Posted on 04/22/2005 9:35:16 AM PDT by metalmanx2j
Pope Benedict XVI has responded firmly to the first challenge of his papacy by condemning a Spanish government bill allowing marriage between homosexuals.
The bill, passed by parliament's Socialist-dominated lower house, also allows gay couples to adopt.
A senior Vatican official described the bill - which is likely to become law within a few months - as iniquitous.
He said Roman Catholic officials should be prepared to lose their jobs rather than co-operate with the law.
The bill would make Spain the first European country to allow homosexual people to marry and adopt children.
Belgium and the Netherlands only allow same-sex marriages. It is also a dramatic step in the rapid secularisation of what was once one of the most devoutly Roman Catholic countries in Europe.
The head of the Vatican's Pontifical Council on the Family, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, denounced the legislation as profoundly iniquitous.
Secular state
Interviewed in the Italian newspaper, Corriere de la Serra, Cardinal Lopez Trujillo said the Church was making an urgent call for freedom of conscience for Roman Catholics and appealing to them to resist the law.
He said every profession linked with implementing homosexual marriages should oppose it, even if it meant losing their jobs.
The cardinal insisted that just because something was made law it did not make it right.
Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero took office a year ago making it clear he intended to remove what he called the church's undeniable advantages and make Spain a secular state.
There are likely to be further tensions with Pope Benedict XVI. Mr Zapatero has made it clear that he intends to streamline divorce law and even to relax the conditions placed on abortion.
And you interpret that to mean people should obey Hitler and Tojo?
This shouldn't be so difficult.
1. Man's law never supersedes God's law; neither does the Church.
2. Homosexuality is a sin; issuing marriage licenses to homosexuals is not.
3. However, if you conscience forbids you to issue marriage licenses to homosexuals, then you should find another job. You may wish to get involved in protests or legislative efforts to change the law.
John Kerry will no doubt be complaining about this, though he has no problem in his own backyard when Voinovich says God told him to vote with the Democrats on John Bolton.
H-m-m. It certainly would be immoral and unethical (as may well be issuing marriage licenses to homosexuals).
But sinful? Truly, I have to depend on the Bible to define what is sinful. Some research might shed light, but I cannot offer anything off hand.
However, it would most assuredly be a matter of conscience that, I would imagine, most Christians would not perform.
If sin is sin, selling a licence to sin is sin. Ever heard of indulgences? Caused quite a controversy in the 1500's.
LEX INIUSTA NON EST LEX
From a secular perspective, I don't disagree.
Stating it in Latin (or Aramaic, or Hebrew, or Greek) does not make it Biblical, however.
Can you provide a reference to Scripture?
I see that you're trolling, but I don't feel like playing along. Sorry to disappoint.
No problem - I meant no offense.
My goal was a rational exploration of secular vs. spiritual law. Thank you for participating. I apologize if I violated etiquette.
Respectfully,
If memory serves, indulgences were a form of “forgiveness before the fact” to allow supposedly “righteous” people to commit what would otherwise be a sin.
I’m not so sure that applies here.
Marriage licenses do not authorize behavior; they are a prerequisite to a marriage ceremony. Practicing homosexuals are willfully disobeying the word of God, and thus not acting very righteously.
Personally, I feel that society has commingled the institution of marriage as a holy (and spiritual) union and the notion of secular legal rights and obligations (e.g., a civil union). I wish we could separate them: marriage as a religious ceremony, and civil contracts for the legal stuff.
However, what is - is, which makes this somewhat complicated. I don’t see how there can be such a thing as a homosexual marriage license; it violates the spiritual concept of marriage. So, irrespective of the language employed by the law, it would seem to be just a form of civil union.
This still does not excuse the sin, but it is a strictly secular matter. People of faith should follow their conscience and act consistent with Scripture and civil law.
For those interested -some links to documents and some excerpts:
Catholic documents and teaching on subject of homosexuality:
- The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality - Guidelines for Education within the Family
104. A particular problem that can appear during the process of sexual maturation is homosexuality, which is also spreading more and more in urbanized societies. This phenomenon must be presented with balanced judgement, in the light of the documents of the Church. Young people need to be helped to distinguish between the concepts of what is normal and abnormal, between subjective guilt and objective disorder, avoiding what would arouse hostility. On the other hand, the structural and complementary orientation of sexuality must be well clarified in relation to marriage, procreation and Christian chastity. "Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained". A distinction must be made between a tendency that can be innate and acts of homosexuality that "are intrinsically disordered" and contrary to Natural Law.Especially when the practice of homosexual acts has not become a habit, many cases can benefit from appropriate therapy. In any case, persons in this situation must be accepted with respect, dignity and delicacy, and all forms of unjust discrimination must be avoided. If parents notice the appearance of this tendency or of related behaviour in their children, during childhood or adolescence, they should seek help from expert qualified persons in order to obtain all possible assistance.
For most homosexual persons, this condition constitutes a trial. "They must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfil God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition". "Homosexual persons are called to chastity".
- Persona Humana - Declaration on Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics
VIII At the present time there are those who, basing themselves on observations in the psychological order, have begun to judge indulgently, and even to excuse completely, homosexual relations between certain people. This they do in opposition to the constant teaching of the Magisterium and to the moral sense of the Christian people.A distinction is drawn, and it seems with some reason, between homosexuals whose tendency comes from a false education, from a lack of normal sexual development, from habit, from bad example, or from other similar causes, and is transitory or at least not incurable; and homosexuals who are definitively such because of some kind of innate instinct or a pathological constitution judged to be incurable.
In regard to this second category of subjects, some people conclude that their tendency is so natural that it justifies in their case homosexual relations within a sincere communion of life and love analogous to marriage, in so far as such homosexuals feel incapable of enduring a solitary life.
