Francis I (aka the Fun Pope) Says Sex and Eating are 'Divine' Pleasures Sent from God

NY Post - Can’t get enough carnal sins? You’re preaching to the choir, says Pope Francis.

In an interview with Italian writer Carlo Petrini, who has compiled several conversations with the pope for a new book, his Holiness referred to sex and food, among other delights, as gifts from God. Furthermore, to enjoy them is not sinful, as “overzealous” church leaders have taught in the past.

“Pleasure arrives directly from God. It is neither Catholic nor Christian nor anything else; it is simply divine,” he tells Petrini in the book “TerraFutura: Conversations With Pope Francis on Integral Ecology,” an English working title, out now in Italy. “The pleasure of eating and sexual pleasure come from God.”

Francis continued, referring to the church’s past condemnation for life’s gustatory and sexual pleasures as “overzealous morality … A wrong interpretation of the Christian message.”

Holy moly. How's this for a game-changer? 

I knew Francis was supposed to a transformative figure who was going to loosen up the church a little bit. Which frankly is how I've been convinced he got his name. 

But saying sex and eating are not only not sins of the flesh, not even indulgences, but actual gifts from God? Like flowers and sunsets and puppies and a mother's love and the NBA playoffs? Unbelievable. I mean, Lust and Gluttony are two of the Deadly Sins. And if "SE7EN" got its math right and I know how to figure out batting averages, that means we're batting .285 right now. 

To be clear, I'm off the sexual market and can't really indulge the eating thing without putting the infamously unreliable Thornton Family ticker at risk (thanks, genetics), so fat lot of good this policy change does for me. And I do feel bad for all the people who avoided these particular avenues of pleasure for the last 2,000 years because they thought they'd wind up as center square in an episode of Hieronymus Bosch Squares. 

But there's nothing the Cool Pope can do about that now. All he can do is move forward and assure you to bang away and feed your face to your heart's content. The Almighty is picking up the tab so feast yourself in abundance. My only worry is that taking the guilt out of it will sort of backfire by taking the fun out of it too. But that's up to the individual. Your results may vary. 

One guy I for sure is happier about this than anybody.