I was much younger, but I don't remember John Paul in a significantly different light. I grew up Catholic, and if there is one word I could use to describe Catholics, it definitely would not be dogmatic. Ask Catholics if they use birth control. :) In fact, I would go so far to say that Catholic dogma was typically something that non-Catholics mentioned more than Catholics themselves. To me, being Catholic was about observance. There are the Sacraments, there is ceremony: Ash Wednesday, Lent, Easter Sunday, fish on Friday, etc. this is what my experience entailed. I can't once recall a priest speaking about homosexuality, or even abortion, for that matter. Maybe it happens in Catholic churches now, but it didn't then. At a Catholic mass, they read scripture, mostly from the New Testament. Then the priest gives a sermon based upon the themes of that reading. You won't find much at all addressing homosexuality or abortion in the Bible. Mostly the themes regard selflessness, trust in faith, humility, kindness, forgiveness, not judging others, etc. I understand how Francis is being seen to make waves, and I do genuinely appreciate it. However, I don't see these words rocking Sunday mass, at least as far as I remember it.
I think the anti-gay stuff happens definitely at the Bishop level, along with political action and donations to anti-equality legislation on the part of the Catholic church. Outside of that, you've got most of the mobilization happening outside of Mass. But there were very clear proclamations from the top down, starting with the Popes. If you were in the pews on Sunday, you either had a priest that felt it was part of a message that bore repeating, or not. Most likely not though. I have to say I was pretty disappointed at the beginning of my wedding Mass though. If you get married in a Catholic church they give you a little booklet where you can plan your Mass by selecting your choice of readings from the Bible at the various stages. These readings naturally draw from what the Bible has to say about the Wedding Sacrament, and the union of a man and a woman. So having a gay sister who was going to be in the pews with her wife partner and their baby, we went through great pains to pour over the texts and select readings that didn't reference the union of only a man and a woman. Obviously this was hard to do, but we managed to find the texts with the vaguest language and cobble something together. If you were new to Christianity, you could be at the Mass and not come away with an understanding of what the church feels on the subject, so we were pretty pleased. So come the day of the wedding, the family and friends are in the pews, my soon to be wife and I are at the alter, and the Monseigneur strides out and begins the entire Mass with an unscripted defense of traditional marriage, and then begins the actual Mass proper. W.
T.
F. I just remember feeling ashamed because my sister and her partner were sitting right there listening to it. They were raised Catholic too, -they get it and couldn't have been shocked, and in the grand scheme of things it probably wasn't a big deal, but it really did bother me and took me out of the moment and the reason I was up there in the first place. It's shit like this that I feel Francis is directly addressing when he talks of re-calibrating emphasis in the church.
My experiences growing up in a Catholic family seem similar to yours. I don't even observe these days, or really believe in the biblical god, but I still think of myself as a Catholic, as for me it's really more cultural than anything else. Now, I was forced to attend CCD (Sunday School) until I was in high school, when I was confirmed and before confirmation, my class had an opportunity to ask questions about Catholicism's stance on anything we wanted to. One girl asked about homosexuality and the Vatican's stance on it (under John Paul II) and the priest told us he couldn't speak for the pope, but he did say that love isn't a sin and that the only thing that conflicted with scripture was the "go forth and multiply" part. As if Catholics in general have a tough time with that. I will say that American Catholics seem to be generally more conservative than Catholics from countries where Catholicism was primarily spread by the Spanish, Portuguese or French. Sin big or go home, I guess.I can't once recall a priest speaking about homosexuality, or even abortion, for that matter. Maybe it happens in Catholic churches now, but it didn't then. At a Catholic mass, they read scripture, mostly from the New Testament.