At Bondings 2.0. Francis DeBenardo notes the hard time keeping up with the voluminous commentary on Pope Francis’ observations on gay priests, the “gay lobby”, and on the importance of gay integration in society.

Catholic–And Cosmopolitan–Responses to the Pope’s Gay Statement |

Since starting this blog over 18 months ago, I have never had such a hard time keeping up with Catholic LGBT news and commentary than in the last two days as articles keep popping up about Pope Francis’ statement which was heard around the gay and Catholic world. Not even the Supreme Court’s marriage decisions in June generated this much electronic “ink.”

- more at Bondings 2.0.

Read Frank’s links and frank observations on them, at Bondings 2.0

I feel much the same way: except that for me, the issue is not simply keeping up with the commentary (I’m not even trying to keep up with everything. There’s too much, and Frank and Bill Lindsey at Bilgrimage do a much better job than I can, on reporting what others are saying. My problem, is just keeping up with my own thinking. Coupled with thoughts on a highly productive annual conference by Quest, the British association for gay and lesbian Catholics, and some excellent books I’m currently reading on liberation theology (with implications for gay liberation theology), on how the relevant biblical verses have been sorely mistranslated, and a backlog of posts sitting in my draft folder but not yet published, I hardly know where to begin.

So, forgive me if I do not present one simple, clear and comprehensive response.

Instead, I will place a series of short responses, not necessarily neatly tied together, on several different points worth noting, relevant to all of these.

This is what I’m working towards:

On Pope Francis’ Words:

• The importance of his welcome for gay priests.
• Why the in-flight observations change nothing in terms of church teaching - but change everything for LGBT experience of the Catholic Church
• How this introduces a transition to LGBT equality in the Catholic Church.
• Why this creates groundbreaking opportunities for gay Catholic organisations like Quest, Dignity, New Ways and others to expand LGBT ministry in partnership with, not in opposition to, Catholic bishops.

And from the books I’ve been reading:

• The damage done to biblical interpretation of the clobber texts by a series of continuously distorting translations
• Discussion of such damage for each of the harmful verses
• The lessons from liberation theology for gay/queer theology
• How equal marriage is redefining marriage - for the better

and much, much more. I’ll probably not get all of it down - but watch this space.