[CATHOLIC CAUCUS] The lies, half-truths and misrepresentations of Peter Tatchell’s Richmond speech

Peter Tatchell, the homosexual activist, gave a speech at the Richmond meeting of Protest the Pope that contained a mixture of lies, half-truths and misrepresentations that have become the hallmark of Protest the Pope’s incitement of anti-Catholic hate. The following excerpts from Peter Tatchell’s speech will be followed by Protect the Pope’s refutations.

‘Pope Benedict opposes women’s ordination. Women are deemed unfit to preach the gospel. This is an insult to the whole female sex. The implication of the Pope’s teaching is that women have no moral capability or capacity for spiritual leadership. This is pure patriarchy, sexism and misogyny’.

Protect the Pope comment: While the Catholic Church, as well as the Orthodox churches, uphold the apostolic tradition that only men can be ordained to Holy Orders, this does not mean that women cannot preach the gospel. Women proclaim the gospel throughout the world as religious sisters, catechists, teachers, journalists and mothers.

To state that Pope Benedict denies women’s moral capacity or capacity for spiritual leadership is absurd, bordering on the bizarre.

‘The Pope says artificial contraception is a sin. He condemns poor parents to having large families that they can’t care for adequately. In some countries, priests spread the lie that contraception makes women sick.’

Protect the Pope comment: The Catholic Church states that using artificial contraception to separate the loving and procreative meanings of sexual intercourse is always intrinsically evil, but if its a sin or not depends on a lot of things. The Church teaches that judging if something is a sin or not must take into account the person’s freedom to act, their knowledge of what they’re doing, and their intention. To say using artificial contraception is a sin is too black and white.

The Catholic Church also teaches that married couples have the responsibility to regulate the number of children according to the socio-economic conditions of the family, and the health of the spouses and children. The Church takes a holistic approach to the regulation of births, advocating the spouses’ observance of the wife’s natural fertility cycle.

Regarding artificial contraception making women sick, Peter Tatchell cannot deny that all medicines can have unwanted side-effects.

Pope Benedict opposes IVF fertility treatment, to give childless couples the chance of parenthood. This is odd. The Catholic Church says having children is God’s will but denies this option of parenthood to infertile couples.

Protect the Pope comment: The Church encourages the medical profession to investigate all causes of infertility and to seek chemical and surgical cures to fertility problems. However, the Church opposes IVF because it separates the loving and procreative meanings of conjugal love and removes reproduction from the security of the mother’s body, resulting in experimentation and destruction of 100,000′s embryonic human beings.

‘The Pope rejects potentially life-saving embryonic stem cell research, which could help find cures for terrible illnesses like motor neurone disease – saving lives and improving people’s quality of life. Surely this research is fulfilling Christian values and ideals?’

Protect the Pope comment: The Church teaches the importance of recognising the sanctity of human life from the moment of conception, and advocates that the dignity and rights of embryonic human beings must be respected. Embryonic stem cell research entails treating embryonic human beings as spare parts, and denying their right to life. The Catholic Church supports and invests in adult stem cell research which is proving more promising in the treatment of diseases.

Benedict XVI has denounced the use of condoms, even to stop the spread of HIV. He has also claimed that condom usage may “increase” the rate of HIV infection. His dishonest teachings discourage a proven way to reduce HIV transmission; thereby putting millions of lives at risk.’

Protect the Pope comment: Dr. Edward C. Green, director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, states that despite AIDS activists and media outlets pounding the pope for downplaying the effectiveness of condoms, the science actually supports the Catholic leader’s claim. ”The pope is correct or put it a better way, the best evidence we have supports the pope’s comments.”

“There is,” Green added, “a consistent association shown by our best studies, including the U.S.-funded ‘Demographic Health Surveys,’ between greater availability and use of condoms and higher (not lower) HIV-infection rates. This may be due in part to a phenomenon known as risk compensation, meaning that when one uses a risk-reduction ‘technology’ such as condoms, one often loses the benefit (reduction in risk) by ‘compensating’ or taking greater chances than one would take without the risk-reduction technology.”

