Posted on 04/12/2005 7:31:36 PM PDT by Grey Ghost II
Well put!.... that is the whole point! - to corrupt the church. Why else would these perverts want to be priests? Love of God? Celibacy? herr.... it's called AN AGENDA!
So don't be surprised, every three or four days, we'll get the same messages... like clockwork :)
The notion of a homosexual "community" is problematical, because the purpose of community is a reenforcement of certain values, mist importantly of personal worthiness. Unlike AA, it reassures its members of the rightness of their action and that they should organize their lives around that conviction.
The Church does reach out to homosexuals through apostolate and through counseling and very importantly in providing a tremendous amount of AIDS relief which disproportionately infects homosexual men. "Courage" is a major apostolate to help homosexuals live lives of chastity and virtue. These are successful and popular apostolates. But I really don't expect people to know the truth. They are bought and sold a line that the Church is homophobic and does not seek homosexuals to bring them into the fold. This is done to seek to discredit the Church as bulwark of moral authority in a secular world.
True, but I don't think it's problematic in a different way than has been overcome before. Paul had the Greek and Roman "communities" of ideas to contend with. Jesus had an established Jewish "community" that had very different ideas about what their Messiah would be like. All of these communities had shared ideas and beliefs in which they put stock and that they mutually reinforced. Remember Paul in Ephesus as the mob shouted "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians" until the city clerk came out and told them to calm down (cf. Acts 19)? Talk about a hardcore "community" reinforcing a certain value. Then, of course, there are the communities of people around the world where missionaries have gone to share the message of the Kingdom. Every tribe and tongue is its own "community"; subscribing to and reinforcing their own ideas and customs. We even have "communities" on the high school campus. The terms "jock", "stoner", "hick" all come to mind from my H.S. days, and every one of those groups posessed and reinforced the "rightness" of a particular set of ideas and values.
The truth is that we are all involved in various "communities" at different levels of our lives, some official, some nebulous, but all influencing us in some way. In that sense, we do truly have a hmosexual "community", and I believe that the message of hope is for the members of that community no less than any other, and I also believe that The Word will successfully infiltrate that community just as it has so many others before. The community itself may not vanish, but individual members will be extracted from it, as if rescued from a burning house, and their lives transformed by the redeeming grace of Jesus Christ and, as that continues and those people keep going back to tell their friends, the whole community will be increasingly impacted by and drawn, one-by-one into the only community that will endure; the Kingdom of G-d.
That's not how it was originally established. While a celibate clergy is merely a discipline, it has a tremendous foundation in scripture, the life of Christ, the writings of Saint Paul, and the practice in the early Church. To say that the allowance for priests to marry was how it was originally established is ignore these things.
"Some are incapable of marriage because they were born so; some, because they were made so by others; some, because they have renounced marriage for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Whoever can accept this ought to accept it"(Matthew 19:12).
Your "about" page is naked.
Are you a Wisconsin person?
I understand that Abp Dolan has made one significant staff-change at the Sem. Perhaps you know about more than that. Care to elaborate?
Obviously, I don't like his "style." There is not enough time in the day for that one-on-one discreet suggesion stuff to correct liturgical wackiness in this Archdiocese, let alone the demi-heretical yapping one can hear from almost any pulpit on any given Sunday.
Our Archbishop has muttered not an "ahem" at the CINO who occupies the Governor's chair and who has relentlessly attacked the unborn, promoted fetal stem-cell research, and wears his "Catholic" label on his sleeve while doing so. And don't tell me that Doyle lives in the Madison Diocese--he collects plenty of money in Milwaukee.
I live with it. I'm a Catholic. He's the Archbishop, and at least I don't have to actively contradict him on matters as I did with his predecessor and the pack of liars which his predecessor ran with.
But I don't have to like his style, and I repeat: I don't.
Well, it is not so much what he has done but what has been done in response to the new direction the seminary will take under his guidance. Teachers who have tended to be a bit heterodox are actually asking for transfers or reducing their status to part-time or resigning. They read the writing on the wall. The seminary is also going to be primarily a place of formation for priests. It hasn't been that way, actually. Under Weakland, its role was split between being a place of priestly formation and lay formation. Also, the Archbishop is seeking to make the St. Francis Seminary a place of formation for other diocese. I believe Bishop Morlino is on the seminary board. He is a fantastic bishop, even if Madison is not a fantastic diocese.
In the seminary, he has made all priests who teach there to concelebrate daily mass because if the priests weren't the celebrants, they just wouldn't go. He has made them wear clerics while "on duty." This stuff didn't happen before Dolan got here. He is beginning to make changes. He is not the kind of bishop who cracks a whip. He doesn't make noise. But he does get results. He did the same thing with the North American College.
If you are in the Milwaukee Archdiocese, I recommend Old St. Anthony's on 9th in Mitchell. It's on the southside of Milwaukee. It is a fantastic parish. I can never say enough about how good it is.
Solemn liturgy
Kneeling to receive the eucharist
Sound teaching
Great choir
Courageous priests
Strong pro-life position
Faithful to the magesterium
I agree about Doyle though. I think somebody should say something. This guy who claims to be Catholic went to a dinner on Water Street celebrating the Roe v Wade decision. Besides being a scandalous Catholic, he is also a horrible governor.
I just got home, it's pretty late here but thank you very much. I am very anxious to hear these.