In the pastoral field, these homosexuals must certainly be treated with understanding and sustained in the hope of overcoming their personal difficulties and their inability to fit into society. Their culpability will be judged with prudence. But no pastoral method can be employed which would give moral justification to these acts on the grounds that they would be consonant with the condition of such people. For according to the objective moral order, homosexual relations are acts which lack an essential and indispensable finality. In Sacred Scripture they are condemned as a serious depravity and even presented as the sad consequence of rejecting God. This judgment of Scripture does not of course permit us to conclude that all those who suffer from this anomaly are personally responsible for it, but it does attest to the fact that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered and can in no case be approved of.
- Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons
10. It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the Church's pastors wherever it occurs. It reveals a kind of disregard for others which endangers the most fundamental principles of a healthy society. The intrinsic dignity of each person must always be respected in word, in action and in law.But the proper reaction to crimes committed against homosexual persons should not be to claim that the homosexual condition is not disordered. When such a claim is made and when homosexual activity is consequently condoned, or when civil legislation is introduced to protect behavior to which no one has any conceivable right, neither the Church nor society at large should be surprised when other distorted notions and practices gain ground, and irrational and violent reactions increase.
11. It has been argued that the homosexual orientation in certain cases is not the result of deliberate choice; and so the homosexual person would then have no choice but to behave in a homosexual fashion. Lacking freedom, such a person, even if engaged in homosexual activity, would not be culpable.
Here, the Church's wise moral tradition is necessary since it warns against generalizations in judging individual cases. In fact, circumstances may exist, or may have existed in the past, which would reduce or remove the culpability of the individual in a given instance; or other circumstances may increase it. What is at all costs to be avoided is the unfounded and demeaning assumption that the sexual behaviour of homosexual persons is always and totally compulsive and therefore inculpable. What is essential is that the fundamental liberty which characterizes the human person and gives him his dignity be recognized as belonging to the homosexual person as well. As in every conversion from evil, the abandonment of homosexual activity will require a profound collaboration of the individual with God's liberating grace.
- Some Considerations Concerning the Response to Legislative Proposals on Non-discrimination of Homosexual Persons
II. Applications10. "Sexual orientation" does not constitute a quality comparable to race, ethnic background, etc. in respect to non-discrimination. Unlike these, homosexual orientation is an objective disorder (cf. "Letter," No. 3) and evokes moral concern.
11. There are areas in which it is not unjust discrimination to take sexual orientation into account, for example, in the placement of children for adoption or foster care, in employment of teachers or athletic coaches, and in military recruitment.
13. Including "homosexual orientation" among the considerations on the basis of which it is illegal to discriminate can easily lead to regarding homosexuality as a positive source of human rights, for example, in respect to so-called affirmative action or preferential treatment in hiring practices. This is all the more deleterious since there is no right to homosexuality (cf. No. 10) which therefore should not form the basis for judicial claims. The passage from the recognition of homosexuality as a factor on which basis it is illegal to discriminate can easily lead, if not automatically, to the legislative protection and promotion of homosexuality. A person's homosexuality would be invoked in opposition to alleged discrimination, and thus the exercise of rights would be defended precisely via the affirmation of the homosexual condition instead of in terms of a violation of basic human rights.
- Considerations Regarding Proposals To Give Legal Recognition To Unions Between Homosexual Persons
4. There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and family. Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law. Homosexual acts “close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved”.7. Homosexual unions are totally lacking in the biological and anthropological elements of marriage and family which would be the basis, on the level of reason, for granting them legal recognition. Such unions are not able to contribute in a proper way to the procreation and survival of the human race. The possibility of using recently discovered methods of artificial reproduction, beyond involving a grave lack of respect for human dignity, does nothing to alter this inadequacy.
Homosexual unions are also totally lacking in the conjugal dimension, which represents the human and ordered form of sexuality. Sexual relations are human when and insofar as they express and promote the mutual assistance of the sexes in marriage and are open to the transmission of new life.
As experience has shown, the absence of sexual complementarity in these unions creates obstacles in the normal development of children who would be placed in the care of such persons. They would be deprived of the experience of either fatherhood or motherhood. Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children, in the sense that their condition of dependency would be used to place them in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development. This is gravely immoral and in open contradiction to the principle, recognized also in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, that the best interests of the child, as the weaker and more vulnerable party, are to be the paramount consideration in every case.
- Religiosorum Institutio
30. Those To Be Excluded; Practical DirectivesAdvantage to religious vows and ordination should be barred to those who are afflicted with evil tendencies to homosexuality or pederasty, since for them the common life and the priestly ministry would constitute serious dangers.
Assuming you to be Catholic -post # 72 presents some authoritative and authentic Catholic teaching -definitive developments beyond the Sola Scriptura.
ping.
Awesome response.
Nothing like getting things off to a good start.
Points well taken and I see nothing debatable in post #72 (thanks for the citations).
Specifically, item 5 seems right on point. However, while it clearly invalidates the concept of “homosexual marriage” (a real oxymoron), it does not come right out and say that issuing homosexual marriage licenses is a sin.
Disapproved - yes. Immoral - yes. Probably something a person of faith cannot in good conscience do.
But is issuing homosexual marriage licenses a sin? Or is it just wrong?
So when it was illegal in the Roman Empire to be Christian, it was the duty of all Christians to become pagans? All of those people practicing Christianity in the catacombs were practicing civil disobedience, were those martyrs wrong? Saint Peter and Saint Paul were excuted for violating the law of the Roman Empire, are you telling me they apostasized?
Not even close.
Indulgence is a partial removal of a temporal punishment due for a sin already committed, confessed, and forgiven.
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