Condemn homosexuality, Vatican official tells Lambeth conference

Homosexuality is a disordered behaviour that must be condemned, a Vatican official said yesterday.

Walter Cardinal Kasper made the remarks during an address at the Lambeth conference, the once-a-decade gathering of the world's Anglican bishops in Canterbury.

Kasper, who is president of the pontifical council for promoting christian unity, reminded delegates of the catechism of the Roman Catholic church on homosexuality: "This teaching is founded in the Old and New Testament and the fidelity to scripture and to Apostolic tradition is absolute."

Quoting from a key document on Anglican and Catholic relations he said: "Homosexuality is a disordered behaviour. The activity must be condemned; the traditional approach to homosexuality is comprehensive ... A clear declaration about this theme must come from the Anglican Communion."

Such a statement would "greatly strengthen the possibility" of the two churches giving common witness regarding human sexuality, something that was "sorely needed in the world of today".

Kasper was saddened that dialogue between the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church had been seriously compromised over the issues of women's ordination and homosexuality. These developments had also caused the Communion to enter into a period of dispute, he observed.

"Many of you are troubled, deeply so, by the threat of fragmentation. In such a scenario, who will our dialogue partner be? How can we appropriately and honestly engage in conversations with those who share Catholic perspectives on the points currently in dispute, and who disagree with some developments within the Anglican Communion or particular provinces?"

The decision to allow the ordination of women in 28 Anglican provinces implied a turning away from the common position of all churches of the first millennium, he said.

The Catholic perspective on the Anglican Communion was that it was moving a "considerable distance closer" to Protestant churches of the 16th century.

Card. Kasper's entire speech can be found on this thread:

[OPEN] At Lambeth, Cardinal Kasper Calls for Another Newman

There are a number of money quotes in the speech. In addition, looking at the context of the speech changes the tone significantly from what was reported in the article. For example, the article reports,

The decision to allow the ordination of women in 28 Anglican provinces implied a turning away from the common position of all churches of the first millennium, he said.
The Catholic perspective on the Anglican Communion was that it was moving a "considerable distance closer" to Protestant churches of the 16th century.

Kasper says (in context):

As I stated when addressing the Church of England’s House of Bishops in 2006, for us this decision to ordain women implies a turning away from the common position of all churches of the first millennium, that is, not only the Catholic Church but also the Oriental Orthodox and the Orthodox churches. We would see the Anglican Communion as moving a considerable distance closer to the side of the Protestant churches of the 16th century, and to a position they adopted only during the second half of the 20th century.

(Note that the change: he was repeating statements he made two years ago. Secondly, by enumerating not only the Catholic, but the Orthodox and the Oriental Orthodox, the emphasis is on the "catholic" (universal) nature of the opinion for all of this time. Considerably stronger wording than what was reported in the Guardian. In addition, by enumerating the Catholic, the Orthodox, and the Oriental Orthodox, the "we" takes on a tremendously greater significance than if "we" would be interpreted as "Roman Catholic" alone)

The legal fees and awards of the last few years would seem to back me up.

You're right. Pew Catholics are paying a very high price for the sins of the past. When the sex abuse scandal broke, the media covered it round the clock for months on end. Victim groups were formed and lawyers swooped down like vulchers. Under constant scrutiny, how did the Catholic Church respond? With this document, that establishes a plan of action to prevent anything like this from occuring again in the future.

Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People

Under the terms of this charter, it is now mandatory for anyone in the Catholic Church who comes in contact with children, to attend a series of workshops and have a police background check. This includes priests, religious, teachers, cleaning staff, service workers, and all volunteers. The experience has been painful but has produced very positive fruits.

The same cannot be said for the non-Catholic Churches.

The figures released to The Associated Press offer a glimpse into what has long been an extremely difficult phenomenon to pin down — the frequency of sex abuse in Protestant congregations.
Religious groups and victims' supporters have been keenly interested in the figure ever since the Roman Catholic sex abuse crisis hit five years ago. The church has revealed that there have been 13,000 credible accusations against Catholic clerics since 1950.
Protestant numbers have been harder to come by and are sketchier because the denominations are less centralized than the Catholic church; indeed, many congregations are independent, which makes reporting even more difficult.
Report: Protestant Church Insurers Handle 260 Sex Abuse Cases a Year

Without a central figure, like the Catholic Church, it is very difficult for insurance companies to pin down the level of abuse in the 25,000+ denominations. As to numbers, here is acollection of news reports on (Protestant) ministers who have sexually abused children.
Sexual Abuse of Children by Protestant Ministers

And these reports do not include abuse by Jewish rabbis or Muslim imams. They do not include abuse by Public School Teachers ( Sex Abuse by Teachers Said Worse Than Catholic Church ), Camp Counselors, Aides ... and the list goes on and on.

Unfortunately, because of the media attention, everyone automatically associates "sex abuse" with Catholic priests. We've cleaned up our seminaries. What has your Church done about sex abuse? What have you done about it in the schools?

