The pastoral, warmhearted response of Pope Francis to a reporter's question about homosexual persons quickened many hearts. Was it a harbinger of change in the near future?
My experience tells me such hopes are unrealistic.
I became a Lutheran bishop in Minnesota in the mid-1970s. It wasn't until then that I began to meet members of our Lutheran congregations who were gay and lesbian. Among them were graduates of our Lutheran colleges and children of some of our most prominent parish pastors.
They told their stories — tales of heartless rejection and accounts of persistent faith. I listened and asked questions.
It was a step.
It was a full two years before I wrote a pastoral letter to all of the more than 600 ordained ministers on our roster in Minnesota. I urged them to do as I had done, to get acquainted with gay and lesbian members of their churches and to give them pastoral care.
It was a step.
Over the next decade, I carved out time to study carefully the handful of Bible passages that refer to same-sex behavior. Eventually, I came to believe that all of them addressed homosexual abuse and rape. I had seen none of this among the growing number of homosexual Lutherans I had come to know firsthand.