Fr. Gerald E. Murray: Pope Francis Oversteps the Papal Office

By Fr. Gerald E. Murray, The Catholic Thing, Oct. 24, 2020

The Rev. Gerald E. Murray, J.C.D. is a canon lawyer and the pastor of Holy Family Church in New York City.

The endorsement of civil unions for same-sex couples by Pope Francis in the film Francesco, directed by Evgeny Afineevsky, is a true scandal in both the technical and popular meaning of that term. He has repudiated the teaching of St. John Paul II that “respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behavior or to legal recognition of homosexual unions” and that the “legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behavior, with the consequence of making it a model in present-day society, but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity.”

In addition to endorsing civil unions, Pope Francis says that homosexuals “have a right to a family.” What are we to make of this? There is evidence that Afineevsky has egregiously taken this statement from a videotaped 2019 interview of Pope Francis by the Mexican journalist Valentina Alazraki out of context.  …