Posted on 05/28/2015 7:40:25 PM PDT by annalex
To be fair, some of the gays are in a difficult spot. Nature may have given them an odd hand. But if he’s not careful, he’s going to be forced into providing gay marriages.
The global warming crap is garbage.
It fits in with his anti freedom dogma.
I guess this was inevitable. A pope that has spent a lifetime in an ass backward country, bent on celebrating it. Maybe the next one will be better.
That misses the point. The only thing we are called to Judge, either before or after absolution, is behavior, not individuals. Francis knows this. He is using a straw man argument to appeal to the world. The issue isn't a judgment of individuals its a judgment on whether various behavior is sin which effects salvation.
“Global warming is a lie as are it’s proponents liars and homosexuals are to be opposed, not given privileges and acceptance. We don’t have to hate them, just not help them continue down evil’s road. And this pope is”.
Amen.
Thank you for putting it all in perspective. Prayers continue for the Church. The Holy Spirit will lead us.
I wouldn’t chnge one word of your brilliant, insightful writing, dearest RitaOK. “He is truly an enigma.” Indeed!
I’m grateful for this article, annalex!!
This pope is not. Global warming is not a self-evidently false proposition, therefore honest people can believe in it without being liars.
Further, anything a pope can say about any scientific theory is by definition not in the realm of faith and morals spoken ex-cathedra. It remains at worst a judgement mistake that any pope can made, like, for example, banning Galileo’s works.
Life Site is different though. It should not be lumped with “the media”.
** “After I give absolution - who am I to judge?” **
Thanks for that detail. Repeating it is necessary!
That is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the most intelligent comment I have ever seen on this forum or anywhere else regarding Pope Francis.
It's an attitude that would be very well applied to many other topics.
“Francis has remained with his heart and mind the Archbishop of Buenos Aires. That would also be fine, if he were not, for two years now, the Bishop of Rome and therewith Pope of the Universal Church.”
He must come into the knowledge of the papacy immediately and act like a Pope instead of some campaigning Archbishop.....this is not criticism.....but a sincere plea.
The conservatives have been spoiled for a while because we had relatively conservative popes, and before that we had a relatively neutral to Catholics and relatively professional media. Sharp disagreements on a number of social or political issues, however, is not a new phenomenon. Consider, for example, the period of Investiture controversy or of the pseudo-popes when the Church was directly involved in governance.
The marginal Catholic need to understand that the Church is neither a democracy nor a military-style command and control structure. It is a living, growing body where disputes happen and should happen. This is one of them.
They can keep a monastic lifestyle for men who are called to it, so long as they're not homosexual of course. The RCC must at all costs purge its ranks of gay men. But it won't. Know why? Because all or nearly all the men who would make the decision are themselves homosexuals.
The RCC was thoroughly infiltrated by gays beginning circa 1930. It's over. They own the entire clergy from the Vatican on down. I see no way short of some major calamity/chastisement that the gays can be dislodged.
That's why I left the RCC. And I was a good little hymn singer, too. But after I learned that my best friend was molested as a kid by a priest, and one of my nephews, maybe two of my nephews, then I really just had to say enough. I have a reputation to keep up. I can't have my good name associated with anything in a Roman collar.
The Holy Spirit will lead and He is leading now. That these issues are under the scrutiny in the Church is already a demonstration of divine leadership.
A church that would not discuss developments in the social sphere: changing attitudes toward homosexuality and family, toward governments’ role in environmental protection, toward the Muslim aggression, — would not be Catholic. That we don’t like the leftwing tilt today should not obscure the fact that the discussions themselves are salutary.
I would add a few possibilities beyond Rita’s “one of these”. My take on the pope is that he genuinely wants to expand the conversation in the Church beyond the Humanae Vitae set of issues, and also involve marginal Catholics and those fallen away or about to fall away. How to do it properly is indeed a big question; the left-wing instincts of Archbishop Bergoglio indeed get in the way; but the dialog must go on. Clearly, when the Catholic flock is dwindling and not listening very much, something has got to be done that hasn’t been done. This article is a part of the process just as much as the Pope’s snap remarks, designed to captivate the hostile media.
