Why Can We Not See Love?

Pope Francis makes a statement, and the world becomes divided. The statement read, “Homosexual people have the right to be in a family. They are children of God. What we have to have is a civil union law; that way they are legally covered." Theologians from both sides of the aisle argue that the Pope is looking to change dogma. Other theologians are arguing that the Pope is making a step towards bringing healing to homosexual people.  

While I can look at both sides of the arguments, I want to point out that no media outlet has given the full statement of where these two sentences came from. I encourage people to ask themselves, “Were the words taken out of context?” The first issue is the Pope did not speak this in English. We are aware that many languages have words that do not mean the same thing in English. We need to look at the sentences prior to these two sentences. Then, we need to look at the sentences after the statement. Once we start looking at the whole context of the materials, then we will begin to understand how these two sentences were meant to be.

Next, I always ask people especially during difficult topics, “Where is your Christian love?” I ask this question because many times we make arguments and get on our high horses. We tell people that we can no longer be in a relationship with the person. We lose friendships, family relationships and any other relationship. This is all because the person has different views on life. We decide to close the door to our relationships because people do not have the same views as us. I want to ask is that what Jesus did.

Did Jesus decide not to love the woman at the well? Did Jesus decide that He was better than the tax collector? Did Jesus believe that children should only be seen and not heard? The answer Jesus always gave was love. Jesus wanted us to know that we all belong to God. We are all children of God. God does not tell us that He can not love us because we committed too many sins. God does not tell us that we have no rights. God tells us through out the Bible that we belong to Him.

The Pope’s comments are not changing dogma. His comments are about uniting us to say that we must give everyone we come across the love and respect that they deserve. We all have the right to have a family and to love, hence the reason why at mass we are considered one family. By living a Christ- filled life, we are allowing others to see the true Christ and love. We all deserve love and the feeling of love. While I can not speak on specifically what the Pope’s intentions were, I can speak on Christ’s love. The love Christ has for us is powerful. If God did not want all of us to have love, then He would not want us to spend eternally with Him. The Pope’s message seemed to me to be about loving people and showing everyone mercy.

Most importantly, I think we need to realize that love is the reason why we are children of God. It is not our job to judge others and tell them that they do not deserve love. If anything, maybe we need to look at ourselves and see if we understand love. My friends, we will all be judged on judgement day and we will not be judged by each other, but by one merciful God. And if anything, I do not want my God to tell me that I cannot spend eternity with him because I did not extend love to my brothers and sisters in Christ who needed loved the most.