First American pope elected and will be known as Pope Leo XIV

Curious, do you think he's wrong that it's at odds with what was taught by the apostles? It's obviously unpopular, but I have yet to see a convincing argument (based in the teachings of the Bible) that promotes same-sex marriages.

If I were in his position, and part of my duty is to interpret and lead via "the holy scriptures," then I would probably want to be as accurate as possible.

> my duty is to interpret and lead via "the holy scriptures"

Said scriptures also says that a woman can be sold to her rapist after he violates her. I think a more modern interpretation would not be a bad idea.

What do you mean? There are plenty of "modern" interpretations. New scholarly commentaries come out almost every year. My point is that, among these, the prevailing assumption continues to be one that doesn't support same-sex marriages in the church.

What is lacking, from my perspective, are scholarly interpretations that swing the discussion the other way. The best I've seen simply just exclude the problematic scriptures which really isn't within the Catholic tradition (inerrancy of scripture and all).

contexnt: I've studied religions (and still follow the topic) and have a basic understanding of where things are, but take it with a grain of salt.

My understanding is that the Catholic church does not actually take scripture as the sole source for church doctrine. “Sola Scriptura” is a thing for some — perhaps even most — Protestant denominations. But not for the Catholic Church.

> “Sola Scriptura” is a thing for some Protestant denominations.

And, infamously and comically, isn't exactly well supported by the text itself.

Christians can't agree on pretty much anything in the Bible, which is why there are thousands of different sects, and a Wikipedia entry for "schisms in Christianity" that is dozens of entries long.

Not the New Testament. Christianity has the luxury (compared to some other religions..) of having very few "divinely ordained" rules. The teachings of Jesus supersede the stuff from the Old testament (the one with all not very nice things) however they are rather vague and undefined.

So various churches can freely pick/discard almost whatever they want besides the 10 commandments while Muslims can't exactly just throw away the Quran or Hadith (which are much more specific)..

Indeed. You can find yourself in some very frustrating loops, down to the parsing of words back to the original languages they were translated from, when trying to argue the Bible as a sole foundation for literally everything.

Source: grew up in churches that tried to do just that.

Yes, this is accurate, they have a whole element of "tradition" that gets encompassed into teachings. However, I may be wrong, but these "traditions" mostly came out of areas where the Bible wasn't super clear. I suppose that's where the debate is, then, because it seems to be a minority view that the Bible doesn't have a clear definition of marriage.

I think the crux of the problem is that with all the statements the Bible makes, at a plain reading of the text, who are we, as mere humans to decide which parts should be strictly adhered to, or which parts should not, or which parts mean something completely different from the plain reading? As far as I can tell there is no consistent application of logic and understanding what parts matter and which parts do not. And depending on who you talk to, those parts change.

I understand that as part of the faith, it is not our place to know the reason God has chosen. However, I believe that there are very serious concerns about the intentions of the people 'qualified' to interpret the texts. Relying on "just trust us" gets us into big trouble, fast.

As the saying goes, the devil may quote scripture too.

I don't think that's a fair statement. For example, a large majority of denominations (I'd say >80%) agree on something like the Apostle's Creed [1]. But yes, for less core doctrines, there are sometimes dozens of flavors.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostles%27_Creed

> The teachings of Jesus supersede the stuff from the Old testament (the one with all not very nice things) however they are rather vague and undefined.

Except Jesus said that he didn't come to abolish the law but to fulfill it, and not one stroke of a letter of the law will pass away. So he didn't change anything about slavery, mistreatment of women, etc.

That is true, but doctrine does need to not violate scripture. So if the Bible prohibits something (which IMO it pretty clearly does prohibit gay relationships), the church can't say "well actually it's ok now". If that did happen it would cause quite a crisis for the church, since it is a Catholic article of faith that God guides the official dogma of the church as he guided the humans who wrote the books in the Bible. So if the two are in disagreement, the whole faith kinda collapses.

Prooftexting is not a good idea. If you think you have a gotcha, then you should get in line with the multitude of teenagers who think they've bested the Church with a verse, and from a bad translation at that.

Think about it. It's been thousands of years. A little humility is called for. You're not the first or the last to make flippant remarks like this without understanding.

It's important to realize that while the pope's main role is to guard revelation from corruption and manipulation, the teachings on same-sex attraction and the gay lifestyle do not require revelation. They rely solely on the natural law. Ethics rooted in unaided reason suffices.

He also said 'Love your neighbor as yourself' and a bunch of similar things. Which kind of makes it complicated. I guess selling other people to slavery is fine as long as you also sell yourself (just like mistreating others).

