Posted on 06/04/2002 3:03:30 AM PDT by maryz
Now, I go out of my way to specifically talk about the difference between my feelings toward Catholics and the pope. I am then chastized for bringing it up too many times. Now I am labeled, once again, as disliking Catholics, or so it seems to me.
But I will happily go away and leave you to your discussion. Good luck!
I read my copy of Goodbye! Good Men only once before I lent it out, and I don't recall whether that seminary is mentioned. AC, TM -- can you be any help?
Gays and the Seminary
The schools that train U.S. priests require students to be chaste, but most allow them to be gay. A Vatican probe may change all that
By David France
NEWSWEEK
May 20 issue — There will never be a gay students’ group—or gay film series or gay dance—at St. John’s Seminary, one of the most respected training grounds for Catholic priests in the nation.
YET THE 64-YEAR-OLD institution, nestled in the hills of Camarillo, Calif., may be one of the country’s gayest facilities for higher education. Depending on whom you ask, gay and bisexual men make up anywhere from 30 percent to 70 percent of the student body at the college and graduate levels. “I don’t want people to think that in a negative way,” says a 28-year-old gay alumnus, who believes all seminarians there are chaste, regardless of orientation. “It isn’t like Christopher Street or West Hollywood. But some seminarians are gay, openly gay, and very loud about it.”
Though they constitute just over 5 percent of the population, gay men may make up half the student body at the 76 high-school, college and graduate-level seminaries across the country, according to broad estimates. For decades Roman Catholic Church leaders have quietly reckoned with this surprising truth about seminary life. There is no rule against celibate gays as seminarians, theologians say. But for a church where priests preach that homosexuality is an “intrinsic evil,” it is at the least incongruous that so many would-be priests are gay.
What bothers me is that I get the feeling that the bishops in the U.S. are going to side step the homosexual issue in the priesthood. This is NOT good. The gay issue is THE issue.
I imagine that is what we are here for. For me, I am waiting to see what action(s) the Bishops will take - if it is less than acceptable (as in not dealing with the homosexual issue), then we have to swing into action. Letters, phone calls, faxes, etc. Plus much prayer, attendance at Mass and the Sacraments as often as possible and working our way to Jesus so that we might be the light.
I have two close friends that were given more than a hard time after their psychologicals and were at first refused admittence to the seminary because they were too "rigid". A third friend dropped out because of the rampant gay lifestyle at seminary.
How is it that a man who claims to be a homo, and lives a perverted lifestyle, who the Church claims is psychologically disordered, not only gets admitted to but recieves preferential treatment in these institutions? What kind of hypocrisy are we dealing with here? How do our bishops justify this kind of thing? Where the hell are the bishops?
The first category of "artificial" birth control also has two subdivisions: barrier methods and methods that kill the child (abortifacients). Barrier methods are forbidden because of the artificial separation of the unitive from the procreative (the deepening of the marriage bond which results from the total giving of one spouse to the other where the act is open to procreation as opposed to the essentially mutually masturbatory use of the partners merely as means for sexual satisfaction). The pill works by making the womb inhospitable to the implantation of the embryo. Although, the womb, on many occasions may be, for unintentional reasons, inhospitable to implantation, the intentional prevention of implantation is a killing. That there is no dramatic or even perceptable event to make the mother and father aware of the expulsion does not justify the abortifacient act any more than firing a gun into a dark room will absolve the shooter if someone is killed "unintentionally." The firing of the gun is intentional so is the taking of the pill. The medical literature appears to be mixed on whether the pill is responsible for long-term medical problems for the woman in the way of breast cancer, uterine cancer, cardio-vascular problems and the like. Giving the pill the benefit of the doubt on this score, would you board a jetliner if there is a 50/50 chance of a bomb in the luggage compartment? A 20/80 chance? A 5/95 chance? Not if you recognize suicide as immoral for perfectly healthy people or otherwise.
Likewise the IUD disrupts implantation by disrupting the womb and it also poses major health risks of an immediate nature to the woman.
Needless to say, the "morning-after pill" is simply a powerful abortifacient taken AFTER conception. The RU-486 pill, dubbed as the "human pesticide" is simply and well-understood by all concerned to be an abortion in pill form.
This leaves "Natural Family Planning" which is allowed only for "grave reasons", which is the loophole that AmChurch liberals have been perverting and driving tractor trailer loads of defiant immorality ever since the more excommunicatable of them rejected Humanae Vitae and its rejection of birth control.
Grave reasons would include physical maladies threatening the life or essential health of the woman (husband has communicable HIV or AIDS, substantial diabetic condition of wife makes pregnancy a major risk, a serious heart condition, uterine cancers, etc.) Grave reasons do not include a desire to buy a bigger projection TV, a desire to vacation in or build a castle in Spain, a need for "fulfillment" by returning to the workplace for the satisfactions (?) of career, a need to be involved in the garden club. Grave reasons also do not include hubby's frustration with infants crying for 3 AM feedings; his desire for a snazzier car; the rising cost of country club dues; the fact that anyone fathering more than two kids is teased by the more Planned Barrenhood oriented of his friends and colleagues for using his wife as (they so delicately put it) a breed sow. I could go on but you get the picture.
