Pope Approves Bless­ing Peo­ple in Same-Sex Unions. Here’s why That Mat­ters to Evan­gel­i­cals

In an unsur­pris­ing move, the Bish­op of Rome now allows for Catholic priests to bless peo­ple in same-sex unions. The Pope’s dec­la­ra­tion on the issue is long, over­ly wordy, but is clear in its intent. What is that intent? To shift the Catholic church and empow­er lib­er­al priests. The only caveat is that these bless­ings can­not resem­ble the ones done dur­ing mar­riage cer­e­monies. AKA: don’t per­form or con­se­crate the union, but only acknowl­edge it exists and bless the par­tic­i­pants of that union.

Ah, that old excuse. I used to live in Wash­ing­ton State, and there it was called “every­thing but mar­riage” in order to get gay mar­riage ‘legal­ized’ by a very close vote in 2009. “See, we’re not call­ing it mar­riage, you get to keep the sanc­ti­ty of mar­riage,” was the cry, and when the vote passed, it changed to “see, soci­ety did­n’t fall apart!” Clever play. In fact, it’s a com­mon strat­e­gy to push things for­ward. Peo­ple think of a slip­pery slope as a nat­ur­al slide, and it cer­tain­ly can be. Often, though, it’s not nat­ur­al at all, and is a very inten­tion­al strat­e­gy to push an agen­da. That is what the Pope is, and has been, doing.

But why Does This Mat­ter to Evan­gel­i­cals?

I’ve talked about this before, briefly, when the Pope laid the ground­work for this dec­la­ra­tion, but it comes down to influ­ence, because the Pope has a lot of it. This influ­ence is glob­al, and local to us, it is reli­gious, as well as polit­i­cal.

“Yes, but that does­n’t mean the ~1 bil­lion claimed Catholics will fol­low what he says.”

Well yes, the­o­ret­i­cal Chris­t­ian, that is true, but must I bring up “every­thing but mar­riage” again? Now Wash­ing­ton State is one of the most aggres­sive­ly pro ‘LGBT’ states. A lot can change in a short time when peo­ple get com­pla­cent and kids start to reach adult­hood after liv­ing their teen years with things just “always being that way.” The Point is, there will be a shift among Catholics over the com­ing years, even if some resist.

“Okay, but that’s Catholics chang­ing, not Evan­gel­i­cals”

True, but you’re miss­ing the point. First, peo­ple that claim to be Evan­gel­i­cal are shift­ing on this top­ic to. Men like Andy Stan­ley, Pre­ston Sprin­kle, and Sam All­ber­ry are rad­i­cal­ly shift­ing how we view sex­u­al­i­ty, and oth­ers like J.D. Greear and Al Mohler are com­pro­mis­ing great­ly. We’re expe­ri­enc­ing the same shift right now.

Sec­ond, the num­ber of self-iden­ti­fied Catholics in the US is around 70 mil­lion. That is a lot of rich soil that pro­gres­sives have been till­ing for over a cen­tu­ry. Despite the many infil­tra­tions of pro­gres­sive ide­olo­gies, and the fact that Catholics already sup­port ‘LGBT’ caus­es more than the nation­al aver­ages, this move by the Pope is still going to cause a shift. And what will that shift do? Well, it will make it even hard­er to stand for Bib­li­cal mar­riage and sex­u­al­i­ty in this coun­try. Hard­er for who? Hard­er for us. Espe­cial­ly, as I men­tioned, there are wolves among us try­ing to defeat us from with­in.

“I had­n’t thought of it that way, so what do we do?”

Well, we need to use what lit­tle polit­i­cal pow­er we have left, while we still have it. Let’s be real, we’re not going to win many polit­i­cal vic­to­ries right now, but we need to stem the tide. You don’t give up when you see a cougar charg­ing your kids and just let it take them! You jump in the way, even if you know the out­come. Who knows, you might find a way to win, but at the min­i­mum, your kids will get to safe­ty.

Now what are we hold­ing out for? For the fruit of our evan­ge­liz­ing and dis­ci­pling to take hold. And when, God will­ing, we’ve seen revival in this coun­try, we’ll be able to see more and more polit­i­cal vic­to­ries.

Okay, back to Catholics, how does this relate to them? Well, there are a grow­ing num­ber of con­ser­v­a­tive Catholics that are find­ing them­selves home­less as their reli­gion runs in the destruc­tive direc­tion. Not only is this a great time to bring them into our polit­i­cal camps, but it is a great time to share the truth of God’s word with them. Now, don’t pull a “see, I told you the Pope was an antichrist.” Instead, bring them into the robust­ness of God’s word and Christ’s gospel. It’s a time of teach­ing and dis­ci­ple­ship. But this isn’t about tac­tics. The impor­tant thing, though, is are you just going to stand there and let them get mauled by a cougar? Espe­cial­ly when, talk­ing about the spir­i­tu­al side of things, you’re hold­ing a gun.

That’s the main mes­sage I want out of this, not to go “oh look at what that crazy Pope did this time, haha­ha,” or to preach a mes­sage of doom as more Catholics are wooed into ‘woke’ destruc­tion. The lat­ter point cer­tain­ly is true, well, not the doom part, but the main thing is to point out the spir­i­tu­al oppor­tu­ni­ty. I hope you all will con­sid­er the real­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion we’re in right now. This coun­try is falling apart, soci­ety is crum­bling into sin and destruc­tion. Cer­tain­ly cor­rupt and wicked politi­cians and ide­o­logues have advanced the sins we see today, but they were only tak­ing advan­tage of a vac­u­um caused by the declin­ing spir­i­tu­al con­di­tion in this coun­try. You want to see change? Preach the gospel, dis­ci­ple peo­ple, and refute the lie that we vote with Bibles closed. The Pope is open­ing up a mis­sion field for us, let’s not drop this oppor­tu­ni­ty.