Posted on 08/22/2010 7:01:35 PM PDT by markomalley
Washington D.C., Aug 22, 2010 / 06:12 pm (CNA).- Prominent Catholic dissenters have created an organization to promote homosexual political causes and to change Catholic opinion through coordination with other activists. Organized explicitly to oppose the U.S. bishops, the group’s website asks for reports of “anti-equality activity” in Catholic parishes.
The group Catholics for Equality’s website, which is still under construction, reports that the organization is dedicated to “support, educate, and mobilize equality-supporting Catholics to advance LGBT equality at federal, state, and local levels.”
The group claims the “official voice of the hierarchy” favors discrimination and opposes “just” efforts to secure “legal equality for LGBT Americans.” This “anti-equality voice” is “far too often” portrayed as representative of American Catholics, according to the website.
One page on the site, titled “Report anti-equality activity!” contains an incomplete template for a submission form. It asks informers to describe the purported anti-equality activity and to categorize whether it took place in the parish, diocese or community “so that pro-equality Catholics can respond.”
The information generates an e-mail sent to the organization and also “an entry into private ‘report’ database,” the website says.
Mark Matson, president of the dissenting Catholic group DignityUSA, reported in a March 2010 newsletter on the group's website that an organizational meeting for Catholics for Equality took place on January 30 and 31 in Washington, D.C.
He said the meeting was convened to address the “increasing role” of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and state bishops’ conference in opposing “LGBT” political causes. Another purpose of the meeting was to “coordinate efforts to shift Catholic public opinion and voter behaviors.”
Matson said he attended in lieu of executive director Marianne Duddy-Burke because the meeting was held on short notice. He added that other DignityUSA attendees included its board members Mark Clark and Tom Yates, both from Dignity/Washington (District of Columbia), and Ray Panas, president of Dignity/Washington.
According to Matson, Catholics for Equality will “focus on influencing legislation and the behavior of Catholic voters in a way that DignityUSA cannot” because of its tax designation. It will also develop an outreach strategy to include “influential theologians.” In his words, the new group “complements” DignityUSA’s mission and will be a counterpart to the homosexual advocacy group Human Rights Campaign (HRC). He and Duddy-Burke will hold two seats on the group’s board of advisors.
Also in attendance at the organizing meeting were Frank DeBernardo and Matthew Myers of New Ways Ministry. Sr. Jeannine Gramick, co-founder of the group and present co-director of the National Coalition of American Nuns (NCAN), also attended.
In a recent interview with a Dallas-based homosexual paper, Sr. Gramick claimed that there was a disconnect between the Catholic hierarchy and the laity on homosexual issues. She also estimated that about half of Catholic priests were homosexual.
In its interview with the religious sister, the Dallas Voice reported that New Ways Ministry is experimenting with a new program to target legislators as well as Catholic grassroots voters in Maryland.
According to Matson, Catholics for Equality’s organizational meeting was convened by Washington attorney Phil Attey and Rev. Dr. Joe Palacios, described as a Jesuit priest from Los Angeles who is currently on the Georgetown University faculty.
Last year Attey created a website to “aggregate reports on every gay priest” in the Archdiocese of Washington to help them “stand up to the church hierarchy” on homosexual issues. According to a WhoIs lookup, the website shares the same 12th Street, NW D.C. mailing address as Catholics for Equality.
In the 1990s Attey served as HRC’s electronic media manager. According to the gay publication Metro Weekly, he also co-chaired the Obama Pride Metro D.C. group to support the current U.S. president’s election bid.
For his part, Palaicos is a board member of Catholics for Equality and also political co-chair of the HRC’s D.C. Steering Community. According to his biography at the Georgetown University website, in 2009 he was appointed by the White House to serve on the board of visitors supervising what is commonly known as the School of the Americas, a U.S. training facility for Latin American military officers which has been criticized for its alumni’s alleged participation in human rights violations.
Issues listed on the Catholics for Equality website include “marriage equality.” Claiming that same-sex “marriage” does not coerce any religious faith, it invokes the “separation of Church and State” and says “we affirm civil marriage for same-sex couples throughout the United States.”
The group criticizes the U.S. bishops’ opposition to the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), and advocates opening military service to open homosexuals.
“Catholics in the United States live in this social context that allows the free exercise of conscience rather than enforced scriptural fundamentalism or bishops’ and pastors’ exhortations in making decisions regarding homosexuality and gay rights— as is often exercised in Protestant fundamentalist and evangelical denominations and now by increasingly doctrinaire Catholic bishops,” the website argues.
It also claims that Catholic priests rarely mention homosexuality or homosexual issues in sermons “except when forced to by the bishops,” saying this coercion happened during the campaign to pass California’s Proposition 8 and Maine’s Proposition 1. Both successful ballot measures restored the definition of marriage to be a union of a man and a woman.
Other attendees at the Catholics for Equality organizing meeting included Joanna Blotner, coordinator of the HRC’s Religion and Faith Program; Sharon Groves, deputy director for the HRC’s Religion and Faith Program; Chuck Colbert, a journalist and contributor to the National Catholic Reporter; Shiva Subbaraman of the Georgetown LGBTQ Resource Center; and Peter Montgomery, a senior fellow at People for the American Way who facilitated the discussion.
The homosexual blogger Anthony Adams, who was ordained as a Catholic priest, attended the meeting as did Anne Underwood of Catholics for Marriage Equality in Maine and Charles Martel of Catholics for Marriage Equality in Massachusetts. California priest Fr. Geoffrey Farrow, who was disciplined by his bishop for opposing Proposition 8, also attended.
