Posted on 03/05/2014 11:59:15 AM PST by Pyro7480
...Many nations have regulated civil unions. Is it a path that the Church can understand? But up to what point?
[Pope:]Marriage is between a man and a woman. Secular states want to justify civil unions to regulate different situations of cohabitation, pushed by the demand to regulate economic aspects between persons, such as ensuring health care. It is about pacts of cohabitating of various natures, of which I wouldn't know how to list the different ways. One needs to see the different cases and evaluate them in their variety.
...At half a century from Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae, can the Church take up again the theme of birth control? Cardinal Martini, your confrere, thought that the moment had come.
All of this depends on how Humanae Vitae is interpreted. Paul VI himself, at the end, recommended to confessors much mercy, and attention to concrete situations. But his genius was prophetic, he had the courage to place himself against the majority, defending the moral discipline, exercising a culture brake, opposing present and future neo-Malthusianism. The question is not that of changing the doctrine but of going deeper and making pastoral (ministry) take into account the situations and that which it is possible for people to do. Also of this we will speak in the path of the synod.
(Excerpt) Read more at catholicnewsagency.com ...
Why assume that is the reason? Copying and pasting and typing html on a mobile is a nuisance. As long as the link is provided, what's the problem?
More and more, we don’t have reporters. We have trolls with press credentials. And not just when it comes to covering the Catholic Church, or Christianity. At a certain point, when you tell somebody “Dude, you’re being trolled with that story”, and they stick with it, you’re left with the conclusions that they either know it’s a troll or don’t care, and that they’re voluntarily in on the troll.
I think we need to take him at his (equivocating) word. The liberal Catholics are certainly doing so. A priest at my local parish was clearly thrilled with the "who am I to judge" remark, and I noticed the homo proselytism increased after that.
Gay marriage has been legal in Argentina since 2010. As such, "civil unions" have fallen by the wayside.
How does the Catholic Church respond to a secularist society rapidly spiraling into morass?!! You realize, of course, that we are now in a post-christian era. Where christian church pews were once packed to capacity, the pendulum has shifted. Perhaps you missed this news item.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — It looked like a typical Sunday morning at any mega-church. Several hundred people, including families with small children, packed in for more than an hour of rousing music, an inspirational talk and some quiet reflection. The only thing missing was God.
Atheist 'mega-churches' take root across US, world
As I noted above, the church is a "field hospital". This pope is confronting a world where God has been replaced by science, relativism, secularism, and all the other "isms". Imagine his frustration! Pope Benedict was overwhelmed by the rapidly emerging culture of death: abortion, euthanasia, et al. Rather than mincing and analyzing the words of Pope France, with the intent of interpreting what was not stated, drop to your knees and PRAY!. THAT is the remedy. He has convened a synod on the family and asked for your prayers.
Look at the rapid progression from banning contraception to IVF and now, 3 parent embryos! And with that "gift" of supposedly a healthy baby, the next step will be an obligation for all families to follow this procedure to reduce health care costs. Please take off the blinders and look at the big picture! Think globally; not locally. Who would want to stand in this pope's black shoes and confront this onslaught of technological "progress"!? The Holy Father is focused on one and only one objective to bring back the lost sheep. To do so, he must come up with a response to counteract the secular message. To reach the sheep, he has to employ technological apps like Twitter, Facebook and catholic media outlets. And these technologies are emerging so fast that, in and of themselves, they present yet another challenge.
This is LENT! It is a time for spiritual purification, meditation. prayer, and penance. Please consider devoting these 40 days in praying for our Catholic Church and Pope Francis, its shepherd.
I’m not sure how that responded to my valid, calm point. All I’m sensing is a lot of anger.
No .. I am not an angry person. Frustration .. absolutely. All of this nit picking discussion is unnecessary. Take off the blinders and look at the big picture. Then, stand in the pope's shoes.
March 28, 2003, Joseph Card. Ratzinger
Moral conscience requires that, in every occasion, Christians give witness to the whole moral truth, which is contradicted both by approval of homosexual acts and unjust discrimination against homosexual persons. Therefore, discreet and prudent actions can be effective; these might involve: unmasking the way in which such tolerance might be exploited or used in the service of ideology; stating clearly the immoral nature of these unions; reminding the government of the need to contain the phenomenon within certain limits so as to safeguard public morality and, above all, to avoid exposing young people to erroneous ideas about sexuality and marriage that would deprive them of their necessary defences and contribute to the spread of the phenomenon. Those who would move from tolerance to the legitimization of specific rights for cohabiting homosexual persons need to be reminded that the approval or legalization of evil is something far different from the toleration of evil.
In those situations where homosexual unions have been legally recognized or have been given the legal status and rights belonging to marriage, clear and emphatic opposition is a duty. One must refrain from any kind of formal cooperation in the enactment or application of such gravely unjust laws and, as far as possible, from material cooperation on the level of their application. In this area, everyone can exercise the right to conscientious objection.
