Posted on 10/16/2010 3:55:05 PM PDT by Cardhu
The head of the Roman Catholic Church in Belgium sparked an uproar today after the release of a new translation of a book in which he says the AIDS epidemic is a “sort of inherent justice” resulting from the “mistreatment of the profound nature of human love.”
Coming just weeks after a report that detailed the abuse of hundreds of children by Catholic priests over several decades in Belgium, the comments of Archbishop Andre-Joseph Leonard has plunged the Church into a fresh controversy.
Political leaders, media, medical institutions and gay rights campaigners have all lined up to denounce his words.
“This statement is far removed from Christian charity,” said Senator Wouter Beke, chairman of the governing Christian Democratic and Flemish party, which traditionally has close links to the Church.
“If God exists, maybe he could provide a punishment for someone who utters such nonsense,” said Rudy Demotte, prime minister of Belgium’s southern Wallonia region.
Doctors and researchers at the AIDS center at Antwerp’s Institute of Tropical Medicine, which is renowned for research into HIV/AIDS, said Leonard’s comments were “offensive” and “absolutely medieval.”
Lawyer Jean-Marie de Meester lodged a complaint at Belgium’s Center for Equal Opportunities claiming the Archbishop’s words were tantamount to hate speech against homosexuals.
(Excerpt) Read more at globalpost.com ...
>>”A growing number of Belgians are leaving the church and a poll published in January showed only 14 percent regularly attend mass.” <<
Maybe because they are afraid of the truth.
When a Catholic official states the obvious - that homosexuality is abnormal and destructive he is attacked for stating a truism? ? ? ?
Of course! Evil hates the Light.
Belgium. Otherwise known as Germany’s driveway.
Drunks ruin their livers, smokers ruin their lungs, gluttons ruin their hearts...Bulimics, anorexics, the list goes on and on: how is this news?
If someone goes skydiving and the chute doesn't open we're only surprised if the person doesn't splatter all over the landscape. People don't get AIDS from "being good" after all, people get AIDS because someone is screwing around in violation of the revealed Will of God.
Doctors and researchers at the AIDS center at Antwerp’s Institute of Tropical Medicine, which is renowned for research into HIV/AIDS, said Leonard’s comments were “offensive” and “absolutely medieval.”So... like the Gospel? Bingo.
But still... wow, the Church in Belgium actually appears to finally have a Catholic in charge again.
In the book, a journalist asks Leonard if he believes AIDS to be a punishment from God. He says no, but adds that just as nature reacts when we abuse the environment, “when we mistreat human love, it ends up perhaps getting its revenge.”Does everyone see what the Secularists and affiliated idiots are getting all worked up about? “when we mistreat human love, it ends up perhaps getting its revenge.” They really freak out over the most basic stuff...
Archbishop Leonard is no stranger to controversy. Shortly after his appointment he provoked outrage from gay groups in a television interview in which he said, “homosexuality is not the same as normal sex, in the same way that anorexia is not a normal appetite.” He has also taken a tough line against abortion, contraception and in-vitro fertilization.
We could use a few dozen like him over here.
I can understand Queer Nation attacking, but why would the Belgian Church’s members not take hope when a Church official takes a stand based upon Natural Law?
After all, “Natural Law” was what the Founders based America upon. Admittedly, the Founders used the term in its philosophical, not Catholic sense, but as Judeo-Christianity is based upon the same core concepts, how Church members would not find such a statement a positive thing escapes me.
Coming just weeks after a report that detailed the abuse of hundreds of children by Catholic priests over several decades in Belgium....
&&&
This is relevant to the bishop’s statement how?
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So people are outraged that he said, in essence, that people using the wrong thing in the wrong place naturally will cause disease? These "outraged" people are insane.
It certainly isn't because the Bishops in Belgium have been faithful to the teachings of the Church. They've been in the liberal, dissendent camp for years, and folks just stopped bothering to go to Mass, because it wasn't filling their spiritual needs.
Oops, make that dissident!
little jeremiah: “These “outraged” people are insane.”
I wouldn’t go so far as to call them insane, but they are certainly irrational. One doesn’t even have to be religious to understand that homosexual sex greatly increases one’s chances of catching AIDS. Nature, in fact, has a way of culling out the weak and dysfunctional. One can wish it otherwise, but the world is what it is.
Now, from a scriptural standpoint, “the wages of sin is death.” That’s from Romans 6:23. Amazingly enough, scripture is actually compatible with the observable evidence! Real world observation and scripture are in complete harmony on the issue of homosexuality. It’s the secularist, pro-homosexual forces who are trying to ignore reality. They are the ones who are seeking to silence all opposition IN SPITE OF what the natural world and scripture plainly shows to be true.
Now that I think about it, I guess you COULD call it insanity.
Even leaving aside any scriptural or transcendent meanings, the simple fact is that anal sodomy plus the wild promiscuity which is part of the “gay” life causes the spread of AIDS and many other horrible disesases and shortens lives.
Trying to pretend that saying the truth about this is evil is called “insanity”.
When people stick their hands in the fire, they will get burnt. Pointing it out is actually kindness, maybe some people will stop sticking their hands in the fire.
But these idiots would call the person warning about burnt hands “evil”.
It’s insanity - and evil, because by their insanity, they are condemning more and more people to a prison life of homosexuality, AIDS and early death.
Your analogy about fire is apt. If you see someone who is going to put their hand in fire, what is kinder? Is it better to warn them or tell them it’s OK? The answer should be obvious. BTW, I think we bring guilt on ourselves when we don’t stand up for truth. The pro-homosexuals deny reality. They believe they can change the laws of nature by popular vote and through suppression of dissenting views. To borrow a phrase, “Nature is a cruel mistress.”
The Apostle Paul says essentially the same thing in chapter 1 of Romans.
People don’t get AIDS from “being good”.
Not always directly, but there are plenty of casualties on the side there are the infants who got it from the womb or birth they had no choice in the matter. There are the people who received the infected blood transfusions in the late 80s and early 90s. But for the most part, it is correct to say that the overall spread of this disease would have otherwise been contained, or brought to a minimum. There’s no denial, but there have been plenty of people who did not get it by their own choice, but the choices of others.
I would agree to the extent that if people didn’t get into committing illicit drug use, sexual promiscuity, prostitution,or homosexual acts, that we probably could have contained the spread of this disease early on. AIDS probably may not have claimed anywhere near the number of victims that it has had numerous people not exerted proper self-control.
You’re right, mea culpa. I wasn’t considering infants and blood transfusion issues. The only person I have actually known who had HIV got it from a blood transfusion in the early 80s because of his hemophilia.
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