Posted on 09/16/2004 1:02:10 PM PDT by presidio9
A leader of Australia's Roman Catholic church has barred a group of liberal followers from using a church venue to hold a conference at which a gay rights activist was to speak.
Cardinal George Pell, who has refused to give communion to gays and once called homosexuality "a greater health hazard than smoking," said it would be unsuitable for the liberal Australian Reforming Catholics group to meet on church property.
It was not immediately clear what the gay activist planned to speak about.
Pell also forbade liberal Bishop Pat Power from celebrating Mass at the event, which has been moved to a private venue in Sydney and will be held next month, and ordered two priests not to attend.
"I think it is really unfortunate because in many ways we're limiting what it means to be a Catholic and I think more and more people are being excluded from the life of the church," Power told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.
Pell, who made Cardinal in 2003, has been a lightning rod for controversy since being appointed Sydney's archbishop in May 2001.
On the contrary! The Catholic Church is not falling apart; its doctrines against abortion and homosexuality, along with the denial of ordination to women, remain strong. What you are witnessing, however, is the strength of the Holy Spirit guiding the Church along the path of truth, while exposing its dissenters. The Catholic Church has survived for 2,000 years and will NEVER cave into contemporary ideology. Christ never has and will NOT allow that!
I hope that is true for the American Church. I don't have a dog in many of the doctrinal fights but on the basic issues of following Biblical law, I hope that it keeps strong.
Indeed!
My friend Adam wants me to go to a Byzantine parish with him. He tells me we have to call ahead to tell them we're coming because the Byzantine Patriarchates are extremely strict about denying Communion to the ineligible. I remarked, "Imagine if some of these politicians claimed to be Eastern-Rite Catholics!"
He says that if they did, it wouldn't even be an issue. None of them would have a prayer of receiving Communion and they'd likely all be excommunicated in a heartbeat.
I used to go to St. Jude in Miami, which is Melkite. I miss that place!
Almost all of the data I have seen show that the average homosexual's life span is between 42 and 45 years. Since the average life span of an American male is approximately 78 years,even lopping off 20 years would still mean the male smoker (two packs a day) was living 10 years longer than the homosexual.
Certainly,all available information is somewhat sketchy but I believe that a specific group's agenda is driving the info you presented.
It seems so dishonest to teach children in school that parent's who smoke are going to die very young,making the children fearful while at the same time telling them that two daddies are just fine,nothing to worry about there.
Homosexual's life spans are shortened primarily due to rampant STDs of all kinds, especially AIDS. If you read the links on FR you'd be amazed (I know you've read them, sara!) at the huge percentages of homosexuals with very serious illnesses. STDs of every description, parasites, all kinds of Hepatitis including (and especially) C, genital warts, syphilis, and on and on. Their extreme promiscuity and wild disregard for hygiene (come on, anonymous sex in bath houses, alleys, bushes and public urinals is NOT clean!) make them prone to ailments and illnesses at a much higher rate than the general public.
Their lifespans are shorter, there is no doubt about it. Not to say that smoking is bad for you. My father died a few years ago of lung cancer, he had smoked for at least 55 or 60 years. Died at age 82. How many homosexuals active in the "gay" life today will live to 82?
I should note that the 42 - 45 year statistic for homosexual men is based on the discredited research of Dr. Paul Cameron. He arrived at these numbers by looking at obituaries in gay newspapers. But he failed to verify that the readership of these publications matches the demographics of homosexual men in this country: the readership of the papers tend to be young. Gay men often do die relatively young, as the Ontario study makes clear, but they also often drop out of the fast-lane lifestyles of the younger crowd that these publications serve.
I strongly suspect many gay men actually leave the gay lifestyle altogether. Recent research by Spitzer shows that motivated gay men can indeed leave the lifestyle, with higher indices of mental health as a result. Many men seek counseling to leave homosexuality, but it is plausible to suggest many men simply do it on their own, just as many smokers quit on their own.
At any rate, I cited the Ontario study because it was done by epidemiologists. By the way, the uncertainty in their numbers (8 to 20 years) is due to the uncertainty in the percent of the male population that has sex with men. They worked under the assumption that this fraction is between 2 and 6 percent -- if it's 2 percent, this implies 20 years off the lifespan because there's the same number of recorded AIDS cases concentrated in fewer men. I think the best studies put the number closer to 2 percent.
I, too, have questioned the veracity of the life expectancy numbers, but for a different reason: Males typically do not become gay until some point after puberty. If the statistics for the general population include all childhood deaths, then surely some of those individuals would have eventually discovered their gayness. Or been indoctrinated, but that's a different story. The point is that any life expectancy survey conducted for this demographic will necessarily be skewed on the high side.
Love those Aussies!
I'm glad someone is taking a stand to preserve the Church. I'm so sick and tired of all this "progressive" junk seeping into the various churches around here.
The church I was married at is a Slovak Catholic Church and it is very. very traditional (kneeling for communion, no communion in the hand, no eucharistic ministers, and only organ music). It is packed to the rafters every Sunday. It's for serious Catholics who still have respect for church, and it's not uncommon for a sermon every once in a while to admonish the congregation when things start getting lax (wearing jeans and other innappropriate attire, behavior during mass, and the inability of some parents to control their children).
I dread the day one of the American "progressive" Cardinals ever makes it to Pope.
But, obviously, promiscuity in a homosexual context is a very bad idea. I've lost good friends to AIDS who got it that way.
In one sad case, a friend caught the virus in the early 1980s when he was very promiscuous. Later, he became monogamous and had a long-term relationship, living a quiet life on the Oregon coast. But it was too late, he was diagnosed with AIDS in 1994 and died soon thereafter -- a year before the protease inhibitors became available. This broke my heart. He was queer as a three dollar bill, as they say, and not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he was a nice guy, completely harmless. Regardless of the morality of homosexuality, no one deserves that. It tears me up thinking about all the other men who are still taking these risks.
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