[NYer]

Bishop Gene Robinson from the U.S. the only openly gay bishop in the Anglican church looks at a stall as he tours the "market place" a collection of stalls run by Christian organizations on the fringes of the Lambeth Conference in Cantebury, southern England July 21, 2008. Robinson has been barred from attending the Lambeth conference, a meeting of bishops of the anglican faith held once every 10 years, but is taking part in activities on the sidelines of the meeting.
REUTERS/Andrew Winning (BRITAIN)

[NYer]

Ping!

[wideawake]

Well, that was straightforward and unequivocal.

Good for Kasper. I can only imagine the rage this will provoke.

[verity]

Is San Francisco going to issue an arrest warrant for a hate crime?

[Bosco]

"Disordered behavior".

Hm.

The Bible calls it a sin.

[I still care]

This is a great place to post one of my favorite articles, written by Dennis Prager.

Prager speaks from an educated, Jewish, philosophical perspective. If more people had his understanding this would be a better world.

“Judaism’s Sexual Revolution: Why Judaism (and then Christianity) Rejected Homosexuality”

“When Judaism demanded that all sexual activity be channeled into marriage, it changed the world. The Torah’s prohibition of non-marital sex quite simply made the creation of Western civilization possible. Societies that did not place boundaries around sexuality were stymied in their development. The subsequent dominance of the Western world can largely be attributed to the sexual revolution initiated by Judaism and later carried forward by Christianity.”

“This revolution consisted of forcing the sexual genie into the marital bottle. It ensured that sex no longer dominated society, heightened male-female love and sexuality (and thereby almost alone created the possibility of love and eroticism within marriage), and began the arduous task of elevating the status of women.”

The rest is at:

http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles2/PragerHomosexuality.shtml

[Brian S. Fitzgerald]

The Cardinal will soon be on RW’s hit list.

[HamiltonJay]

If you stand for nothing, you will fall for anything....

After centuries of blasphemy, whats one more?

[markomalley]

Card. Kasper's entire speech can be found on this thread:

[OPEN] At Lambeth, Cardinal Kasper Calls for Another Newman

There are a number of money quotes in the speech. In addition, looking at the context of the speech changes the tone significantly from what was reported in the article. For example, the article reports,

The decision to allow the ordination of women in 28 Anglican provinces implied a turning away from the common position of all churches of the first millennium, he said.

The Catholic perspective on the Anglican Communion was that it was moving a "considerable distance closer" to Protestant churches of the 16th century.

Kasper says (in context):

As I stated when addressing the Church of England’s House of Bishops in 2006, for us this decision to ordain women implies a turning away from the common position of all churches of the first millennium, that is, not only the Catholic Church but also the Oriental Orthodox and the Orthodox churches. We would see the Anglican Communion as moving a considerable distance closer to the side of the Protestant churches of the 16th century, and to a position they adopted only during the second half of the 20th century.

(Note that the change: he was repeating statements he made two years ago. Secondly, by enumerating not only the Catholic, but the Orthodox and the Oriental Orthodox, the emphasis is on the "catholic" (universal) nature of the opinion for all of this time. Considerably stronger wording than what was reported in the Guardian. In addition, by enumerating the Catholic, the Orthodox, and the Oriental Orthodox, the "we" takes on a tremendously greater significance than if "we" would be interpreted as "Roman Catholic" alone)

[markomalley]

You may be interesting in this for your Anglican list.

[Antoninus]

May as well tell NAMBLA to condemn homosexuality...