Catholics who believe they need to abstain from sex outside marriage or face the fires of hell have been told by Pope Francis it is time to relax and instead worry about more serious sins.
In a candid conversation with reporters, Francis claimed people’s bedroom antics were not exactly his priority. “Sins of the flesh are not the most serious,” he said, adding that pride and hatred were “the most serious”.
The question came up during a question and answer session with journalists on his flight back from a trip to Greece and Cyprus on Monday. He was asked about the resignation of Michel Aupetit, the Archbishop of Paris, who offered to step down after the French magazine Le Point claimed that he had a consensual, intimate relationship with a woman, which emerged when he sent an incriminating email to his secretary by mistake.
Aupetit has denied the affair but said: “I poorly handled the situation with a person who was in contact many times with me.”
The Pope said that “it was a failing on his part, a failing against the sixth commandment, but not a total one,” involving “small caresses and massages”, adding: “That is the accusation”.
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The sixth commandment says: “You shall not commit adultery”, which covers those having affairs out of wedlock, but Francis appeared to apply the rule to celibate priests in the case of Aupetit.
His tone suggested that fooling around is not enough to incur the full wrath of God. One veteran commentator said Francis’s declaration did not mean he was going rogue, but simply giving voice to a widely held belief in the church.
“Sexual sins were once considered very serious in the Catholic church and priests would warn against non-married kissing and even tell parents not to let their children go out dancing, but things have changed in the last 60 years,” Luigi Accattoli, a journalist said. “Francis is the first pope to come out and say what has been clear to his predecessors since Pope Paul VI. They didn’t say so for fear of scandal and traditionalists may attack Francis now, but he is not afraid to say what he thinks.”
Robert Mickens, editor in chief at the Catholic daily La Croix International, linked Francis’s statement to his relatively relaxed attitude to homosexuality. “When he said ‘Who am I to judge?’ about homosexuality it was all part of being less rigid on sex,” he said.
The Catholic Church Catechism lists a bewildering number of sins and categories of sins, starting with the Bible’s mention of “fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like”.
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Although not listed in the Bible, the seven deadly sins — pride, avarice, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony, and sloth — have been part of Catholic teaching for centuries and are mentioned in the catechism under the heading capital sins, so called “because they engender other sins, other vices”.
