Vatican recognises the 'pain' experienced by LGBTQ+ Catholics in landmark report

Majority of slaves owners were Protestant. They would double down just to spite the pope.

This goes for both the left and the right. The Catholic Church doesn't fit into the contemporary left/right paradigm, and so both sides just ignore the stuff that they don't like.

Not sure pointing to past history to prove how the popes have always been on the right side of history, is the best play here.

This Pope, or some past Pope? Because it wasn't until 1888 that the Church finally said slavery was no-take-backsies bad (after Brazil banned slavery that year, so there were no longer major Catholic slaver countries). And the Church was still using forced labour for profit in my country until 1996, over a century afterwards. For all I know, they're probably still *doing* slavery somewhere in the world even though they've finally figured out it's bad.

The Vatican is scared shitless the church with divide up even more than it already is doing. Even in recent history there's a [fresh schism every ffew years](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schism_in_Christianity#21st_century_Christian_schisms) over relativelty minor stuff. If the Pope signed some official doctrine saying contraception is OK, or women can be priests, you'd get hundreds of new popes overnight. For the guy who supposedly represents Saint ~~Paul~~ Peter the first Pope who is capable of speaking into existence new laws of heaven, he doesn't say much. Knowing this, the Vatican tries to give itself the odd PR bump by talking about progressive ideas, but never actually getting close to implementing anything.

Isn’t that most religious/overly politically minded/ conspiratorial thinking people?

Catholicism in the U.S. is such a mix, the real problem area are the evangelicals who are much more willing to go against that grain.

Good luck to people who use that shit hole sub. Not representative of Catholicism. It’s just American rad trads and crusader LARPers

can you elaborate?

If you're old enough to remember Pope John Paul II or Benedict, then Pope Francis and Leo really have been a massive shift that was almost unthinkable up to 15 years ago. This kind of hostility to any shift in the right direction that doesn't go far enough is unhelpful at best. The Catholic church does not move fast. Even mainstream politics in most countries in the 90s was outright aggressive and hostile towards gay people – they're not even *that* far behind. You do need to give people time.

In a way their statements are just PR but in a way it is also substantive. As a former Catholic who supports LQBTQA+ rights, I believe that many people need to rethink how they view organized religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular. In my humble opinion, the best way to view the church in this day and age is as a private club. It is not like the past where membership in the majority religion of a society was mandatory or highly socially disadvantagous to reject. So, in a secular society where you can freely choose to join or to leave a religious community at any time, for any reason, why do we care at all about the rules that the members of that religion impose upon themselves, so long as it applies exclusively to their community? I specifically hedge my statement by saying that this perspective applies exclusively to secular societies that have a true culture of religious freedom because I recognize that there are places where the law doesn't necessarily reflect the reality of people's lived experience. Like with any other ideology, there are many different ways to "interpret" the Catholic Church's official positions on certain issues. There are Catholics, for example, who are basically Marxists in terms of their views on economics and this is not a perspective that is really "out of line" with the gospel or the Church's traditions per se. There are also Catholics who have dissenting views on abortion. I think that this is not necessarily a heretical POV in the technical sense of the word because the church's stance on abortion has changed over time. Go read what Thomas Aquinas (a saint and Doctor of the Church) says about abortion and you might be surprised by what a nuanced stance he takes on the question of "What makes someone a person and when in the process of procreation does it happen?" If you seriously believe in an afterlife and divine judgement, this is a pretty important to answer since some possibilities don't exactly jive with the concept of God's "omnibenevolence" (a core tenant of Catholic theology). However, there are certain things that even the "wokest" possible interpretations of Catholic teaching cannot justify, like ordaining women into the priesthood or any sex outside the context of a monogamous, heterosexual relationship that has been certified by the church through the sacrament of marriage. If you know Catholicism well and are being intellectually honest, there simple isn't a good faith theological argument you can make for these things that doesn't conflict with the wider context of Catholic teaching (and no, I am not interested in debating this point). What these two past popes have been doing is simply saying that: 1) The church continues to officially recognize that these behaviors (homosexuality, divorce, etc.) are sinful in the eyes of God BUT... 2) The business of correcting this sinfulness is between God and the person themselves (i.e., they shouldn't be forced against their will). 3) Catholics ARE NOT obligated to ostracize people for living in sin, especially if they are not members of the church since they are not subject to the laws of the church anyway. Worshiping the wrong God, for example, or even worshipping God incorrectly (i.e., being a Protestant) will also get you sent to hell but we are not perpetually harassing non-Catholics or trying to change the laws of countries to ban freedom of religion. There is even freedom of religion within Vatican City itself, so clearly there is room for allowing certain sinful behaviors to legally exist. 4) Catholics ARE forbidden from harming people, either physically or materially, on the basis of their sexual orientation (and always have been). 5) Catholics ARE obligated to love people in spite of whatever behavior they're engaging in because the reality is that even openly living in sin cannot make someone any less of a child of God. No longer being in communion with the church does not put someone in a box of "people that God allows me to hate and terrorize". This would also apply to truly evil people who are engaging in non-consensual acts of violence like pedophiles and murderers. You have to love everyone and be willing to give them the chance to repent and be forgiven (not excluding the possibility of punishment to meet the demands of secular justice). Therefore, I think that these "vibe-shifts" from the past two popes are actually meaningful, even if they don't represent a fundamental change to Catholic dogma. If you don't believe me, see how furious these statements make Traddies (right-wing Catholics), to the point that they are regularly threatening to reject the spiritual authority of the papacy and start a new church (i.e., LITERAL HERESY) rather than accept that God doesn't condone them being hateful pricks 24/7. TLDR: It is true that the messaging of the past two popes is kind of just a "vibe-shift" within the church, but this vibe-shift is meaningful and positive in my opinion because there is room for interpretation/debate within Catholicism, especially with respect to the practical question of how certain beliefs/attitudes should manifest themselves in the real world. Catholics believing that homosexuality is a sin, but that they are morally obligated to treat gay people with respect and love - like any other person - is substantively better then burning them at the steak or quietly allowing hatefullnes towards gays, which has largely been the status quo in the past.

