Posted on 06/16/2008 6:16:35 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
President Bush may follow in the footsteps of his brother Jeb and convert to Catholicism, several European papers are reporting.
In the wake of the president’s visit to see Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican, Italian newspapers, citing Vatican sources, said Bush was open to the idea of converting to Catholicism.
The Italian newspaper Il Foglio referred to such talk about Bush’s possible conversion and stated that “anything is possible, especially for someone reborn like Bush.”
Noting that Tony Blair converted to Catholicism after leaving office as Britain’s prime minister last year, the paper also stated that “if anything happens, it will happen after he finishes his period as president, not before. It is similar to Blair’s case, but with different circumstances.”
President Bush welcomed Pope Benedict XVI warmly when he visited the U.S. in April. And Vatican watchers noted that Bush met privately with the pontiff in the private gardens of the Vatican last Friday — an unprecedented place for the Pope to meet a head of state. Typically, the Vatican gardens are used by the Pope for private reflection.
A Vatican spokesman said the Pope used the unusual locale to reciprocate for the “warmth” Bush showed when the two met in Washington.
Though the Catholic Church has criticized the U.S. war in Iraq, Bush has been an ardent supporter of pro-life issues; he has staunchly opposed stem-cell research; and he opposes gay marriage — all issues important for Rome.
Currently Bush belongs to a Methodist church in Texas and attends an Episcopal church in Washington, D.C.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe the Catholic Canon law will allow someone in your situation to marry if he intends to consummate the marriage and, of course, avoid contraception. At the same time it would not be sinful or invalidating for the marriage if the couple were to maintain a natural family planning discipline so that to avoid pregnancy on the medical grounds.
You wrote:
“...and my friend thought it was ridiculous that after “x” years of marriage and a fully consummated one I might add, the Church could annul her marriage.”
The number of years is irrelevant.
“She even said, “What does that make my son?””
It doesn’t make him anything other than what he is - the son of that man and woman. Too many fools out there actually think that an annulment makes a child a bastard or some such nonsense. That’s just untrue.
“This is why I see nothing but hypocrisy and legalism. This is why. Sorry if you don’t like it.”
What I see is a lack of knowledge (and your friend’s). Clearly neither you nor she understand what’s going on. Your lack of knowledge is acute enough that you probably should refrain from making conclusions until you resolve the problem. You should also help your friend out and buy her a copy of Edward Peters’ book on annulments. It will help out tremendously.
You wrote:
“My problem is not how I would feel if I had a child with the same disorder as me, it is what he or she would feel.”
If you act properly he will feel loved. You may adopt a child only to discover a terrible medical problem later. What will you do then? Turn the kid in for another? Regret ever adopting that child? Aren’t there risks no matter what you do?
“It is sad when the majority of your childhood memories involve being in a hospital. Also never being able to join a sports team, ride a bike, or roughhouse.”
So you opted for suicide, right? You’re dead now, right? It seems to me that kids can have difficult lives and still grow up happy. My childhood was no picnic - and oh how I wish I could blame it on a genetic disorder - and yet I still find a reason to get out of bed every day and find enjoyment in living. What if you have a perfectly healthy child (your own or adopted) and he is struck by a car at say age 11 and paralyzed? Is his life now worthless? I knew a kid with MD. He died before he reached 21. He could never play sports, ride a bike, dance, climb trees, walk, run, jump or any of the other things kids usually take for granted when they’re kids. He still enjoyed life. He died in college. His physically fit, athletic brother never got that far.
“I also know this would not just be my decision, I would discuss this with my wife and with my pastor before I went ahead with any procedure.”
Okay. And what do you think God would say?
Can you explain this to me? I’m Catholic, but I never heard the whole “paralysis” thing and it’s perhaps the most disturbing thing I’ve heard about my Church.
And I’m sorry if I’m being graphic here...but as I read Can. 1084, applying it to the paralysis context, it basically means if you’re a male unable to have an erection and thus cannot perform “the sex act” in its most basic biological terms, no marriage. But if you’re able to have an erection - even though you’re sterile - you can be married in the Church.
To me this is a distinction without a difference. If the Church’s argument is that marriage must be open to the transmission of life, well, sorry, but neither one is...
Then why do we let post-menopausal women get married in the Church?
Documentation?
You know, that is an interesting question, and I won’t hesitate to say I don’t know the answer. My theory, however, is that the marriage has to be consummated and open to life. A post-menopausal woman can certainly consummate a marriage, something an impotent man cannot do at the start of the marriage. And Sarah, after all, was well beyond reasonable child-bearing years when she became pregnant.
