The interview that changed the tone
It was not the doctrine that changed but the tone: the interview that stirred up the Church in 2013.
On 19 September 2013, a text appeared simultaneously in sixteen countries that stirred up the Catholic world. Jesuit journals printed a long conversation with Pope Francis, conducted by Antonio Spadaro, editor-in-chief of the Roman "Civiltà Cattolica". It had taken place the previous August, over three afternoons in the Santa Marta guesthouse.
Francis had been in office for half a year at the time. What he said sounded like a break. The Church could not "insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods". He had not spoken much about these things and had been reprimanded for it. Pastoral ministry must not be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines. Otherwise, he warned, the moral edifice of the Church was likely to fall like a house of cards.
On homosexual people he spoke at unusual length. In Buenos Aires, gay people had written to him saying they felt condemned by the Church and socially wounded. The Church did not want that. He repeated what he had said on the plane from Rio, that he was not one to judge. And he told of a provocative question as to whether he approved of homosexuality. His reply had been a question in return: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person? One must always consider the person. The confessional, he added, was not a torture chamber.
What was new was the tone, not the doctrine. Francis called himself a son of the Church and did not call its positions into question. He did not announce any opening of marriage. He left untouched the Catechism's description of the homosexual inclination as objectively disordered.
Even so, the text had an effect. Conservative bishops reacted with alarm, progressive believers celebrated. Ten years later, Rome permitted blessings for couples in so-called irregular situations, same-sex couples included. This changed nothing about the concept of marriage. At first, all that had shifted was the way people talked.