No, Pope Francis did not affirm same-sex unions. And even if he had, according to him, it wouldn’t matter.

In his little 2005 book On Bullsh*t, the analytic philosopher Harry Frankfurt (1929–2023) wrote, “One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullsh*t” (see Note 1 below; or as they say on SpongeBob, “barnacles”). This week has been a reminder of what Frankfurt lamented.

A number of media outlets have been in a frenzy over the published, originally private correspondence between five Cardinals and Pope Francis (see Note 2). With predictable framing of partial statements, it is being misleadingly reported that Pope Francis “suggests” or may be “open” to blessing same-sex relationships. Some outlets are especially bad, such as NBC, NPR, or the private, hotelier-owned, and unfortunately named Catholic Herald, whose clickbait headline (as of 02 October) claimed the Pope said “Yes” to blessing same-sex “unions” (as of 04 October, the Herald’s phrasing has been reduced to “maybe,” which is no better). It is incontrovertibly false. Remarkably, Pope Francis’s own translated remarks from September 2023 do not even contain the words “yes” or “maybe,” and actually build off of, and are consistent with, his official statement from March 2021 that had already rejected the request from activist members of Germany’s clergy to bless same-sex unions. Pope Francis in 2021 not only explicitly responded to these clergymen in the negative, but also pointed out that the Church and its leaders have no authority to bless sin because God does not and by nature cannot bless sin. And in his 2016 exhortation Amoris Lætitia §297, he writes clearly against the idea of people flaunting “objective sin as if it were part of the Christian ideal.” There is a large gap between what Pope Francis has said and made publicly available in written form and what is subtly and not so subtly said about him by others.

This sort of journalism is a lesson in the dangers of people being out of their depth, and/or having ideological goals, while being in positions to publish from afar about happenings in the magisterium. Such articles seem to publish what they wish had happened, relying on the sobering reality that many people scrolling online are too uninterested or too lazy to consult the actual documents and transcripts in question and are thus content to accept pithy headlines as shorthand for what happened.

In short, here is what Pope Francis wrote in the summer of 2023 about same-sex unions (Dubium 2). There is no substitute for reading the actual text (translated here into English).

1. Marriage is and can only be between a man and a women open to the begetting of children.
2. The Church is to avoid “any kind of rite or sacramental” that could contradict the nature of marriage or give an impression that things which are not marriage could be or should be recognized as such.
3. In pastoral work, defending objective truth is not the only dimension of embodying charity, but also kindness, patience, understanding, tenderness, and encouragement. It is not just about denying, rejecting, excluding, or treating other people as sinners.
4. Pastors need to reflect on whether there are forms of blessing for people that could be offered “that do not transmit a mistaken conception of marriage.”
5. Theoretically, such a blessing is imaginable insofar as a request for a blessing is about someone “expressing a request for help from God, a plea for a better life, a trust in a Father who can help us to live better.”
6. Even if we imagine such blessings to be possible in certain circumstances, they should not be treated as a norm because of how it could reinforce people’s motivated reasoning— in Pope Francis’s words, it could lead to “intolerable casuistry.”

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Note 1. What Frankfurt meant by “bullsh*t” is basically the idea of spouting off about this or that without a concern for accuracy in facts or concern for truth. See Harry G. Frankfurt, On Bullsh*t (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 1.

Note 2. Somewhat comically but mostly tragically, there appear to be people now analyzing this piece of correspondence as though it were, or should be, a treatise of some kind that ought to anticipate and respond to objections, complications, etc. It is not such a text.