It’s impossible for me to be any kind of a fan of the current Pope, primarily because he takes no action about any of the high-sounding words he utters.
He makes noises about poor people, but the princes of his church lead sumptuous lives that could fund food and medicine for tens of thousands of people, even hundreds of thousands.
Francis himself lives with some modesty, but he allows thousands of senior church officials to live like high-level business executives. He could change that with a snap of his fingers, and obviously he ought to, but he chooses not to.
His natterings about the poor are lies.
Francis lies constantly, particularly about the sexism inherent in the church and the church’s horrific homophobia.
When he first took office and started to make nice-sounding noises about gay people, he raised a lot of hope. People got the idea that he was progressive. He encourages that idea. A lot. He has a PR department that puts out press release after press release about what a lovely fellow he is.
But his actions are vicious and cruel. While mainstream news sources run by credulous straight people reported his nice words breathlessly, he strengthened and nailed down a church ban on gay men entering the priesthood.
He encouraged parents to send their gay children to conversion therapy. Some of the press tried to pretend that’s not what he really meant. But it’s exactly what he meant. His words were crystal clear, and the faithful took him at his word.
He lied to a group of parents in Rome a few months ago telling them the church loves their gay children and accepts them. Yet LGBTQ kids in Catholic schools are routinely threatened with expulsion. Some of them have been forced into psychological counseling they don’t want simply because they’re gay.
These things have been reported extensively in the press and even in the Catholic press, and Francis has done absolutely nothing, even though people say they’ve brought the matters to his attention.
A woman in Detroit who had been music director in a church for decades was fired just before she retired, for no reason other than being a lesbian. She gave her life to the diocese, and the diocese through her away like garbage.
Also reported in the press, and Francis did nothing. Not one damn thing. And that sort of thing happens everyday. Catholic press have been reporting for years that a wave of anti-LGBTQ staff purging has been going on. It started while Francis was pope, and he has done literally not one thing to stop it.
I could go on and on and on, because I write about this constantly. But my main point is that Francis is a vicious homophobic bigot and a lying sack of shit with the best PR department money can buy.
But even if he weren’t personally so loathsome, the one thing I can never look past is that children all over the world everyday are taught in schools that I, my loved ones, and people like us are literally depraved and intrinsically disordered.
Depraved!
What evil, vicious, horrifying language that is.
It’s beyond me why anyone tolerates the Catholic Church. It’s beyond me how any person of good conscience could be associated with an institution that is so horrifically homophobic. Certainly if the people who said those things were in the corporate world or even just people’s neighbors, people would shout them down and treat them with revulsion.
As a gay man, I am horrifyingly saddened to understand that people will not shout the Catholic Church down. I’m shocked and appalled that people who consider themselves to be of good conscious associate with any member of the Catholic clergy, who to me are demonic agents of repression and persecution.
