On the flight back to Rome from his trip to Georgia and Azerbaijan, Pope Francis gave another one of his controversial press conferences, and unfortunately it was as controversial as usual. I had hoped that Greg Burke, the new director of the Vatican’s press office, would keep this pastoral pope from saying something the agenda-driven news media could co-opt for their purposes. But, apparently, he couldn’t.

On the airplanes, this pope speaks in a way which he might describe as “from his heart.” Some use his off-the-cuff comments to pummel him or to push for “change” in the Catholic Church.  Many create what is now called a “narrative.” It goes like this: Pope Francis is going to change the “old fashioned” views of the Church he serves and this latest comment proves it.

The narrative tells the world that he’s going to change the revealed truth about marriage and approve same-sex “marriage,” open the Church to women as priests, approve procured abortion as a right, and support living as a transgender person as a healthy and moral choice — that the Catholic Church is finally going to “come around” on these hot button issues.

Of course, none of this is true. First because he does not intend to do so. Second, because he cannot do so. Not even a Pope can change the revealed truth about life, marriage and sexual difference as a gift and a given.

The Pope Against ‘Gender Theory’

What did he say this time? Let me back up a day. In Georgia the day before, Francis warned about the “global war to destroy marriage.” It’s a war “being waged [not] with weapons but with ideas.” He called out “gender theory” as an enemy of marriage and attacked what he has regularly called “ideological colonialization.”

This is one of his consistent themes. It’s clearly very important to him. See, for example, his encyclical Amoris Laetitia (56) and his address to the Meeting with Families in Manila, as well as this, this and this.

With a boldness and clarity rare in a western leader, he insists that sexual difference is a gift from the Creator we must accept and embrace. He is clear that marriage between one man and one woman is the basis for the family and essential for the healthy upbringing of children.

The pope made these same points on the plane press conference. (Catholic News Agency offers a transcript.) He spoke of “marriage as the union of man and woman as God made it, as an image of God and man and woman, the image of God is not man, it is man with the woman together, they are one flesh when they join in marriage: this is the truth.”

He’s speaking clearly, so what’s the problem? Unfortunately, this clarity is all too often clouded by other things he says, and that was true this time as well.

After he made that comment, he was asked a controversial question by Josh McElwee of the National Catholic Reporter, an independent and usually dissenting newspaper. “[W]hat would you say to someone who has struggled with their sexuality for years and feels that there is truly a problem of biology, that his aspect doesn’t correspond to what he or she feels is their sexual identity. You, as a pastor and minister, how would you accompany these people?”

The Problem Answer

The pastoral pope responded from the heart. He again warned against ideological colonialism and gender theory leading children astray. Then he tried to make a nuanced pastoral point.

He spoke of a couple who had visited him over the years who had succumbed to the error of thinking people can choose and change their gender and sexual identity. He said he showed them mercy and “accompanied” them on their journey. As a deacon of twenty years, I read his response as that of a pastor. It was an answer to the question “What would Jesus do?”

At the end of his answer, he said, “Life is life and things must be taken as they come. Sin is sin.” And then he said something very confusing:

And tendencies or hormonal imbalances have many problems and we must be careful not to say that everything is the same. Let’s go party. No, that no, but in every case I accept it, I accompany it, I study it, I discern it and I integrate it.

What does that mean? What kind of pastoral relation is he describing? I don’t know. But I am sure this comment will be misused by those with agendas to say that the pope supports transgender people in living as the other sex.

Francis saw this too. He asked the media, “Please don’t say: ‘the Pope sanctifies transgenders.’ … Because I see the covers of the papers. Is there any doubt as to what I said? I want to be clear! It’s moral problem. It’s a human problem and it must be resolved always can be with the mercy of God.”

I am afraid the pope’s plea is not enough, because he’d already said a lot a biased press could use. It’s hard being a Catholic and just waiting for the uproar to begin. That’s not what we look to the pope to give us.

I well understand this monsignor’s recent personal plea to Pope Francis. “Please, Holy Father: Enough of these ad hoc, off-the-cuff, impromptu sessions, whether at thirty thousand feet or at ground level. … This is an era of instant reportage and lots of recording devices, tweets, and instagrams.”