re: Pope Denounces ‘Hypocrisy’ of Those Who Criticize LGBT Blessings

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No, he reformed prostitutes.

He told them to sin no more.

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The Gospel reading at Mass today was Jesus’ cleansing of a leper found in the 1st Chapter of Mark:

A man suffering from leprosy came to him and pleaded on his knees saying, 'If you are willing, please cleanse me.'

Feeling mercy for him, Jesus stretched out his hand, touched him and said to him, 'I am willing. Be cleansed.'

And at once the affliction left him and he was cleansed.

And at once Jesus sternly sent him away and said to him: 'Mind you tell no one anything, but go and show yourself to the priest, and make the offering for your cleansing prescribed by Moses as evidence to them.'

In biblical times, lepers of course were treated as untouchables and outcast from their community. Jesus thus restores humanity, wholeness and happiness to this outcast.

The lesson as I read it was that that without the saving Grace of Christ, we all are outcasts from God’s divine Providence. Jesus cleanses all of our sins and makes us whole again.

Yet only by being cleansed of sin are we allowed back into the community of believers. Someone openly living a sinful lifestyle is still afflicted in the disease of sin just as a person suffering from leprosy is still suffering from the skin disease.