Monday, June 27, 2016

The pope's Request for Forgiveness from the LGBT Community

Sacramental theology refresher: if you come to confession and confess a sin and seek forgiveness, but tell the priest that you will continue to commit the sin and have absolutely no intention of changing your behavior, the priest must withhold absolution, because you're not sorry for your sin, you just want a "get outta hell free" card. Your "confession" is actually in and of itself sinful. (Note -- I'm NOT talking about people confessing habitual sins they find it very difficult to quit, but who have every intention of doing what they can to change, even though they believe the efforts will not be completely effective. I'm talking about people who have NO intention of changing their behavior.)
So when pope Francis is saying the Roman denomination should seek the lgbt community's forgiveness, but will continue to refuse to marry same-sex couples and will continue to work to prevent-laws giving rights to same-sex couples (as he himself has done recently in both Italy and Slovenia), and will continue to write anti-transgender encyclicals (such as his environmental encyclical), he is NOT sorry for the actions of his denomination at all. He is worried that, post-Orlando, people will connect the dots between religious hatred of lgbt people and violence against lgbt people.
Until and unless he officiates at same-sex marriages, requires all Roman clergy to do so as well as a condition of continuing in their ministry, announces his denomination's support of legalizing same-sex marriage and laws against discrimination, rewrites his environmental encyclical to remove the anti-transgender portions, and otherwise changes his behavior and that of his denomination to stop hurting lgbt people, his apology is meaningless and nothing but a "get outta just criticism free" card.

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