OF COURSE...NO OFFENSE INTENDED

Pope Francis told a reporter that parents should seek psychiatric help if their children had homosexual tendencies.  

The comment in question was reportedly made as the Holy Father was flying back to Rome from Ireland on Sunday. 

While Pope Francis has previously implied that there is nothing wrong with being homosexual (“Who am I to judge?”), this time he said that "a lot that can be done through psychiatry" no later than in childhood and added that ignoring such a child is "error of fatherhood or motherhood." 

"When it shows itself from childhood, there is a lot that can be done through psychiatry, to see how things are. It is something else if it shows itself after 20 years," Pope Francis told reporters. 

Curiously, that reference was not included in a transcript of the in-flight press conference published by the Holy See Press Office on Monday. 

More curiously, the Press Office did not deny the alteration, saying that the quote had been erased to avoid confusion. 

"When the Pope referred to 'psychiatry', it is clear that he was doing it to highlight an example of 'things that can be done'. But with that word he didn't mean to say that it [homosexuality] was a 'mental illness'," a Vatican spokeswoman stated. 

Very curiously (to me at least) is the almost paranoid concern this Pontificate exhibits that the Church say or do nothing that might be considered “insensitive” to the homosexual community.

And it’s incidents such as this that make me wonder if Pope Benedict XVI’s assertion as well as the recent letter of Archbishop Vigano that the existence of a homosexual clique at the center of the Vatican is true.

Pope Francis has told the faithful:  “Read...judge for yourselves.”

The more I read, though, the more convincing it is that allegations of homosexuals within the Vatican seizing control of the Church are plausible and true.

The lack of candor and clarity from this Pontificate is causing more and more damage to the very fabric and unity of the Church.

Would that the Holy Father and the Holy See understand and correct this terrible fault.