I truly don’t know. Pinging NYer - any thoughts?
But if you’re sterile, and you know it, your marriage is not “open to life.”
Very confusing...and this whole issue seems to me to rely on Medieval thinking on the sterility/impotence issue that the Church would do better to jettison. I’m a pretty faithful Catholic, but this issue has me pretty riled. I wouldn’t in a million years belive that Jesus would approve of foreclosing marriage to a paralytic because that paralysis caused impotence.
Please disregard my previous post.
Anyone who gets his bible teaching from a typical United Methodist Church denominational church and/or the modern Episcopal church will not be exposed to sound biblical doctrines. Although there are still quite a few biblically sound local Methodist pastors and laymen in individual UMC churches, the UMC at the national level has been thoroughly infiltrated and dominated by unbelieving liberals for several generations now and the current UMC bears little resemblance to the traditional Methodist Church of my grandparents generation.
My devout Christian paternal grandparents who passed away almost 50 years ago were lifelong Methodists of the old school Methodist church, and they would run not walk away from the liberal dominated UMC of today. My father remained in the Methodist church until the 1960s when it was beginning to become very obvious that unbelieving liberals had wormed their way into control of the Methodist denomination and were corrupting the biblical teaching of the traditional Wesleyan Methodist church, and he joined a Baptist church along with my mother and me.
As for the Episcopal Church, the only segments of that denomination that have remained faithful to biblical Christianity seem to be the African and Asian bishoprics. My sister's large nondenominational, evangelical church recently hosted a fund raising seminar conducted by a black African Anglican bishop who is as critical of the Anglican and American Episcopal leadership and clergy as any Baptist or Pentecostal would be.
Too true.
Mark 10:8, He said to them, "Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. 9 And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery."
I agree with the Catholic position that God's ideal plan for marriage was and still is a permanent union between one man and one woman for life, but according to Jesus' statement to the Pharisees it can be ended by adultery if the offended party so desires.
I realize that there are other ways in which this scripture passage can be interpreted, one of those being that it only applied in the context of that particular time period to fornication committed by a betrothed bride during the customary Jewish year long betrothal before the formal wedding ceremony. But I believe that He was clearly telling the hypocritical Pharisees that marriage was intended by God to be for life, and they were sinning by divorcing their wives for trivial reasons, but that marriage can be dissolved by the act of adultery that was flagrantly practiced by many of the Pharisees themselves. St. Paul later taught basically the same thing in I Corinthians ch 7.
All well and good, but that article doesn’t at all help to clarify the distinction between sterile persons being permitted to marry while impotent persons cannot.
The Greek word translates to "lewdness" or "unchastity," not "adultery". The words are different, porneia versus moicheia.
The Lord's reference is to marriages that are not real marriages, because of consanguinity or some other invalidating circumstance.
Allowing divorce and remarriage in the case of adultery makes a hash out of the law, because it encourages people to commit adultery to get out of an unhappy marriage.
Are you still referring to post menopausal women?
I don't see how avoiding passing along genetic problems to one's children could be attributed to a lack of faith.
Most of us understand that it is wrong to "challenge God" as a matter of faith, such as doing something we know is risky or dangerous and then asking that God protect us from our own actions.
What Campion said. In addition, 1 Cor 7 does not allow for divorce after adultery either; the exception there is, again, one preexisting the marriage, namely, absence of Christian faith in one spouse.
The incident with my friend happened in the early 80s so no book is necessary - she’s very over it. As for her question about her son, it was rhetorical.
Glad you know so much about my lack of knowledge. Maybe if you removed the log from your eye you might be able to help others with the speck you seem to be glaring at.
Thankfully, Martin Luther started one for me.
To be frank, I don’t want to Google anything about the Catholic Church’s annulment process. I know enough about it first hand, and what happens in real life tells me far more than anything that’s in their official teachings, just as knowing that their are priests out there telling congregants that Satan is a figment, a fantasy, mere make believe, and I know the official teaching of the Church does not say this.
As Dennis Prager says, “Don’t show me what a religion says, show me what its adherents do.”
I am very glad your Church has removed all doubt from your mind about this issue. I, myself, take great comfort in knowing that Jesus showed mercy, kindness and great charity and love to Thomas. I have many doubts about many things and I am perfectly fine admitting that I don’t get it all and am glad the Lord doesn’t require me to follow men either.
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