Pope Francis Welcomes Divorcees To Church, Closes Door On Gay Marriage

Pope Francis exposed his ideas regarding divorce, gay marriage, and other social issues affecting family life in a 256-page document titled “Amoris Laetitia,” or “The Joy of Love,” published on Friday. In addition to addressing topics that are commonly controversial amongst the Church, the Pontiff offered answers to questions that are of pastoral care such as, sex, communication, commitment and love in general.

Francis, who has been praised but also criticized for a having a slightly more liberal point of view about today’s lifestyles and communities, encouraged his clergy to welcome sinners and saints into the Church, and exhorted them to extend an olive branch of mercy to divorced and remarried Catholics.

Despite the on-going conversation about whether the Catholic Church should open or not their hearts and minds to same-sex marriage, the Holy Father decided that the Vatican should reject the notion, at least for now.

“I understand those who prefer a more rigorous pastoral care which leaves no room for confusion,” Francisco said in the document. “But I sincerely believe that Jesus wants a church attentive to the goodness which the Holy Spirit sows in the midst of human weakness.”

He continued, “We have been called to form consciences, not replace to them.”

Throughout the text, the Pope refers only to marriages between “a man and a woman” and makes it clear that there are “absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual union to be in any way similar to God’s plan for marriage and family.”

Even though Franciscus, as you would refer to the Pontiff in Latin, prefers to leave gay marriage in the hands of the state, he did call on governments to “help facilitate the adoption process, above all in the case of unwanted children, in order to prevent their abortion or abandonment.”

Besides opening the conversation about contraception, sterilization, and abortion, Pope Francis offered inspirational advice on relationships and specified that sex should never be pursued for just one person’s pleasure. Sexuality is “meant to aid the fulfillment of the other,” he wrote. Adding that one should never treat thy partner as “an object to be used.”