June 3, 2003, Joseph Card. Ratzinger
This is the measure against which Pope Francis' recent statements must be judged.
Thanks for posting. That’s a great post.
The way I see it, one can look at those words of then Cardinal Ratzinger and Francis’ words in two ways:
In opposition to each other.
Or complimenting each other.
I prefer the latter, unless led otherwise. For example, there’s been a few posts here and there about Francis’ “support for gay unions in Argentina”.(paraphrased)
Anyone wanna provide proof of that? If not, I see no reason to not go with the latter of the two alternatives I gave above. Especially in this season of Lent.
I certainly have no interest in providing proof for it, and I have not made the claim here. But it was reported, with specifics, in the MSM.
On Gay Unions, a Pragmatist Before He Was a PopeBy suggesting in 2010 that the church in Argentina support civil unions for gay couples, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio revealed himself to be a deal maker willing to compromise.
Alright, thanks. There may be some contradiction between the two there after all. I still don’t know for a fact, since this is the NY Slimes. But I don’t think it’s reasonable to say at this point there can’t be any contradiction. There very well could be.
The preponderance of the evidence seems there might, at least between the two men when both were Cardinals.
Pray for both him and the Church this Lent, I guess that’s the only other thing to say at this point.
The most disturbing aspect of this discussion is watching catholics source secular media (CNN, NYT) to support their absurd concerns. Yes .. absurd! I will be posting another thread from a traditionalist catholic priest's blog.
There’s only so much you can credibly blame the media for this. At some point you gotta admit it’s not all media spin. Maybe a big part of it. But not all of it.
This argument falls flat for me. Because I have seen other Catholics post Francis-related news from MSM sources. Is it only okay to do that when the MSM says things those Catholics agree with? For example, the recent thread from NBC News about the “Francis Effect” and how more Catholics are praying. I guess all of a sudden NBC News is honky dory!
I thought you all might be interested in this. http://www.lifesitenews.com/mobile/news/bergoglio-didnt-suggest-endorsing-homosexual-civil-unions-in-2010-says-conf
And this:
http://www.lifesitenews.com/mobile/news/pope-francis-will-never-approve-homosexual-civil-unions
Hat tip to NKP_Vet for providing these.
From the National Catholic Register (not a liberal MSM source):
Pope Francis on Homosexual Unionsby Jimmy Akin Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Excerpt:
Two Situations The CDF document envisions two situations:
- In the first, it speaks of when recognizing homosexual unions is first proposed in a legislative body and it says that, in that case, Catholic lawmakers must vote against such a law.
- In the second, homosexual unions have already been given legal recognition and the effort is underway to try to limit their harm since it is not possible to get rid of this recognition altogether.
The Argentine Situation
In 2010, the situation Argentina fell somewhere between these two.In that the case, it could be licit to try to stop the full-blown national recognition of homosexual marriage by tolerating a lesser form of legal recognition (i.e., civil unions) as a stopgap measure to prevent the even worse situation from happening.
- Unlike the first situation, this was not the first time that legal recognition was proposed for homosexual unions. As early as 2002, legal recognition had been given to civil unions in Cardinal Bergoglio's own city of Buenos Aires, and such unions had been making dramatic strides in subsequent years.
- Unlike the second situation, full-blown legal recognition of the unions as marriages was not yet in force on a national basis (though various courts had already started approving them in 2009).
After all, it would be vastly harder to roll back a homosexual marriage law once it's in force than to stop it from coming into force.
If the only way to stop it from coming into force would be to tolerate a less-bad form of legal recognition then that would seem permissible.
Cardinal Bergoglio's Proposal?
Cardinal Bergoglio thus may have entertained the idea of civil unions as a last, desperate stopgap measure to prevent full-blown homosexual marriage from being inflicted on Argentina.He may have floated the idea to his fellow bishops, who ultimately decided that it wasn't the way to go on the issue.
He may have mentioned it privately in discussions with homosexual activists, as a kind of trial balloon, to see if they would be willing to accept it in place of homosexual marriage.
It's hard to know what happened in these situations, and I'm not going to take an activist's word about what happened in a private discussion of which we have no transcript. It's too easy for partisans to slant what may have been said--or even engage in outright fabrications.
I prefer to go with what a person has chosen to say in public, on record, in a verifiable way.
A Desperate Expedient?
It's clear that Cardinal Bergoglio in no way approves of homosexual marriage, which he attributed to the Devil. That's a remarkably blunt statement.If he privately floated the idea of civil unions as a way of stopping full-blown homosexual marriage, I would see this as a last, desperate expedient and not suppose that he viewed such unions as a positive thing, just as a less-horrible thing.
I certainly wouldn't see it as evidence that he was "seeking compromise" or being "flexible" or open to "dialogue" on established moral principles.
I would instead assume that he was trying to prevent an even worse situation from coming about and seeking to apply to the particular situation in Argentina the principles the Magisterium had already established.
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