Same-sex Marriage

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Podcast: Yes, Israel vs. Hamas was No. 1 story; but watch Global South flocks during 2024

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Podcast: Yes, Israel vs. Hamas was No. 1 story; but watch Global South flocks during 2024

Am I alone in thinking that leaders of the Religion News Association probably wish that they could have delayed shipping the ballots for their poll to select this year’s top religion-news events and trends?

The bombshell Vatican document encouraging priests to bless same-sex couples (and other Catholics in “irregular” marriages and relationships) would have ranked very high in the list of the Top 10 international stories. As you would imagine, this was one of the main topics in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in).

A hint of what was coming could be seen in the fourth item in the global RNA results:

The Vatican says it’s permissible, under certain circumstances, for transgender Catholics to be baptized and serve as godparents. Pope Francis criticizes laws that criminalize homosexuality as “unjust.” A meeting of German bishops and laity calls for the church to approve blessings of same-sex unions.

Ah, the ongoing progressive reformation in Germany. Hold that thought.

Meanwhile, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith insisted that its move was pastoral and will not change ancient Catholic teachings about the sacrament of marriage. However, the press coverage fueled waves of confusion in which activists on the Catholic left and right noted that the symbolic nature of these rites will be completely impossible to ignore or control. Scan the 20,000+ news stories, if you wish.

Only one question remains: Who will the Vatican discipline? The German bishops who push on with their attempts, via the Synod on Synodality, to change church teachings on this matter or the doctrinal conservatives in the Global South and elsewhere who reject this document altogether? I wonder that Cardinal Raymond Burke and Bishop Joseph Strickland will say about that?

Let’s back up for a moment. The top stories in both the International and U.S. lists were linked to the hellish Hamas attack on Israeli civilians and then Israel’s attempts to crush the terrorists who, as always, were based in Gaza locations shielded by helpless Palestinians.


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The Religion Guy (as usual) dissents somewhat on the votes for 2023's top religion stories

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The Religion Guy (as usual) dissents somewhat on the votes for 2023's top religion stories

When it comes to religion news, what ultimately mattered in 2023?

Colleagues in the Religion News Association (RNA) divided their annual choices of the year's top stories into two categories. Incidents of hatred against Jews and Muslims ranked number one in U.S. matters, while the related Israel-Hamas war led international items. Thirdly, Pope Francis was deemed the year’s top newsmaker in religion for the fourth time.

It’s hard to argue against the two top stories, but The Guy observes that we have no idea whether U.S. hatreds are a temporary sickness that will subside, or whether anything can really alter the essential questions in the decades-long Mideast conflict. Thus, The Guy leans toward the importance of permanent changes in direction as depicted below.

he results of the RNA members’ poll were released just before Monday’s revolutionary “declaration” from the Vatican’s doctrine agency, following frequent nudges from Pope Francis, that lets priests provide blessing ceremonies for same-sex couples and for Catholics in “irregular” situations, presumably meaning those divorced and remarried.

The Church of England’s parallel approval for same-sex blessings, implemented the day before the new Vatican edict, gravely worsened this year’s split over marriage and sexuality among Anglicans worldwide, a divide that has been widening for decades.

Several important stories are ongoing and we cannot yet judge their long-term import.


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Pope's same-sex blessings stunner inspires headlines and firestorms about those headlines

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Pope's same-sex blessings stunner inspires headlines and firestorms about those headlines

Catholics around the world — reacting to waves of media coverage — are still debating the decision by Pope Francis to allow priests to bless same-sex couples. 

Many rejoiced in seeing bold headlines about the decision, while others across the doctrinal spectrum argued it could sow confusion and exacerbate tensions further between progressives and conservatives within the church.  

The 5,000-word document — known as Fiducia supplicans and issued by the Vatican’s Doctrine of the Faith on Monday — elaborated on a letter the pontiff sent to cardinals that was published in October. In that letter, Pope Francis had said such blessings could be offered under some circumstances if they didn’t confuse the ritual with the sacrament of marriage.

This new declaration repeated those conditions, but also reaffirmed that marriage is a lifelong sacrament between a man and a woman. The Vatican said the blessing of these “irregular” situations — which also includes divorced Catholics — must be non-liturgical in nature and cannot be done at the same time as a civil union. 

