Somewhere in America a liberal weeps.
Posted on 02/22/2005 12:46:48 PM PST by Clint N. Suhks
I'm sorry I ruined the party by intruding with a little truth. But truth is better than living in a dream world.
Since the Pope has already packed the coming conclave with cardinals outside the mainstream of Catholic Tradition, I expect the next pope to be equally bad--but without JPII's charisma.
VIII At the present time there are those who, basing themselves on observations in the psychological order, have begun to judge indulgently, and even to excuse completely, homosexual relations between certain people. This they do in opposition to the constant teaching of the Magisterium and to the moral sense of the Christian people.A distinction is drawn, and it seems with some reason, between homosexuals whose tendency comes from a false education, from a lack of normal sexual development, from habit, from bad example, or from other similar causes, and is transitory or at least not incurable; and homosexuals who are definitively such because of some kind of innate instinct or a pathological constitution judged to be incurable.
In regard to this second category of subjects, some people conclude that their tendency is so natural that it justifies in their case homosexual relations within a sincere communion of life and love analogous to marriage, in so far as such homosexuals feel incapable of enduring a solitary life.
In the pastoral field, these homosexuals must certainly be treated with understanding and sustained in the hope of overcoming their personal difficulties and their inability to fit into society. Their culpability will be judged with prudence. But no pastoral method can be employed which would give moral justification to these acts on the grounds that they would be consonant with the condition of such people. For according to the objective moral order, homosexual relations are acts which lack an essential and indispensable finality. In Sacred Scripture they are condemned as a serious depravity and even presented as the sad consequence of rejecting God. This judgment of Scripture does not of course permit us to conclude that all those who suffer from this anomaly are personally responsible for it, but it does attest to the fact that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered and can in no case be approved of.
10. It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the Church's pastors wherever it occurs. It reveals a kind of disregard for others which endangers the most fundamental principles of a healthy society. The intrinsic dignity of each person must always be respected in word, in action and in law.But the proper reaction to crimes committed against homosexual persons should not be to claim that the homosexual condition is not disordered. When such a claim is made and when homosexual activity is consequently condoned, or when civil legislation is introduced to protect behavior to which no one has any conceivable right, neither the Church nor society at large should be surprised when other distorted notions and practices gain ground, and irrational and violent reactions increase.
11. It has been argued that the homosexual orientation in certain cases is not the result of deliberate choice; and so the homosexual person would then have no choice but to behave in a homosexual fashion. Lacking freedom, such a person, even if engaged in homosexual activity, would not be culpable.
Here, the Church's wise moral tradition is necessary since it warns against generalizations in judging individual cases. In fact, circumstances may exist, or may have existed in the past, which would reduce or remove the culpability of the individual in a given instance; or other circumstances may increase it. What is at all costs to be avoided is the unfounded and demeaning assumption that the sexual behaviour of homosexual persons is always and totally compulsive and therefore inculpable. What is essential is that the fundamental liberty which characterizes the human person and gives him his dignity be recognized as belonging to the homosexual person as well. As in every conversion from evil, the abandonment of homosexual activity will require a profound collaboration of the individual with God's liberating grace.
II. Applications10. "Sexual orientation" does not constitute a quality comparable to race, ethnic background, etc. in respect to non-discrimination. Unlike these, homosexual orientation is an objective disorder (cf. "Letter," No. 3) and evokes moral concern.
11. There are areas in which it is not unjust discrimination to take sexual orientation into account, for example, in the placement of children for adoption or foster care, in employment of teachers or athletic coaches, and in military recruitment.[/quote]
13. Including "homosexual orientation" among the considerations on the basis of which it is illegal to discriminate can easily lead to regarding homosexuality as a positive source of human rights, for example, in respect to so-called affirmative action or preferential treatment in hiring practices. This is all the more deleterious since there is no right to homosexuality (cf. No. 10) which therefore should not form the basis for judicial claims. The passage from the recognition of homosexuality as a factor on which basis it is illegal to discriminate can easily lead, if not automatically, to the legislative protection and promotion of homosexuality. A person's homosexuality would be invoked in opposition to alleged discrimination, and thus the exercise of rights would be defended precisely via the affirmation of the homosexual condition instead of in terms of a violation of basic human rights.
4. There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and family. Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law. Homosexual acts “close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved”.7. Homosexual unions are totally lacking in the biological and anthropological elements of marriage and family which would be the basis, on the level of reason, for granting them legal recognition. Such unions are not able to contribute in a proper way to the procreation and survival of the human race. The possibility of using recently discovered methods of artificial reproduction, beyond involv- ing a grave lack of respect for human dignity, does nothing to alter this inadequacy.