> didn't change anything about slavery, mistreatment of women, etc.

The "fulfill" bit is rather ambiguous. AFAIK the most popular interpretation (certainly when it comes to ceremonial rules like not eating pork/shellfish/etc.) is that his intention was to "bring the law to its intended goal/purpose" rather than to maintain it in perpetuity.

If you're basing everything on the Bible, then you must understand that the Bible was canonized by men in a way that fit their beliefs. Even the beloved 10 commandments are different for Catholics than from the Old Testament. After getting to an age to understand this, the holiness of the scripture just lost its bling for me.

The Old Testament said to not eat pork. The church today says it's okay. It also says not to keep the festivals of the pagans specifically one where you cut down a tree and adorn it with ornaments, yet it is now top two "holy" holidays

> I have yet to see a convincing argument (based in the teachings of the Bible) that promotes same-sex marriages.

Here you are.

https://whosoever.org/letter-to-louise/

Memories of using Strong's reference to do this very thing.

> Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's.

Christianity has been comfortable with fairly sophisticated realpolitik since day zero.

Oddly enough practically the only philosophers who buy "natural law" arguments against homosexuality are Christian.

Makes my motivated reasoning detector go off.

If you're genuinely interested in learning more (and not just sneering at your outgroup), then I would suggest reading "Hard Sayings" by Trent Horn. In that book, he attempts to tackle some of the more difficult (to modern minds) passages in the Bible and explain why things that may seem contradictory are not necessarily so. This is definitely a topic where theologians and apologists have thought about it and tried to come up with answers.

But none of that ever applied to gentiles. Not before Christ, not after. Jews today do not claim that non-Jews are obliged to, or even ought to, perform any Mitzvot whatsoever -- and that's despite generally acknowledging that there are universal moral laws which bind all "children of Noah".

So if the remaining Jews continue following the Old Covenant, but others choose to rather follow Jesus' 'New and Eternal Covenant', then where would this obligation towards Old Testament law come from?

Gay penguins are massively inconvenient for “natural law” arguments.

> The teachings of Jesus supersede the stuff from the Old testament

And teachings of Paul supersede the stuff from Jesus.

To be fair modern Jews don't really follow the laws from the book of Deuteronomy (the one with rape -> marriage thing..) either due to other (but in a way kind of similar) reasons

It would be hard to argue that the bible actively promotes same-sex marriage, but I think you could reasonably argue that it says nothing on the subject and so leaves it for the church/community to decide.

There are places where the bible gives guidance for heterosexual marriages, but that doesn't necessarily mean that all other marriages are prohibited. Most people are heterosexual, so it makes sense that the bible would talk about marriage in a heterosexual context.

There are also several verses that condemn gay sex, but I think you could make the case that it's not talking about the types of loving, committed gay relationships that we have in mind today. And also, even if gay sex is forbidden, you could still hold that gay couples are allowed to get married and adopt children, but that they should remain celibate. That's rough, but Christians commonly hold that heterosexuals aren't supposed to have non-procreative sex either. For comparison, the American Jewish Conservative movement holds that male-on-male anal sex is biblically prohibited, but all other aspects of gay relationships are permitted. And even though the sexual act is forbidden, it's also forbidden to invade someone's privacy by questioning whether they're doing it.

That's not exactly a "gotcha." The church's official stance on women has changed drastically over the last couple millenia. It's reasonable to suggest that its stance on same-sex couples might eventually change as well.

When did Jesus say ANYTHING about homosexuality?

Jesus never said he was superseding a single thing. His entire ministry was about railing against the legalistic structure of the Pharisees, who were more interested in following "the Law" than having common sense or taking care of people. His ministry was about Jews, for Jews, and had nothing to do with gentiles at all. The grifter Paul is the one who opened up their cult to gentiles.

> As far as I can tell there is no consistent application of logic and understanding what parts matter and which parts do not

I would disagree. The art of hermeneutics has been around for a _long_ time and has been refined over time as we develop new understandings about the ancient cultures that wrote these documents. So, yes, things do change, but I would argue they do not _dramatically_ change. For example, the message of "the gospel" has been the same since the founding apostles. But our understanding of something like Genesis 1 has changed dramatically over the years as our understanding of the sciences, history, etc. increase.

For much of Christian history the Bible was largely interpreted as being pro slavery and against interracial marriage. Most people now disagree with those interpretations. There is growing support for LGBT within the church. Here's one example https://thomasjayoord.com/index.php/blog/archives/introducin...