LOL. Nonsense. The Church is the only institution where chastity is the bar of admittance to clergy, and it is needed in the fallen society as such. Homosexuality among priests is a problem that has been largely resolved through better scrutiny in the seminaries.
I do call for Holy Inquisition to be sent to the US and other Western countries to eradicate fallen priests completely, and do it demonstrably in the historical paradigm of the Holy Church. But that cannot be done by a church that first surrendered its centuries-old discipline and then tries to fight from that changed premise.
What you do with yourself is your call. My advice is, however, penance.
Yes. Me too.
In modern society there are too many other ways up for a psychologically healthy, bright young man to make his way. Hence, the celibacy rule attracts gay men, because becoming a priest is (1) cover for their failure to marry, (2) provides a steady income and social acceptance to gay young men who tend largely to be socially maladjusted, (3) gives them power over others, which ultimately is what the whole queer thing is about.
You say that what is needed is "chastity." Swell. We agree. But what the world really urgently needs right now is a cohort of psychologically healthy young married men who preach and practice real Christian marriage. We won't get that so long as we have homosexuals preying on Catholic families, as was certainly my experience, as it was obviously in formerly Catholic Ireland.
You suggest repentance for me. Thank you. I'll try to take you up on it. May I make the same suggestion to you? Repent of clinging to the illusion - delusion - that this thing can be fixed. The wolves are in charge and they're preying on the sheep. They're not about to vote themselves out of ready access to fresh mutton. Embrace that reality with open arms, please.
I counsel a frank admission that it's broken beyond repair.
Well, I read the whole thing carefully, and it doesn’t really say anything, except that there are disagreements among the Vatican insiders. Well, we knew that already.
I’m very disappointed at some of Pope Frances’s appointments. He has promoted some lousy bishops into key spots, he has allowed the troublemakers to run things, and he seems to me far too preoccupied with himself. Who cares if he lives in cheap rooms instead of the papal apartments? There are more important things to be done than constantly saying: “Look at me! Don’t I live a wonderful life of poverty?”
But, in any case, I don’t think this present article says anything except that there are vague discontents about the Pope from all sides.
**Your experience is completely the opposite of mine. From what I can see the clergy is increasingly lavender. A friend of mine from Madison sent me a picture of the new seminarian class last year. Just looking at the picture it was clear they were all a tad light in the loafers. No, the RCC has a serious personnel policy problem. This isn’t the Middle Ages where an ambitious young man would rise in the world in the military, the Royal bureaucracy, or the Church. **
I can send you my complete set of links that proves that Pope Benedict sent emissaries to all the seminaries to clean them out.
Applicants for the seminary must now go through a strenuous two-day psyche exam, his parents are questioned, the parish priest is questioned, input from friends is sought that all point to his sound foundation in morals. Then he undergoes even more questioning at the monastery — and it goes on and on until he is accepted.
Do you want the links or not? Your premise is false.
The premise is this. Annalex seems to think that the RCC's insistence on the clerical celibacy rule is part and parcel of the RCC's powerful witness to the world of the godly, sexually chaste life.
But that is clearly delusional. "By their fruits you shall know them." In judging reality as Christians we are to look at actions much more than words.
And by its well publicized actions, the RCC's witness to the world is anything but that of godly sexual morality, as Annalex would have. Quite to the contrary. The RCC's witness to the world is one of the most vile sexual license without consequence. The RCC's witness to the world - as my friend and my nephew and thousands of others can readily attest - is one of unpunished perversion of the most destructive kind.
You can blink your eyes real hard, put your pinkies in both your ears and scream "la-la-la-la" at the top of your lungs all you want. Reality is what it is. Denying it doesn't change it. And clearly the reality here is that the RCC's witness to the world - by its many actions and inactions, including especially its clinging to the clerical celibacy rule - is nothing other than Sodomy Enthroned.
I can have nothing to do with it. You seem a good person, and I wish you well. But it hurts me that good people like you and Annalex fail to see the unspeakable spiritual carnage your refusal to embrace the reality of the situation - including especially the clerical celibacy rule - has wreaked on the RCC. The RCC just lost Catholic Ireland. It probably lost Catholic Poland. It certainly lost me, many of my family and friends who were among its most ardent believers. What will it take for your to look reality in the eye?
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