Pope Benedict XVI appeared before an audience in Croatia yesterday to plead for couples to marry instead of simply living together as common-law partners. In his anticipated homily, the pope lamented a “secularized mentality which proposes living together as preparation, or even a substitute as marriage.”

So, to all you young couples out there: Do not, under any circumstances, live together before marrying. Just trust that all your quirks will be perfectly compatible, legally combine your lives and finances, and start having children right away. Don’t adopt; that robs children of their natural, unfit-by-admission parents. And take this advice to heart. After all, how could recommendations from an 84 year old celibate who has no personal experience with romantic relationships be wrong?

Still, it’s nice to hear the pope come out in vocal support of marriage after dedicating years to preventing me from getting married. I wonder what made him change his heart so quickl—oh, wait, my mistake; his speech still implied that gay families aren’t real families, our relationships are unnatural, and that we somehow rob children of their rights.

Ouch. And given all his years of wisdom, he must have a point; the pope lifestyle is far more natural. I mean, why else would popes emerge so readily in nature?

Food for thought, I guess…

• Pope denounces ‘disintegration’ of family in Europe, urges couples to marry, not live together [The Canadian Press]

Here’s a neat lesson to start off your Friday: If you want to join a notoriously unwelcoming community, maybe try not to be surprised when you feel unwelcomed.

Jim Corcoran, a gay Catholic in Ontario, was shocked—shocked—to learn that he was removed from his church’s altar service after some of his fellow parishioners complained to the Diocese that a gay man was serving. Jim is now filing a human rights complaint against Bishop Nicola De Angelis for discrimination based on sexual orientation.

While Jim has every right to feel offended, his case will fail—if the Human Rights Tribunal even agrees to hear it at all. Churches, as private religious institutions, are exempt from having to conform to Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. That means, legally, they can discriminate against whomever they please, so long as it’s within their own private institutions and not within the public sphere.

So, while firing Jim just for being gay wasn’t a moral thing to do, churches are allowed to act that way—and happily seize the opportunity.

It’s what Jesus would do, after all, I guess.

And a courtly tip o’ the hat to the always amazing Matt Guerin at Queer Liberal for the story.

• Gay altar server contests firing [National Post]

The  Traditional Anglican Communion, a group of Anglicans who abandoned the global Anglican church over same-sex blessings and the ordination of women, has decided to go back to their very early roots and re-join the Roman Catholic Church, if The Vatican will let them.

Anglicans spit from Rome in 1534 over their refusal to annul the marriage of King Henry VIII. Nothing like a common dislike of the gays to mend a 475-year old rift, huh?

• Traditional Anglican Communion wants to join Catholic Church [Daily Gleaner]