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished”

He didn't.

He did say slaves should obey their masters, however. It's weird that Christians have no problem opposing slavery despite it being unambigiously supported by the Bible, and verbatim by both God and Jesus, but they absolutely cannot budge on homosexuality.

Even though the Bible only explicitly forbids sex between men, meaning the Church should have no stance whatsoever on lesbianism, yet they do. It's like they want to eat their cake and have it too.

OMG I haven't thought about Strong's Concordance in so long. Memory unlocked, haha.

For the (fortunately) uninitiated:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong%27s_Concordance

This document plays at least two shell games, declaring that “homosexuality” as its own concept is recent (within 200 years) but then smoothly omitting this when discussing scripture, instead of analyzing scripture and then inserting the modern concept. No wonder it doesn’t find any condemnation of a concept it excluded from consideration!

It then does a similar trick where the authors of the New Testament are acknowledged to have poor Greek in many cases but then using specific word choice to claim they meant an extremely forced reading, relying on the previous trick a bit too.

There’s even a discussion of how nitpicking word choice is bad practice earlier in the same document!

Ah right. So "for those issues on which doctrine is silent, we will use my opinion".

We'll call it "natural law", to suggest that it comes from somewhere other than some random human.

Got it.

For some added context, Prevost is an Augustinian. Augustine of Hippo himself was not a biblical literalist.

Jesus travelled around the land healing the sick and helping the poor. He didn't travel around the land with a sign saying "God hates fags".

There are just a few (oblique) mentions of homosexuality in the New Testament. It clearly wasn't a main concern. Pope Francis' interpretation always seemed completely consistent with scripture. It's the extremely heavy emphasis on homosexuality that's inconsistent with it.

Also: being gay and gay acts are two different things. Catholic priests are not supposed to engage in any sexual acts, so in that sense, it doesn't really matter if a priest is gay.

> It would be hard to argue that the bible actively promotes same-sex marriage, but I think you could reasonably argue that it says nothing on the subject and so leaves it for the church/community to decide.

This is where I've yet to see convincing evidence. The whole meta-story of the first few chapters of Genesis was about creation. Not just creation of the universe as we know it, but the pro-creation between a man and a woman in the sanctimony of marriage.

Whether you have an overly-religious view of Genesis or not doesn't really change the fact that the original authors were clearly "sanctifying" this act of pro-creation (the "meme" if you want to use Dawkins' terms). Other cultures and tribes obviously had their own ways of sanctifying it, but in a large, almost universal majority of cases, it was always between a man and a woman.

Changing the gender to same-sex more or less destroy's the original intention of the meme. I mean, you can do it, but I don't think you're walking away with the authentic thought that was being communicated by the authors.

I'm purely speaking from an academic sense here (the art of understanding what someone wrote a long time ago). Sure, we can choose to ignore and/or change it because it's "out of date" but that leads back to a point I made elsewhere about how it's not usually within the Catholic tradition to so blatantly alter scripture.

This is usually taught within the first year of any seminary or religious study of Christianity. It's widely understood _why_ people are now permitted to eat pork. A good place to start is reading modern commentary on Acts 11:4-6 and basically all of Romans 14.

I don't think you understand what that means. There are 3 types of Jewish laws and only one (the moral law) still applies.

You aren't bringing up the moral law.

Which leads to many Protestants saying the Bible is infallible, but which books belong to the Bible is not infallible. Which, don't tell them, means they have no clue if the books they think are infallible are actually infallible.

And the New New Testament could come out and say that same sex is not taboo and there's plenty of people in the world now to not be concerned about shallow gene pools.

The point is that the canon of writings assembled into the book is based on how people think at the time. Things change and evolve. A book canonized today would probably undo even more of the old testament teachings as archaic and no longer relevant with their version of Romans 14 and Acts 11:4-6. Francis 2:8-10 or from a series of letters sent to the people of Americas instead of Corinthians. These writings are just a snap shot in time

But I don't know why we are playing hypotheticals here. Such a dramatic change (i.e., introducing Francis 2:8-10) is far outside of the bounds that have been set for thousands of years within the Catholic tradition. The original discussion was why it might be more appropriate for a Pope to have a view that reflect's the biblical understanding of marriage rather than one that fits the modern times. If he is leading the global church through interpreting scriptures and maintaining the traditions, such a dramatic change as introducing new teachings that would seemingly contradict our prior understanding of marriage would completely step outside the bounds of his office.