When a community is founded on principles hostile to Christianity, then the only good thing to do is to wean individuals away from such a community. . Its very anthropology is opposed to that of the Church, so there is little common ground, either spiritual or natural.
Having been a member of the choir at St. A's for the last 6 years, I am well-acquainted with the parish.
However, we are about to leave. Their CCD program sucks(in one word...), the pastor has managed to mouth at least two distinct heresies in the last 8 weeks (we are actually keeping count...) and the time/distance factor is becoming a problem.
Happy to hear Abp Dolan requires clerics. At this time, he has NOT tossed the 'babes' out of the Seminary--and he put the Sem commission under the chairmanship of an individual who is abhorrent.
UGH! This slimewad makes God the author of his own filthy sin, and glorifies God for the presence of his sin.
I would not even sit at a table with this monster, let alone take communion from him. Of course, were I Catholic, I would definitely be a Donatist...and wouldn't last long
While there are a lot of Catholics on this thread who might choose NOT to have dinner with this Bishop, if you take his word that he is celibate, then there's no 'sin.'
Being a homosexual is not sinful. ACTING on that disordered desire is sinful.
We all know that 'genetics' has nothing to do with this, although it's not clear exactly what causes may exist. There are family-background commonalities.
I happen to know quite a few gays, some active, a few who are heroically NOT active. Doesn't bother me to have dinner with any of them, assuming there are other factors which would make it a friendly occasion.
As I am in Madison, I don't get much of an opportunity to get down to St. A's. Would you mind telling me the heresies that you have heard there? I am just curious. Have you ever thought about becoming a member of the Tridentine community at St. Mary Help of Christians?
A final note: the state of catechesis in this country is sad. So many of the catechists aren't even catechized and are influenced by such a wrong-headed understanding of what the Church actually is.
BUT WHY THE CHURCH?... Why do homosexuals, knowing what they are, want to DESPERATELY be inside the Church?... That is what makes me suspicious. There are thoundsands of professions out there... why does it have to be in the church, unless they have an agenda? If I were a drug-attic, or a prostitute, or a gigolo, or a pedofiliac - like Jacko the Wacho - [smile], I would just act on what I like to do, regardless. Why would I want the Church to change, in order to accommodate my dysfunctions? Doesn't makes sense... unless, again, you have a plan, an agenda.
And what is the agenda you asked? [smile], just like a cancer that invades a healthy body, to invade it, spread the decease, to destroy the moral values of the church, and kill it. And we know why the want to destroy it, don't we?
You succinctly reiterate my underlying points.
The homosexual community's positions -- ranging from defense to avid promotion -- form a basis of belief that is fundamentally hostile to Biblical Christian doctrine regarding what constitutes sin.
The right thing to do is extract individuals from that community.
There is little common ground to work from.
So, this is the layout of the battlefield -- spiritually and sociologically -- and the gospel of Jesus Christ will prevail in many of these individuals' lives. But only if the Church does not allow itself to take on the persona that the homosexual community is accusing it of having: homophobic, snide, callous, hostile, petty, hateful, hurtful, condescending -- all of these things can be levelled at the Church in an accusatory manner. BUT, the Church must rise above the accusations and, by direct loving action, demonstrate them to be false.
There will always be accusers, but if the Church -- and that means individual members within the Church -- acts in line with scripture, those accusers will be increasingly isolated, discredited, and ingored.
I think we could have a long circular argument about whether a celibate man can be a homosexual, but I agree with the thrust of your point. My point was not that the sin of homosexuality makes this man odious, but rather his claim that God actively creates sin and deviancy. He commits the sin of calling evil good, and compounds it both by blaspheming and by proclaiming it from a priestly pulpit. From a scriptural perspective this makes him a false teacher to be shunned, unless he repents. Both Paul and Jude speak authoritatively on this point.
If he were a homosexual outside of the church, or even one within the church who was not in a position of authority I would gladly eat dinner with him. Christ did no less for sinners.
Christ went among sinners to preach the kingdom of God to them, they were not considered men for appointment as representatives of God.
Priests do not become priests overnight. It takes years to be appointed to that position. If a man still considers himself homosexual it intimates that act is not far from his mind, whether or not it is due to recent acts or contemplation of acts is not clear and does not matter. He is still in a fleshly frame of mind and not a man to be put in charge of a flock.
The fact that this priest clearly does not consider homosexuality a sin is strange. It goes against what Corinthians 6:9 states; "People who do evil will never inherit the Kingdom of God" and goes on to list sodomites among the evils. It ends with saying that is what some of you were but you have been washed clean in the name of the Spirit of God. How can they be washed clean if they consider it not evil?
"The gift of a gay child..." "What a loss if we drive these gifted people from our midst"
Obviously does not coincide with the teachings of the early apostles who were taught by Christ.
"Homophobia" is a shibbolth that is leveled at anyone who says that homosexual behavior is morally wrong. Add the word "unnatural" and they really go through the roof. I personally have never thought that the sexual behavior of homosexuals is more reprehensible than the heterosexual libertinism of someone like Jack or Ted Kennedy. But gays just won't allow me to say even this. Even the iimplication that homosexuality is immoral is thought to be "homophobic." Our elites support this line of thinking because they have more or less taken up the Shirley McLain position that having sexwith a date is sort of like having dinner. Never mind the effect this sort of behavior has on real lives and on society as a whole.
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