Replies

Then there’s this statement:

“A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: ‘Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?’ We must always consider the person. Here we enter into the mystery of the human being. In life, God accompanies persons, and we must accompany them, starting from their situation. It is necessary to accompany them with mercy. When that happens, the Holy Spirit inspires the priest to say the right thing.”

As a Protestant I feel constrained against intruding into a debate among Catholics over their own theology. But when the discussion impinges on the political world and by its very nature has implications for my political freedoms, I feel perfectly free to wade in, especially to comment on a political forum with a Judeo/Christian consensus.

I wonder if the author is informed when he includes abortion on the same level with homosexuals and contraception and implicitly concludes that the Pope will change church doctrine concerning all three in what we might call a libertarian direction. I cannot understand how the test which the Pope applies, which is how God sees a person apart from the sin, can be invoked-nor do I suggest the Pope would invokesuch a test-to condone abortion.

It would be an abandonment of the very principle His Holiness endorses to condone the murder of an unborn child. The distinction, of course, is to look for a victim and where none exists to refrain from invoking the power of the state to control the behavior. That means that homosexuality and contraception are not fit subjects for governments to control.

It seems, although it is not clear, that the pope regards them as unfit subjects for the church to denounce. Whether that means that the church will condone them is another matter. My interest, as I noted above, is how the church's position impinges on my political life.

That "one passage in particular..." “The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently. Proclamation in a missionary style focuses on the essentials, on the necessary things: this is also what fascinates and attracts more, what makes the heart burn, as it did for the disciples at Emmaus. We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel. The proposal of the Gospel must be more simple, profound, radiant. It is from this proposition that the moral consequences then flow."

I have no idea what he's saying there. None. And that's not good. It sounds like babble, that can be interpreted to mean just about anything. From anyone else I'd call it bravosierra. When it comes from the Pope, I just don't know what to make of it.

As someone whose completed Seminary, and earned an STB in a pontifical degree...

MSM doesn’t know their ass end from their pie hole when it comes to understanding how the Catholic Church thinks.

Basically the Pope just stated that the dogmatic teaching of the Church is not a narrow but a broad teaching on all aspects of life. It has a richness to it which enlivens more than certain moral issues of life. Which is obvious to people who’ve studied and lived it carefully...He only wanted to emphasize the point that it is wrong to “only” apply the faith to narrow issues, because the dogmatic teaching encompasses far more.

To use a sports analogy, the rules of baseball tell us more than 3 strikes is equal to one out. It tells us that to reach home base you have to sequentially run from first, second and third base. It tells us everything we need to know about playing baseball...But if no one knows how to even throw a pitch or catch a ball...make sure you explain that too, not just the three strike rule.

That’s basically what he was saying (in far more eloquent language) about teaching the faith in that paragraph.