Posted on 06/01/2014 5:20:38 PM PDT by ebb tide
Mexico City, May 28, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Mons. Raul Vera Lopez, bishop of Saltillo in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila, baptized a 16-month-old who is being raised by her natural mother and her lesbian partner this past week. This was the second such baptism to take place in Latin America recently, after a similar event took place last month in the Archdiocese of Cordoba, Argentina.
Bishop Vera Lopez has stirred controversy about his views on homosexuality in the past. Two years ago he was investigated by Vatican officials because he had affiliated his diocese with a group that openly promoted the homosexual lifestyle. Bishop Vera was their “spiritual guide.” Last year he also said, “You need to be sick in the head” to think homosexuality is a perversion, according to local media.
The bishop met two weeks ago with Pope Francis in Rome, and according to the Mexican newspaper Excelsior, the prelate discussed his views of “caring for vulnerable groups, such as the lesbian-gay community” with the pope.
“I have been open and given clarity to homosexual couples or whatever,” said the bishop, according to the pro-gay website CristianosGays. “But some groups within the Church say I promote promiscuity, those are conservative groups that harm pastoral care.”
“Who am I to judge? The Pope has the same attitude as Christ did,” he said.
The girl's mother and her partner, Lourdes Badillo and Cristal Cobas, were “married” in Mexico City, where homosexual unions have legal recognition. The girl was conceived through artificial insemination. Badillo is the natural mother.
Earlier this year, the couple made the headlines by becoming the first homosexual couple in Mexico to have their child accepted into the Mexican government’s social health system (IMSS), after a long legal battle with the institution.
“I am very happy,” Cobas told the local media. “This is another small step we must take even if laws and society don’t approve of this type of relationship.”
The girl was baptized in the Church of Saint Francis alongside two other children.
“There were several couples,” said Bishop Vera Lopez. “If I find the natural daughter of one of two women, how can I deny her baptism? If the parents seek it it’s because there is a Christian faith,” he explained to the media.
“To receive baptism there is a preparation, and during these talks certain values are made clear. The Pope already said it: Who am I to judge?”
Coahuila’s governor Ruben Moreira, from Mexico’s Party of the Institutional Revolution, welcomed Vera Lopez’ actions: “I congratulate him, we needed a voice like his, full of wisdom… to tell us that we are all children of God.”
While the governor said that the bishop was acting according to Church teaching, the Church’s Code of Canon Law states that for an infant to be baptized in the Catholic Church “there must be a founded hope that the infant will be brought up in the Catholic religion.”
“If such hope is altogether lacking, the baptism is to be delayed according to the prescripts of particular law after the parents have been advised about the reason,” canon 868 §1 adds.
Last month's baptism in Argentina was criticized over fears that the public ceremony was being used as a publicity stunt to undermine the Church's teachings on homosexuality. The couple in that case chose the president of Argentina as the godmother for their child, and made an extensive media tour following the baptism.
Bishop Vera López has also functioned as the head of two Mexican “human rights” organizations that support the legalization of abortion.
“Vera is a dissident,” Juan Dabdoub, president of the Mexican Family Council, told LifeSiteNews. “He only seeks to hurt the Church in everything he thinks the Church is wrong; it is a disobedience… I don’t understand how the Hierarchy tolerates it.”
“The doctrine of the Church also recognizes implicit baptism of desire. This consists in doing the will of God. God knows all men and He knows that amongst Protestants, Muslims, Buddhists and in the whole of humanity there are men of good will. They receive the grace of baptism without knowing it, but in an effective way. In this way they become part of the Church.”
http://outsidethechurchnosalvation.blogspot.com/2009/07/archbishop-lefebvre-on-extra-ecclesiam.html
“However, if you’re dealing with people raising the child who have a public commitment to lesbian sin (a commitment they have shown in the most public way possible: pseudo-marriage), you do not have this sincere intent.
Baptism is not some kind of magic. Sincere intent is always required, otherwise it is fraudulent and, in fact, a sacrilege.”
What are the odds of a child rebelling against their parents? I mean what if 40 years from now there would be a woman who thanks Christ that she was baptized despite her parents being lesbian wackadoos because it eventually inspired her to inquire about the faith that for some reason her parents decided have her baptized in despite their lifestyle? I reckon it would be pretty hard for me to say “hey, you should have never been baptized in the first place, lady. I don’t care that you account for your faith that way no how anyway.”
I don’t know, its a hard one. I can see what you are saying too.
Freegards
I don't either. Why do they? Aren't Catholic bishops answerable to someone above them? I sincerely hope the Vatican realizes how insipid the homosexual "rights" groups are in inch by inch eroding the edifices of morality that used to BE defended by the Christian church.
Thank you.
Considering the child will be brought up believing that homosexuality is just fine and dandy. Yes, it will bear the sins of the “parents”.
But it will be raised in the Novus Ordo.
