Pope said it - must be true. . .

After years of equivocating and spreading a fog over the clarity of Scripture and tradition from Pope Francis, we have this from Pope Leo:

“I do understand that this is a very hot-button topic and that some people will make demands to say, “we want the recognition of gay marriage,” for example, or “we want recognition of people who are trans,” to say this is officially recognized and approved by the church. The individuals will be accepted and received. Any priest who has ever heard confessions will have heard confessions from all kinds of people with all kinds of issues, all kinds of states of life and choices that are made. I think that the Church’s teaching will continue as it is, and that’s what I have to say about that for right now. I think it’s very important. Families need to be supported, what they call the traditional family. The family is father, mother, and children. I think that the role of the family in society, which has at times suffered in recent decades, once again has to be recognized, strengthened.”

Of course, it really does not matter what the Pope thinks.  It matters what Scripture says and the Church has confessed faithfully in response to that Word of God through the ages -- at least until things began to change and some Christians began to believe that it did matter what they thought and it mattered more than what Scripture says.  In any case, we ought to be grateful that this Pope at least has noticed what has been happening and says [traditional] families need to be supported and that the family is father, mother, and children.  It has been a while since the Vatican spoke so clearly.

We are not beholden to Rome but it helps when Rome speaks in faithfulness to Scripture and supports the rest of us who confess what God has said, His order in creation and the blessing of marriage and family.  In our times, this has been a truth confessed by fewer and fewer churches and rather ambiguously by others trying not to offend the culture.  The family is in trouble and the source of that trouble is often from voices within the churches who listen more to the pulse of the world and the press of media than to the clear and blunt teaching of Scripture.  I wish it were merely the government or society pressing against the faithful but the reality is that without Rome's clear confession we are tenuous minority.  Everyone else seems to have decided that doing what feels right in your own eyes is not a recipe for sin but for the ultimate human achievement and fulfillment.  

So, while I will not rest in my own encouragement to the faithful to hear God's Word and keep it with regard to marriage, children, and family, it does help when a voice from Rome admits that the family has suffered.  If the same Pope admits that the family has suffered in part by the failures of Francis, I will be even more encouraged.  For now, these are good words.  He has not exactly appointed the most faithful folk to positions in the Vatican to carry out these words so, like everything, we must wait and see how this pans out.

On another note, the same Pope in the same interview (how odd is it that Popes are interviewed like political or media figures!) that homosexuality, the role of women (aka ordination), family, and the Latin Mass are "hot button" issues or charged or divisive.  Well, sure, they are emotionally charged even if they will not change to approve same sex couples or the ordination of women (deacons or priests).  Of course, the traditional family (in the face of our want to change that definition) and reverent worship should not be emotionally charged but our culture has made them so.  But divisive does not mean that they need to be changed.  Truth is divisive.  I think Jesus said that.  It is the stumbling stone.  He is divisive -- setting family member against family member.  He is a scandal -- unless He is diluted or softened to make Him say and do nothing at all.  We have to remember that.  You can talk about some of these things all day long and it will not make these doctrines and issues less divisive or charged.  Sin has made the things of God a conflicted problem for us.  Redemption and faith are the only way out of it.  In the world but not of it.