Outcry after bishop's gay marriage jibe

A CATHOLIC bishop has sparked controversy by suggesting that, if the Scottish Government truly believed in equality, it could extend legislation on same-sex marriage to encompass bigamy and even incest.

Bishop Hugh Gilbert of Aberdeen asked why equality did not extend to "nieces who genuinely, truly love their uncles" and why men could not have two wives, adding such scenarios were not freaks of nature but might in fact occur in Scottish parishes.

In an interview with the Scottish Catholic Observer (SCO), Bishop Gilbert, the first to be appointed in Scotland by Pope Benedict, said: "You can't have a meal without food and you don't have marriage without a man and a woman. This isn't just social convention. It's not something any Government can change. It's a fact of life.

"The truth is that a Government can pass any legislation it likes, it can legislate to say everything with four legs is a table, even when it's a dog and not a horse, but that won't make it so. Why is it all right for a man to marry another man, but not all right for him to marry two women? If we really want equality, why does that equality not extend to nieces who genuinely, truly love their uncles? And, if you say that such things don't happen, that they are mere freaks of nature, extreme examples dreamed up for the sake of argument, I say you need to spend more time in the parish."

He added: "As Bishop of Aberdeen, I know there are gay people among the community of the Church. I promise I will always respect and love them and uphold them in their relationship with the God who loves them. But I won't marry them. It just can't be done."

annalex, even if your posit is true, the Bible is replete with the condemnation of homosexuality. It is implied or explicit throughout. No amount of interpretation is going to excise the fact that homosexuality is a sin.

From the implicit (God giving a woman, Eve, to a man, Adam, as his helpmeet) to the explicit:

“For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due.” (Romans 1)

to the positive (an elder is to be the husband of one WIFE), from Genesis to Revelation is is one man and one woman, a union which is even described as a symbol of Christ and His Church.

So accept the Bible, or don’t. But don’t try to pretend that there is any uncertainty as to what sort of sex is acceptable to God.

That may be a valid point, and I don't know quite what to say about it. I'm sincerely perplexed.

On the one hand, it suggests in a way that the US was trying to limit civilian casualties.

I say "in a way" because on the other hand, nobody expected or intended substantial evacuation of the civilians. I know flyers were dropped on some 20-30 cities, weren't they? There were actually people in HIroshima who had fled there from other cities. It would have been a physical as well as a political impossibility that Japan would permit, much less direct, the evacuation of all its major cities.

Plus, the US was certainly lookng for maximum psychological impact, a goal which is explicitly adopted by the Target Committee in Los Alamos in their May 1945 records. This impact was to come come from a whole city and its inhabitants being incinerated in one "go." Both sides had done consderable incineration of civilians with conventional incendiaries: but this was to give that extra shock and awe.

Imagine, if you can, that the Little Boy had proved to be somewhat of a dud, and had enough impact to take out only a limited but certainly military target --- say, Field Marshal Hata's 2nd General Army headquarters.

Wouldn't that have been a disappointment? Wouldn't it have failed to achieve its hoped-for impact?

So I wonder about the "intention" after all.

You can hardly say all those civilians died "inadvertently," which is the only way their deaths would have been non-intentional.

As I understand it.

Otherwise, following the same line of moral thinking, a great many abortion deaths of infants would have to be considered non-intentional, because the aborter could say, "I did not intend to kill the baby, only to end the pregnancy; and I took prenatal vitamins right before the procedure." Or something along those lines.

“Otherwise, following the same line of moral thinking, a great many abortion deaths of infants would have to be considered non-intentional, because the aborter could say, “I did not intend to kill the baby, only to end the pregnancy; and I took prenatal vitamins right before the procedure.” Or something along those lines.”

You have to factor in, also, the thousands, ten thousands, or hundreds of thousands of innocent lives spared by the ending of the war - which was not ending, which is why we dropped the two nukes. They did end the war.

The “innocent” lives saved may have been mainly military, and therefore may not be as “innocent” as you consider the families of Hiroshima. HOWEVER, it is Japan that invaded us, so, strictly and truly speaking, we were the innocent party.

I see the dead of Hiroshima as victims of the Emperor of Japan.

even if your posit is true

All I "posit" is what the Bible said in the original language. Yeah, call me arrogant, I think it is true.

The Church teaches that a man who has sex other than with his wife commits a grave sin. Naturally, homosexual acts are horribly sinful.

Further, the Church teaches that a distinction can be drawn between a man who resists a homosexual tendency and a man who follows up on it and commits homosexual acts; and even worse, makes his affliction a point of public "pride"; yet worse, commits these acts with minors.

I don't think there is anything in the Holy Scripture that teaches different.

I was simply pointing out that the translation you were using was questionable.

"You have to factor in, also, the thousands, ten thousands, or hundreds of thousands of innocent lives spared by the ending of the war - which was not ending, which is why we dropped the two nukes. They did end the war."

It’s by no means settled that the atomic bombing was necessary to end the war. Let‘s look at who disagreed:

DWIGHT EISENHOWER
(General, U.S. Army; Supreme Commander of U.S. Forces in Europe);

"..In July 1945... I voiced to him [Secretary of War Stimson] my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."
- Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380
"...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."
- Ike on Ike, Newsweek, 11/11/63

Joined in this opinion by:

ADMIRAL WILLIAM D. LEAHY
(Chief of Staff to Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman);

HERBERT HOOVER
(former U.S. President);

GENERAL DOUGLAS MacARTHUR
(General of the Army, U.S. Army)

JOSEPH GREW
(Under Sec. of State)

JOHN McCLOY
(Assistant Sec. of War)

RALPH BARD
(Under Sec. of the Navy)

LEWIS STRAUSS
(Special Assistant to the Sec. of the Navy)

PAUL NITZE
(Vice Chairman, U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey)

ELLIS ZACHARIAS
(Deputy Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence)

GENERAL CARL "TOOEY" SPAATZ
(In charge of Air Force operations in the Pacific)

BRIGADIER GENERAL CARTER CLARKE
(The military intelligence officer in charge of preparing intercepted Japanese cables - the MAGIC summaries - for Truman and his advisors)

"...when we didn't need to do it, and we knew we didn't need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didn't need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs."
Quoted in Gar Alperovitz, The Decision To Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 359.

This raises serious doubts, to say the least.

Moreover, Consequentialism is rejected by Catholic Moral Law: if something is in itself a grave moral wrong (as is target-equals-city bombing is , according to the Catholic Church,) it cannot be justified by a claim that good may come of it.

The Catholic Magisterium has explicitly condemned this kind of indiscriminate killing: “Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities or extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation." (Gaudium et Spes, 80. Also, Catechism of the Catholic Church)

"I see the dead of Hiroshima as victims of the Emperor of Japan."

True. We are in strong agreement on that. And they were also the victims of President Harry S. Truman.

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