As alway, intense mainstream-media coverage played a major role in the firestorm surrounding this Vatican document, with many journalists struggling to define the difference between “blessings” for same-sex couples and rites recognizing the validity of those unions.

The confusion shaped the debates. In the end, the document “will undoubtedly be considered yet another black mark on the memory of this pontificate, according to Steven O’Reilly, who runs a blog called Roma Locuta Est.

“Now, in an effort to defend this document, the Francisapologists or ‘popesplainers‘ will no doubt rely on the fact that the new Vatican document does say that the ‘form’ of the blessings for individuals in same sex relationships ‘should not be fixed ritually by ecclesial authorities to avoid producing confusion with the blessing proper to the sacrament of marriage,’ ” he said. “So, the document in its first few sections appears to be consistent with past teaching.”


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Perfect for Christmas headlines: Pope Francis OK's blessings for same-sex couples (sort of)

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Perfect for Christmas headlines: Pope Francis OK's blessings for same-sex couples (sort of)

When you thought all Pope Francis had in mind for this coming week was the traditional midnight Mass at the Vatican, the pontiff had something else up his sleeve.

One day after Francis turned 87, the Vatican dropped a bomb — a major victory for the progressive leaders of Europe’s shrinking Catholic churches who want to march forward with efforts to modernize Catholicism. How will bishops respond in the growing churches of Africa, Asia and the Global South?

As GetReligion has stressed, this story has been hiding in clear sight in Germany for more than a year — while receiving little or no coverage. Now, it is time for America’s most powerful newsrooms to ramp up their headlines.

Starting with the Washington Post’s 66-word lede:

ROME — The Vatican on Monday issued formal, definitive permission for Catholic priests to bless same-sex couples, as long as those benedictions are kept separate from marriage, a decree that amounts to an about-face after decades of discord between the LBGTQ+ community and the Catholic Church, which has long upheld that homosexuals are “disordered” and said any nod to their unions would be tantamount to blessing sin.

The guidance from the powerful Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, issued after papal review and approval, largely reverses a 2021 ruling and expands on a far briefer statement of support for such blessings issued by Francis in September in response to questions raised by conservative clerics.

In other words, Pope Francis has been signaling for some time that some sort of approval for same-sex blessings was coming down the pike. No one expected him to choose the week before Christmas to do so.

One has to wonder why Francis didn’t give his bishops more of a heads up as to when this was going to happen. Here they’re coming into one of the busiest liturgical weeks of the year and the last thing they need is a major doctrinal switcheroo like this to land in their laps.

Couples in “irregular situations” as well as “couples of the same sex” may receive priestly blessings, the Vatican said, so that these “human relationships may mature and grow in fidelity to the Gospel.”

And what are these “irregular situations?” Divorce? Divorce and remarriage outside the laws of the church? Cohabitating couples? Big recipe for confusion here.


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Podcast: Is Cardinal Burke being 'political' by asking the pope questions about 'doctrine'?

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Podcast: Is Cardinal Burke being 'political' by asking the pope questions about 'doctrine'?

Let’s start with some basic facts about a hot, hot story on the religion-news beat — the escalating clashes between Pope Francis and doctrinal conservatives in his church.

We know that Pope Francis and the wider Synod on Synodality camp wants to bring a wave of “reform” to the Roman Catholic Church, with some openly stating that this includes the modernization of doctrines as well as the pastoral-care practices linked to traditional doctrines.

We know that Cardinal Raymond Burke and others — mostly leaders from the era of Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI — insist that their primary goals are to defend the church’s doctrines, primarily on moral issues, as stated in the Catechism and centuries of church tradition.

Thus, journalists need to thinking about the meaning of several words that they are using, over and over, in coverage of this clash inside the Church of Rome. These three words were at the heart of this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in).

What three words?

