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Sulpician Father Gerald Coleman is adjunct professor, Graduate Department of Pastoral Ministries, Santa Clara University.
Father Gerald D. Coleman, PSS
Catholic San Francisco
Oct. 23, 2020
“Homosexuals have a right to be a part of the family. They are children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out or be made miserable because of it. What we must create is a civil union law. That way they are legally covered.”
(Pope Francis, from the film “Francesco”)
This statement of Pope Francis has been described in major news outlets as a bombshell, firestorm, shock, and disaster. Both secular and ecclesiastical critics accuse the pope of diluting church doctrine and contradicting church teaching about same sex unions.
As part of the 2020 Rome Film Festival, “Francesco” was premiered on October 21, 2020 and released in the United States on October 25, 2020. The film is a documentary on the life and ministry of Pope Francis.
Evgeny Afinssevsky, the documentarian, is a Russian-born Israel-American film director, producer, and cinematographer who lives in the United States.
He began work on “Francesco” in 2018, finishing the film in June 2020. In 2015, he was nominated for both an Academy Award and an Emmy Award for “Winter on Fire,” a documentary that chronicled Ukraine’s 2013 and 2014 Euromaidan protests. His 2017 film “Cries from Syria” was nominated for four News and Documentary Emmy Awards and three Critics’ Choice Awards.
On October 22, 2020 the Italian Ministry of Culture presented him in the Vatican Gardens with the prestigious Kineo Movie for Humanity Award which recognizes filmmakers who present social and humanitarian issues through filmmaking.
Afineevsky has expressed surprise at the stir created by the pope’s remarks on civil unions as “Frances wasn’t trying to change doctrine but was merely expressing his belief that gay people should enjoy the same rights as heterosexuals.”
On October 21, 2020 Jesuit Father Anthony Spadaro, editor-in-chief of the Jesuit-affiliated journal La Civilta Cattolica, similarly told the television channel of the Italian bishops’ conference that “in no way did the pope’s remarks affect doctrine.”
While the pope’s reflections about civil unions are attracting international attention, the film itself chronicles Francis’ pastoral approach to a number of pressing social issues and displays his words and actions to those who are “on the existential peripheries,” for example, migrants, refugees, the poor, victims of clerical sexual abuse.
His remarks about homosexual persons are nothing new. In 2010, while he was archbishop of Buenos Aires, he publicly opposed efforts to legalize same sex marriage. In the 2013 book “On Heaven and Earth,” conversations between Argentine Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio and rabbi Abraham Skorka, however, he did not reject the possibility of civil unions, but strongly rejected laws that equated same sex unions with marriage. He called such “assimilation” an “anthropological regression.”
Opponents of Francis’ comments on the possibility of recognition of civil unions for homosexual people cite the 2003 document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons.”
The context for this letter is stated in paragraph 1: The need of “protecting and promoting the dignity of marriage, the foundation of the family, and the stability of society.” The document quotes the Catechism of the Catholic Church that “men and women with homosexual tendencies must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided” (no. 2258).
At the same time, the congregation expressed concern that “where homosexual unions have been legally recognized or have been given legal status and rights belonging to marriage, clear and emphatic opposition is a duty” (no. 5).
The congregation’s fundamental concern is that such recognition too easily will make civil unions “analogous to those granted to marriage” (no. 6).
The pope’s remarks in “Francesco” are interpreted wrongly if one thinks he is attempting to compromise the church’s longstanding beliefs about the sacredness of marriage. His comments in 2010 and 2013 show that this is not the case.