Pope Francis, who has been notoriously wobbly on the issue of homosexuality, has apparently joined Lady Gaga in the “Born That Way” crowd.
According to the LA Times, the pope told Juan Carlos Cruz, a Chilean homosexual who was the victim of sexual abuse at the hands of priests, "God made you that way and loves you as you are." If true - the Vatican has refused to deny or confirm - this would indicate that the leader of the largest sector of the world’s Christian populace is now taking his theological cues from pop culture rather than the Word of God.
Cruz said that the pope added, “The pope loves you as you are, you have to be happy with who you are.” The first half of the pope’s statement could possibly be considered biblical, the second half is most decidedly not. The Bible is quite consistent from beginning to end - from Moses to the apostles - that homosexuality is not okay, but rather is a perversion of God’s design for human sexuality.
While the Bible’s view is that we are to “love the sinner but hate the sin,” the Pope has now modified it to “love the sinner and love the sin.”
Homosexuality is a form of sexual deviancy because it so radically deviates from the revealed will of God regarding sexual expression. The Scriptures make it clear that any sexual expression outside a marriage relationship between a husband and his wife is contrary to God’s intention. Thus homosexuality is in the same category as adultery, sexual immorality, prostitution, pederasty, and pedophilia as forms of sexual activity that are utterly contrary to the plan of God for humanity.
The Catholic Church’s official catechism - from which Pope Francis has grievously departed - has it right. "Basing itself on sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that 'homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’”
The Pope is not only in theological error to join the born-that-way crowd, he is also in scientific error. According to eight different studies of identical twins, “in Australia, the U.S., and Scandinavia during the last two decades all arrive at the same conclusion: gays were not born that way.” (Emphasis mine throughout.) These twins, of course, share identical DNA and an identical prenatal environment. If homosexuality is genetically triggered, the concordance rate would be 100% - if one of the twins was gay, the other would be gay as well, every time. But they’re not.
As scientific researcher, Dr. Neil Whitehead observed, “Because they have identical DNA, it (the concordance rate) ought to be 100%. (But) If an identical twin has same-sex attraction the chances the co-twin has it are only about 11% for men and 14% for women. No-one is born gay. The predominant things that create homosexuality in one identical twin and not in the other have to be post-birth factors.” Strikingly, the concordance rate is even lower among teenagers, just 7.7% for males and 5.3% for females.
The “post-birth factors” include things such as the possibility, perhaps even the likelihood, that the homosexual individual was subjected to sexual abuse, as Juan Carlos Cruz was. An individual’s first sexual experience has a profound imprinting effect on an individual’s sense of his sexual self. Sadly, the pope thus minimizes the devastating impact of the abuse of young boys by priests. God does not make boys gay - sexual abuse does.
The good news is that homosexuals can, with the help of God’s truth and power, redirect their sexual energies in a heterosexual direction. As Paul said about former homosexuals in Corinth, “Such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11). I’m sure the pope knows this verse is in the Bible. Perhaps it’s time for someone in the Vatican to remind him.
