Monday, April 11, 2016

"The Joy of Love" is definitely not "The Joy of Sex"

  (David Parkins/The Globe and Mail)
I had a good chuckle at David Parkins' cartoon in today's Globe and Mail, which shows a bishop recovering after mistakenly reading "The Joy of Sex" instead of the Pope's new encyclical "The Joy of Love". I can just imagine the librarian's face as he checked it out of his local lending library.
I have to admit, I had exactly the same thought when I first read the title. Maybe it's one of those titles that loses something in the translation, and it may perhaps be safer to stick to the Latin, "Amoris Laetitia".
I'm not totally convinced that the document represents a "paradigm shift" with the "potential to shape the church’s response to the family for generations to come", as some would have it. But it is at least a little more hopeful for the Catholic LGBT community than anything else to have come out of the One True Church, calling at one point for the church to "reaffirm that every person, regardless of sexual orientation, ought to be respected in his or her dignity and treated with consideration", even if it stops short of pushing for a change in actual church doctrine, or of actually condoning gay marriages.
In the same way, divorcees are still only accepted grudgingly, and without a call for any change in church rules, and abortion and fertility treatment are definitely still beyond the Catholic pale.
So, all in all, "The Joy of Love" can definitely not be mistaken for "The Joy of Sex". Ah well, baby steps...

No comments: