Open Letter to Pope Francis

October 22, 2020

Feast of Pope St. John Paul II

 Dear Pope Francis,

Thank you for assuming a thankless, overwhelming task. I cannot imagine the burdens you face. America’s upcoming election pales in contrast to the political challenges you face daily in our ‘cohesive’ Church. 

Take heart. I am not a political animal. But as a man familiar with and committed to overcoming same-sex desires, I am a faithful son of our Father through Jesus. I love our Church. And I need you to father me and others who aspire to chastity better. I am a father of four children and seven grandchildren. I know something now of what fathering is. Please hear me as I have listened to you intently over the last seven years of your papacy. 

If the media distills any truth accurately (a valid sad question today), and you are advocating that ‘homosexuals have a right to a family…what we have to create is a civil union law. That way they are legally covered’, then I must protest. However merciful your intentions are, they are wrong. 

You cannot contradict yourself and be a trustworthy father. You wrote two encyclicals-‘The Joy of Love’ and ‘On Care for our Common Home’–that each decry ‘gender ideology’ and its fruit of same-gender couples seeking ‘to create’ family. Now you advocate for that very thing? You wrote: ‘This…ideology leads to legislative enactments that promote a personal identity and emotional intimacy radically separated from the biological difference between male and female. Consequently, human identity becomes the choice of an individual.’ (The Joy of Love) And in ‘Our Common Home’, you invoked the moral law and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI when he said: ‘Man has a nature that he must respect and that he cannot manipulate at will.’ 

Regardless of one’s desires, each baptized Christian is under Christ and His Church to discover that nature and to refuse to manipulate it into any number of ‘gender selves.’ That you, our leader, would forego your own expressed beliefs in these binding documents then advocate for the very thing you opposed is fragmented fathering. It is neither a wise nor a merciful application of your care of persons. 

It is confusing at best. How can we die daily to the seduction of a global culture intent on fanning our vulnerabilities into an expanding list of fractured ‘selves’ when you bless and advocate legal ‘cover’ over them? Pope Francis, wake up. These forces are unseen robbers who are intent on destroying lives. We who through God’s mercy have repented of our sins and who now fight for the chaste dignity of our comrades are hindered, not helped, by the disassociation of your beliefs and pastoral application. 

And you are naïve to think that the LGBTQ+ juggernaut will be appeased by your ‘civil union’ compromise. It did not work ten-years-ago in Buenos Aires when you tried to appease activists by giving them ‘civil unions’ instead. Your Argentina led the way for ‘gay marriage’ in Latin America. Most of our formerly ‘Catholic’ nations have followed suit. It is fanciful, nothing short of magical realism, to think that you are striking a wise compromise with ‘civil unions.’ LGBTQ+ activists want it all-marriage and family. You give a little and they will insist on everything, as every nation I know has experienced. 

Finally, you have majored on ‘showcasing’ your fatherly expanse by including LGBTQ+ representatives at gatherings with you in the Vatican, in America, and in other ports of call. Two-years-ago, you reportedly expressed to Juan Carlos Cruz–a clerical abuse survivor and a ‘gay’-identified man–that ‘God made you this way and loves you this way and the Pope loves you this way.’ Wow. Do you really? Do you, leader of the biggest group of Christians in the world, really love his homosexuality as born of the Father? Is that as good as you can do, blessing his misbegotten effort to discover his own manhood in the arms of other men? Is that your vision of the human person, one that shreds every Scripture and Catholic moral teaching related to our sexuality? 

A true father fights for the dignity of his children, especially when they become worldly, conformed to other ‘selves’ and mastered by disordered desires. You have not fought for us. Instead, you have done us sinners a disservice, granting us false assurance in our divided states. I repeat: you have not fought for us. Love is more stern and splendid than mere acceptance. You have exhibited compromise and confusion in your pastoral care of persons with same-sex desires. Your merciful intentions are not trustworthy to me and to those I represent. As we have repented, so can you, Pope Francis.

Thank you for your consideration.