This will set the cat among the pigeons. Cardinal Dolan (was one of the potential contenders for the papacy) said over Easter that gay couples are entitled to friendship, while as sex is only for married couples:
‘When asked what he would tell a gay couple who said they loved Jesus, loved the church and loved each other, he replied: “Well, the first thing I’d say to them is, ‘I love you, too. And God loves you. And you are made in God’s image and likeness. And we want your happiness. And you’re entitled to friendship.’ “But we also know that God has told us that the way to happiness, especially when it comes to sexual love — that is intended only for a man and woman in marriage, where children can come about naturally.”
Cardinal Timothy Dolan defended Catholic opposition to gay marriage during an Easter Sunday interview with ABC, stating that the church needs to remain disconnected from popular consensus in some occasions and that gays are ‘entitled to friendship.’
‘Sometimes by nature, the Church has gotta be out of touch with concerns, because we’re always supposed to be thinking of the beyond, the eternal, the changeless,’ Dolan told George Stephanopoulos on ABC News’s ‘This Week.’
‘Our major challenge is to continue in a credible way to present the eternal concerns to people in a timeless attractive way,’ he said. ‘And sometimes there is a disconnect — between what they’re going through and what Jesus and his Church is teaching. And that’s a challenge for us.’
It certainly is a challenge. The sexual drive in man is very strong and many don't take kindly to being told that they are not entitled to sex if it's not with their wife. Especially if they don't want a wife, are not attracted to women and think of sex as self-gratification rather than self-giving love that leads to happiness.
Related link: Cardinal Dolan defends Catholic opposition to same-sex marriage and says gays are 'entitled to friendship' ~ Daily Mail
Good Lord Lucia Maria.
ReplyDeleteI will leave a no comment on this issue.
But I was out and about today and was talking to a young woman who was heavily pregnant.
She mentioned her 'partner' not husband.
As I said to my ex-partner afterwards "So we have a world with gays wanting to get married and straights who cannot be bothered. Even when the birth of a child is imminent."
Hi FFM,
ReplyDeleteGood to see you!
Yep, it's all gone mad. All previous social engineering has lead to this point that we are at now. That shouldn't be forgotten, either.
Dolan doesn't even know right from wrong, why would anyone care what he thinks?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/31/cardinal-timothy-dolan-archdiocese-milwaukee-payoff-abusive-priests_n_1559298.html
Hi Richard. The way I read that article, Dolan has acted decisively to remove suspected priests out of the priesthood, and avoid a much longer process to get them out via the normal process.
ReplyDeletePeople are usually very upset if the priest is just sidelined somewhere, and have demanded that they are defrocked - and here's Dolan doing exactly that. Compared to the Golden Handshakes of former CEOs and the typical redundancy packages for dumping suspect staff, the 20K severance pay is pretty good.
It is up to the secular courts to find the priest guilty, and the article points out that one of the priests in question was accused but not charged. So not proven guilty then. Again, I urge the secular system to pursue these cases, and I've blogged often on how the secular system (courts, police) let the victims down considerably, and yet no-one seems fussed about that.
Good on Dolan for marching these perverts off the premises based on credible allegations and not relying on a court judgment.
Hi FFM. Thanks for your comment. Drop me a line, and lets work out a way to catch up for a coffee.
ReplyDeleteWhen I read the above article I thought "wow, that's going to hit the non-catholics who would never follow Catholic teaching anyway, really, really hard."
Of course, if you read the comment carefully, he actually included ALL people, not just gays. It's no surprise really - the message has always been "no sex outside of marriage" and I'm sure a lot of non-Catholics will find themselves completely hamstrung by that suggestion and wonder what on earth they can now do with the 5 years supply of contraceptive pills they had stacked up.
Catholics might be slightly more perturbed, and I would hope they investigate further to find out more about the theology and philosophy that drives this idea.
Zen: Had Dolan known right from wrong he would have reported these people to the police. The police can't pursue a case if they don't know about it. Dolan knew and wrote out a cheque to to make his problem go away. Let's remeber were not talking about a crap CEO or a surplus worker, we're talking about child rapists.
ReplyDeleteIt is however refreshing to see some implicit criticism of the vatican's inaction on rapist priests on this site, in particular with the Cardinal in charge of this institutional inaction being Ratzinger.
The report you quoted actually mentioned that the police had been involved. I mentioned it.
ReplyDeleteThese were not payoffs to keep quiet.
Dolan fired some of these priests precisely because he had met with victims that had already gone forward to the authorities. He helped them understand he was taking action by short-cutting the de-frocking process, even though it created a backlash with a couple of parishes that thought their priests were innocent.
Again, he acted on credible allegations where the courts were not acting, or not acting fast enough.
I don't have access to some of those reports anymore, but maybe you can find them on the net rather than accept a lot of the mainstream media that spins and puts negative slant on even positive actions.
You are also wrong on Ratzinger. Yes, the Vatican is an enormous slow moving bureaucracy, but even so, Ratzinger has made a big difference.
Save your venom for the real criminals, because they deserve it, and it is a mark of our society that we don't deliberately assign guilt until there is proper evidence. Dolan has taken action where others felt constrained. That is a good thing.
PS: Yes, I want the Church cleaned out as much as the next devout Catholic. I want the criminals brought to justice, and appropriately punished. I think the death penalty would be appropriate for some of the cases. Equally, I want meaningful justice, and there have been cases of priests falsely accused and jailed. That is not fair on the innocent. Imprisoning innocent people does not punish the wicked.
ReplyDeleteComing back to the actual subject of the article, my response is one word:
ReplyDeleteduh.
Lost in all this is the fact that marriage is under attack from all sides and has been for many years.
For some reason, because it's under attack from several other fronts, we're expected to agree to another attack. Apparently when it comes to marriage, evil has to have equal opportunity...