Trust the Vatican to try to spoil the party. Vatican secretary of state Pietro Parolin (“seen as second only to the pope”, according to The Guardian[1]) pronounces that the Yes vote in Ireland’s gay marriage referendum (opposed by the Catholic Church) was “a defeat for humanity”. This was in reply to Dublin archbishop Diarmuid Martin, who said after the vote that the Church now needed a “reality check”. The Yes vote was, of course, a defeat, not for humanity but for the Catholic Church, at least in Ireland. So in the real world, Pietro, the party has not been spoiled.

Some Catholic gays had hoped that the election of this new pope, Francisco, might lead to change in the church. He is often seen as being cut from a different kind of cloth to previous popes. Maybe he will “pronounce” (like Parolin), but this time in favour of equality. Not so. He sends Pietro to the barricades with the same old message. Which is that gay relationships are wrong, sinful, definitely against God’s will.

The Catholic catechism (which sets out the teaching of the Church on most matters)[2] has stern views on the subject. “Sacred Scripture”, it declares, “presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity”, and

“tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’ They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.”

Homosexuality, says the catechism, is an “inclination” which is “objectively disordered”. So “Homosexual persons are called to chastity.” They are called to “fulfill God’s will in their lives and … to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition” – in other words, to stifle and kill their deepest desires and needs. But we surely know by now what psychological, emotional and social disorder this nonsense leads to.

In the middle of all this there is a glaring contradiction. For the catechism lays down that “people with deep-seated homosexual tendencies” must be accepted “with respect, compassion and sensitivity”. There must be no “unjust discrimination” against them. But if you were serious about that, Pietro and Francisco, you would get rid of the rubbish about “grave depravity”, stop calling people “intrinsically disordered” and stop sending them into the nightmares of disorder your teaching condemns them to.

Could Francisco help? According to The Guardian, on a recent visit to Brazil, he seemed quite relaxed, if a bit ambiguous, about the matter when he was asked whether there was a “gay lobby” in the Vatican:

“‘I think that when we encounter a gay person, we must make the distinction between the fact of a person being gay and the fact of a lobby, because lobbies are not good,’ the pontiff told journalists, while at the same time joking that, while there was a lot of talk about a gay lobby, he had never seen it stamped on a Vatican identity card.”

A pontiff joking? A bit laid back? But then he sent out Parolin to reiterate the hard line to the journalists. Catholic gays should not hold their breaths. But they should keep fighting. Because rights are always won, not given. The Irish government didn’t “grant” the right to gay marriage. It was the long, painstaking, obstinate work of people over decades that made demands, overcame the prejudice against them and got the referendum and will now get the law. You get rights only if you fight for them, the powerful don’t hand them out as gifts.

And if you finally get Church dogma changed you might discover that you don’t actually need a pope at all.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/26/vatican-ireland-gay-marriage-referendum-vote-defeat-for-humanity?CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2

[2] http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s2c2a6.htm