The Pope, Same-Sex Blessings, and Protestants

When the pope sows chaos within his church on the matter of gay blessings, it is likely to affect us all—Catholic clergy and laity, certainly, but also us Protestants. For Protestants (and likely many Catholics), this is a reminder that the papacy is not a cure-all for the alleged problems surrounding Protestant notions of scriptural sufficiency and clarity. Saint Paul promoted both the importance of Scripture and a church marked by ordained office for the preservation and transmission of the faith. Neither on its own can do the task by itself, and if Protestantism is vulnerable to not taking the church seriously enough, then a strong and hierarchical ecclesiology is vulnerable to generating its own forms of chaos. The system only has the competence and integrity of its leadership.