My argument based on the teachings of the Bible would be that Jesus said to judge a tree by its fruit. When I look at Christians who oppose LGBTQ people their fruit tends to be... not great. On the other hand, those who support LGBTQ people tend to be much more Christlike.

> Even the beloved 10 commandments are different for Catholics than from the Old Testament.

What differences are you referring to specifically?

> The whole meta-story of the first few chapters of Genesis was about creation. Not just creation of the universe as we know it, but the pro-creation between a man and a woman in the sanctimony of marriage

I find this to be a very strange reading. I never got that from the creation narrative at all. Looking through it, I only see two places that seem to be about marriage. First there's Genesis 2:22-24:

> 22. And God YHVH fashioned the side that had been taken from the man (adam) into a woman (ishah), bringing her to the man (adam). 23. Then the man (adam) said, “this one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. This one shall be called woman (ishah), for from a man (ish) was she taken.” 24. Hence a man (ish) leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife (ishah), so that they become one flesh.

This doesn't mention procreation at all! It seems to say that men and women come together because they have a common origin, not necessarily because it produces offspring. You could still say that this supports heterosexual marriage, but I don't see any particular reason to read it as prohibiting other types of marriage. And in fact, it seems to work fine with gay marriage – two men or two women are also presumably from the same flesh and bones as Adam and Eve.

Then there's Genesis 3:16:

> And to the woman [God] said, “I will greatly expand your hard labor—and your pregnancies; in hardship shall you bear children. Yet your urge shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.

This says something about bearing children and about male-female relationships, but it doesn't really draw the line saying that the purpose of marriage is to produce children. It also presents all of this as an unfortunate state of affairs.

I guess there's also 1:28-29:

> 28. And God created man (adam) in the divine image, creating them in the image of God—creating them male and female. 29. God blessed them and God said to them, “Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it; and rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and all the living things that creep on earth.”

That talks about reproduction, but it doesn't say anything about marriage.

> I'm purely speaking from an academic sense here (the art of understanding what someone wrote a long time ago).

Right. I think whoever wrote the creation story was trying to provide an explanation for why the world was the way it was: why the world exists, why there are seven days in a week, why there are men and women, why they have dominance over the animals, why there's suffering, why snakes have no legs, and so and so forth. I don't think they meant for the creation story to give instructions at all, except a moral that one should obey God. I don't get the impression that the author was trying to sanctify marriage or procreation at all. If they were, it seems like they would have described Adam and Eve's wedding, they would have spent more than one sentence on the birth of their first child, and they wouldn't have presented pregnancy as a curse.

You keep ignoring the main point in that the canonized book was done so by men that selected writings that they felt represented the views they held. For thousands of years, pork was bad. Suddenly pork was good, so writings they felt supported that decision were included. If there were writings that taught otherwise, it was very convenient to leave them out. Look at the writings of Enoch as an example. It didn't toe the line, so it was omitted. A decision made by men.

The catholic version makes no mention about idols. It then splits covet into 2 separate commandments; one about neighbor's wife, the second about neighbor's things. There are many websites with much more details easily found with a simple search comparing differences of the catholic ten commandments

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/exodus/20 verse 4 starts with "You shall not make for yourself an idol". And yes, different denominations number the commandments differently, but with the exception of Samaritanism, all Abrahamic faiths agree on what the whole of them are.

> You keep ignoring the main point in that the canonized book was done so by men that selected writings that they felt represented the views they held

No, you're trying to trivialize changing the canon of the Bible. It's a pointless argument if you're not going to adopt the understanding of the Catholic tradition and then argue within it as the subject of this conversation is the Pope.

I was under the impression we were arguing why it's important for the Pope to have an accurate view of the Bible. Instead it seems like you're just wanting to say that it's all man-made anyways so might as well change it which is a completely foreign thought process to a genuine Catholic.

> You keep ignoring the main point in that the canonized book was done so by men that selected writings that they felt represented the views they held

No, you're trying to trivialize changing the canon of the Bible. It's a pointless argument if you're not going to adopt the understanding of the Catholic tradition and then argue within it as the subject of this conversation is the Pope.

I was under the impression we were arguing why it's important for the Pope to have an accurate view of the Bible. Instead it seems like you're just wanting to say that it's all man-made anyways so might as well change it which is a completely thought process to a genuine Catholic.

The catholic tradition of changing the canon? They modified the 10 commandments to allow for idols. Moses's own brother got in trouble for making an idol. You think that was some small change? They did it to increase their membership and income streams. Allow the pagans with their mother/son idols to keep them with a Mary/BabyJesus rename, and bada-bing, new members. So excuse me if I don't hold their respect for canon quite so sacrosanct as you apparently do.