According to DignityUSA’s Matson, Cathy Renna, media relations director of Renna Communications, advised attendees on communications strategy. She praised Duddy-Burke’s lobbying related to the sexual abuse scandal.
While Catholics for Equality is a 501(c)(4) non-profit which can lobby on political issues, it has also planned a parallel non-political foundation to engage in campus outreach and to reach out to “prominent pro-equality Catholics in the entertainment, civic, business and sports areas, providing them a national platform as leading American Catholics to voice their support for LGBT equality.”
“Report anti-equality activity!”
Fill out the forms with local mosque’s address and some pics of muzzies hanging homosexuals
REAL jobs are hard to find in America these days. I guess the solution is to create an artsy fartsy “group” and to apply for government grants while you’re waiting for the first batch of out of court settlements to come through.
This is Satan’s attack on the Catholic Church via the “Civil Rights” front. Will be costly, could be crippling, unless defended well legally. JMHO
Catholics for Equality will “focus on influencing legislation and the behavior of Catholic voters in a way that DignityUSA cannot” because of its tax designation.
While Catholics for Equality is a 501(c)(4) non-profit which can lobby on political issues, it has also planned a parallel non-political foundation to engage in campus outreach and to reach out to “prominent pro-equality Catholics in the entertainment, civic, business and sports areas, providing them a national platform as leading American Catholics to voice their support for LGBT equality.”
The money backing this can't be traced through the normal channels. Planned dividing and conquering - and they've outlined the game plan.
Why does the news article label these people as Catholic?
The label assumes agreement with Church teaching.
This is so pathetic but I’m almost amused at their notion they can succeed with this. Their smug arrogance is astounding
You’re right. They’re driving themselves away from the Church, and they don’t recognize the thing they’ve given the car keys & steering wheel to. Gonna have to pray for their souls, as well a complete lack of success on the Evil One’s part in this.
Jesus Himself is anti equality with all that sheeps and goats stuff.
If they invited Ann Coulter to speak would she be slamed for speaking to gays or to Catholics?
Not really Catholic are they?
Must be a George Soro’s funded group. Their aim is to divide and destroy the Catholic Church.
Several Cardinals appeared before Napoleon in order to negotiate the release of Pope Pius VII, whom Napoleon had imprisoned.
Napoleon bragged, "I can destroy the Catholic Church in one week."
A cardinal smiled and responsed, "A week Emperor? We Catholics have been trying to destroy the Church for almost 1,800 years, and we still haven't succeeded."
I very much doubt even a man as resourceful and evil as Soros can do anything to destroy the Catholic Church.
Napoleon also scoffed: what will happen if I don’t release the Pope? Do you think God will force my soldiers to drop their weapons and flee?
And, of course, that is exactly what happened when he attacked Holy Russia: His soldiers fled, dropping their weapons in the extreme cold...
And so, it starts.
Then why doesn't the RC church excommunicate; an act that rarely ever happens?
Excommunication is a topic that a lot of non-Catholics don't understand (along with a lot of Catholics).
A couple of misconceptions:
Excommunication is what is known as a "medicinal" penalty. Its goal is to lead the individual to repentance and eventual reconciliation with the Church. Excommunication prevents the excommunicated from receiving the sacraments prior to the excommunication being lifted. In other words, a person may not receive communion, may not be absolved of their sins, may not be married, may not be ordained, and so on and so forth (obviously, this includes ministering the sacraments in the case of ordained clergy who are excommunicated). (Note: in the case of imminent death, the excommunication can automatically be lifted).
There are two types of excommunication: latæ sentinæ and ferendæ sentinæ. The first is automatic. When a person is excommunicated latæ sentinæ, the very doing of the act results in an automatic excommunication. For example, a woman who has an abortion is excommunicated statim ipso facto...at the very moment she has the abortion. On the other hand, a cleric who lives in concubinage could potentially be excommunicated, but only after a canonical trial: that type of excommunication is known as a ferendæ sentinæ excommunication.
Formerly, there were two degrees of excommunication. One of them was known as excommunication Vitandi. The other was known as excommunication Toleranti. The former (vitandi) was a "shunning" like what we, in our normal parlance, call "excommunication." Members of the Church were to avoid all contact with the person who was excommunicated vitandi. Others, who were merely denied access to the sacraments were known as excommunicated toleranti. Generally, only those who were considered a danger to the Faith (such as notorious heretics) were excommunicated vitandi. This concept of two separate degrees of excommunication were suppressed by Pius IX in his 1869 Papal Bull, Apostolicae Sedis Moderationi.
Bottom line is that these people may well be excommunicated...but that doesn't prevent one from calling himself Catholic.
Mark I did know this about Excommnunication. I meant in terms of what these people believe they are not Catholic. The press fails to understand that the Church is not structured along the lines of a U.S. corporation or a political party. She doesn’t form beliefs by polling members. The stock holders don’t get to vote the CEO up or down. The mission statement does not change to reflect cultural shock waves or ripples. They see mainline Protestant churches splitting off over GLBT agenda and figure the Catholic Church is subject to the same sort of denominational split.
Part of this is from ignorance (they are journalists after all) but a great deal is from hostility that the Church will not follow the liberal elitist agenda. So they paint these malcontent harpies and whingers as equality Davids against the repressive misogynist homophobic Goliath of the Church. But even they know to legitimize these useful idiots they must let the world know they are Catholic.
Scripture addresses church discipline and the final, biblical resolution for an impenitent "christian" is excommunication - treating the person as an unbeliever. This is hardly equal to holding a membership card.
: D
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