This morning, the world has been greeted with headlines proclaiming that ‘Pope Francis blesses gay marriage’. It stems from hysteria related to use of older comments in a new documentary about the pope, entitled ‘Francesco’.
As with many other similar instances of controversy in the papacy of Francis, such as the ‘Who am I to Judge?’ fiasco, a mix of Francis’s ambiguous speaking style and deliberate lies by the mainstream media are to blame, though this time there is the added aspect of the strange nature of Frances’s documentary. We must also lay some of the blame at the feet of the Vatican Press Office, who appear to be the only people in the world who have not yet commented on the issue.
A quick rundown of what happened.
The comments were released as part of promotion for the new documentary Francesco. The documentary is directed by Israeli director Evgeny Afineevsky, a former Israeli Defence Forces Member. Afineevsky is a long time promoter of same sex marriage, specifically with relation to families. His debut film was ‘Oy Vey, My Son is Gay’, a comedy about a Jewish family learning to accept their son’s homosexuality. Afineevsky has in the past claimed that the church gets it wrong on gay marriage and in 2013 he shared a news story on social media which claimed that Pope Benedict had come out as gay.
Afineevsky appears to be using the film to coincide with President Trump’s reelection campaign, he has posted inflammatory messages in the past decrying the president and the trailer is critical of the president’s election campaign.
Afineevsky is an award winning film maker, but he never makes a film for entertainment. Two of his recent releases Cries from Syria and World on Fire have been used to bolster Western intervention in Syria and Ukraine respectively.
The comments from Francis were presented as if they were part of a new interview. They had actually originated from mid 2019. Although the exact comments released in the documentary do not seem to be in this upload.
Despite this, two interviews that Pope Francis has given since seem to point towards these comments as having been taken out of context and misconstrued.
In a later interview, Pope Francis said that it is an incongruity to speak of homosexual marriage.
Pope Francis has been accused of supporting Civil Unions since at least 2013. This stems from the fact that in Argentina, Francis followed the 2003 teaching of Cardinal Ratzinger and Pope John Paul II which stated that it was permissable for the political defense of civil unions if it was a lesser evil to stop same sex marriage, if the total abrogation of the unjust law was not immediately possible.
This scandal is reminiscent of the 2010 story where Pope Benedict was alleged to have endorsed use of condoms. The Vatican acted quickly in that instance and it is now mostly forgotten about.
The panicked reaction from faithful Catholics is reasonable, but we need to start becoming more media savvy. The media are no friends of Catholicism and lie about every aspect of our faith and our lives. We do not trust them with other aspects of the news, so why with the pope?
Having said that, that media literacy must apply first and foremost to the papacy and to the Holy See. This has been a distressing incident for many Catholics it is one in which the clarification has not come quickly enough (it has not come at the time of writing). This director has no business making this documentary, this documentary had no business being time for release to be used to influence the US election.