Posted on 10/23/2003 7:01:37 PM PDT by narses
Boston-AP) -- The Catholic Church in Massachusetts may be open to extending some benefits to gay couples.
That was the message of Worcester Bishop Daniel Reilly at today's Statehouse hearing on legalizing gay marriage.
Reilly said the church is firmly against gay marriage and civil unions, but believes that the state should provide gay couples with certain economic and social benefits, including bereavement and hospital visitation rights.
Gay rights advocates welcomed the Catholic Church to the debate, but said that denial of marriage would be a violation of same-sex couples' civil rights.
The Judiciary Committee today hosted the first-ever legislative hearing on the legalization of gay marriage or civil union.
The panel also heard testimony on an abortion bill that would require women to wait 24 hours before consenting to the procedure.
You have to admit Jesus didn't tell the crowd to throw some of their money in a pot so that the woman could continue on in her affair at a nice hotel,and essentially that is what you are advocating. Because you see,most people are experiencing higher insurance costs as well as higher taxes,both to cover the very expensive medical coverage for those who practice homosexual behaviors.
Only persons who are not particularly bright or caring can close their eyes and shut their ears to the plight of those they cannot see or hear,merely because they are not in their line of vision or out of hearing distance. Or more likely,haven't been able to harness the power of the press or other media because they don't have a lot of money or time.They have to work to survive. Don't fool yourself into thinking you are on some kind of high road,you are not.
Can't anyone make arrangements for situations like this? It just takes some paperwork to be filed determining who can visit, who inherits, etc.
I'm glad he's standing firm on the homosexual 'marriage' issue. Sometimes he can get TOO compassionate with social issues.
There have been a few priests removed from Parishes because of accusations of molestation; including the Pastor of the parish where our kids were in school for a couple of years. He apparently had been fooling around with teenage boys in the 80's. I don't know for sure, because I haven't heard anything more. There certainly haven't been large numbers of them.
I heard on the news a priest was accusing of having raped a teenaged girl many years ago, but am not sure of the details.
We haven't had huge numbers of vocations, but there have been 6 or so new seminarians each year since we've been here (15 years), so that's not too bad. Interestingly many of them have been Hispanic or Asian.
Many of the Parishes have the typical Northeast liberal Catholic attitude, with liberal pastors and DREs, especially ex-nuns. But even with those folks running the show, most Catholics tend to be moderate. Northeastern Catholics are a strange group. They don't trust people who are TOO overly religious. They makes them nervous. ;o)
Thankfully, because the Catholic Church has a heirarchy and a visible head, (the pope), the renegade bishops of the RCC cannot really represent official Church views. Bishop Rielly can be silenced, or forced to reverse his position, by the American heirarchy, or even the Vatican. He can speak his personal views about gay rights all he wants, but they can never become official Catholic views unless the heirarchy, including the pope, agrees with him.
If siding with the Catholic Church is "siding" with homosexuals, then I plead guilty.
"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" - from this past summer in "CONSIDERATIONS REGARDING PROPOSALS TO GIVE LEGAL RECOGNITION TO UNIONS BETWEEN HOMOSEXUAL PERSONS"
Please keep the bishops of Massachusetts in your prayers, especially. We are a diocese adrift in social justice and peace with no clear rudder.
Grex locutus est.Comoedia finita est.
I think you need to re-read that, and see how absurd it is. talk about twisted... The Catholic Church combined with a heresy is an oxymoron.
Maybe the church you side with consists of the pedophile priests, then?
If Archbishop O'Malley supports this policy of extending some economic benefits to gays (mostly to help children), why do you oppose it?
Here we go again.
When did the Pope speak ex cathedra against benefits for gay couples?
Every state in the union allows each person to complete a Last Will and Testament and leave their property as they see fit. Many states also provide that a surviving spouse may claim as much as 1/3 or 1/2 plus a percentage of the rest of the estate in lieu of any provisions made for anyone in the will.
It is one thing to make such provisions in law to protect a surviving spouse (that would be a person of the opposite sex for the more Modernist among us) and quite another to shoehorn in "spousal" rights for a grieving Lance bereaved by the death of the late Bruce (cry me a river!). If Lance is getting anything under the circumstances, Bruce had better have made provision in his Last Will and Testament because old Lance is not a widower or widow or whatever he/she/it may imagine being (let us not forget the transgendered, Kumbaya) but for the purposes of intestate succession no less a stranger to Bruce's estate than you or me.
Of course, if the elitist scum on SCOTUS keep pursuing the line of Lawrence vs. Texas, who knows? Vague testimony that the late Bruce (having "found" himself in an alleged relationship with Lance) had been cannoodling regularly with old Lance might result in the creation of hitherto unimagined "rights" of Lance to inherit the intestate estate of Bruce in preference to Brucie's widow, the mother of Brucie's kiddies or even in preference to the kiddies themselves. I can tell you all that Patrick Henry, James Madison and even Thaddeus Stevens would have been utterly flabbergasted at what our courts have come to. Why, no one ever accused Benjamin Franklin of living a conventional and boring social life but no one ever suggested that he had jeopardized anyone's brother, father or domestic livestock. He is said to have confined his considerable attentions to the ladies who were his contemporaries. One may search in vain in Poor Richard's Almanack for sympathy for lavender cannoodling.
One might add that Popes Pius V, Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII and John Paul I (and even Benedict XV, John XXIII and Paul VI) and all of the good ones would be at least equally flabbergasted as to what the Roman Catholic Church has degenerated into in such AmChurch dioceses as Bishop Daniel Reilly's Worcester, among others.
The Jesuit President of Holy Cross College is openly "pro-choice." He has never been publicly reprimanded. Holy Cross also sponsored "The Vagina Monologues." Despite protests from Holy Cross alumni, Bishop Reilly was publicly silent.
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