lol don't worry; God has a suspiciously regular history of changing His mind about things a couple decades after public opinion.

Let's not pretend it's an easy decision. I have read that the Pope is far too progressive for the majority of the Catholic Church especially in parts of Latin America, Eastem Europe and Africa. MAGA Catholics also seem to talk about the current Pope the same way they talked Obama. Being the Pope is not just a religious duty, it is also a political duty. Perhaps he knows he can do more good slowly moving the Conservative factions towards something in 15-20 years than seeing a split within the church. If that were to happen, we'd see a massive regression in progress from the last 60 years. The Conservative factions want everything from Vatican 2 erased for 70% of Catholics worldwide.

Any progress is good progress. I say this as a queer as f*** person. Expecting perfection is nice but refusing attempts at being better is never the answer. A gift rock is much better than a gift turd.

Don't forget the part where you're technically allowed to exist, but actually being intimate with someone you love is a mortal sin.

Yeah they act like they're accepting of lgbt people... As long as they don't expect the same things straight people get in life.  

I still don't get how people can get upset about a religion not supporting something specifically and unequivocally condemned by their religious text that they believe is the revealed word of God. "A man shall not lie with another man, it is an abomination." You can't get more explicit. Abomination means hateful to God. I'm an atheist and have nothing against gay marriage. But I have trouble understanding how people get upset about Christians or Muslims conforming to their own religious texts.

They haven’t changed their position.

Right? I mean it's nice, I suspect it'll frustrate my mother. But it's basically like "oh wow, the church finally listened to gay people like people with a full emotional life, and they've determined that their beliefs are unchanged but they really should be much nicer to them, it's pretty hard to be gay and we were a little bit dicks about it in the past." And then it's like 'wow! woke pope!'. Insofar as it might ease some lgbtqia peoples' suffering I am glad for this to have happened. But also it's pretty fuckin mid if I'm being nice.

The sin is ultimately having sex with no plan of getting someone pregnant. Showing each other love should probably be encouraged if anything.

Being gay isn't a sin, it's the sexual act itself that is the sin

Look at how long it took them to figure out slavery was bad - like 500 years of hemming and hawing, distinguishing between "just" and "unjust" slavery, saying you can enslave those people but not these ones, denouncing it for a year (but only in specific circumstances) then following up with a "Non Indecens Videtur" as soon as the king of Spain reminded the Church where the money was coming from. If they can get on the right side of any queer issues by the end of this century or even the next one, it'll be unusually fast moral progress for them.

'we may have been a little rude about this in the past, and we regret how ineffective it was. Apparently it can be difficult to be gay so we should really try to be nice and give them some time & grace to accept the sinfulness of their marriage.'

> Hate your neighbours as long as you can - Jesus or something

So true. But I do support this pope’s attempt to push forward more tolerance and peace. It’s an organization entrenched in tradition and corruption and pushing it forward is going to take a lot of time and effort. While still recognizing the massive damage it has caused.

Would even be start if the Pope stopped calling us "unnatural"... 🙄

Don’t forget the fancy hat he has, too!

Protestantism is a widely varied branch of Christianity. It basically started by rejecting the authority of the Pope and as such there's rarely a central authority in any branch of Protestantism and instead of one main branch like in Catholicism there's like 50. The long and short of it is that some Protestant branches are very conservative and some are very liberal. Baptists, for instance, are *usually* conservative but even here I have to say "usually" because Baptists are decentralized even by Protestant standards. But generally, the "mainline Protestants" - broadly speaking, Protestants that aren't Evangelicals - are more liberal and are more likely to do things like ordain women and bless same-sex couples.