Pro-Gay Chicago Catholic Priests Send Open Letter Ripping "Vile and Toxic" Rhetoric of the Vatican

Catholic Citizens of Illinois ^ | 12/22/2003 | Shamus Toomey

[marshmallow]

List of signatories appended as a service to Chicago area Freepers who may wish to review their Mass arrangements in the light of this letter.

The pastoral care of homosexuals and lesbians and the best ways to approach this issue is something which is negotiable.

The inherent sinfulness of homosexual acts and the necessity to abstain from them, is not. As the Cardinal states, the fundamental problem here is unlikely to be simply a pastoral issue, but rather a more fundamental rejection of the Church's teaching on sodomy.

[battlegearboat]

Tar and feather 'em and run them out of town on a rail!

[RebelBanker]

Sounds to me like a group of priests is begging to be defrocked and excommunicated.

[biblewonk]

Catholics are always claiming that there are 20,000 different protestant denominations. I have always maintained that there are as many different Catholic denominations are there are Catholic churches. The follow up Catholic claim is that "those people" are Cino's. It's a convenient dodge but the fact remains. You can have almost any belief you want and be a Catholic in good standing.

[tractorman]

They ought to just join the Episcopalian church.

[Travis McGee]

What's vile and toxic is grown men masquerading as clergy, so they can seduce children into a death-style of filthy perverted deviant sexual practices.

[ArrogantBustard]

Rooted in gospel justice which demands equal respect for each human person, the letter asks the bishops to enter into earnest dialogue with gay and lesbian Catholics instead of talking at them.

What's there to "dialog" about? Buggery is sinful, always and inherently. Quit celebrating your sinfulness, repent, and get to Confession. Lather, rinse, repeat. Most of us, I think, are ashamed of our sins.

[Taliesan]

You can have almost any belief you want and be a Catholic in good standing.

That certainly is the way it looks to this Wesleyan. The church disavows abortion; yet you can be a pro-abortion politician, or even a pro-abortion clergy!

The church calls homosexuality "disordered", yet there two dozen homosexual priests in the Chicago area alone! And these are just the openly gay ones!

Are there ANY controls over who gets ordained? I suppose you just can't be married, or Protestant, but you can be gay, or doubt the Resurrection.

[ArrogantBustard]

So, would you support a return of the Inquisition? Or would you then condemn the papists for being too authoritarian?

[expatpat]

If they kept their hands off teenage boys and otherwise kept their noses clean, they wouldn't be criticized.

[Walkin Man]

Agree 100% with that!

[biblewonk]

I knew a very Marian Catholic woman who's "priest" said it was ok to think of God as a female. Nothing I hear from any individual Catholic surprises me.

[ArrogantBustard]

You're really having problems paying attention. The creatures who signed this letter, the ones criticising the Pope, are cut out of the same mould as the ones who like to mess with teenage boys. Those being criticised are the ones trying to clean up the mess.

[ArrogantBustard]

So, would you support a return of the Inquisition? Or would you then condemn the papists for being too authoritarian?

[ikka]

Catholic leaders: discipline, defrock, excommunicate ... or face ever more good folks leaving for other churches such as Eastern Orthodox, etc.

[RLK]

The Catholic Church is in need of some thorough housecleaning and some excommunications.

[Campion]

You can have almost any belief you want and be a Catholic in good standing.

Unlike liberal Protestantism, where only people who promote and accept sodomy have a home anymore, huh?

What you're talking about is a failure of discipline, not a failure of doctrine. The teaching is crystal clear. (If it weren't, the bad priests described in this article wouldn't be upset.) Getting sinners to obey it is less so.

Of course, I suppose we could resort to the fundamentalist solution and simply declare such people "not Christians". Sort of like that Scripture where Jesus says that wayward sheep should be slaughtered and fed to wolves. You know the one I mean, it's in ... uh ... can't find it right now ...

BTW, you should talk to Dan ("BibChr") who rails against the "tyranny" of the Vatican. You two can't have it both ways.

[Hegewisch Dupa]

Yes - those are the only two choices. Brilliantly thought out.

[Desdemona]

Are there ANY controls over who gets ordained?

It's controlled locally. What we see here is the legacy of one Cardinal Bernardin, who was the "seamless garment" guy. While he was alive NOTHING in terms of doing it right got done. If half the rumors about him are true, the man was vile. He had more influence than the pope for some reason.

Now that the little dissenters aren't getting their way anymore, they are squealing like there's no tomorrow. This what we are seeing. In time, as the pope is replacing apostacy with orthodoxy by attrition, it will all fade quite a bit. In the meantime, the dissenters can complain all they want. It doesn't change anything.

[Campion]

I must try to answer all bible questions

Why don't you try answering ArrogantBustard's question. Shall we restart the Inquisition, or would you then complain about Papist tyranny?