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Even Progressive Catholic Leaders Can’t Keep Up With The Public Embrace Of LGBT Rights
Something's gotta give...
http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2015/04/28/3651818/catholicisms-relationship-lgbt-rights-getting-super-awkward/
Take, for instance, Monday’s announcement that Bishop John C. Wester, of Salt Lake City, Utah, will replace retiring prelate Michael Sheehan as the Archbishop of Santa Fe, New Mexico, an archdiocese that claims around 320,000 Catholics. Although the appointment surprised few, Wester’s relatively even-handed position on LGBT issues did receive nominal coverage. Michael O’Loughlin, national reporter for the Catholic news publication Crux, called Wester a “Pope Francis Bishop,” a phrase similar to those used during the recent elevation Archbishop Blase Cupich, a moderate and so-called “American Pope Francis” who took over the post of a well-known opponent of LGBT rights in Chicago last year.
...
But while Wester and other new bishops aren’t waging Cordileone-stye campaigns against LGBT equality, they do generally share his conservative understandings of homosexuality, and are often called on to repeat that fact during ongoing debates over marriage equality. Wester, like Cupich, has publicly upheld the Catholic Church’s historic opposition to same-sex marriage on multiple occasions, and called Utah’s embrace of marriage equality in 2013 “an affront to an institution that is at once sacred and natural.” More importantly, while his support for the new Utah LGBT protections law has been echoed by moderate and conservative Catholics alike, many activists argue the compromise — although a major achievement for equality advocates in the Beehive state — is not an ideal model for the rest of the country. Its wide-ranging religious exemptions are a testament to diplomacy, but are really only commonplace in deeply-religious Utah, where many laws already have religious exemptions. If the same exemptions were instituted in many other states, it would generally would be a step backward for LGBT rights.
...
But while Wester and other new bishops aren’t waging Cordileone-stye campaigns against LGBT equality, they do generally share his conservative understandings of homosexuality, and are often called on to repeat that fact during ongoing debates over marriage equality. Wester, like Cupich, has publicly upheld the Catholic Church’s historic opposition to same-sex marriage on multiple occasions, and called Utah’s embrace of marriage equality in 2013 “an affront to an institution that is at once sacred and natural.” More importantly, while his support for the new Utah LGBT protections law has been echoed by moderate and conservative Catholics alike, many activists argue the compromise — although a major achievement for equality advocates in the Beehive state — is not an ideal model for the rest of the country. Its wide-ranging religious exemptions are a testament to diplomacy, but are really only commonplace in deeply-religious Utah, where many laws already have religious exemptions. If the same exemptions were instituted in many other states, it would generally would be a step backward for LGBT rights.
The problem with any PR campaign is that eventually, people will see through the lies.
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