Posted on 06/27/2002 9:26:04 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Gays Still Threatened in Catholic Church Despite Victory at Bishops Conference
MUBARAK DAHIR
In mid-June, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops convened in Dallas under a cloud of suspicion, hostility, anger and, for some, remorse.
The tension was, of course, about how the bishops could and should address the recent child sex abuse scandals. In the past few months, the Catholic church has been rocked to its core by revelation after revelation that priests were having unscrupulous sexual encounters with minors.
While this fact was itself disturbing to Catholics, what was most upsetting to the public, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, were the lengths to which church leaders had gone to cover up the abuse cases. For many, the obfuscation of the crimes was even more upsetting and maddening than the fact that such crimes took place.
Initially, it seemed as if the church refused to learn its lesson, however. Rather than take responsibility for the misbehavior of its priests, as well as for the shameless cover-ups, the church hierarchy&emdash;in a trail leading all the way to Rome&emdash;instead chose to once again try to shrug its responsibility and instead find a convenient scapegoat to blame for its problems.
It was no surprise that the church's first tactic was to try to blame the scandal point-blank on the gay priests in its ranks. Quite a few bishops adopted the approach either directly or indirectly&emdash;such as Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua of Philadelphia, who banned gay men from entering any seminary under his jurisdiction. But it was clear that the strategy of scapegoating gay priests had the full blessing of top officials all the way up to the Pope when Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls told The New York Times that one element to solving the problem was to discover and dismiss all gay priests.
However, the Catholic church was in for a big surprise. Amazingly, ordinary Catholics refused to buy the line that the sex abuse problem was the making of gay men.
I first was sitting at the dining room table in my lover's mother's house when I understood just how powerful Catholic public sentiment was on this matter.
My lover's mother is a devout Catholic. She goes to Mass six days a week. She also holds fairly conservative political viewpoints. When my lover, Darryl, first told his devout mother he was gay, her response was, "Why are you telling me this? Go see a priest."
Of course, at the time, she didn't realize just how many priests are gay. She thought that counseling and prayer could change her son.
On many occasions over the years, her strongly held Catholic opinions about homosexuality have been cause for great strife in her relationship with her son, and with me. So I cringed when the topic of the sex scandals and gay priests came up around the dining room table.
As usual, Darryl's mother was quick to voice her strongly held opinion. "What do you think of that?" she said in disgust. I figured her prior disdain for homosexuality was about to resurface. But I was dead wrong. "The two don't have anything to do with each other," she said matter-of-factly, and delivered a short tirade against the church's continuing attempts to evade responsibility for the misdeeds of its priests.
I knew then that, amazingly, gay people in America had made incredible strides if my lover's 68-year-old, politically conservative, devout Catholic mother wasn't buying the Vatican's it-was-the-gays-fault argument.
American Catholic bishops must have heard the words of my lover's mother repeated a zillion times over around the country. Before the conference in Dallas, they clearly floated past American Catholics the trial balloon of blaming gays. Much to their credit, average Catholics refused to accept this flimsy pretext as an excuse for the church's abysmal record on abuse and cover-ups.
I strongly believe the widespread rejection by the vast majority of Catholics of the "let's blame the gays" approach had a huge influence over the official response by the bishops at their Dallas conference.
Though Bishop Fabian Brusketwitz from Lincoln, Neb., did try to include an amendment that targeted gays, the bishops overwhelmingly rejected it. In the end, the official statement&emdash;called the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People&emdash;that the 284 bishops adopted in Dallas made no link or mention whatsoever between homosexuality and child sex abuse. For gay and lesbian activists who were expecting a possible showdown in Dallas, the bishops' statement was a clear victory.
However, that doesn't mean that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people should consider the subject closed. Church officials never retracted the earlier statements that were made linking homosexuality and child abuse. Furthermore, right-wing bishops still would like to make the connection, and are far from giving up the fight to demonize gay priests and marginalize gay and lesbian Catholics.
The most immediate danger, though, can still come from Rome. The Vatican is set to send "inspectors" to all American seminaries, ostensibly to ensure that they are following the strict teachings of the Catholic church. But many gay and lesbian activists fear that sending the inspectors is simply a cloaked way to discover and eject gay priests.
Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people should not delude themselves into believing that this unexpected victory at the bishops' conference means the end to witch hunts and scapegoating of gay people in general, and gay priests in particular.
MubarakDah@aol.com
How does the congregation resolve the contradictions between what the church leadership says and what God's Word says?
Anecdotally, my brother was prohibited from using the Bible as an ordinary part of his RC Sunday school lessons. The Catechism texts were deemed to be "sufficient."
Sufficienty vague, perhaps.
As one who has been teaching RCIA for the last 10 years in our parish; and also about to receive Diaconal Orders, I can say without a doubt that most Catholics have NO idea what ROM 1:26-27 even is. In fact many who call themselves Catholic couldn't tell you who wrote the letter to the Romans.
Bad or no catechesis is at the root of the failing faith among many Catholics. Shear ignorance of the scriptures and Church teaching. This is why the Holy Father has been freakin' out over catechetics.
This problem stems from p*ss poor teachers. The b*stards that call themselves deacons, priests and bishops who are misleading today's Catholics need to read Mark 9:42. Of course, I don't know how much good that would do seeing that many of them don't see scripture as the inerrant word of God.
