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Comment by bhouston | Hacker News Reader

Generally popes have to be relatively conservative, often more conservative than their clergy, as they serve the foundation for the preservation of the church's doctrine.

This pope seems to be somewhat progressive and that is welcome. This is consistent with previous statements he has made:

https://apnews.com/article/pope-francis-gay-rights-ap-interv...

Some argue that the biblical passages against homosexuality are actually mistranslations, although I am not an expert on that, but there is a new movie on that concept (which I also have not watched):

https://www.1946themovie.com

Anyhow, cool pope, even though I am both not catholic by heritage nor even religious myself.

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> Some argue that the biblical passages against homosexuality are actually mistranslations

The Catholic position is that is not possible, for a few reasons:

1. The Doctors of the Church (a period of early writers from the first 300 years or so of Christianity), when they unanimously agree on an issue, are considered to be inspired by the Holy Spirit and almost certainly infallible. The discipline of the Church is to treat them, on unanimous agreements, as such.

2. 1 Corinthians 6:9 has Saint Paul explicitly stating that homosexuals will not inherit the kingdom of God. Maybe this is a mistranslation; but when Ezekiel 16:50 uses a word from Greek that means "sexually disgusting," Leviticus 18:22 remarks that it is an "abomination," and Jude 1:7 states that "Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion," it's very hard to claim that all the verses were mistranslations. If that is the case, we may as well say that the Bible is not inspired and is not infallible - which would, quite literally, mean the Catholic religion (or any Christian religion) has no reason to exist.

3. If rape and inhospitality were the primary sin of Sodom; the men of the city would have been willing to take Lot's suggestion of using his daughters for their appetites. Lot was also an "outsider" in a cultural sense already - so it would stand to reason (as multiple commentators point out from ancient and modern sources) that if it was purely about violence to the stranger, Lot's offer should have been acceptable. The fact that Lot's offer was not acceptable shows the homosexual inclinations of the city.

With the above evidence, the Catholic position is that while inhospitality was certainly part of the condemnation upon those cities, it was not the primary cause. The alternative position is, correctly or not, a modern view to explain away the inconvenient.

Edit: Also, fun fact, there is a city that is in the correct place, dating back to the correct time, that appears to have been destroyed from an asteroid. There's no evidence to prove with certainty that it is Sodom, but that's because almost nothing from the city survives. Either it is Sodom or it inspired the story, but it's interesting. I can admit though that the odds of a massive asteroid perfectly landing on a city of only 8,000 people certainly seems divine.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/destruction-of-cit...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericmack/2018/12/04/new-science...

Edit 2: The Bible is infallible in the Catholic view. Vatican II explicitly stated: "The books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation." This does not mean that little historical or otherwise facts may not be different, so the term preferred on a technical level is inerrant.

https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_coun...

> Maybe this is a mistranslation; but when Ezekiel 16:50 uses a word from Greek that means "sexually disgusting," Leviticus 18:22 remarks that it is an "abomination," and Jude 1:7 states that "Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion," it's very hard to claim that all the verses were mistranslations.

The passage from Leviticus seems explicitly about male homosexuality, but Ezekiel seems more vague in this translation:

> 49 “‘Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. 50 They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.

And Jude also doesn't seem to explicitly mention homosexuality, but I guess it's calling back to another piece of writing that the reader is expected to be familiar with.

> The Doctors of the Church (a period of early writers from the first 300 years or so of Christianity), when they unanimously agree on an issue, are considered to be inspired by the Holy Spirit and almost certainly infallible.

This seems like a type of survivorship bias: The relatively-few ancient manuscripts we have are largely those that were preserved by those who canonized what they regarded as "proper" doctrine.

(Example: Paul's epistles included complaints that people were deviating from what he regarded as the "true" gospel. See Gal. 1.6-11.)

Tangentially, here's a piece from 2004, applying a litigator's perspective about documentary evidence and witness testimony: https://www.questioningchristian.org/2004/10/why_i_cant_acce... [self-cite]

The Catholic Church has never stated that the Bible is infallible. That's why the Papal doctrine even exists. They knew very early that the Bible was not only fallible but also contradictory in many points.

Only after Martin Luther is that the idea of "Sola Scriptura" was popularized.

I think your comment about how and why this is a problem specifically for the Catholic church is valid.

But to cover a couple of verses quoted in point 2, just in case it is helpful for people trying to combat people wielding these to attack them:

Ezekiel 16:50 - It's not clear that the toevah in Ezekiel is a sexual sin. Just because it is used in that way in some places is to ignore all the places it isn't. The point of Ezekiel 16:49-50 is that the sin of Sodom was inhospitality. If it should be interpreted as a sexual sin, there is nothing to say it is specifically sodomy [1]. It can easily be argued the sexual sin is the attempted rape of angels.

Jude 1:7 - Similarly, there isn't anything here that identifies it as sodomy rather than rape.

Countering the others, though, I think _does_ require letting go of univocality and infallibility.

[1] Homosexuality isn't really a concept at this time. Instead of attraction, they focus on acts and power.

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