So he is a Catholic after all

Mea maxima culpa, I had my doubts on that score. Can you blame me?

Pope Francis has frequently championed new-fangled secular causes that not only have nothing to do with Christianity, but are inimical to it. Thereby he stayed on the right side of modernity but – in my respectful but firm view – on the wrong side of his remit.

An institution rooted in eternity has to be conservative by definition, if only because modernity is chiefly animated by hostility to religion. When the Vicar of Christ (or, for that matter, any priest) starts mouthing faddish leftie shibboleths, he lets his side down – theologically, philosophically, historically and politically.

Such a man fails to realise that the culture of share-care-be-aware represents a ghastly caricature, indeed denial, of Christian virtues. Nor does he grasp the derivative aspects of Christian doctrine that could serve even our daily lives better than any ‘liberal’ profanation. The Church dogma trumps dogmatic wokery every time.

For example, conservatives who abhor the uncontrollable expansion of the central state should invoke the principle behind the Church structure: subsidiarity, devolving power to the lowest sensible level. This works well for the Church, and, whenever a secular state applies this principle, it works a treat there as well.

Pope Francis has been assiduously trying to adapt the Church dogma to that of the modern liberal (actually, anti-liberal) ethos, which has provoked my occasional criticism. So much happier I am today to see that His Holiness has finally pitted the Church against the tyranny of modernity.

He decreed the other day that the Church cannot bless homosexual unions because “God cannot bless sin”. By blessing such unions, the Church would “approve and encourage a choice and a way of life that cannot be recognised as objectively ordered to the revealed plans of God”.

Stoutly spoken, and this isn’t just a restatement of the Catholic moral teaching. This is a reminder of the thin lines separating licence from decadence and decadence from degeneracy. Firmly lodged in history, the Church is aware of the gruesome fate suffered by societies that crossed those lines, or indeed even approached them.

It’s also a reminder of the transcendent value of absolute morality impervious to current appetites. Morality can’t zigzag in the wake of kaleidoscopically changing fads. If it does, it eventually becomes first immoral and then amoral.

As Pope Benedict XVI put it, “’A century ago, anyone would have thought it absurd to talk about homosexual marriage.” And his predecessor, John Paul II, found even stronger words in 2003: “The Church teaches that respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behaviour or to legal recognition of homosexual unions… [because that would mean] the approval of deviant behaviour”. 

That Pope Francis now toes the same line is quite a radical departure from his earlier statements on the same subject. For example, in 2019 he advocated a “civil union law”, and last year he added that: “Homosexual people have the right to be in a family… they are children of God”. 

The contrast is stark between the feelings underlying those statements and his current position, with His Holiness suggesting that any law equating same-sex relationships with marriages would be “an anthropological regression”.

The conservative in me rejoices, while the cynic wonders what prompted such a sharp about-face within such a short time. Usually, people of the Pope’s venerable age don’t change their views drastically, or at least take much longer to do so. Could it be that he succumbed to the pressure exerted by conservative cardinals?

However, the conservative is telling the cynic to shut up. Let’s just savour the moment and stop asking frivolous questions, along the lines of “Is the Pope Catholic?”. Of course, he is. Well done, Your Holiness – long may this continue.