‘The Pope has colluded with the Vatican’s promotion of the lie that condoms spread HIV because latex is porous to the virus (sic). This is an outrageous falsehood and has been condemned as untrue and irresponsible by scientists and medical professionals.’

Protect the Pope comment: Pope Benedict has never stated that condoms spread HIV because latex is porous to the virus.

In 1992, When he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he authored a Vatican document that condemned homosexuality as an “objective disorder” and a “strong tendency ordered towards an intrinsic moral evil.” Rejecting the concept of gay human rights, the document asserted that there is no “right” to laws protecting homosexual people against discrimination, suggesting that the civil liberties of lesbians and gay men can be “legitimately limited for objectively disordered external conduct.”

Protect the Pope comment: The Catechism of the Catholic Church, published in 1994, under the oversight of Cardinal Ratzinger states:

‘The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided’. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2358).

‘The Pope has attacked same-sex marriages as “evil” and vilified supporters of gay equality as “gravely immoral.” He has also denounced homosexual equality as a “deviant trend” and condemned same-sex love.’

Protect the Pope comment: Pope Benedict has upheld the Catholic Church’s teaching that homosexual acts are intrinsically evil. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states: ‘Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.’ (CCC, 2359).

‘While condemning loving, consenting adult same-sex relations, the Pontiff played a role in shielding Catholic clergy guilty of child sex abuse from prosecution. In 2001, Pope Benedict wrote a letter to all Catholic Bishops, which ordered Papal silence concerning allegations of child sex abuse. He instructed the Bishops to report all such cases to him in Rome, so the idea that he did not know about sex abuse by priests is nonsense. His letter did not tell Bishops to report the abusers to the police.

Protect the Pope comment: Neil Addison, Barrister, has proven in his legal comment, ‘A world -wide criminal conspiracy?’ that Vatican documents do not seek to shield Catholic clergy guilty of child sex abuse from prosecution.’ Neither did the Vatican documents instruct bishops not to report allegations of child abuse to the police. (see Neil Addison’s legal assessment in the ‘Benedict XVI’ section).

The esteemed Catholic theologian, Hans Kung, said the Pope bears co-responsibility for the cover-up and that Benedict has failed to apologise for his own personal shortcomings during the child sex abuse scandal.

Fr. Hans Kung is not an esteemed Catholic theologian. Fr. Hans Kung had his licence to teach as a Catholic theologian removed because of his intransigent opposition to fundamental aspects of Church teaching. Soon after being elected Pope Benedict XVI invited Hans Kung to a private meeting with him in the Papal apartments. After attending the meal, Fr Kung’s response to this olive branch has been to make a series of unfounded allegations about the Holy Father.

‘For more than two decades, as a Cardinal and as a Pope, Joseph Ratzinger has attempted to reverse the liberalising trends of the Second Vatican Council – pushing the whole church back to a more orthodox, conservative agenda. He’s strengthening the hierarchy and autocracy of the Vatican and the Papacy. This has prompted a grassroots Catholic revolt – the “We are Church” movement – which seeks a more democratic, transparent, accountable church.’

Protect the Pope comment: The Second Vatican Council was not a ‘liberalising council’ as witnessed by the dismay expressed by many of its leading figures about this misrepresentation, such as Henri de Lubac, Jacques Maritain, Cardinal Ratzinger, Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II. For example, the document, Gaudium et Spes, that many liberals hold up as the Magna Carta of a progressive Church, condemned artificial contraception as gravely evil.

‘The Pope has condemned liberation theology, as espoused by Catholic theologians such as Gustavo Gutierriz and Leondaro Boff, and he has opposed the worker priest movement. He preaches social justice but attacks those clergy who advocate political action to reform society and make it more just.’

Protect the Pope comment: Cardinal Ratzinger did not condemn all types of Liberation Theology, but only those that uncritically accepted Marxist ideology and advocated class conflict. Pope Benedict does not attack clergy who advocate political action to reform society and make it more just as Tatchell absurdly claims. His own encyclicals advocate the reform of society and social justice.

