hot take
you aren’t being super woke and thinking deeply by defending father flynn. you’re missing the whole point of the show.
father flynn represents religious homophobia. plain and simple. his entire role is to show how the church represses teens, discourages them from formulating opinions, and rejects their calls for help and validation because of perceived sin. even after jason’s death, he can’t acknowledge jason’s sexuality. the best he can do is apologize to peter after peter cuts straight to the heart of the issue. it’s the shortest apology possible, indicates nothing about how he feels, and the point is not that he apologizes but that peter forgives him. the whole “he’s influenced by his upbringing” argument could work EXCEPT that there’s a clear foil to him in that respect: claire. when peter comes out to her, she is initially unable to accept it but finds it within herself to choose love for a scared teenager over her core beliefs. father flynn is not only faced with the same choice, but it is much higher stakes, and he is unable to do what claire did. so yeah father flynn sucks and y’all need to stop defending him as a way of being fake deep because his CHOICE (yes it was a choice, he knew he could comfort jason) helped push a boy over the edge to kill himself