The first word is “reform.” In a previous post, I turned to online dictionaries and found this useful set of definitions for that loaded term:

Reform …. * make changes for improvement in order to remove abuse and injustices; "reform a political system" * bring, lead, or force to abandon a wrong or evil course of life, conduct, and adopt a right one; "The Church reformed me"; "reform your conduct" ... * a change for the better as a result of correcting abuses; "justice was for sale before the reform of the law courts" ... * improve by alteration or correction of errors or defects and put into a better condition; "reform the health system in this country" * a campaign aimed to correct abuses or malpractices. ...

What doctrines and pastoral traditions are we talking about?

The Associated Press report focusing on the pope’s latest actions against Cardinal Burke — the loss of his apartment in Rome and, most likely, his stipend — offers the following:

Burke, a 75-year-old canon lawyer whom Francis had fired as the Vatican’s high court justice in 2014, has become one of the most outspoken critics of the pope, his outreach to LGBTQ+ Catholics and his reform project to make the church more responsive to the needs of ordinary faithful.

Twice, Burke has joined other conservative cardinals in issuing formal questions to the pontiff, known as “dubia,” asking him to clarify questions of doctrine that upset conservatives and traditionalists.


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Mainstream press ignores statements in which Pope Francis doubles down on doctrine

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Mainstream press ignores statements in which Pope Francis doubles down on doctrine

Catholics around the world are currently preparing for Advent. But there’s another period they are all currently experiencing that can’t be found on any liturgical calendar. 

Catholics are living in a post-Synod on Synodality church where the debates from the month-long meeting that took place at the Vatican last month continues to reverberate, even with the efforts by Pope Francis to put a lid on news coverage of the discussions and speeches that took place during that event.

Europe, in particular, has been the epicenter of the action since that meeting of bishops wrapped up on Oct. 29. The synod was led, for the most part, by Europeans.

Indeed, in a span of nearly a month, we’ve seen violence against churches — a trend we have documented here at GetReligion for years now — and Pope Francis’ letter saying German bishops are “increasingly” moving away from the church’s position on a number of issues. 

Let’s start with the church vandalism. 

This is what Catholic News Agency reported on Nov. 17: 

During the night of Nov. 14–15, unidentified persons destroyed the altar and stole sacred vessels from the Basilica of the Sacred Heart in the Archdiocese of Rouen, France.

According to the French newspaper Le Figaro, the prosecutor’s office confirmed that the Sacré-Coeur basilica was vandalized and that the unidentified persons also smashed a statue, although the Blessed Sacrament was not stolen.

The authorities have not yet identified the vandals, but local police have already launched an investigation to find them. 

CNA also reported this: 

A recent report from the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe (OIDAC) indicates that France ranks third for the most hate crimes against Christians in 2022, with 106 out of a total of 748.


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Church of England backs same-sex blessings and the elite press yawns, once again

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Church of England backs same-sex blessings and the elite press yawns, once again

What we have here is a battle between two relevant parables linked to a major religion-beat story.

The first is that classic ducks analogy. You know the one (care of UsingEnglish.com): " If it walks like a duck, looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's a duck"

In other words, if the Church of England narrowly approves the use of stand-alone (that’s crucial) rites to bless same-sex relationships, then that is the visual equivalent of same-sex marriage rites. Cue the “duck.”

It’s safe to say that a formal, honest change in Church of England doctrine on marriage would be the last straw for the stressed-out Anglican Communion causing a schism that would probably end up in the lap of King Charles III. At this point, Global South leaders — representing about 75% of Anglicans in pews — have already proclaimed that it's time to start cutting the ties between the "Canterbury Communion" and the rest of the Anglican Communion.

Does it matter that the technically evangelical Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby abstained from the vote? Click here for a conservative Anglican news-you-can-use collection of his actions on this issue in the past.

So the walking duck image is certainly relevant, in this case. However, this brings us to an image that I have used several times here at GetReligion — with Anglican news events, even. I am referring to the “lighthouse” parable and, dang it, it’s relevant once again

As the story goes, this lighthouse had a gun that sounded a warning every hour. The keeper tended the beacon and kept enough shells in the gun so it could keep firing. After decades, he could sleep right through the now-routine blasts. Then the inevitable happened. He forgot to load extra shells and, in the dead of night, the gun did not fire.

This rare silence awoke the keeper, who leapt from bed shouting, "What was that sound?"

