Mark Silk's political spin on Pope Francis' statements

Posted to Religion News Service as a reply to Mark Silk’s reply to a person commenting on his article, “Explaining away the pope.”

*amazing that Mark Silk is: "...and in 1998 founding editor of Religion in the News, a magazine published by the Center that examines how the news media handle religious subject matter."  When he so blatantly uses the RNS news media to distort religious news.  He doesn't even have a degree in religion. 

Mike Jones Aug 6, 2013 at 5:26 pm

The individuals Pope Francis is referring to when he asks that we not marginalize them, is anyone who has some level of same-sex sexual attractions. He is not referring to how they might express behave in response to those attractions. What the Pope is referring to in terms of who he asks that we not judge is anyone, as even the Pope is only like a trial lawyer, whether for the defense or for the prosecution. Depending on the topic and point at hand. He knows that no lawyer ends up being the judge or the jury. Yet he also knows that he is invited to represent his position well in the court setting, so to speak. The setting here and his position is that same-sex sexual attractions are not sinful, and all intimate same-sex sexual behavior is sinful.

Pope Francis, thus is not judging at all. He is saying that he understands how someone could say, “the fact of a person being gay.” He would invite them to restate that, as something like this, “the fact of a person having same-sex sexual attractions, and maybe or maybe not pursuing intimate same-sex sexual behavior. He would go on to say that he would not view the person’s identity as primarily dependent upon either their sexual attractions or their sexual behavior. He would conclude by saying if the person feels that because they experience same-sex sexual attractions, that they then are correct in saying they are gay, and then saying that, it justifies same-sex sexual behavior – this would not be consistent with his perspective or the perspective of the Catholic church as to what is viewed by the church as pleasing to God.

Pope Francis wasn’t referring to actions (or behavior) when he was referring to tendencies. The Pope wasn’t asking anyone to go to Confession because of the same-sex sexual attractions that they experience.

The following article by Scott P. Richert explains well what Mark is confused about. I have made several comments to this article, joining with Scott in explaining the context of sentences such as, “gay person who seeks God and is of good will, not to be judged."

If you click on “Mike Jones” as a hotlink of any of the comments that I have posted there – you are shown all of the comments that I have made to this article.

It’s amazing to me that in most articles on Pope Francis’ statements, and even here, Mark only selects certain portions of the full statements that Pope Francis made on this topic, in his return flight from Brazil interview with reporters.

After reviewing the article in Crisis Magazine, come back and see if it is not Mark Silk, here, who is doing the political spin work.

Mark Silk's article and the comments are again, here.