Posted on 10/18/2014 1:24:34 PM PDT by NKP_Vet
Pope Francis appeared to have lost out to powerful conservatives in the Roman Catholic church on Saturday after bishops scrapped language that had been hailed as heralding a historic opening towards gay people.
In the final report of an extraordinary synod on the family which has exposed deep divides in church hierarchy, there is no mention as there had been in a draft version of the gifts and qualities gay people can offer.
Nor is there any recognition of the precious support gay partners can give each other.
A paragraph entitled pastoral attention to people of homosexual orientation itself a distinctly cooler tone than welcoming homosexual persons refers to church teaching, saying there can be not even a remote comparison between gay unions and heterosexual marriage.
Nevertheless, it adds, men and women of homosexual tendencies must be welcomed with respect and sensitivity. They should not suffer from discrimination, it adds.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Yep.
It is still slightly moving in the wrong direction.
I completely understand your point of view, and it is a real shame. I don’t know the answer, but can only pray that God provides inspiration to these poor souls, and stirs their hearts to Him.
Its the proverbial leading the horse to water thing.
Those are some pretty severe statements, do you care to back them up with quotations and sources?
Many people don’t like the style of the Pope, nor do they like personnel changes he has made. However, in my opinion, there is way too much tea-leaf reading going on, as well as mind reading.
Finally, regarding Cardinal Wuerl, you accuse him of being a homosexual. What evidence do have to support the accusation?
Remember, the gates of hell shall not prevail.
Well, maybe. I thought it was a reaffirmation of existing dogma so hard to understand why all the dramatic benefits. Maybe because of chemical birth control it had to be stated anew? I personally don't recall anyone or anything changing but then my interpersonal network is very small.
What is true of every other sinner (all of us, that is) is true of homosexuals as well. Even sinners can attend Mass, and those who know they are in the State of Grace are welcome to receive Communion.
This whole business of "welcoming" them is simply sodomite propaganda.
As for "gifts" they have to offer the Church, homosexual priests did grave harm to the Church in the past few decades. We don't need that kind of gift.
However, I'm just old enough to remember 1967 and 1968. It "felt" as if it were all going to change; and all the powers that be--- I mean ALL the powers that be in academia, the media, government, the medical, legal, and legal professions, the Socialists, the Capitalists, the racists and the racial-justice activists, the humanitarians, the libertarians, the contrarians, the punditocracy, the academic theologians, the opinionators in the secular, Protestant, Jewish and emphatically the Catholic world --- The Papal Birth Control Advisory Commission for God's sake! --- said it was all going to change.
I remember that Dr. John Rock, the guy who ran the clinical trials for the oral contraceptive, was a daily communicant who could not even conceive that the Catholic Church would find any problems with this.
Paul VI went against the entire world. It was Paulus Contra Mundum.
We may live to see how important this was. It may require first, sadly, that several nations be annihilated.
Well if Francis can write another Humanae Vitae, not all is lost. :)
Ditto.
Any Catholic that supports abortion has renigged on the right to call themselves Catholic. And that’s fact. But of course they will deny it all day long.
There are indeed homosexuals of good will. But I submit that the truly militant gay activists have often proved they do not act in good will. So many have no more regard for the truth than a Communist. More often they are more like the Pharisee bragging about his moral Superiority than the tax-collector beating his breast and confessing his unworthiness. Itv seems that the Church is more concerned to accommodate these men of power than the poor sinner.
I understand what you are saying, and agree with what you say of those not of good will, however, I think the Pope is really trying to reach out to those of good will.
There will always be people who hate God and His church. Some of those will never change. Some will, and go on to be great saints, like Paul.
As it stands, since Humanae Vitae, which has been an incredibly strong stand against the current culture of the last 50 years, people haven’t been listening or acting according to the teaching of the church regarding sexual morality. How does the Church and its members change that?
How do we execute the Great Commission? How do we do it in light of the world we find today? How do we reach out and encourage fellow sinners to turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel? Are we preaching the Gospel of Love, the Gospel of Life, and the Gospel of Christ Crucified to the most vile sinners of our day (including ourselves)? If not, why not? Have we written them off?
Ultimately, Thy will be done. Be it done to me according to Thy will.
If there is any word that is abused it is love. We say that God is love. Indeed, and we trust like the poet that he is the hound of heaven who keeps coming after us until we finally choose to jump over that cliff into the waiting arms of Satan. But the lesson of Job is how hard it is to realize what that means. In the end , after God has revealed himself to Job, Jobs just says, yes, Lord, I understand. Despite all that has happened to me, I accept that you do love me. In spite of all, I put my trust in you. You owe nothing to me, all I have comes from you. That is hard. hard, hard to realize that the God who takes everything you have is, in the end, a just God. I think the message of the gay rights movement is exactly the opposite.
Not sure I understand what you are saying or where you are going in relation to the relatio.
I mean that the word love is like catnip to the public at large. The gays have only to say that one should have the right to choose whom to love, and since love and marriage, as the song goes, go together like a horse and carriage, then it is east to say that one ought to be able to marry whom one chooses. Without much exception, I might add. Speaking of, love is the essential ingredient of any true marriage. But although impediments to the marriage of minds ought to be few, there are physical impediments to matrimony. The very word invokes the limitation. But same-sex marriage ignores that limitation. Indeed, it is the attitude that ignores in all cases, the physical impediments and all moral impediments. There is a reason that Dante put Romeo and Juliet in hell, because the people of the Middle Age were much more aware of things, such as that animals in heat copulate, with no particular merit being assigned to it. That the copulation of two human beings was more important because it shares in the creation of a being like themselves, their being there image of God. Now there is nothing wrong with an ardent friendship between two men or two women, but it is surely some thing different from the relationship between a man and his wife. The latter requires sexual relations albeit with the consent of both parties. Does the former? In the year 100+N.F. (after Freud) the public seems to think so. These may be relations more like that between a man and a whore than between a man and a wife, not as an exception but as a norm. So how does the Holy Father and his party —I dare say so—hope to save any sense of the specialness of matrimony if they by implication say there is something also special —something beyond the limits of personal friendship—about homosexual relationships? We cannot go back to the old anti-sodomy laws any more than we can the old witchcraft laws, but their lack of merit does not mean there is any merit in the physical coupling of two men.
Great news is that the Holy Spirit has our back. :)
...ah yes...the sad refrain from the Vatican II bunch...
However, for me, Paul VI means, more than anything else, the incredible, heart-throbbng, completely against-the-odds and grace-drenched miracle of Humanae Vitae.
...heart-throbbing and grace-drenched...? are you a drama critic by chance...?
...guess that’s what the phrase ‘diff’rent strokes’ mean...because when I think of Paul VI I think of the impoverished and flaccid Mass that bears his name...
needs more cowbell?
I’m no VaticanII guy, but, I do trust in the Scriptures and the traditions. This came well before VaticanII reared its head.
I was too stupid to do so at the time (1968), but have come to realize that Humanae Vitae -- the "Sanctity of Human Life" --- was the most important re-affirmation of Catholic doctrine in 500 years. Done by And it was done by Paul VI: depressed, sickly, diffident ---and nothing can quite account for such a thing but the power of the Holy Spirit.
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