Posted on 11/29/2013 3:39:45 PM PST by Mrs. Don-o
“It’s a Catholic priest speaking at a Catholic school. It’s touchy,” said Tym Moss of the Bronx LGBTQ Center.
Linger over that. A Catholic priest speaking at a Catholic school is touchy? You’d think that priests speak at Catholic schools every day and it would be completely unremarkable. But you don’t live in gay world.
Well, actually you do. You just don’t know it yet.
The prestigious Cardinal Spellman High School in the Bronx, created precisely to teach inner-city kids whose parents fight to keep them out of the disastrous New York Public School system, is under fire for inviting a Catholic priest to speak on Catholic teaching.
A Spellman parents’ group invited Reverend Donald Timone to talk about Church teaching on homosexuality and a Church-sanctioned program for gays who want to live in accordance with Church teaching. The program is called Courage, and has chapters all over the country, and overseas.
You would have thought Hitler was coming to town rather than a kindly octogenarian priest. The New York Daily News headline screamed, “Rev. Donald Timone – who advocates ‘pray away the gay’ – will speak at Cardinal Spellman High School.”
The reporter never revealed exactly where Father Timone advocates something called “pray away the gay.” That’s a slur used by gay activists against those who would help men and women with unwanted sexual attractions. Most of the news reports on this controversy repeated some version of what Courage does not do, so-called “conversion therapy.”
ABCLocal used “pray away the gay” and called it a twelve-step program, which it’s not. “Opposingviews.com” said that Courage and its allied group, Encourage, which helps friends and relatives of gays, does “reparative therapy.” Also false.
Opposingviews.com offered an example of Timone’s “anti-gay bias”: “Courage claims that ‘by developing an interior life of chastity, which is the universal call to all Christians, one can move beyond the confines of the homosexual label to a more complete identity in Christ.’”
Oddly, the New York Times got it near right in describing Courage’s work as encouraging “men and women with same-sex attraction to remain celibate.” Nothing about “praying away the gay” or “reparative therapy” or “conversion therapy.”
What does the scary Courage actually do? Through group meetings, online support groups, and retreats, Courage has five goals for its members:
•to live chastely according to Church teaching; •to dedicate their lives to Christ through service to others and a regular regimen of religious activities; •to foster a spirit of fellowship; •to be mindful of the truth of chaste spiritual friendships; •and to live lives that may serve as good examples to others.
Cardinal Spellman High School
This is the program that has caused some students, parents, and trustees to quiver and quake. The Post reporter somehow found an alum – a drag queen going by the name Miss Coco Peru – who is apparently “incensed” that the priest is coming. “They’re trying to shame these kids,” he said.
An online petition was launched. A Facebook page was started. There was going to be a candlelight procession outside when the priest spoke.
Clearly, the students have not been very well catechized on Church teaching, or the parents for that matter. Parent Leanne Arena said, “I think God made everyone and everyone deserves to be who they are and there’s no person that can change that.” Tell that to Augustine who rolled in briars to change himself.
Seventeen-year old student Aneesa Alli said her “Theology of the Body” teachers explained that being gay was a type of sexuality and nothing more.
The student body president, Jamie Crowther, said perhaps the most sensible thing, “Some people it may offend and some it doesn’t and some don’t even care. At the end of the day it’s his own belief and your own belief and you don’t have to take it.” Note, however, that he referred to Catholic teaching as the priest’s “own belief.”
The event likely would have gone off without a hitch except for a claque of gay alums who watch and wait to impose their views on Spellman. How else did this local story break out into the most important newspaper in the world?
How did the newspaper reporters, a notoriously lazy lot, find not one but two and perhaps many more former students who are gay activists, including the drag queen and someone named Gypsy Guillen Kaiser, who the Times identified as “an independent advocacy strategist.” Of course, Gypsy and Miss Coco Peru alerted the media to latest offense against their sensibilities and the media obediently lapped it up.
Besides yet another uncatechized generation, the bigger problem in the immediate situation is with the Board of Trustees, which postponed Fr. Timone’s talk. That board includes at least one person, probably more, who would be highly sensitive to any whiff of “homophobia,” even in Church teaching.
