Posted on 05/26/2015 4:28:21 PM PDT by 9thLife
The Irish vote to allow gay marriage marked a “defeat for humanity”, said Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state and the Pope’s top lieutenant. The comments mark the highest-level reaction from the Catholic church to last weekend’s groundbreaking referendum.
Cardinal Parolin was reflecting the unease and dismay the Irish result had triggered within the upper reaches of the Vatican, which opposes same-sex marriage and campaigned against its approval in Ireland.
“I am very sad because of this result — the Church needs to strengthen its efforts to spread its message,” Cardinal Parolin said in Rome on Tuesday. “I really think we should not just speak of this as a defeat for Christian principles but also a defeat for humanity,” he added.
Irish voters backed gay marriage by a wide margin — with 62.1 per cent in favour and 37.9 per cent against — in a sign of the rapid social transformation in the small and overwhelmingly Catholic country. Ireland has now become the first nation in the world to approve same-sex marriage by popular referendum.
After the vote, Diarmuid Martin, the Archbishop of Dublin, suggested there needed to be soul-searching within the Church. “It is very clear that if this referendum is an affirmation of the views of young people, then the church has a huge task in front of it to find the language to be able to talk to and to get its message across to young people, not just on this issue but in general,” he told RTE, the national broadcaster.
However, Cardinal Parolin’s words suggest that inside the Vatican many will see this not as a call for greater tolerance towards gay couples, but as a call to fight the drive in favour of same-sex marriage in the western world even more aggressively.
In Italy, the centre-left government of Matteo Renzi reacted to the Irish vote by pledging to move ahead with new legislation allowing civil unions between individuals of the same sex, though gay marriage remains off the table. But the mayors of some cities, including Rome, have been recognising the gay marriages of people who wed outside Italy.
Pope Francis has always opposed gay marriage. But comments two years ago in which the Argentine pontiff said “Who am I to judge?” when asked about the presence of a “lobby” of gay priests in the Vatican stoked hopes that the Church’s attitude towards same-sex individuals was set to change. Since then, Pope Francis has opened a debate on the family within the Church — known as a synod — which concludes later this year, and could yield instructions for priests to be more accepting of homosexuals.
However, language moving in that direction floated in a preliminary synod document last October was quickly quashed by conservative bishops and cardinals, suggesting there remains strong opposition to it. Meanwhile, a furore erupted this year after the Vatican stalled in giving its consent to the nomination of Laurent Stefanini, who is gay, to be France’s ambassador to the Holy See.
French president François Hollande nominated Mr Stefanini in January, but the Vatican has so far failed to give him the green light, amid speculation that it is unhappy with his sexual orientation.
Meanwhile, Mr Hollande has not withdrawn his pick. Cardinal Parolin offered some hope of a breakthrough in the stand-off with Paris. “The dialogue is still open and we hope it will be concluded in a positive manner,” he said.
Next it will be, "The Bishops refused to wipe their backsides for them".
Protestants are incapable of reason. You can quote me.
For private interpretation of Scripture to be the ultimate rule of faith, the Church has to be dismissed, or at least reduced to a powerless society.
It's no accident that following the Protestant Revolution, the process of religious disintegration passed through the rejection of church hierarchy, self-interpretation of Scripture and finally, Unitarianism.
This is why most Protestant religion threads here are attacks on the Church rather than a presentation of Protestant teaching. It's been more than 500 years of protest.
News flash: Catholics who aren't persuaded by "the Church teaches" aren't going to be any more persuaded by "the Bible says".
Hate to say it, but Pope Francis flung the door open and made it appear that homosexuals and homosexual "marriage" might very well be welcomed in the Catholic church. Some would argue that between Francis' statement and the lingering resentment towards the Catholic church for ignoring the scandal of Priests molesting young boys (and some young girls..) that Ireland just voted for "gay marriage" as a way to "send a message" to the Catholic Church.
I personally think that's bunk and not a logical connection. One doesn't reward behavior they don't want to see their Clergy doing by voting to make that same/similar behavior legal. That just doesn't wash.
I think what's really going on here is that the younger generations (those 30 and younger mostly..) have a much different world view towards sex and marriage than say my generation (50's plus) do.
Blame the liberal schools. Blame TV. Blame the Internet, blame whoever. Part of the blame does go to the Catholic Church specifically for Pope Francis' statements, and the failure of the church to forcefully and unapologetically stand for traditional marriage, between one man and one woman in the face of the evil that is now "gay marriage."
Finally, as a former Catholic it truly frightens me to see the Catholic Church flailing around like this. If the Catholic Church falls (and it's the single biggest Christian denomination in the country) then I don't see how we as a country turn the evil tide of the radical, fascist homosexual agenda back and reclaim the moral high ground.
The Catholic Church needs to regain it's footing, fight for the moral high-ground by calling evil exactly what it is, and re-claim moral relevance. Why the Catholic Church? Because no other Christian denomination is big enough.
Frankly, I wonder how many times my dear, dead Irish grandmother voted.
I suspect it was more than once!
It is certainly a defeat for civilization.
Doesn’t matter - humanity’s not gonna be around much longer, anyway.
When Ireland is invaded by the Muslims everything will even out as far as the queers and the head choppings.
Millions were spent in Ireland by the US gay lobby. An American millionaire gave 10 million and an American organization of gay promoters gave 8 million. I heard that on EWTN Radio after the lunch hour. I hope I am giving you the correct number of millions, as I recall.
What is happening here in the perversion the US culture is being exported around the world and certainly they are all after the Church of Rome. Obama is courting Pope Francis, who claims he has not watched TV in years and has always read only one Leftist newspaper.
You can imagine what a sitting duck our pope is for these moneyed sources with silver tongues and influence.
An interesting point you make there, about Parolin, and about who might stand and who might fall, being among the least expected.
What the hell happened to Ireland?
Call me the denomination cop, but the Catholic Church is not a “denomination”. Never has been, never will be. Rather, she is Christ’s Church. In her, He prayed for unity and one mind. He did not pray for unity with heretics.
The denominations are protestants who left the Catholic Church. Protestants left the Catholic Church, protesting the Church, and now represent the many different forms of protest to the Church.
I will be as accepting of homosexuals as I have always been.
Maybe they helped provide more guidance for your life.
It’s full of Irish people.
America is also being subverted by the same forces that have destroyed Irish religion and tradition.
God save us from the Fiend.
A mighty backlash is on the horizon.
This is a war
Evil is winning
Time for Good to step up.
Mine, too, and she left the Auld Sod when she was three years old, 100 years ago!
There was a time when this would have provoked a war, with Catholic armies marching into a country to end the heresy. Alas, not today
It chose poorly.
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