In southern Texas when I was a kid in the 1970s, Catholics were the liberals. That went for both their lifestyle and their politics. They were the ones who could dance and drink, while we Southern Baptists were taught that those activities were sins or would lead to sins (I forget which). Sure, Catholics weren't supposed to use contraceptives, even within marriage, but that edict was disregarded.
Where I grew up, Catholics were mostly Mexican-American; Mexican-Americans voted for Democrats; and Democrats were liberals. Their church opposed the death penalty and just about every use of military force. They emphasized helping the poor. For us Southern Baptists, poverty only showed that capitalism was working properly by punishing the indolent.
If I had thought much about gay issues back then, Catholics would have seemed liberal on this too. In its treatment of the topic "Homosexuality," the New Catholic Encyclopedia, published in 1967, was downright enlightened for its time. Catholicism recognized homosexuality as an orientation, a "proclivity" that "develops gradually over many years as a result of complex influences not under the control of the potential homosexual."
Southern Baptists, to this day, see in homosexuality not an unchosen "orientation" but only a wicked and vile choice by lustful sinners.
The New Catholic Encyclopedia, reflecting church teaching, debunked several then-dominant myths about homosexuals. "There is no evidence that [the homosexual's] sexual drive, in itself, is more intense than that of heterosexuals," it declared. The homosexual "is rarely an alcoholic or a threat to immature children."
It criticized "harsh and vengeful religious writings" against gays and urged a pastoral counseling approach characterized by "compassionate leniency."
I don't want to paint too bright a picture. Catholicism continued to regard homosexual acts as "a grave transgression of the divine will" and "a sterile love of self, disguised in apparent love for another." The only solution for the homosexual was life-long chastity.
Still, all of this was much more tolerant than anything my religion taught. Southern Baptists may have invented the slogan, "Love the sinner, hate the sin," but most often they seem to despise both. (Actually, we had a youth minister who molested boys in his charge; his slogan must have been, "Hate the sinner, love the sin.") By comparison to my church, Catholicism seemed rational, literate, and civilized. It was receptive to new learning about homosexuality. On the eve of John Paul II's papacy, in 1978, there was reason for hope.
At the end of his reign, that hope is all but gone. The reactionary wing of the Catholic Church has gotten stronger. A new Catholic traditionalist movement in the United States, for example, focuses much of its energy on blaming gays for the Catholic priest scandal and on fighting equality for gay people. Politically, Catholic traditionalists are aligning themselves with my old Southern Baptists and with other conservative Christian sects to form a Religio-Republican complex.
By word and deed, the Pope aided this regression. Under John Paul II's guidance, the Catholic Church backed away somewhat from its previous view that homosexual orientation was morally blameless. The Vatican's Congregation on the Doctrine of the Faith, under Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger [now Pope Benedict XVI], claimed that even the homosexual "inclination" came close to "an intrinsic moral evil."
In 1986, with John Paul II's approval, a tenured professor at Catholic University was barred from teaching theology because of his belief that homosexual acts within a loving relationship could "in a certain sense be objectively morally acceptable." That same year the archbishop of Seattle was stripped of his authority on gay issues after he allowed Dignity, a gay Catholic group, to hold Mass in his cathedral. The Vatican tried to have a World Pride festival barred from Rome in 2000, the year of the church's Grand Jubilee.
While the Pope was rightly praised for reaching out to other religious faiths, his ecumenism had its limits. Last year he warned that the selection of the openly gay Gene Robinson as a bishop of the American Episcopal Church would create "new and serious difficulties ... on the path to unity."
On AIDS, the Pope sometimes had kind words, saying "God loves you all, without distinction," to AIDS patients during a trip to San Francisco in 1987. But he steadfastly opposed practical efforts to stop the spread of the disease, including safe-sex education and all use of condoms.
On the subject of gay marriage, John Paul II was especially harsh. In 1994, he called it "a serious threat to the future of the family and society itself." Catholic politicians who disagreed were "gravely immoral." In a book released in February, he denounced gay marriage as "perhaps part of a new ideology of evil, perhaps more insidious and hidden, which attempts to pit human rights against the family and against man."
The Pope is the most powerful single religious leader in the world. Because he influenced the beliefs and practices of hundreds of millions of people, he did more harm to the rights and equality of gay people than any other person.
So all of the hagiographic tributes to John Paul II - claiming that he helped free Eastern Europe from Soviet domination, that he had "rock star" charisma - fell flat to me. I was deeply alienated from the mourning throngs I saw on television. The only thing that could make me miss him is the fear that his successor might be even worse.