Posted on 05/05/2008 11:51:40 AM PDT by Pyro7480
CATHOLIC parishes that allow cross-dressing homosexuals to play female saints in the Santacruzan or Santa Cruz de Mayo procession do not honor but instead insult the Blessed Virgin Mary and will be punished, Cardinal Gaudencio Rosales, Archbishop of Manila, warned on Monday.
The punishment is the removal of the faculty for Holy Masses in those parishes.
In the Catholic Church, the month of May is devoted to Mary, who is revered as the Mother of God since her son Jesus is God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. Pious Catholics go on pilgrimages to shrines dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Parishes organize the Santacruzan or Santa Cruz de Mayo procession. It is actually a novena (nine days of devotion) during which the participants pray and sing the holy rosary. When sung, the words of the Hail Mary prayer are in Spanish (“Dios te salve, Maria …”), which shows that the Santacruzan novena harks back to Spanish times.
As with everything in the Philippines, the show business and beauty pageant culture invaded the Santacruzan. The May procession originally involved life-size images of saints—the Blessed Virgin, Queen Helena, the mother of Roman Emperor Constantine, who stopped the persecution of Christians and favored Catholicism over the original pagan religions of Italy and other female saints of early Christianity.
Then the processions started to feature reigning beauty queens as Queen Helena. The runners-up take the roles of the other saints. All wear tiaras and glittering gowns.
Before long, consumer-goods companies sponsored citywide and televised Santacruzan processions. Movie stars now play the role of Saint Helena (who is credited with finding the original cross of Calvary) and their leading men as consorts. This was never in the original Church novena.
Then, with the emergence of empowered gay groups, some neighborhoods—independently of the local Catholic parish priest and parish council—held their own Santacruzan processions with cross-dressing gays as the saints.
Soon enough, some parishes assumed the highly successful homosexual-organized processions as their own.
This is what Cardinal Rosales condemned in the Monday radio interview on Catholic Church-owned and operated Radio Veritas.
“We should keep sacred what is sacred,” Cardinal Gaudencio Rosales said as he attacked parishes for allowing male homosexuals to play Saint Helena and other female saints in the Santacruzan procession.
“The procession is religious. [But] what the [parishes] do is organize it as a parade of homosexual cross-dressers. That’s an insult to the Blessed Mother. Ay, naku po, nakakapanghilakbot! [Oh, mother of mine, it’s hair-raising]” the Cardinal said.
Rosales added that he had taken the leaders of one parish to task for having gay cross-dressers participate in these processions.
“I told them that’s not right because it’s a sacred procession. You are destroying the purity of the devotion,” he said.
Rosales announced that the Church will ban the holding of Masses at any parish that disregards the warning.
He clarified that he was not discriminating against homosexuals but only wanted “to preserve the solemnity of the processions that are meant to honor the Mother of God.”
Catholic ping!
This is pretty funny! St. Helena, my patron saint, was an old woman when she travelled to the Holy Land, and a divorcee whose ex-husband had died. (A divorced widow?)
So ... how do you say “No Poofters” in Spanish? Tagalog?
Spanish for poofter is “maricon.” I used to know some Tagalog, when I was growing up in San Diego, but I was too young to assimilate the appropriate term, if I’d heard it.
Our local parish has teenage girls for a procession and sadly, it has turned into a mini-prom. Elaborate hairdos; heavy makeup; tight, strapless, glamorous white gowns, high heel shoes. Some girls show up in limousines. The “audience” applauds at the girls’ crowning with glittering tiaras like it’s some beauty pageant. This is supposed to honor the Virgin Mary? To me, it makes mockery of Our Lady’s humility and modesty and the example she set of obedience to God. Nonsense like this shameful manifestation of a May procession is why I drive 80 miles to a TLM parish.
Good heavens! How did the Church get to this!
God bless Cardinal Rosales.
After reading the first few words of your comment I was going to suggest that but you beat me to it.
When are good bishops like Cardinal Rosales going to admit that it is VaticanII, or at least an incorrect interpretation/implementation that set the stage for these horrible abuses?
Things aren't good when I can't take my young girls to a Mary procession because of fears of seeing a sex parade. Can you imagine the incredible (bad) irony in that?
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