A couple of thoughts about the Pope and Kim Davis
Last edited Mon Sep 28, 2015, 07:28 PM - Edit history (1)
There have been articles posted here and elsewhere about Pope Francis' statement, in apparent support of Kim Davis, that government officials have a human right to decline to discharge duties that violate their conscience. Just so you understand where I am coming from, I am a 54-year-old gay man, an Episcopalian, a staunch supporter of marriage equality as well as all other civil rights for LGBTQ persons -- causes I have supported since the day I came out 35 years ago, in 1980, at the age of 19. I have very much admired Pope Francis' statements on issues such as economic inequality, social justice and the environment. So you might expect that this news would come as some terrible disappointment to me. But the fact of the matter is that I just can't get particularly incensed by it. The way I see it, it is simply an indicator that the Pope has his blind spots (as does his institution). I can still applaud him on those areas where he is a breath of fresh air. But there are also a couple of other things to keep in mind . . .
First, we don't really know what information the Pope has been given about the Kim Davis case, or whether it was information he gleaned on his own or if he might have been briefed about it by, say, an American bishop or other aide. I can imagine that if he was briefed on it by someone like Cardinal Archbishop Timothy Dolan, for example, then the information would have had quite a spin on it.
But besides all of the above, there's a certain fallacy built into the question that was put to the Pope, in that Kim Davis was never denied the right to refrain, herself, from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The option of allowing others to issue the marriage licenses she felt she could not, as a matter of (alleged) conscience was available to her from the beginning, and was offered as a way to avoid legal action by the lawyers for the couples who ultimately sued. But she refused that because she wanted to prevent any of her staff from issuing the licenses as well. Somehow, I suspect that if Pope Francis were fully apprised of all of the details of this case, he might see it rather differently. And if not, well, then I guess he's just infallibly wrong on this particular subject. 
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supports marriage equality.
The fact that several mainstream Christian denominations support marriage equality is not well known or
understood. The Pope doesn't speak for all Christians any more than Kim Davis does--despite her
insistence that she has a direct line to God.
. . . that is to say, churches in Eastern Europe and central Asia that are in full communion with and under the jurisdiction of the See of Rome, but whose liturgical tradition is that of the Eastern Orthodox churches. Prior to the 11th C., both the western (Roman) tradition as well as the eastern Greek/Byzantium tradition ordained married men. IN both traditions, bishops must be unmarried. The Orthodox churches still follow that practice, but there's a catch: married men can be ordained priests, but priests who were unmarried at the time of ordination must remain unmarried. The Eastern Catholic churches are permitted to continue to follow that practice, even though they are under the Pope's jurisdiction.
The celibacy requirement in the West arose primarily because, in the middle ages in Europe, there was no legal provision for institutional ownership of church property. The local parish church was considered the property of the local parish priest. As priests and bishops, married or not, began siring children all over the place, in order to prevent church property from passing to the heirs of a priest, celibacy was introduced as a requirement for priests and bishops. (If a priest had no heir when he died, his parish property would become the property of his bishop.) The theological arguments in support of priestly celibacy were largely after-the-fact rationalizations.