‘Pope Benedict has rescinded the excommunication of Bishop Richard Williamson who, in 2008, denied key elements of the Holocaust; claiming that a maximum of 300,000 Jews died in concentration camps’

Protect the Pope comment: Pope Benedict XVI has told American Jewish leaders that any denial of the Holocaust is “intolerable”, especially if it comes from a clergyman. “The hatred and contempt for men, women and children that was manifested in the Shoah (Holocaust) was a crime against humanity. “This should be clear to everyone, especially to those standing in the tradition of the Holy Scriptures…” (BBC report 12 February 2009)

Pope Benedict rescinded the excommunication of Bishop Williamson so that talks could take place between the Vatican and the schismatic group he belongs to. However, Bishop Williamson has not been allowed to act as a bishop in the Catholic Church.

Benedict has also paved the way for eventual sainthood of Pope, Pius XII, despite the war-time pontiff’s failure to speak out publicly, either during or after the Holocaust, against the Nazi mass murder of six million Jews and millions of others, including Russians, Poles, disabled, gays, Roma and many more. Pius XII was no saint. The fact that Pope Benedict wants to makes him a saint shows how far he has strayed from the moral and ethical values of most Catholics and most of humanity.

During the war, the New York Times called Pius XII “the only ruler left on the Continent of Europe who dares to raise his voice at all…the Pope put himself squarely against Hitlerism…he left no doubt that the Nazi aims are also irreconcilable with his own conception of a Christmas peace.” (Christmas 1941).

New research has found that Pope Pius XII may have arranged the exodus of about 200,000 Jews from Germany just three weeks after Kristallnacht, the Daily Telegraph reported on Tuesday.

The research is being carried out by Dr. Michael Hesemann, a German historian who is combing through the Vatican archives for the Pave the Way Foundation, a U.S.-based interfaith group. (Haaretz, 7/7/10).

On the day of Pius XII’s death in 1958, Golda Meir, Israel’s Foreign Minister, cabled the following message of condolence to the Vatican: “We share in the grief of humanity…When fearful martyrdom came to our people in the decade of Nazi terror, the voice of the Pope was raised for the victims.” (Wikipedia).

As early as December of 1940, in an article published in Time magazine, the renowned Nobel Prize winning physicist Albert Einstein, himself a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, paid tribute to the moral “courage” of Pope Pius and the Catholic Church in opposing “the Hitlerian onslaught” on liberty.

Sir Martin Gilbert described as “a British historian and the world’s leading expert on the Holocaust”, is quoted as saying that the Pope should be considered as a “Righteous Gentile” by Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust remembrance authority.

In his classic study, Three Popes and the Jews, Israeli historian and diplomat Pinchas Lapide, concluded that Pope Pius XII ‘was instrumental in saving at least 700,000, but probably as many as 860,000 Jews from certain death at Nazi hands’.

Protect the Pope comment: Peter Tatchell’s concludes that ‘The fact that Pope Benedict wants to makes him a saint shows how far he has strayed from the moral and ethical values of most Catholics and most of humanity.’ This one sentence alone reveals Peter Tatchell’s hatred of Pope Benedict and the Catholic Church he represents as the Vicar of Christ. Tatchell reveals his extremism in all its ugliness when he mischievously seeks to portray Pope Benedict as an immoral man, even a monster, beyond the moral and ethical values of humanity. No fair minded person could accept such an absurd accusation!

May God rebuke the devil.

May God grant Peter Tatchell the grace of repentance and conversion.

3 posted on 08/15/2010 9:49:18 AM PDT by ArrogantBustard (Western Civilization is Aborting, Buggering, and Contracepting itself out of existence.)

Peter Thatchell is in the devil’s grasp. He, and others like him, need our prayers.

Sad what lengths people will go to to justify their own sins. It has been so since the beginning.

Continuing the "Big Lie".

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