Paula Madison, a long-time print and broadcast journalist, retired a few years ago as the first “chief diversity officer” of NBCUniversal in Los Angeles. Diversity means privileging, protecting and promoting anyone other than white males unless a white male is gay.
Madison spoke at a 2000 conference of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association at which an MSNBC producer complained about the idea of balance in reporting, and compared talking to critics of homosexuality with talking to the Klan about black issues: “I don’t see why we would seek out. . .the absurd, inane point of view just to get another point of view.”
At the Jefferson Lecture a few years ago, Harvard Professor Harvey Mansfield said, “You can tell who is in charge of a society by noticing who is allowed to get angry and for what cause.”
Indeed, you can tell who is in charge these days. The gays and their allies are allowed to get really angry, any time and over practically nothing. The Church, however, must tippy-toe.
Pope Francis famously made headlines over the summer when he said in an interview, "If someone is gay and is searching for the Lord and has good will, then who am I to judge him?" His words made me grateful for the church's ministry, called Courage, which assists and supports people with a same-sex attraction to live virtuous lives, and EnCourage, dedicated to the spiritual needs of parents and relatives of those with same sex attraction.
Here we have a loving, welcoming, community, dedicated to helping those who strive to live as Jesus calls us to live. This is what our gay Catholics have long sought: a home, a welcome, a sense of inclusion in the church they love.
Imagine my surprise and disappointment when I learned of the cancellation of a talk by a retired priest of the archdiocese (a remarkably gentle and holy man, by the way), active in Courage, that was to be given, at their request, to parents of Catholic high school students, intended to help and support those parents whose children may sense a same-sex attraction.
The reaction to the planned lecture at Cardinal Spellman High School is a shame — one that distorts the very meaning of “tolerance.”
It seems that no one can talk of virtue anymore without, at the very least, being labeled out of touch with reality, and in this case, accused of far worse — spreading hatred. But didn't Jesus promise, "Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God." (Mt 5:8) A pure heart is a chaste heart, a heart that loves others for who they are and not simply for what they can do or how they can satisfy me.
Is this not the way each of us wishes to be appreciated and desired by another? At the same time, however, we know our hearts are restless, unfulfilled, even in the best of love stories. Some of that restlessness is good — it attracts us to God and to Heaven — but some of it is dangerous, and can make us self-centered, promiscuous, irresponsible and inconsiderate of the good of others.
A pure heart leads to generosity, peace and fulfillment. We are all called to chastity — to keep God's gift of sexual love within marriage — and for married couples to live in faithful fidelity to one another, all in keeping with God's plan. Yes, sex is a beautiful gift from God, but we see the effects of the misuse of this gift all around us, don't we?
The epidemic of pornography, adultery, sky-high divorce rates, human trafficking, treating others as objects and not as people made in the image and likeness of God, all can be traced back to the lack of virtue and purity in our lives.
Which is part of what makes the intolerance of those who seek to drown out the church’s beautiful teaching so alarming. For individuals and groups to bully, to threaten, to protest, when a priest seeks to explain this timeless and timely message to parents who invited him to do so, is a scary precedent. We have gone from the days when the plea from some activists was “all we want is to live our lives in peace” to “you shall not have the right to present your teaching.”
Who is being intolerant here? I am reminded of the recent shameful episode when Police Commissioner Ray Kelly was unable to give a talk after being shouted down by students at a renowned "liberal and tolerant" Ivy League school. Have we really reached the point where only one point of view can be expressed?
One thing must be made clear. Courage is not against anyone or anything. Having been a supporter of Courage for many years, and now serving as chairman of its episcopal board, I know what it is unwaveringly for: for the person, for the faithful expression of God’s love and mercy, for helping people who are seeking Jesus to live full, happy, integrated lives. There is never an intention to impose on anyone, but always to extend an invitation to those who wish to respond.
"Who am I to judge?" Pope Francis asks. How sad that those who claim to be in favor of tolerance have pre-judged and blocked a message of love and acceptance from being delivered, tarnishing the reputation of a splendid group and a school which has as one of its goals to help our youth live out their faith.
Dolan is archbishop of New York.
