7 Points Explaining Anti-gay Animus In The Catholic Church And Why It Will Never Change

From Gaystar News:
You’d be forgiven for thinking there was hope for reform in the Catholic Church.
At last year’s Synod Pope Francis and his prelates released a more enlightened document, seeking a more tolerant attitude toward gay Catholics and priests.
It wasn’t the same this year. We got one paragraph, with two guidelines: The church doesn’t believe in ‘unjust discrimination’ of gay people, and gay marriage has ‘no grounds whatsoever’.
This is not a step back. It’s a sort-of half-hearted response, shifting uncomfortably, that won’t please conservative or liberal Catholics.
It isn’t surprising. There was some pipe dreaming before the synod Pope Francis would push the church toward gay acceptance. There is some reason to believe this is what he wants; but plenty of reasons to suspect he’ll never get it.
1. The synod only creates new guidelines
The synod is a meeting of bishops and the pope with the intention of providing guidelines for Catholics in the modern world. It was never going to change doctrine. A theological discussion about whether Christian religion sees homosexuality as sinful has been going on for decades: but most mainstream Catholics say it is. The bishops attending the synod, then, saw it as beyond their power to change the church’s stance on gay people.
2. The Catholic Church isn’t built for change
The Catholic Church is unlike other religions in that it has a figurehead: the Pope. In most religions, power is decentralized among a hierarchy of dignitaries. This makes change difficult, because when it doesn’t come from the top it looks like a challenge to that authority. Acceptance of gay people isn’t coming from the top but from the secular world. Unlike governments, the Catholic Church is not a democracy: and popular demand won’t affect its decisions.
3. LGBT inclusion is not a priority
The reason this synod attracted so much attention is because the church is in a period of upheaval. It’s not just trying to assimilate modern values, like acceptance of homosexuality, but a broader base of Catholics in regions like Africa, while in America and Europe, liberal and conservative Catholics are distancing themselves from Rome.
4. The church doesn’t reform: it splits
Catholicism has had plenty of chances to evolve in the past, but it didn’t. The Protestant Church arose out of attempts to reform the Catholic Church – Protestantism comes from ‘protest’. Just think: yesterday, the Pope announced they would budge the doctrinal equivalent of an inch and provide sacrament to divorced people. If that sounds progressive, think about how they were having this same argument 500 years ago, when Henry VIII tried to divorce Catherine of Aragon. It didn’t result in reformation but with Henry VIII establishing a Church of England.
5. Pope Francis may not be so pro-gay
Whether or not the Pope is pro-LGBT is disputed. He’s met with gay couples and spoke to gay advocacy groups, but also said transgender people should ‘accept the body God gave you’ and praised ‘traditional’ families as the best there can be. He is also said to have met up with gay marriage antagonist Kim Davis – who’s not even Catholic. Even if the Pope was pro-LGBT, he can’t ignore the conservative Bishops, who have threatened he could be ’separating the church along Protestant lines’. As long as the church remains predominately Catholic, he’s prevented from pushing for change.
6. The church is not a Western organization, but a global one
We might think because the papacy is in Rome it will follow along Italian lines: conservative now, but getting there. But the church has growing bases in Africa and the Far East, where homosexuality isn’t just sinful, it’s largely punishable by death. Bishops from these countries attended the synod and wield increasing power with the papacy.
7. Catholic teachings on gays are dehumanizing: so why would they care?
At this moment, the way gay people are referred to is clinical and dehumanizing. We are ‘sinful’. In the synod document released yesterday, it revealingly talks to the families of gay people: not to gay people themselves. Why? Possibly it thinks it would dirty the pages of a church (rife in corruption), or doesn’t want to condescend to gay people (though it teaches humility, and that we are all sinners). Even the chosen word, ‘homosexuals’, is a throwback to pathologizing textbooks, when homosexuality was considered a mental illness.
It might be remarkable that in the 21st century the Catholic Church and its followers can still take such an immobile and even cruel position on gay Catholics. They wish to appear progressive, but while saying they want to avoid ‘unjust discrimination’, they don’t provide any ‘just’ reason for being so discriminatory. The church, flawed and frayed at the edges, thinks it’s too good for ‘homosexuals’: so why would it take us seriously?