The issue, oh Pope, is not gays but sex!

By Sangeeth Sebastian

Pope Francis certainly knows how to make headlines. Nothing else explains the frenzy a relatively obscure document, authored by his hand picked bishops’, has generated among his billion plus disciples in the last few days.

The document released midway through an assembly of Roman Catholic bishops on Tuesday, reportedly extends a hand of friendship to people whom the church had hitherto regarded as pariahs, especially homosexuals.

The 12-page report in Latin was quickly interpreted by the media and the Catholic world as Vatican’s softening stand on homosexuality. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

For the record, the church already has a sympathetic attitude towards gays. The Catechism of the Catholic Church published in English in 1994 calls for homosexuals to be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity. What the church abhors, is not homosexual orientation but homosexual acts. Deliberate homosexual acts, the church teaches, are mortal sins, meaning those who commit them will be damned unless they confess and are forgiven by a priest.

The new Vatican document does not alter this reality or its official teachings on sex rooted in abstinence. Here is why that is unlikely.

St. Augustine, the fourth century Roman Bishop, who formulated the Catholic view on sexuality, regarded sex as intrinsically evil. Adam and Eve, Augustine believed, was expelled from Eden for their sexual act. This made celibacy the preferred ideal. However, those who succumb to the temptations of flesh can marry. But the teaching is clear. Every single act of sexuality must be open to procreation. This means almost all other forms of sexual acts, right from masturbation to the use of contraceptives are morally reprehensible.

The church is also diabolically wicked when it comes to defending its teachings. Cardinal Alfonso Lopez de Trujillo, Vatican’s former chief of the Pontifical Council for the Family, used to warn his audience that all condoms are secretly made with microscopic holes, through which the AIDS virus can pass. His statements were repeated by evangelical medical practitioners in Kerala as scientific truth during religious conventions (imagine the damage). Church leaders in Kerala also led the fight against implementation of sexuality education in schools in 2007 on grounds that the proposed programme included topics on masturbation and contraceptives. Catholic children, traditionally, have been taught to regard anything connected with sexual organs as improper. They were told never to touch their sexual organs or to speak about them.

To change position on any of these teachings is like opening a Pandora’s Box, as it can force the church to make changes in some of its other controversial doctrines such as abortion, which it strictly prohibits even when the life of a mother is at risk. Such reversals in traditional positions can be detrimental to its credibility or even existence.

The Vatican document, which was read aloud before a gathering of 200 plus Catholic leaders, on Tuesday, offers nothing more than a mere exhortation on whether “Catholic communities are capable of accepting and valuing their (gays) sexual orientation ” apart from a seemingly patronising “gay people have gifts and qualities to offer to the Christian community.” 

To address “real world problems” which the document claims to be its purpose, the church must dare to confront its bete noire: sex.

(This blog was posted before Vatican decided to abandon its document on homosexuality.)