When a person dies, only those who have sanctifying grace (which is a supernatural gift, not an automatic part of human nature) and whose souls are 100% free of sin and all of its spiritual and temporal effects, can enter Heaven, since God is pure and perfect and entirely incompatible with any unholiness.
When considering the destiny of infants, born or unborn, who are not baptized, or of good and righteous men and women who lived before Christ's saving work, the question arises, "How can they be in Heaven or Hell, since on the one hand they still fall short of Divine perfection, while on the other hand they have done nothing to deserve damnation?" So one hypotheses was that there is some intermediate state.
The word "limbus" means border or threshold. Some ambiguous phrases in both the OT and the NT seem to point to border states. For instance, Jesus says Lazarus went to "the bosom of Abraham." (Doesn't call it "Heaven," doesn't mention the unveiled presence of God.) Other phrases talk about dying and going to one's fathers, or to one's ancestors.
Similar references:
Psalm 6:5
Among the dead no one proclaims your name. Who praises you from the grave?
Psalm 88:10
Do you show your wonders to the dead? Do their spirits rise up and praise you?
Psalm 115:17
It is not the dead who praise the Lord, those who go down to the place of silence
This all seems to be referring to the "Limbo of the Fathers," the borderline where the righteous dead lived in a shadowy state. Jesus is also described as preaching to "the spirits in prison" (1 Pet 3:19) --- obviously not those in the Hell of the Damned, but also not yet in heaven.
Similar to the Limbo of the Fathers (a temporary holding state) is the hypothesis of the Limbo of Infants, where infants could live in natural happiness, but not the Beatific Vision.
These are not "de fide" doctrines. They are just ways to think about people who were not in this life saved and filled with supernatural grace, and yet were not damned.
In the end of time, there will be only Heaven and Hell.
The point I was hoping to illustrate is that delaying or denying baptism to someone in this unfortunate situation doesn’t equate to “denying salvation”.
If that baby were found abandoned laying in the street would it be OK to baptize it? Then the hearts of the child’s parents would be even more unknowable.
"Saints Say That Road to Hell is Paved with Skulls of Bishops and Priests...
“I do not think there are many among Bishops that will be saved, but many more that perish.” St. John Chrysostom, Extract from St. John Chrysostom, Homily III on Acts 1:12.2"
Horrible. However, I don't equate lesbians with Satanists. The former is sinful. The latter is BEYOND blasphemy.
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Do you not feel it to be a mockery of the Catholic Church and Her Sacraments?
Yes, I do.
God will mete out His justice for them. HE is their judge.
I don't know what "the Vatican" did. As human beings with a free will, we are allowed to sin. Our sins will be dealt with by our Creator. I won't cast the first stone.
Nope...If the pope lets this go, it sets the standard for in the closet Catholics and future Catholics...I don't see where baptizing the baby means anything but allowing the queers to gain acceptance in the church is a milestone...Has no where to go but down...
And yet you continue to baptize babies who have no intent other that to get some more milk...
Former Fetus’ comment in 43 that it would take a lawyer to sort things out is correct. Complicating things from the present perspective is that we are dealing with the 1917 code, not the 1982, and that concordats can, if my memory serves me correctly, over ride canon law, and can certainly make additions to the law for the particular country.
And on top of that, people and institutions often ignore the law in favour of something else.
If it were a current case, it might be worth sorting out, but I don’t have the time to go messing around finding the concordat and working it over with decidedly mediocre and very rusty Latin or Spanish.
In the end, I am reluctant to say that the times were better or worse—if the Church had a say in some government selections, we might be headed in a different direction.
Former Fetus—thank you for your background on Spain in the 70’s. Interesting times.
Infants can give and receive love: in fact, a hugely important part of infancy is growing in these experiences. It's a given because these parents will help him, through many means including Baptism, to "grow in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man." (Luke 2:52)
Well I certainly wasn’t expecting some kind of Spanish Inquisition.
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No one does, from what I hear.
Do you REALLY expect the Pope to interfere in all the baptisms in the ENTIRE Catholic world that someone thinks is NOT good? THAT would be an impossibility.
Imagine the possibilities of misuse there. I shudder to think of them.
Do you always use sarcasm in trying to bring people to Christianity?
You didn’t answer my question. What’s the Biblical basis of needing the parents to buy in to a baptism in order to baptize a baby?
Actually, what’s the Biblical basis of having to be without sin completely, or the Biblical basis of buying into Christianity completely in order to baptize a baby.
If that were the standard, no one would be baptized, because each of us has doubts about one aspect of Christianity or the other.
And here’s the kicker - you don’t know what’s in a person’s heart. I know plenty of homosexuals that pray every day that they weren’t. And yet they sin sexually. Then they ask for forgiveness, and then do it again.
I wasn’t advocating for ‘secret baptism’, and you know it.
A church as government?
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