Pope Francis' stealth reform of the Roman Catholic Church shows no sign of slowing down — and may even be accelerating. Stealth is key here. If the pope had declared earlier this month that henceforth the Roman Catholic Church would authoritatively teach that homosexuals should be happy being gay, that God made them homosexual, and that God himself (along with the pope) loves them just the way they are, it would have been a massive story in the history of Catholicism — and one that quite likely would have precipitated a major schism, with conservative bishops and priests (mainly in North America and Africa) formally breaking from Rome. But because word of the pope saying these things comes to us second hand, in a report of a private conversation between Francis and a gay man named Juan Carlos Cruz who is also a victim of the clerical sex abuse crisis in Chile, the utterance will go down as just the latest example of the pope making unorthodox statements in settings in which he has plausible deniability and in which he can claim he was speaking as a pastor rather than as an expositor of the church's official dogmas and doctrines. Most popes view themselves as caretakers of the church's authoritative teachings on faith and morals.
Pope Francis' Cunning Long Game
OnlineEditor@theweek.com (Damon Linker), The Week
Wed, 05/23/2018 - 2:55am
Topics: stealth catholicism north america africa rome chile catholic church if pope francis joseph ratzinger pope benedict xvi lord september peter's synod family italian conservative catholics ross douthat but i machiavellian francis pope francis roman catholic church st i juan carlos cruz long game gay change rules god moral rule good sacrament shows homosexual declared major reform people sex dogma consequences
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