In the Christian gospels, Jesus talks an amazing deal concerning the good society, and the way individuals should treat one another. One-sentence summaries are necessarily crude but, in essence, he preaches to never treat others in a way that you simply wouldn’t wish to be treated yourself.
Pope Francis might do well to reflect on that core teaching in the sunshine of reports that, in a recent meeting of Italian bishops, he referred to gay men within the Vatican as frociaggine, an offensive Italian collective noun that roughly translates as “f*****ry”.
It is sufficient to make all Catholics – many, like me, nearly clinging to mass-going after the paedophile priests’ scandal and cover-up – hang their heads in despair.
