nor gay marriage will be passed, the RCC tends to oppose both.
When it looks like one or the other is likely to happen anyway, the RCC endorses civil unions as being good in some ways but draws the line at marriage.
The civil union law in Austria passed with the support of the local RCC.
Francis, when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires, tried to propose civil unions as an alternative to gay marriage (and obviously did not succeed).
The RCC in the US tends to be more conservative so support for civil unions in any form here tends to be rarer among Catholic bishops, but I think it has happened.
One key difference between civil unions in English-speaking countries and elsewhere is that civil unions here tend to involve all the parental and adoptive rights of marriage (civil unions in Austria, for example, still prohibit joint adoption by same-sex couples). The partnership rights of marriage and the parenting rights of marriage tend to be viewed as two legally different things in these countries. The RCC is most worried about same sex parents being legally equal to opposite sex parents (although we all know that same sex parenting occurs whether it is legal or not). That might be why RCC support for civil unions is not common in the US.
I am pretty sure that the Pope's support for civil unions does not include joint adoption rights for same sex couples.
Posts: 1537 | Registered: Mar 2010
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Lyda*Rose
Ship's broken porthole
# 4544
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Posted
Wouldn't affirming civil unions be affirming sex outside of marriage? It seems a strange position for a pope. Would he okay it for Catholics? ![[Confused]](confused.gif)
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"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you. Thank you for my life." ~from Joe Vs the Volcano
Posts: 21377 | From: CA | Registered: May 2003
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Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
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Posted
The next step is for some future Pope to acknowledge "matrimonial communities of grace" ... ![[Devil]](graemlins/devil.gif)
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
Posts: 7247 | From: Liverpool, UK | Registered: Nov 2004
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lyda*Rose:
Wouldn't affirming civil unions be affirming sex outside of marriage? It seems a strange position for a pope. Would he okay it for Catholics?
I imagine the Catholic Church will eventually come to the same accommodation for same-sex marriage that it already has for remarriage after divorce. It will hold that in the eyes of the Church the couple are sinful sodomites/adulterers who aren't really married, but will acknowledge the existence of a legal union in the eyes of the state.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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L'organist
Shipmate
# 17338
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Posted
Best summed up as too little, too late.
If Pope Francis can't bring himself to get his church to face up to reality about marriage, divorce, same-sex relationships, etc. then perhaps he should focus more of his energies on looking after the remaining victims of the Magdalene laundries in Ireland?
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Rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quae velis et quae sentias dicere licet
Posts: 4950 | From: somewhere in England... | Registered: Sep 2012
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stonespring
Shipmate
# 15530
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Posted
Civil unions in Italian political discourse apparently refers more to cohabiting heterosexual couples and is not associated as closely with gay couples as it is in the US. The Pope's spokesman is trying to make very clear that the Pope was not implying that the government should give legal recognition to same-sex couples. But just because he didn't imply it doesn't mean that he wouldn't have an opinion on the subject if asked...
I know the Pope's orthodox on moral theology. He's just being "pastoral" as usual. It's better than not being pastoral.
Posts: 1537 | Registered: Mar 2010
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Eliab
Shipmate
# 9153
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by stonespring:
He's just being "pastoral" as usual.
He probably thinks he is.
To me, campaigning against the rights of gay people to get married just like everyone else looks monumentally spiteful. Being in favour of allowing gay people to have marriage-in-all-but-name civil unions, but being implacably opposed to calling those unions by the ordinary word for such things, namely 'marriage' appears almost as spiteful, AND looks incredibly stupid and petty.
What is so fucking hard about treating people equally under the law? It is so obviously the right thing to do, that I really don't see why someone making tentative steps towards a slightly less contemptible sort of bigotry deserves much applause for it.
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"Perhaps there is poetic beauty in the abstract ideas of justice or fairness, but I doubt if many lawyers are moved by it"
Richard Dawkins
Posts: 4619 | From: Hampton, Middlesex, UK | Registered: Mar 2005
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L'organist
Shipmate
# 17338
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Posted
STOP PRESS
Pope Francis has now said that he thinks the way the RC Church has handled the abuse of children is open, honest and transparent and that other organisations could learn a lot from the way the church has gone about facing the issue.
![[Projectile]](graemlins/puke2.gif) ![[Killing me]](graemlins/killingme.gif)
I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
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Rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quae velis et quae sentias dicere licet
Posts: 4950 | From: somewhere in England... | Registered: Sep 2012
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