Why is there counseling to help confused “yutes” “come out of the closet” where as counseling confused individuals about the normative state that is heterosexuality is “evil, unnatural, hateful, wrong, etc”?
Why is it already pre-determined that “questioning yutes” MUST be fresh meat for homosexual predators? Why can’t some of them be mistaken about “being gay”?
“I think God made everyone and everyone deserves to be who they are and there’s no person that can change that.”
This is a rather sickening statement when you think about it. Essentially excuses ANYONE of any wrongdoing.
The Libs cannot understand that homosexual acts are sinful. As is adultery.
“Why is there counseling to help confused “yutes” “come out of the closet” where as counseling confused individuals about the normative state that is heterosexuality is “evil, unnatural, hateful, wrong, etc”?
Why is it already pre-determined that “questioning yutes” MUST be fresh meat for homosexual predators? Why can’t some of them be mistaken about “being gay”?”
Kids when they’re young have a period where they wonder about themselves sexually. They don’t know. Why should they?
Many a heterosexual male has tried things and later discovered he was on the wrong path. The only thing is with homosexuality there is the danger of HIV, and these perverts out there who are after young boys.
Sex Positive Agenda advocates see nothing wrong with consensual adultery, consensual incest, consensual... well you get the idea. They seek to smash monogamy and end ALL moral judgments regarding sexual pairings of ANY kind.
If you have an impulse, they believe you should act on that desire. This is why they are anti-abstinence, it is counter to their worldview (they claim it is “unhealthy”). ‘ineffectiveness’ is just cloud cover, as are “genetic origins of homosexuality”. They don’t care the cause of the desires, if you want to do something, they believe you should be able to do it, whatever, whenever, with whoever, no questions asked.
Ping!
bump
and they are the ones who would mock kids for choosing not to have sex.
Well, yea, they're kinda queer that way....
Faggies rule! Got it, “breeders”?
So sickening. If the homofascists want riots, bring it!
Actions & ideas have consequences, even for the politically correct protected classes. It may indeed require the striking or cutting of flesh to drive this point home.
Well there is always the alternative. Rev. Mother Superior. With her convent issue ruler she will beat the gay out of the kid.
So stop the derogatory stgereotypes, OK?
Nah, nothing that violent. Just poke a hole in their rubbers with a pin. Let nature take its course!
Sorry God, just joking.
putting a hash p hash AFTER your image, makes the post look more organized.
I KNOW you knew that, but probably just forgot. LOL
Just havin fun on Friday night!
“And sisters did not and do not beat sexually confused kids.”
Sisters like Sister Simone Campbell maybe but good old fashion nuns would have got out the ruler in New York Minute! We need more nuns like that too. They are not sexually confused either, they are brainwashed by Dems. If we had any decent nuns left the kids could be detoxed of all that sexual nonsense.
We live in strange times when evil is seen as good and good seen as evil. This will not end well.
That's stunningly untrue of any of the "good old-fashioned nuns" I ever had contact with, and that comprises K-12 Catholic schooling in the 1950's and 60's, plus periodic involvement thereafter.
The only teacher I ever had who really was quick with a smack was a repellent lay teacher named Thomas Ritter (yes, that was his real name, so let him sue me), a skinny balding man with a skinny-man's overcompensating "tough guy" persona who roughed up boys to cure them of "bad attitude". Whether these included any sexually confused boys or effeminates, I do not know. But we all hated him, and he only worked there two years before he was gone.
"They are not sexually confused either, they are brainwashed by Dems."
At this point there is an organized, aggressive and perverse ideology we're fighting, true. And the ideologues reach out to "questioning" kids and exploit them as cadres for Sexual Revolution II.
But not all kids suffering from some level of sexual disorder, are minions of the LGBT Fascists. Some are just lonely, "I have never fit in" boys or girls who have kind of nameless, amorphous longings and insecurities who need understanding and sound guidance, not an ass-whuppin' from a bigot or a bully.
Strange. Just a couple of weeks ago, I sincerely told an antagonistic gay advocate at a political website (not this one) that I did not know any Catholics who took a punitive or shaming attitude toward suffering kids. Now I have to amend that, Morgana. I know one.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.