Can you tell that I am upset. I'm rip roaring mad and very close to the time when I don't have to hold back any longer. We have had our Church infiltrated with a bunch of heterodox feminist sodomites who are home wreckers and soul snatchers. Their days are numbered and they know it. That's why we are seeing more and more whiney articles like this one.
Can you tell that I am upset. I'm rip roaring mad and very close to the time when I don't have to hold back any longer.
Allend - These two quotes are related. ThomasMore describes exactly how I feel. I would even say that it is righteous anger at this point. Yes... I have gone on a bit of a rampage in the last couple of days. But I am fed up.
I stand by everything I have said and I invite you to consider what I have said in light of God's Word - and nothing else!
To repeat something I said to narses earlier:
If it weren't a matter of your eternal security, it would almost be laughable.
Finally, you may have missed this post.
AMEN!
I asked Narses and/or Allend to explain how a priest can possible be allowed to continue his his ministry in light of I Tim 3's requirement that a bishop or "elder" be "blameless, temperate, sober-minded, of good behavior, not violent."
Further, I want to be clear about this: I oppose men "who hold the truth in unrighteousness;" (Rom 1:12) - no matter what their doctrinal orientation.
It's rather the opposite. The Church hierarchy (1/3 to 1/2 gay) couldn't bear to finger themselves. And only a very few priests had the courage to admit the nature of the problem. Priests molesting teenage boys is all homosexual. If the Church wants to continue being the Sodomite Church, it will lose many people who don't want their children raised in that environment, who want authentic Catholic sexual morality taught sincerely, and who value the safety of their sons.
I am praying for this.
Nobody is trying to marginalize gay and lesbian Catholics. They are welcome in the Church like anyone else. But having a heavily gay clergy who could care less about Christian and Catholic sexual morality, who is promiscuous, and a certain percentage of whom can't keep their hands off teenage boys is disgusting and frightening.
The b*stards that call themselves deacons, priests and bishops who are misleading today's Catholics need to read Mark 9:42.
You restated it,
Catholics need to read Mark 9:42
That's a whole new meaning. But thank God that most of our clergy are not like this!
BTW, all good Catholics read and understand and live by the gospel. And likewise our bishops.
I'm not sure how the mother can let those spawn of Satan lay around her house like that.An article on the Courage website entitled "Unlocking the 'Coming Out' Trap" offers the following insight into the mental dynamics behind otherwise orthodox Catholics acceptance of secular "gay" apologetics:
Encounters that Alter ValuesThe same article also suggests how the mother might have handled the situation:+++ A recent graduate from an excellent Catholic college who worked with teens in her parish was unwilling to present them with the Church’s teaching on homosexuality and the call to be chaste. She was otherwise a very good and caring youth worker, but she was held back by her feeling of loyalty to a "gay" college friend with whom she had been close during the time when he had "come out" in their campus community.Both of these youth ministers withheld a vital message of truth and goodness from those to whom they were responsible because of their fear of offending their friends.+++ A well-established youth ministry administrator was quite interested in the testimony of people who had formerly been actively homosexual, but had completed a journey of finding their heterosexuality. He believed in the authenticity of those testimonies, but would not pass along that information to other youth ministers. He feared he might offend a good friend who had "come out" to him some years before.
Anything More?Yes. You must come out too...as a Roman Catholic! And yes, in most colleges and high schools, you will surely feel a vulnerability of your own if you admit you are convinced of the truth of the Church’s teaching about homosexuality. This quote from an article on marketing the gay agenda explains why the risk is so real:
"We can undermine the moral authority of homophobic churches by portraying them as antiquated backwaters badly out of step with the times and with the latest findings of psychology.""The Overhauling of Straight America"Erastes Pill & Marshall Kirk, Guide Magazine, 1987
Over ten years later, that article proves itself to have been prophetic. Now, if you stand openly with your Church, you will find yourself labeled "antiquated," "out of step," and "homophobic." Who needs to risk those kinds of insults?
It is a risk, but your friend has just gone out on a limb and revealed something very personal. Rather than just standing back and watching, you can and should take the same risk. You’ll do both of you a lot more good that way, even if things do get a bit controversial. Pray a lot. Pick your time and place carefully, and maybe say:
"Will we still be friends if I’m honest with you too? Will you reject me if we disagree? I want you to know that I love and trust the wisdom of my Church. Can we listen together? I want to be very open with you because I do care.You’ll be asking your friend to question one of the big myths and angers of the gay movement: that the Catholic Church is "homophobic." To that, you can say:"My Church was the first to open hospices for AIDS victims at the beginning of the epidemic. Is that homophobia?"Your friend may say. "The Church can only prove its love for us by saying homosexuality is good and healthy." But you can ask:"Is this a good and healthy choice if 30% of all actively homosexual 20 year olds will become HIV positive by age 30*? Is it love if I encourage behavior that could kill? Isn’t it more loving to tell you about persons with homosexual feelings who have chosen to lead chaste lives? Some have even experienced a measure of healing from the emotional causes of their homosexuality. By being aware of this, at least you won’t feel you have no choice."(* Statistics from the American Psychiatric Association Press, as quoted by Dr. Jeffrey Satinover in Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, Baker Books, 1996)
I note the abscence of the father in the article at the root of this thread.
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