From The Flighty Interview Department: Pope Says Christians Should Apologize To Gays For Not Coddling Them

Two days ago, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, one of the pope's nine closest advisers, claimed that the Church must apologize to gays because "we've done a lot to marginalize them".  He said that up "until recently, the Church has been very negative about gay people".  Did Marx intend to refute St. Peter Damian, himself a bishop as well as Doctor of the Church, when the latter combated the mortal sin of homosexual conduct in the ranks of the clergy?  Marx has been rather brazen about his attempts to "normalize" that mortal sin.

Yesterday as he was returning to Rome via plane, the pope gave another disastrous interview - by far not his first, but quite likely his worst to date.  When asked about Marx's remarks a day or so earlier, he echoed Marx as he stated that the Church as to say it's "sorry to the gay person" for "discrimination".  Not so. Anyone who engages in mortal sin, particularly unrepented and repeated mortal sin, marginalizes himself and discriminates against himself - in the worst way.  He/she deliberately cuts him/herself off from sanctifying grace and places him/herself in the position of being damned to hell forever.  Only by repentance and the Sacrament of Confession can that person find him/herself back in the friendship of God and in the communion of believers.  Or does the pope suggest that St. Paul should have apologized to that wayward Christian about whom we read in 1 Corinthians 5:1-13?

If there's anything for which the Church should be "apologizing" to gays, perhaps that shortcoming would be the refusal of so many clergy to preach to them that unless they repent they will most likely go to hell.  Perhaps it would be for the coddling of their mortal sin, causing false comfort and complacency as they careen towards eternal perdition.  Four years ago, when Father Marcel Guarnizo was thrown under the bus by the Archdiocese of Washington for denying Holy Communion to a lesbian, Bishop Knestout apologized to her.  For that, I truly believe that Knestout really owes her another, different apology.  He should apologize to her for coddling her mortal sin and for not displaying true pastoral solicitude in his refusal to call her to repentance.  Sadly that won't happen at this time for it seems that the pope has just confirmed Knestout in his cowardly statement to the lesbian.

If this is what the pope calls being "pastoral", we now have a problem of wolves dressed in shepherds' clothing.