Homosexual unions are also totally lacking in the conjugal dimension, which represents the human and ordered form of sexuality. Sexual relations are human when and insofar as they express and promote the mutual assistance of the sexes in marriage and are open to the transmission of new life.
As experience has shown, the absence of sexual complementarity in these unions creates obstacles in the normal development of children who would be placed in the care of such persons. They would be deprived of the experience of either fatherhood or motherhood. Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children, in the sense that their condition of dependency would be used to place them in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development. This is gravely immoral and in open contradiction to the principle, recognized also in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, that the best interests of the child, as the weaker and more vulnerable party, are to be the paramount consideration in every case.
"You don't agree with all the Pope has done? Fine. But don't spread scandal about him."
When the Pope offered our sacred altars to Voodoo priests and witchdoctors, all the news media of the world were present. The scandal was his alone, not mine. I only relate what he has done--and what he has done is scandalous. The fact that it sounds so when I repeat it, is his fault, not mine.
I'm a Catholic in good standing. You may not like that I attend the traditional Mass at an SSPX chapel, but it's perfectly licit, even by Rome's own admission. I have never denied the legitimacy of the papacy nor of this pope--though I believe he's a bad pope. That's the way I see it. It may not make me a favorite around here, but it doesn't make me a schismatic either. Your saying so is slanderous--but it's routine with you and I'm used to it. The truth is, I am very much in the Church and receive the sacraments with a clear conscience.
Yes and I am not a talifreeper.
Why do you bash the Pope on these threads? Do you think he reads them or anyone else in the Vatican for that matter? But there may be Catholics who are be weak in their faith who read your posts, or those who are looking to convert to Catholicism.
Faithful Catholics all know the smoke of Satan has entered the Church. Would you tell a potential Catholic convert of all the problems in the Church before they converted? Of course not, because they probably would look to find a Protestant church then. In fact, everyone who bashes the Pope here is doing nothing more than causing scandal against the Holy Father, which is a GRAVE SIN!
"all you can do is slander the Holy Father. What kind of a faithful Catholic does that?"
If a mere recitation of actions by the Pope himself elicits charges of slander--how come the actions themselves don't get your censure as well? Is it slanderous for me to say he offers our altars to witchdoctors or that he apologized to Islam for the sins of the Church? HE did these things and worse, not I. If I relate the facts, how is it I am accused of slander? Are you embarrassed by the truth?
I forgot to put the obvious sarcasm tags in my last post
"The Pope is fully orthodox on teachings of the faith. He has not derogated one iota from the teachings of the Real Presence, the sacrifics of the Mass or the dogmatic teachings of the Council of Trent."
He is orthodox on most dogmatic truths in writing but not in practice. You say he has "not derogated one iota from the teachings of the Real Presence"--yet his papal Masses are the scenes of widespread liturgical abuses and blasphemies involving the Blessed Sacrament. Nor has he prevented these occurances by a change in procedure in any way. He claims to reject indifferentism and syncretism--yet his actual practices belie such claims. In fact his actions are heterodox--and even some of his encyclical writings are pretty doubtful. Redemptor Hominis is certainly heterodox--and even shocking--in many ways, expressive of a faith that owes more to secular humanism than to Catholic theology.
"You NEVER mention Dominus Iesus."
This never fails to make me laugh. Dominus Iesus was necessary because the Pope, by his actions, had spread an indifferentist message. He was forced to backpedal. One measure of the truth of what I say is how bitterly shocked and disappointed Protestants and Jews were following its publication. They had no inkling about the real truth but had believed exactly what the Pontiff led them to believe. Why should you suppose we ought to give JPII a medal for saying what needed to be said because of his own unclear, deliberately ambiguous behavior?
"John Paul II understands the Papacy perfectly. He wears the shoes of the Fisherman, not the tiara of a king."
I don't think he thinks he's a fisherman, and I don't think he thinks he's a king. I think he thinks he's some kind of rock star.
truth bump
Oh please, go away!
"What kind of a faithful Catholic does that?"
Dante put his own pope in Hell. The Church considered him a model Catholic for centuries thereafter. Being a faithful Catholic has nothing to do with saying nice things about the pope. It is about remaining faithful to the faith.
Probably not since the KKK is/was virulently anti-Catholic.
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