It may well be that some priest has told Salvation what she posted. Fortunately, we do not regard our priests as infallible much less our laity (such as your not so humble servant). Just as we have far too many pederasts, pedophiles, ephebophiles and just plain queers within the priesthood, we also have embezzlers, drunks, drug abusers and priests of extremely questionable judgment who, above all, wish to be liked and are willing to please by telling parishioners what Father Feelgood thinks they want to hear. If the priestly advice in question suggested the moral acceptability WITHIN Catholicism of ANY form of birth control other that Natural Family Planning OR the acceptability of NFP under any but "grave" circumstances, he is wrong and his advice is a marriage wrecker. Such advice is all too common and is one very important reason for the scandalous percentage of divorce among "Catholics".
Fortunately, Father Feelgood, Father Pederast, Father Barleycorn, Father Embezzlement and Father Heresy are not the only sorts of priests or anywhere near a majority. If your priest is telling you that birth control is OK, bear in mind the connection between the natural sterility of homosexual sex (all of it) and the artificial sterility of birth-controlled sex. There are plenty of heroic priests (particularly among the younger ones) who will adhere to the moral truth of the Magisterium and help you to do likewise. Find one quickly for this and many other reasons. Shun the rest.
Also, bear in mind, that acceptance of the notion that a couple have a moral right to "plan" the number of their pregnancies, never mind what God may want, is, as understood by the infamous Margaret Sanger would inevitably lead to acceptance of abortion as a fall back measure. Birth control, without grave reason, is defying God by effectively saying: "My will, not Thine be done." But that is what Sanger was really up to all along, ably assisted by Antonio Gramsci, Lothrop Stoddard, Madison Grant, Himmler, Hitler, the Arkansas Antichrist, Ms. Antichrist, most of the legislators that most of us despise for whatever reasons, and so many, many more, but the victory over them is not just possible. It is guaranteed on the Highest Authority. We still must do our part.
In Connecticut, I enjoyed the friendship of some very conservatively oriented Greek Orthodox families and their priest, and spent time with the families daily at their business and the home of one of the families. Perhaps, there was something unspoken of historical problems with some Catholics in centuries previous to any we had lived in, but, if so, it never came up in conversation and they knew me well enough to know that any sincere belief of theirs would not harm our friendship but would occasion my respectful attention.
I apologize for the "small annoyance" crack. If unity between your Church and mine is not to be, we will, both of us, survive. Yours is a truly wonderful Church with entirely valid spirituality and sacraments and Mass. I will absolutely not disrespect the Orthodox Church. When I was outraged in the immediate post-Vatican II era over the suppression of the Tridentine Mass and considered options, the option most likely if I were to have ceased being Catholic would have been Eastern Orthodoxy. For me, it finally came down to the old Roman maxim that where Peter is, there is the Church. I know we disagree on that, which is why I am Catholic and probably a reason why you are Orthodox. We need not disagree disrespectfully.
Finally, one of our local pastors observed that anyone who thinks that actual Catholics are having their Faith shaken by the current scandal does not know us very well. The congregation (a novus ordo one) responded with a standing ovation. We are, of course, a tad sensitive at the moment and like the Celtic warrior Cuchulain, girded for battle. We and you need not fight one another at this time.
That is one very cute goat on your profile page as well. God bless you and yours.
Where on earth did you get this?
Here's what the Catholic Catechism has to say about NFP:
2370 Periodic continence, that is, the methods of birth regulation based on self-observation and the use of infertile periods, is in conformity with the objective criteria of morality.
Moreover, the Catechism says regulations of births may be done for just reasons, which is a far cry from "grave."
The determination of the size of a family is the duty of the married couple and no one else.
I guess you could read my statement to mean that the Church would approve of birth control. However, what I meant, was that on an individual basis, in sitting down with a priest and explaining the details, the priest can give you guidance from the point of view of the Church.
The individual, thus informed, can then judge his or her or situation.....alchoholism in the family.......Rh factor danger of losing the mother........etc., etc. Each individual cas is then decided by the individual, NOT the priest or the Church.
Is this a better explanation?
God bless. You covered what I wanted to say much better than I.
Absolutely.
I won't belabor the point here. The idea of my posting was to help you guys see why we don't have that gratitude you speak of toward your pope. Just very different perspectives of him. They don't seem to be reconcilable.
May God have mercy on you!! May your prayers be answered and may you find eternal bliss in the Kingdom of our Lord!! May God protect and defend you from all evil!
Please pray for me, a sinner.
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