ED
Noor: The open Talmudization of the Vatican continues at an alarming pace. This
latest development is truly no more than a public announcement of what has been
happening for so many decades: the Vatican shelters its pedophile priests much
like Israel does its perverted rabbis from the wrath of the international
community for their various criminal activities along these lines.
To
Roman Catholics, what the pope says is straight from God’s lips to his ear and
always infallible. I imagine many of the flock are not at all pleased about
this announcement.
It
is extremely naive to believe that all of these men will speak the truth as to
their chasteness! I have written and done enough work on the issue of abuse
within the ranks of the church that I find it impossible to believe that this
announcement makes much of a difference to anything other than now, the Pope
has spoken what has been going on for aeons.
August 4, 2013
ROME ~ The New Chosen
Pope Francis said he wouldn’t judge gay priests, he opened the door to a
new era of reconciliation within the Roman Catholic Church, which has struggled
for decades to confront the presence of homosexuality in its ministry.
The pontiff
was traveling aboard a turbulent overnight flight to Rome from his first
overseas trip ~ a journey marked by his plain-spoken appeals to Catholics to
reground the church in grass-roots ministry ~ when he broached the delicate
issue of how the Catholic hierarchy should respond to clerics who are gay,
though not sexually active. In doing so, he departed from the posture that has
long shaped papal thinking on gay priests.
“Who am I to
judge a gay person of goodwill who seeks the Lord?” the pontiff told a news
conference in response to a question. “You can’t marginalize these people.”
Pope Francis
reaffirmed church teaching by referring to homosexual acts as a sin. But he
wielded his formidable bully pulpit to shift the tone of how the church regards
homosexual orientation at its highest ranks.
The pope
returned to the Vatican from a weeklong visit to Brazil, where he was given a
rock-star reception as an estimated three million people flocked to a Sunday
Mass on Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana beach.
Analysts
said that show of support is likely to strengthen his hand as he confronts
myriad challenges, including alleged corruption at the Vatican bank and the
sexual-abuse crisis.
The pontiff
said women couldn’t be ordained as priests, because the issue had been
definitively settled by Pope John Paul II. However, he said he wanted to
develop a “theology of the woman,” in order to expand and deepen their
involvement in the life of the church.
Never before
had a pope spoken out in defense of gay priests in the Catholic ministry, said
Vatican analysts, and past popes have traditionally treated homosexuality as an
obstacle to priestly celibacy.
In 1986, the
Vatican defined homosexuality as an “objective disorder,” and in 2005 Pope
Francis’ predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, formally barred men deemed to
have “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” from entering the priesthood.
.
.
ED Noor: Perhaps a little softening of the blow after the above statements sure to have roused the ire of some of his more alternative flock?
“This isn’t
a change in the church’s teaching,” said Rev. James Bretzke, a theology
professor at Boston College. “What’s important is the change in style and
emphasis.”
Cardinal
Timothy Dolan of New York echoed the pope on Monday, saying a priest’s
homosexuality “wouldn’t matter to me as long as one is leading a virtuous and
chaste life.” But, he added,
“My worry is that we’re buying into the vocabulary that one’s person is one’s sexual identity and I don’t buy that and neither does the church.”
Stephen
White, a fellow in the Catholic Studies Program at the Ethics and Public Policy
Center in Washington, D.C., said the pope “cut through a great deal of distrust
between the church and people of same-sex attraction,” adding that he doesn’t
anticipate that the pontiff’s comments will cause a rift within the church.
The pope’s
remarks drew cautious praise from gay-rights groups, who welcomed his change in
tone.
“This could
be the opening of a door or a window,” Marianne Duddy-Burke, executive director
of Boston-based DignityUSA, an organization of gay and transsexual Catholics.
Ross Murray,
director of news and faith initiatives at GLAAD, an advocacy organization, said
while the pope’s words are helpful, he remained sceptical of what will happen
in practice.
Pope Francis
met with reporters on the plane for 80 minutes, and he mused at length on one
scandal that erupted on his predecessor’s watch: a secret Vatican report leaked
to the Italian media purporting that homosexual Vatican clerics had formed a
“gay lobby” that was secretly pulling the strings inside the Holy See.
The
Argentine pontiff said he had discussed the findings of the internal Vatican
report with Pope Benedict, who resigned in early February. The German pope
emeritus, Pope Francis said, had given him documentation and testimony from the
internal report prepared by three cardinals before he stepped down.
The pope
carefully drew a distinction between the possibility of pressure groups
existing inside the Vatican ~ which he defined as a “problem” ~ and the
potential presence of gay priests within Vatican ranks.
“You have to
distinguish between the fact of a person being gay, and the fact of a lobby,”
the pope said. “The problem isn’t having this orientation. The problem is
making a lobby.”
The comments
cut to the core of one of the most challenging issues facing the Catholic
priesthood. Data measuring the prevalence of homosexuality in the priesthood is
limited. A poll of Roman Catholic priests across the U.S. the Los Angeles Times
conducted in 2002 found that 15% of priests described themselves as homosexual
or leaning toward homosexuality.
Bishops who
run local dioceses have long been divided over whether to accept gay priests
who are chaste. While some bishops are tolerant of homosexuality, the Vatican’s
ban on gay men entering the priesthood has forced many clerics to keep their
sexuality hidden from superiors.
For bishops,
the issue boils down to if “you got a priest you know is gay but isn’t active
is that a problem for you or not?” said John L. Allen of the National Catholic
Reporter. “For this pope the answer is ‘no.’ “
In Africa,
one of Catholicism’s fastest-growing regions, church officials expressed doubts
that openly gay priests would be welcomed by their flocks. “Here the issue is a
taboo,” said Ben Assorow, director of communications for the Symposium of
Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar.
The pope’s
remarks on homosexuality were prompted by a reporter who asked the pontiff to
comment on a report in an Italian magazine alleging Battista Ricca, a Vatican
monsignor promoted by Pope Francis, engaged in gay sexual relationships years
ago when he was posted overseas at a Vatican embassy in Latin America. The
monsignor, who has never publicly commented, remains in good standing with the
pope, said a senior Vatican official.
In one of
his first moves as pope, the pontiff appointed Msgr. Ricca as interim overseer
of the Vatican’s bank while a special commission weighs its future. For years,
the bank has faced allegations from Italian prosecutors and regulators that its
internal controls weren’t strong enough to guard against money laundering. On
Sunday, Pope Francis suggested he was keeping all options on the table, from
transforming the bank into a charitable fund to shutting it down entirely.
“I don’t
know how this story is going to end,” the pope said.
Msgr. Ricca
is tasked with acting as Pope Francis’ eyes and ears at the Vatican’s bank
while the commission forges ahead. The pope said he ordered a preliminary
investigation of the monsignor after rumours began to swirl about the cleric’s
purported sex life. The inquiry “found nothing,” the pope said, without
elaborating on the investigation or its findings.
.
.
Interesting headline!
The pope, who said he was too tired to take questions on his way to Brazil, appeared indefatigable during the trip home. He dispensed reading tips ~ advising reporters to “read and reread” Fyodor Dostoyevsky ~ and discussed his plans to visit Jerusalem on his next overseas trip.
Through it
all, he maintained a Zen-like state of calm, even as the plane hit turbulence
and the seat-belt lights flashed.
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