Pope Francis is to be given a lot of credit for his remarks on income inequality and his emphasis on the poor. His remarks on the value and importance on the virtue of mercy has touched many hearts and souls.
Yet there seems to be a disconnect between the new Pope and the way American Catholic Church speaks and treats gay persons.
“I DON’T understand,” said Nick Johns, whose Catholic church outside Atlanta asked him to resign from his job as an organist last May, as it became better known that he had a male fiancé. “They make it clear that they don’t think being gay is wrong, but they think gay people should be celibate,” he said, accurately describing Catholic doctrine. “And now that I’ve found the love of my life, I can’t imagine God wanting me to suppress that. If God made us and he gives us the gift of love and he gave me that gift, and if he made me this way, why wouldn’t he want this?”
And this becomes the problem for a gay Catholic who does not want to lose his or her job in a Catholic institution:
For a gay person who doesn’t want to be exiled, secrecy is smarter than honesty, which is supposedly a virtue.
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