Liberals have had high hopes (no pun intended) for Pope Francis ever since his election. His sometimes nuanced messages of compassion for all humans have been regularly covered here by Ed and I have found many of them inspiring, though really not all that different from traditional messages coming from the Vatican. The Pontiff just has a different way of expressing himself than some of his predecessors. But that hasn’t stopped many liberals from believing that a sea change was in the air, particularly when it came to the relationship between the church and gay and lesbian Catholics. But given the recent news out of France, that excitement may be tempered a bit in the future.

It’s been a few months since France appointed Laurent Stéfanini, a practicing Catholic who is also openly gay, to be the country’s next ambassador to the Holy See. This week, the European press noticed that the Vatican has yet to accept the appointment, which many are interpreting as an implicit rejection of candidate.

The Rev. Thomas Rosica, a Vatican spokesman, declined via e-mail on Thursday to comment on Stéfanini’s appointment, adding that “any host government has the right to grant agrément or refuse it for their own reasons.” …

The rumors about the meaning of the Vatican’s apparent non-response to the appointment seem to stem from a report in “Le Journal du Dimanche.” The report, citing an unnamed Vatican insider, alleges that a decision to essentially freeze the application came from the “pope himself.”

No matter what’s going on privately at the Vatican over the appointment, the decision to appoint an openly-gay ambassador to the Vatican (even one as experienced in Paris-Vatican diplomacy as Stéfanini) was interpreted by some Vatican watchers as both a provocation and a challenge to the Vatican by the French government.

As far as the overarching message goes, I think Pope Francis has been pretty clear that he’s not suddenly steering the church off in a new direction and approving gay marriage or female priests or any number of other policies which progressives view as being “out of step” with the 21st century. “Loving the sinner” doesn’t translate to waking up one day and endorsing an entirely new doctrine or lending it support by way of high level political appointments.

As far as Monsieur Stéfanini goes, it’s hard to imagine this not being a deliberately provocative act as some in the press are speculating. The Vatican is not just a church… it’s also a nation state and a government, and as such it has to deal with many of the same housekeeping duties as any other nation. One of those functions is the appointment and reception of ambassadors and there are definite rules of the road to be observed in terms of protocol and decorum. Stéfanini may indeed have all the requisite titles and experience on his resume to make him a fully qualified ambassador to the Holy See, but being openly gay is probably a bridge too far. Was there nobody else in the country with comparable qualifications who wouldn’t immediately turn the process into a political circus?

Given the sensitive nature of the topic these days, who in France thought this was a good idea? Were they somehow convinced that they could be the agents of change in the church by essentially calling out the Pope and daring him to turn down a gay ambassador? If so, they seem to have gotten their answer. Each government’s leader can accept or decline a new ambassador as they see fit, so this was a fight that France was destined to lose.

Then again, I’m writing this as a citizen of a country that sent a soap opera producer to Hungary and gave Argentina a political bundler who didn’t speak the language and probably couldn’t find the nation on a map. Perhaps I shouldn’t cast stones here.