Pope Francis… There are some things he has done that I’ve liked. For example, when liberal media has pressured him to change the church’s stance on issues of church dogma or practice, he has changed the conversation, and basically said: “We’re not going to change. Just accept that. Now let’s talk about something more important – like issues of how to live as Christians in the world, how to care for the poor as God would have us do, etc…” That, in my opinion, is what we as Christians need to do more of, rather than always getting caught in the fray of defending our Biblical positions at the cost of being distracted from the call of following Christ and His world mission – not to mention that we end up being known for arguing our position rather than for compassion and love. Jesus himself had a lot of strong positions, which would not be popular today by any means – but he didn’t spend his days arguing with those who disagreed with him, rather he was actively pushing forward all the time to do the will of the Father.

What do you think about this statement that the church could be supportive of civil unions?

My thought is that this is the first step towards one day seeing the church actually affirm gay marriage as the Episcopalian church has done. Obviously, Pope Francis’ doesn’t speak for me, but as the leader of 1 billion Catholics, anything he does will be somewhat of a bellwether for Christianity as a whole.