Pope Francis announced at Easter Sunday mass on March 31 that he had an Easter revelation. Before he announced the revelation, he was quoted saying “This might seem like a complete reversal of my previous position” and indeed it was. The Pope announced that gay marriage is now OK under Catholic doctrine and that contraception is not actually the devil’s invention. This revelation has shocked the world and especially Catholics who strictly follow the Pope’s word instead of bending the rules as most slightly religious people do.
“God called me on the Pope Phone for the first time since I became pope, and he said that he’s thought about it and the more people who love each other the better — so gay marriage is OK. The big man upstairs still encourages but isn’t so adamant about waiting until marriage to ‘make whoopee’ but love between two people is good. Furthermore, contraception is okay because we don’t need to be procreating like bunnies,” said Francis during his Easter homily, who stressed those were God’s words exactly.
The queer community greeted the news with surprised delight yet remain suspicious of the Vatican’s doctrine after so many years of prejudice and hate.
By counting gay marriage as a valid form of marriage, Francis is hoping to lower the divorce rate across the world. Also, with the relaxation of the contraception doctrine, the argument that gay unions aren’t “procreative” doesn’t matter. The Pope added that it was a stupid argument anyway, because a lot of heterosexual partnerships struggle with infertility and don’t always produce children.
Apparently, in the conversation on the Pope Phone, God explained that the birth rate doesn’t need to be exponentially increasing. Humans aren’t going extinct anytime soon — save a nuclear war with North Korea, which God didn’t offer any insight into — and so the whole “go forth and multiply” commandment doesn’t have to be taken quite so seriously. Clearly, having the chance of putting a bun in the oven every time a man and a woman want to have sexual intercourse isn’t necessary.
However, most Catholics in the Western world never really followed these papal decrees anyway, with gay marriage being more and more accepted and legally allowed in a growing number of countries, and the falling birth rate a clear sign that Westerners have been using contraception for quite a while.
“I’ve never really been fussed with what the Pope says anyway. I’m on birth control and I support my lesbian friend and I don’t have any residual Catholic guilt,” says third-year biology major Megan Overwood, who admits to being a Christmas-and-Easter Catholic.
The response from the faithful hasn’t been quite so carefree.
“It’s been ‘hate the gays, hate the gays’ for so long, I can’t really imagine moving to ‘love everyone as Jesus loved them’ and literally mean everyone,” said fourth-year political science major and president for the Complete Catholics for Christ on Campus Club Rebecca Ferguson.
Catholic priest Father John was in a state of shock in mass on Easter Monday following the announcement.
“I didn’t know the Pope Phone actually existed,” he said. “Only in my wildest dreams would I ever get to talk on the Pope Phone. I’ve heard it’s an old, red rotary phone.”