Vatican Doctors Pope's Remarks on ‘Psychiatric Help’ for Gay Children, Says He Did Not Mean It

Well, so much for infallibility!

Pope Francis © Gonzalo Fuentes / Reuters

Pope Francis told a reporter that parents should seek psychiatric help if their children had homosexual tendencies. The Vatican says he did not mean it and removed those words from the official transcript, however.

Then what did he mean?

The comment in question was reportedly made as the pontiff was flying back to Rome from Ireland on Sunday. While the Pope has earlier implied that there is nothing wrong with being gay, this time he said that “a lot that can be done through psychiatry” no later than in childhood and added that ignoring such a child is “error of fatherhood or motherhood.”

“When it shows itself from childhood, there is a lot that can be done through psychiatry, to see how things are. It is something else if it shows itself after 20 years,” Pope Francis told reporters, as cited by multiple outlets.

However, that reference was not included in a transcript published by the Holy See Press Office on Monday.

The Vatican did not deny the alteration, saying that the quote had been erased to avoid confusion. 

Now, I'm really confused!

“When the Pope referred to 'psychiatry', it is clear that he was doing it to highlight an example of 'things that can be done'. But with that word he didn't mean to say that it [homosexuality] was a 'mental illness',” a Vatican spokeswoman told AFP.

Ah! That's much better... He didn't mean to say what he said. But if he wasn't calling homosexuality a mental illness, then he was at least calling it a sin. You cannot call it anything less than a sin and believe in the God of the Bible, for He made it very clear and unambiguous. Yet, the church has had a great deal of tolerance for gays in the priesthood with many advancing to Bishops and Archbishops and, at least some, to Cardinals. Sin is progressive - nothing good could possibly have resulted from the Catholic embrace of an abomination inside the priesthood.

Last week, Pope Francis was accused of inaction over sexual abuse claims against a prominent US priest, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, which the pontiff allegedly knew about. The claim was made by former Vatican ambassador to the US, Carlo Maria Vigano, who even called for the pope’ resignation. 

However, the pope refused to comment on the allegations, calling on the public to “judge for yourselves.” 

The Catholic Church has recently found itself in the epicenter of the sex abuse scandal and had to acknowledge that priests were really involved in it, after a Pennsylvania grand jury published a report that found 300 “predator priests” had abused children for decades.

And, rest assured, Pennsylvania is no different than any other state in America or any other country in the world with regard to pedophile priests. In Australia they have determined that 8% of the country's priests were pedophiles, although in some orders the percentage was in the 20s and even 40s. 

It seems the percentage of Pennsylvania priests were likely very much in the range of 8% or more. If that holds true for the whole world, then you are looking at more than 33,000 current priests as pedophiles. Most of those pedophiles would be gay, although many gay priests may not be pedophiles, which just means that there are considerably more than 33,000 gay priests in the world, perhaps several times that. 

Is it any wonder the Bible refers to the Catholic Church as the Whore of Babylon?