> I don't hold their respect for canon quite so sacrosanct as you apparently do.

That's fine, it just makes it pointless to make a argument for what the office of Pope should and shouldn't do. It's like going into a Muslim country and telling everyone how stupid their views are because you don't respect their holy texts. Why bother?

That was my point, you're not interested in having an actual conversation. Which is fine. That's why I said I had a misunderstanding of what was going on here. But it's clear now.

> That talks about reproduction, but it doesn't say anything about marriage.

Later in chapter 2, God is quoted as saying:

> Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and cling to his wife, and they shall become one flesh

Jesus himself then comes back and quote this exact verse in Genesis in the context of divorce being bad (Matthew 19). It's clearly referencing marriage within the context of creation.

You may not agree it's the central thrust of the text, and perhaps I overstated the position, but marriage between a man and a woman is certainly a major theme in these first two chapters. I'd be impressed if you can find Rabbinical texts that support a different theory.

The 10 commandments are the same. Catholics just order and number things differently than Protestants. Both have the same commandments, unfortunately, some Protestants can only read a sentence and don't

I don't think you know what natural law means. This is from wikipedia.

It wouldn't matter if 99% of animals and humans were gay.

> Natural law[1] (Latin: ius naturale, lex naturalis) is a philosophical and legal theory that posits the existence of a set of inherent laws derived from nature and universal moral principles, which are discoverable through reason. In ethics, natural law theory[2] asserts that certain rights and moral values are inherent in human nature and can be understood universally, independent of enacted laws or societal norms. In jurisprudence, natural law—sometimes referred to as iusnaturalism[3] or jusnaturalism,[4] but not to be confused with what is called simply naturalism in legal philosophy[5][6]—holds that there are objective legal standards based on morality that underlie and inform the creation, interpretation, and application of human-made laws.

The Bible is a book used by a much wider audience than the Pope's followers. The pope at the time just tweaked the book to increase his followers. A very convenient reasoning from the Pope's perspective. So you seem to not be accepting that on why would a pope should and shouldn't do.

Since the time of the canonizing of the book, lots of history has happened where the pope of the time has softened some of what was traditional practices. Again, not sure why it is okay to accept some pope from historical time could canonize the bible, but a future pope would not have similar authority to make further amendments. He is the Vicar after all, and is infallible. Unless you do not believe that about modern popes??

I said you were trivializing it, not that it was impossible. My original comment is it's "far outside the bounds" of what has been traditionally done by Pope's. To suggest that the answer to the question on marriage is to introduce an entirely new canon to the Bible that appears to contradict previous books of the canon (I supposed he'd have to remove those at the same time) is simply unprecedented and has never once occurred in the history of the church since the Bible was canonized.

I don't see how an appeal to natural law holds any value since humanity has a near infinite ability for motivated reasoning. To the point where if someone advocates natural law that suggests to me either that they have a serious lack of wisdom or they aren't arguing in good faith.

Germans love Paul

Biblical interpretation does not work like that. Later texts cannot abrogate earlier texts. Whatever they say must dovetail with the things said earlier, not contradict them. That actually doesn't leave a lot of manoeuvring room (as in, any room) for changing core beliefs.

The Bible doesn't even have the concept of race as we understand it today, because that concept is a very recent invention (to my understanding). Anyone using it to support anti-interracial marriage positions would be doing so anachronistically, rendering their own claim invalid.

Natural law isn't really related to the reason why people are motivated to do something. It is considered one motivation, but not the only one.

Also, what does your comment have to do with gay penguins that i was responding to? I was just trying to show natural law has nothing to do with gay animals.

Yup. He said that in the Bible. But he also fed people on the Sabbath because there were people needing to be fed, not because the recognition of the Sabbath day was abolished, but because the ridiculous legalistically dogmatic adherence to the Law was harming people. Just like today, where we've got ICE agents rushing parents and leaving their children alone in the backs of their vehicles. Also, his fulfillment was about being the sacrifice that sinners couldn't make for themselves, not about ignoring Old Testament laws.

Interesting that you should mention the Old Testament. 2025 is a year of Ordinary Jubilee. I'd invite you to research what a Jubilee Year meant to the Jews, and what it currently means to Christians. Because Jubilee Years have never been abolished.

Hint: there's parts about freeing slaves, about repatriating foreigners, and about fallow fields. It's really sort of awe-inspiring how our secular government is implementing Jubilee by fiat.