Now, once upon a time, almost anything that Anglicans and/or Episcopalians approved on LGBTQ+ issues was automatically one of the year’s most important mainstream news reports. Ditto for actions by Pope Francis or Catholic leaders in once-important lands (think Germany).

Now, this no longer seems to be the case.


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Podcast: CNN offers an old opposition-research file on Speaker Mike 'theocrat' Johnson

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Podcast: CNN offers an old opposition-research file on Speaker Mike 'theocrat' Johnson

Before we return to the never-ending saga of Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and his efforts to create a totalitarian theocracy that destroys democracy in America, let’s pause for a Journalism 101 case study.

Don’t worry, this is directly related to this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in).

Now, gentle readers, are any of you old enough to remember Marabel Morgan, the evangelical superstar who wrote “The Total Woman,” which sold something like 10 million copies? Morgan was an anti-feminist crusader clothed in pink (as opposed to something else) who had a knack for infuriating blue-zipcode elites. Here is a quick flashback, via the Faith Profiles website:

An editor at Time magazine once confided in Marabel Morgan that he came away from a cocktail party with high-heel marks all over his chest at the mere mention of her name.

And what heinous crime did Morgan commit that could provoke such a sharp reaction? Morgan wrote a book in the early 1970s that sold more than 5 million copies about how she salvaged her marriage. The widespread belief was that she proposed that women rekindle their marriages by such innovations as greeting their husbands at the door dressed in Saran Wrap or having sex under the dining room table.

Whee!

During my early 1980s religion-beat work at The Charlotte News, I ventured out to a suburban megachurch where Morgan spoke to several thousand fans. I left that meeting absolutely furious, my mind packed with outrageous punchline quotes from her (I had to admit entertaining) speech.

Driving back to the newsroom on deadline, I started figuring out what would be in the crucial first two or three paragraphs of the story. Then I realized that, if I followed my own prejudices, I was going to frontload this story with stuff that would fire up my editors and others who detested Morgan and her tribe.

Thus, I decided to attempt a story that opened with material that included (a) what Morgan said that I knew would appeal to her critics and (b) what she said that drew cheers and applause from her supporters.


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Pope's media blackout created a shadowy Synod on Synodality, with its own 'sideshows'

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Pope's media blackout created a shadowy Synod on Synodality, with its own 'sideshows'

Sometimes the boring stuff is the most important. Anyone who has ever worked in journalism for several decades, such as myself, can attest to this. 

Whether you’re sifting through legal documents or financial statements, there’s more often than not a story — or at the very least some important information that can be used as supporting material — that can be gleaned from such an exercise.  

The same often goes for materials and documents released by the Vatican. I often try to read Holy See correspondence in Italian (like the United Nations, the Vatican often puts out information in a variety of languages) on the Vatican website or in its official newspaper l’Osservatore Romano.  

But information out of Rome, often resembling a fire hose, was down to a trickle over the past month. That was the story that loomed over the whole Synod on Synodality story.

For several weeks, there were no documents to read through and very few notable news conferences. You ended up with talking points about the lack of talking points. It was, to be blunt, next to impossible to know what was happening. Maybe that was the point?

We know, now that this second phase of the synod has come to an end, that the Vatican issued a document that “said it was ‘urgent’ that women have a larger role but postponed discussion of major issues such as ordaining women as deacons and failed to address outreach to L.G.B.T.Q.+ Catholics.”

That’s what The New York Times reported this past weekend upon the synod’s conclusion. It should be noted that the final phase will take place in October 2024. At that point, recommendations on what doctrinal changes — yes, doctrinal changes — the church should adopt will be put in front of Pope Francis for consideration.

While there was plenty of coverage once the meeting was over, there was little to no coverage of the synod while it was taking place. At least no coverage that informed readers in general, and Catholics in particular, on what was actually going on inside the Vatican these past few weeks. Almost all “information” available was second-hard or from Vatican approved voices. There were no transcripts or videos of crucial speeches, for example.

The reason for all of this was a simple one. Pope Francis wanted a media blackout.

That’s right. A meeting meant to inspire open dialogue was held under a veil of silence.


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