Our families are still not recognised by the Catholic Church, and it’s part of the same injustice that criminalised gay men

On the day after we go to print with this issue of GCN, An Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar is announcing in the Dáil a pardon of gay men who were convicted of homosexual off ences before decriminalisation in 1993, and a offi cial event will mark the moment in Dublin Castle on June 24. It seems that Ireland is casting off yet another shackle.

We’re at an interesting juncture, given the landslide Yes vote in the referendum on the eighth amendment in May, where a clear message was given by the Irish people to the Catholic Church about its past control over our lives and bodies. As a message to the Word Meeting of Families (WMF), which the Pope will visit Ireland for next August, Dublin Pride chose the theme ‘We Are Family’ this year. It’s a direct response to reports that images of same-sex parents and their children were removed from promotional materials for WMF

Ireland was a very diff erent place the last time a Pope visited. In 1979, when Pope John Paul II embarked on his whirlwind tour, he was greeted like a rockstar by a country that seemed devoted to the Church. John Paul behaved like a rockstar too, driving around in his ‘Pope Mobile’ to touch the hands of delirious fans, kissing the ground when he touched down in Dublin airport, and declaring his “love” for the young people of Ireland. Not the gay ones, though; seven years later he would write that homosexuals had a “strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil”.

Our current Pope is less nasty about the LGBTs, or might we say, a little more on the fence. He’s said and done a few things about LGBTs over the years to move the tone a little to the left of the arch conservatism of previous pontiff s, such as, “who am to judge them?” and, “We have to fi nd a way to help that father or that mother to stand by their [LGBT] son or daughter,” but on Saturday, June 16 he reiterated the Catholic line on same-sex marriage, saying: “It is painful to say this today: People speak of varied families, of various kinds of family,” but “the family [as] man and woman in the image of God is the only one.”

Reports surfaced a few weeks ago that American author Fr James Martin, will discuss ways “parishes can support families with members who identify as LGBTI+” at WMF. Fr Martin has suggested that same-sex attraction should be referred to as “diff erently ordered” rather than “intrinsically disordered,”as the Catechism of the Catholic Church continues to state. The organisers may be manipulating language for a sense of inclusiveness, but will the programme include any actual LGBT+ family representation? Will the parents of LGBT children share their experiences? Will a same-sex couple talk about the joys and diffi culties of raising children? Will participants hear from a transgender person about their experience of family?

And what shall Pope Francis himself say? The world will be waiting for whatever statement he’s going to make as he lands in an Ireland that has unbound itself from the dominion of the Catholic Church in terms of sexual and bodily autonomy, and which wants to address a past that’s overshadowed by the cruel injustices meted out by the Church in the name of its God.

The Church had a prime place in the injustice of continuing to criminalise homosexuality in this country until 1993, while the continued ideology that gay people are “intrinsically disordered” is part of the Catholic-dominated past we need to consistently free ourselves from. A reversal of that ideology is the only way the WMF could adequately include our families.