In Rome, such Vatican pronoun-cements are usually greeted with counter arguments right in St. Peter’s Square. When the Vatican released its same-sex marriage document, the largest Italian advocacy group for gays and lesbians, Arcigay Nazionale, assembled a few dozen people in front of St. Peter’s Basilica to wave placards comparing the Vatican to the Taliban.

A staff member of Arcigay, Renato Sabbadini, admitted that the document was “no more offensive than usual” and joked that the Vatican might, in fact, have become a little more reasonable, since it had at least acknowledged that homosexual feelings might be beyond a person’s control. “But,” he added, “asking members of parliament to oppose legislation is a heavy form of interference in the democratic life of a country.”

About a month after the Vatican issued the bulletin on gay marriage, the European Parliament, in its annual report on human-rights issues, recommended that homosexuals be allowed to marry and adopt children. It was one more indication of a cultural shift in developed countries toward the acceptance, and eventual legalization, of same-sex marriage a trend that makes the Vatican’s position appear, increasingly, to be an idea from another age.

“One of the big criticisms that many in the Vatican have with the Catholic Church in many parts of the world, including Canada, is that it is insufficiently critical of the culture,” Allen says. He means that Church institutions outside Rome sometimes allow themselves to be influenced by changing societal values in their own communities rather than listening solely to their more conservative masters in Rome. “They are so eager to play nice and get along and not make waves, that they have, in effect, surrendered on some of the core moral and doctrinal principles the Church is supposed to insist on. That sort of criticism—that you guys are out of touch—while it may be true, doesn’t cut much ice here.”