This is about the most arrogant thing I’ve ever read.

You do realize that Greece, and its glorious republic, existed long before a few rogue Jewish guys started an offshoot of Judaism. So did it retroactively effect Greece? How about China? Christians are a tiny minority there, and they’re not part of the West...I guess the concept of monogamous marriage is absent there as well. Nobody gets married in Japan, either.

Even more ridiculous is the assertion that we were nothing but a bunch of rutting pagan beasts, stupidly breeding with no thought of anything else...yeah, no Vikings ever got married. No Angle ever got married. No Vandal, or Greek, ever got married before Europe turned Christian...which was a process of hundreds of years. Amazingly, the West can land on the Moon, but the idea of staying faithful to one person escaped them until Judaism came along...makes perfect sense. People are no smarter than we used to be, there is just a lot more accumulated knowledge/easier access to it. There is no proof that IQ’s were any less 2500 years ago than they are today, and the idea of staying faithful not exactly a solely Jewish idea.

Just absolutely ridiculous, and a denial of historical fact. Greeks were in monogamous relationships LONG, LONG, before Christianity ever reached Italy’s shore, and to say otherwise is just stupid, and arrogant. The Bible didn’t invent marriage, if it did, then the Greeks/other pagans/et al would not have engaged in the practice of it. If that wasn’t true, there would be no such thing as an ‘Athenian Wedding Rite.’ By the way, since Orthodox Jews don’t allow women to worship with them, maybe they should ‘elevate’ the status of women a little further.

If this is alone what made the West great, and we must have followed it to a man, then why didn’t murder dissapear? Thievery? Coveting your neighbors wife? I mean, why did we just pick monogamous marriage to stick faithfully to, but we didn’t do the same with the other rules in the Bible? Yeah, exactly. The people of the West are what made the West, just as the Chinese people have made China what it is. You do realize that most people never even saw a Bible in ancient times, correct? Everyone didn’t have a copy of it, to read through and decide whether or not it was ok to be unfaithful to his MATE.

Did this guy invent sliced bread too?

Wow. Welcome to free republic. I see you just joined today.

This is Judeo-Christian philosophy 101. Are you telling me the Greeks revered marriage like Christians and Jews? Even their Gods ran around with every sexual partner they could find, of both sexes. If you look at ancient places, they had phallic symbols hanging everywhere. Temple prostitutes. They murdered their unborn and their newly born, and sacrificed them to idols. There are whole buildings in the ancient world with piles of baby skeletons in them.

The ancient Romans worshiped death to the point that their entertainment was watching men and animals tear each other apart. The ancient Greeks in cultures like Sparta were barbaric, drinking blood and beating their children. The Japanese worshiped war and violence to the point of developing ritualized suicides. And even today the Chinese don’t respect rights or freedoms or life one bit.

I have not seen any great proof that ancient China, Japan, Mexico or anywhere else revered their women as equals and marveled at the gift of life from God. I do not see anywhere else that the concept that marriage is sacred, and a gift from God. And that every life is precious and a piece of the sacred divine. And that women and man are equal before God, made in the image of God and a creation born of His love.

I believe in American exceptionalism. I think this Judean Christian heritage, and American philosophy that we have been blessed with, is the greatest shining culture that has ever existed. And each time we reject this philosophy, we move closer to darkness.

If that makes me arrogant, I’ll take it.

Have you taken a look around in America lately? Sex is everywhere. Does that mean that were never a Godly country, because we have fallen now? Can we assume that because marriage is a (nearly) broken institution in America, 2008, that it was broken in 1808?

People are people. My Viking ancestors valued their women, because they valued themselves...just as a thorougbred horse values and protects his mare, sorry for the animal comparison, Ladies. They didn’t have to be told to love their own, and they weren’t wasteful.

Have you taken a look at what people watch for entertainment these days? Its pretty much “men and animals tearing each other apart,” with sex, theft, adultery, pornography and whatever else goes thrown in. Take a look at movies, and our violent crime, we’re not that far from returning to the Coliseum days.

I believe in American exceptionalism as well...but Judaism didn’t invent sliced bread. There have been men intelligent enough to value and treasure their mate, because it makes good sense, for as long as there have been men. We weren’t a bunch of rutting beasts, ignorantly foraging.

Can I ask you this? In Roman/Greek times, can you positively say that every man was a whore monger? In America, can you positively say that every man stays faithful to his wife? No? Then there go the absolutes you speak in.

As for the piles of baby skeletons, well, if we didn’t incinerate them, we’d have a hell of a lot of a bigger pile, just from our abortions. And this is in a Godly country, or one that once was. So when you point a finger at those people, you’re really pointing at yourself.

All Greek gods were whores? And here I was thinking that there was an entire spectrum of them, with individual personalities.

I wonder what a future civilization would think of us if they found piled up all our dead, murdered babies and crime victims. You think they’d find us civilized? No doubt they’d be awed by our closeness to God, or at least how close we like to put infants to God.

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