Pope Francis: Christians should apologise to gay people. Me: those have harmed gays should apollogize to them.

Here’s a link to some comments made by Pope Francis about homosexuals:

Christians should apologise to gay people: Pope Francis

Well, the Pope got this part right:

The questions is: if a person who has that condition, who has good will, and who looks for God, who are we to judge?" the pope added, repeating his famous "Who am I to judge?" remark about homosexuality made early in his papacy.

This is an appropriate Christian remark. Even given that the Catholic Church and most religions consider homosexual sex to be a sin, it is not up to us to judge individuals.

Unfortunately, the Pope went on to say this:

We Christians have to apologize for so many things, not just for this (treatment of gay people), but we must ask for forgiveness. Not just apologize -- forgiveness.

Really? He wants all Christians to apologize for their treatment of gays? What about Christians who have not mistreated gays? Didn't any of his speech writers catch his ridiculous generalization?

The Pope can get away with this because it's safe to attack Christians. And it's safe to group us all together as if every Christian has the same beliefs as every other Christian.

So if you wish to follow the Pope's logic, say this to your Muslim friends, "You should apologize for the acts of Islamo-Terrorists, because you are Muslim and so are they". Let me know how that goes.

I'm sure the Pope has good intentions. But his comments have the terrible unintended consequence of teaching us to blame an entire group for the sins of a few.

Keep the blame exactly where it belongs: on the perpetrators, and those who encourage them.

Don’t make these broad generalization that try to get an entire group to feel responsible for the bad actions of those in the group. It just leads to divisiveness, and God knows we need less of that.

Each of us is responsible for our own actions, and no one else’s.

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Tim Farage is a Senior Lecturer in the Computer Science Department at The University of Texas at Dallas. The views expressed herein are those of the author. You are welcome to comment upon this blog entry and/or to contact him at tfarage@hotmail.com. Twitter account: www.twitter.com/TimFarage.
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