25th April 2009
Tony Blair tells the Pope: You’re wrong on homosexuality

(L’Osservatore Romano/AP)
The Pope greets Tony Blair during a private audience with him and his wife Cherie at the Vatican
Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent
Tony Blair has challenged the “entrenched” attitudes of the Pope on homosexuality, and argued that it is time for him to “rethink” his views.
Speaking to the gay magazine Attitude, the former Prime Minister, himself now a Roman Catholic, said that he wanted to urge religious figures everywhere to reinterpret their religious texts to see them as metaphorical, not literal, and suggested that in time this would make all religious groups accept gay people as equals.
Asked about the Pope’s stance, Mr Blair blamed generational differences and said: “We need an attitude of mind where rethinking and the concept of evolving attitudes becomes part of the discipline with which you approach your religious faith.”
The Pope, who is 82, remains firmly opposed to any relaxation of the Church’s traditional stance on homosexuality, contraception or any other area of human sexuality. He has described homosexuality as a “tendency” towards an “intrinsic moral evil”.
Mr Blair, who now travels the world on behalf of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, which aims to promote understanding of the main religions, left the Church of England for Rome soon after leaving office in 2007.
In the interview Mr Blair spoke of a “quiet revolution in thinking” and implied that he believed the Pope to be out of step with the public.
“There are many good and great things the Catholic Church does, and there are many fantastic things this Pope stands for, but I think what is interesting is that if you went into any Catholic Church, particularly a well attended one, on any Sunday here and did a poll of the congregation, you’d be surprised at how liberal-minded people were.” The faith of ordinary Catholics is rarely found “in those types of entrenched attitudes”, he said.
He also thought that in Islam there would eventually be a change of heart. “I believe that, ultimately, people will find their way to a sensible reformation of attitudes.”
People’s thinking had changed fundamentally, he added. “Now, that doesn’t mean to say there’s not still a lot of homophobia and a lot of things to be done. But the fact that it is unacceptable for any mainstream political party to be anything other than on the side of equality and respect is, in a way, the biggest change. The items of individual legislation matter a lot, but I think it’s the general shift in climate that is perhaps the most important point.”
He said: “When people quote the passages in Leviticus condemning homosexuality, I say to them — if you read the whole of the Old Testament and took everything that was there in a literal way, as being what God and religion is about, you’d have some pretty tough policies across the whole of the piece.”
He continued: “What people often forget about, for example, Jesus or, indeed, the Prophet Muhammad, is that their whole raison d’être was to change the way that people thought traditionally.”
No change in the Catholic Church’s stance is likely under the present leadership. The Church in England and Wales, which has been more liberal, is expected to move rightwards under the new Archbishop of Westminster, the Most Rev Vincent Nichols, who has become increasingly conservative since becoming a bishop and archbishop.
While some converts become more conservative than those born to Roman Catholicism, the interview with Attitude’s Johann Hari shows that Mr Blair has allied himself firmly with the Church’s liberal wing.
Conventional wisdom was not necessarily wise, he said. “It can be wrong and it can be just a form of conservatism that hides behind a consensus. If you look back in time, through the suffragette movement, the fight against slavery, it’s amazing how the same arguments in favour of prejudice crop up again and again and again.”
He also claimed that the mood was changing in evangelical circles, which have been long been anti-gay — the source of the dispute that has taken the worldwide Anglican Communion to the brink of schism.
Referring to his contacts with evangelical groups in the US and elsewhere through the foundation, he said: “I think there is a generational shift that is happening. If you talk to the older generation, yes, you will still get a lot of pushback, and parts of the Bible quoted, and so on. But if you look at the younger generation of evangelicals, this is increasingly for them something that they wish to be out of — at least in terms of having their position confined to being anti-gay.”

Several newspapers have reported on Tony Blair’s interview with the gay magazine Attitude in which he urges “religious figures everywhere to reinterpret their religious texts … to make all religious groups accept gay people as equals.”
I wish to highlight just a few of the many inconsistencies in Mr. Blair’s reported position, especially concerning his injudicious comments about Pope Benedict XVI.
First, it is claimed that Mr. Blair converted to Catholicism, but with his open and public dissent from the Church’s moral teaching, it is evident that he merely entered the Catholic Church without actually becoming a Catholic. As the Vatican II document, Lumen Gentium §14 warns a person may indeed be in the bosom of the Church but “in body” not “in heart”. In other words, Mr. Blair has merely become a Roman Protestant.
Second, presumably when he entered the Catholic Church, having married a catholic woman, he would have been fully aware of the Church’s principled teaching on marriage in general and homosexuality in particular. Since he has not repudiated his affinity for homosexuality, why did he leave the Anglican Church, the first Christian church to sanction divorce, to approve the use of contraception, and to ordain openly practising homosexuals as bishops, (dogmas strongly held by Mr. Blair), and join the Catholic Church, which explicitly, consistently and authoritatively repudiates all of these? Did he not make a profession of faith when he entered the Catholic Church? If yes, he is being hypocritical in judging the Pope wrong for teaching that homosexuality is a “tendency towards an intrinsic moral evil”.
Third, why did he choose to refer to the Levitical condemnation of homosexuality over the Pauline, which is so much more relevant and explicit? St. Paul enumerates some of the sins that endanger our salvation: “Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God.” 1Cor.6:9-10. Fornication, stealing and lying are just as evil as homosexual acts.
Fourth, he claims that the Pope is out of step with the public. I agree with him and thank God, the Pope is out of step. The Catholic Church was not founded to rubber stamp public opinion or to canonize worldly wisdom, but to teach what God requires of us: Jesus said to His apostles, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.” Mt.28:18-20.
Catholics believe that the Pope, as supreme pastor and teacher of all the faithful, has Divine assistance when he proclaims by a definitive act a doctrine pertaining to faith or morals and that this doctrine is unalterable, whether accepted or not. In short, Pope Benedict XVI and his successors, like their predecessors but unlike most modern politicians, can never teach that homosexual acts are anything but immoral, that is, the Popes can never “call evil good and good evil, put darkness for light and light for darkness, put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter” Is.5:20. Further, I do not recall Mr. Blair giving much credence to the millions of Britons who thought he was out of step and expressed the view that his war with Iraq was wrong.
Fifth, the Church does not reject homosexual people but openly and warmly welcomes, accepts and embraces them as equals. She condemns their behaviour, just as she welcomes, accepts and embraces fornicators, liars and even hypocrites into her fold while condemning their behaviour.
Sixth, I am surprised that a man of Mr. Blair’s experience can aspire, with his views, to be an “unofficial ambassador for the Catholic Church”. He should know that an ambassador is one who speaks on behalf of the authority he represents. What would have been his reaction had the British ambassador to the UN said that he thought that Prime Minister Blair was both out of touch with public opinion and wrong on the invasion of Iraq?
I could go on but will end here with the thought that as Mr. Blair “travels the world on behalf of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation” does he claim to have a different Gospel from St Paul who wrote “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonouring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever! Amen. For this reason, God gave them up to dishonourable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error”. Rom.1:24-27

Fr. Linus F. Clovis, Ph.D, M.Sc, JCL, STB
Spiritual Director Family Life International