Fr Chacko Karinthayil
Shalom Rehabilitation Centre
“Nagaland identifies 5315 sex workers… Supreme court directs states to provide ration to sex workers…” (Nagaland Post, Eastern Mirror news; October 29th). Pope Francis recently said “Gay people have the right to be in the family they are children of God, they have right to family. No one can be thrown out of the family or make life impossible for that. What we to do is a civil co existence law. They have the right to be covered legally”. The supreme court of India is not promoting prostitution by asking the prostitutes be provided with livelihood by the state. Similarly, the Pope is not legalizing homosexuality when he said that they have right to be covered legally. If some Christians felt that the Pope is a brother or Lucifer , they should also remember ‘I came not to call the vitreous, but sinners to repentance” (Lk.5.32).
Pope Francis has been proposing a civil co existence law to protect the homosexual people from mistreatment and social rejection in their own family circles. He has been defending the dignity of the individuals and is proposing civil laws to protect homosexuals from abuse in their own family environments, which are often rejected by their won parents, siblings and relatives. Historically the Pope has opposed efforts to inscribe same-sex marriage in law. And he still does. The idea of civil unions for same-sex couples is intended by Francis as a compromise: one that makes room for LGBT people to enjoy some protection of the law without damaging the theological integrity of marriage.
The news of Pope Francis' ‘endorsement’ of civil unions for same-sex couples in the new documentary "Francesco" has taken the Catholic world by storm. Progressive Catholics have applauded the remarks; the conservative Catholics, especially in Poland and some of the African countries have decried it as a break with official church teaching and a tacit approval of sexual immorality.
Francis' is proposing distinction between canonical marriage and civil unions. The law, he said, exists for the sake of the common good, and so it should only permit or forbid things in light of their effect on the good of the whole community. Thus, there is any number of evidently immoral activities or styles of life that ought to be permitted by the law, or perhaps even protected, so long as doing so conduces to the common good, like prostitution as an immoral activity, making of an atom bomb, capital punishment etc., the law may not forbid.
To quote an example from Nagaland is the NLTP act and treatment for alcoholics/drug users. If possession and use of drugs is punishable by law, all alcoholics and addicts should be jailed. We do not put them behind bars but treat them, because the law also accepts that addiction is a biological orientation. No one begins to drink to beat up his wife or die of liver cirrhosis. Most homosexuals are such, not by choice but by genetic makeup. (Mat.19.12). This is a call for the church to understand and accept that a most homosexuals/transgender are people who have gender identity or gender expression that differs from the sex that they are born with. They are struggling to find a place in the church and in the society that brands them are sinners.
Pope Francis has been time and again emphasizing compassion and mercy as the cornerstone of Christian ministry. The "throwaway culture" against which Francis so fiercely preaches invades the very heart of the church when Christian parents, for purportedly Christian reasons, discard their LGBT children as broken, polluted things… Young people, made to believe that they are unworthy of family, are turned out onto the streets where they are exposed to the violence of poverty, drug use and sexual assault, while trying to survive, often through sex work.
