Catholic Church's letter on homosexual unions

It has been argued in this forum before, usually with much opposition, that it is becoming increasingly difficult to remain Roman Catholic as a liberal in 21st century America. Many have come to the end of their rope and left for other churches. For most, it basically boils down to the Catholic Church's refusal to comply with modern, evolved understandings of human sexuality and abortion.

Another sad example is the recent letter from the Vatican on homosexual unions:

www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20030731_homosexual-unions_en.html

As so many in the world were celebrating the recent victory for progress within the American Episcapol churches, here was the Catholic Church, once again, arguing that there are certain eternal "truths" about human sexuality that cannot be denied, that adoption by homosexual couples is a violence against children, and furthermore, that all Catholics must oppose the legal recognition of homosexual unions.

I keep thinking that some day the Catholic Church will get it-- I've been waiting for over forty years now. Those 40+ years began with Humanae Vitae and have come to this...

How long does one wait?

remember how much time they needed to accept the truth of Galileo...

Although many Catholics-- as well as non-Catholics-- in Galileo's day believed in a geocentric universe, the Church itself never officially taught a doctrine of either a geocentric or heliocentric universe. In fact, the Church has never taught binding doctrine (as in all Catholics must accept it) about any scientific matter. The Church's binding doctrine-- defined either by a Church Council or by a Papal ex cathedra statement-- have always dealt with matters of faith and morals only.

until anything changes.

Sorry G C, but you're spreading ignorance if you claim the church didn't view Galileo's teaching as a threat to the one and only true faith, because it brought into question the reliability of the whole bible. Here an excerpt from the book Vicars of Christ, which I feature on my site http://www.LiberalsLikeChrist.Org/PopesvsChrist :

After Galileo gave one of his newly invented microscopes to his friend, Pope Urban, and the pope had marvelled at a world he had never known existed, the pope said to Galileo concerning the new book Galileo had just published about how the sun, rather than the earth is the fixed center of our universe: "You may have irrefutable proof of the earth's motion (around the sun). That does not prove the earth actually moves. . . God is above human reason and what seems perfectly reasonable to men may prove folly to God." ( I would submit that 'what seems perfectly reasonable to POPES may prove folly to BOTH men and God.')

Urban went on to say that he, as pope, was responsible for the salvation of souls. Sometimes scientific discussion imperilled souls. The Copernican system, unless taken as a pure mathematical device, might cast doubt on Scriptures. Should that happened, he would have to take steps to stamp it out.

Because the pope had read in the bible that the sun "comes up" and "goes down", the pope knew that Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo (and any number of other scientists) couldn't be right about the earth revolving around the sun, instead of the other way around,

What wounded Galileo most was the disgrace. It had been visited on him for no reason he could understand. He thought of himself as a devoted Catholic. (Yet the divinely guaranteed head of the Church insisted that he was a heretic for promoting scientifically provable facts.) How could anyone insist on taking Genesis literally when there were overwhelming reasons for it being a myth! He was convinced that scientific problems could not be solved by a clerical police force. Ranged against him, he saw only ignorance, malice and impiety posing as Christian faith and virtue. Small-minded Vatican clerics had humiliated him but they could not stop the progress of science. His was the classic case of truth being crushed by power, genius being silenced by petty bureaucracy. It showed Rome's fear and hatred of the enquiring mind which was to be repeated time after time in the centuries ahead.

The church's backward march into the future meant that its war with science and progress was to go on. It warred against liberty and the democratic process at and after the French Revolution. It made war on Darwin and Freud, on biblical scholarship, on attempts to understand the world on its own terms, free from divine 'interventions from outside'. Today, it wages war against birth control and the equality of women. On each and every occasion, the Catholic church at the highest level refers to the Bible and natural law as it tries, with the best intentions, to halt the forward march of the world. It is a melancholy fact that it would be hard to find in the last four centuries one instance in which Rome greeted with unqualified joy a decisive advance of the human spirit. Any theologian who is censured today can at least take comfort in the fact that he is not treated as harshly as the Father of Modern Science. (p. 230)


See http://www.LiberalsLikeChrist.Org/PopesvsChrist.

Check out Christ's answers to the "Christian Coalition" & "Religious Right" .

on this or any other issue. They gave up the right to claim that their religion dictates anything when they thumbed their collective noses at the Pope over the massacre in Iraq. The Pope said no and the US Catholics basically said "Screw the Pope lets kill Iraqis anyway"

Beside the fact that protecting the sanctity of marriage is a joke when they sell annulments to those who can afford it and then marry adulterers.
Not to mention the entire pedophile scandal.

Sorry they need to stay out of people bedrooms.

(Speaking a someone that was raised in the Catholic church)

..at the Vatican on birth control and reproductive choice, too.

The most disturbing thing I read in this screed from Rome was the proviso that no Catholic should vote for somebody who supports civil rights for gays. That means Rome has crossed the line again, and I would dearly love to see their tax exempt status lifted, since they're now another political organization. Same goes for Falwell, Robertson, CBN, and the rest of the televangelist/politician crowd.

Of course, we can expect nothing like this from Bushco, but it really is overdue.

I've thought so for years. At the very least on all the extra property that has nothing to do with religion. But I case that would be another thread.

I don't agree with the pope on this, but it is their right to express their view. Freedom of religion and all that.

Who's thumbing their noses at the Vatican about birth control? Have you read Humanae vitae? Caste Conubii? Familiris Consortio? Any of John Paul II's writings on birth control? Apparently artificial birth control is also a "grave mortal sin" for all Catholics too.

Oh, did you mean that American Catholics thumb their nose at this? I suppose that's true, based on the numbers of them who claim to contracept anyway.

I see this latest letter on gay marriage as nothing more than the right wing enlisting the Vatican in the "culture war". There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Opus Dei is behind this latest letter.

When I see the church come out just as strongly against capital punishment and for social justice, I might take something like this as genuine. Otherwise, it's just another bomb lobbed at liberals by the right wing.

This is reiteration of what the Church has always taught-- long before our contemporary understandings of liberal vs. conservative, left vs. right, or any kind of "culture war". You can actually go back through the centuries and find these same statements and positions on homosexuality in various encyclicals and catechisms.

The Vatican right is playing lead violin to the well orchestrated US religious right's campaign to demonize liberals.

This is not aimed even so much at gay unions. Its purpose is to use the gay unions issue as a battering ram against liberal thinking.

I would not stay at a party where people were bashing blacks, Hispanics or other minorities.

I feel uncomfortable staying in a church that is doing the same.

And I especially feel uncomfortable staying in a church that tells me whom to vote for. I live in the Deep South; if I wanted that, I'd just walk a block in either direction and go to a fundamentalist church.

I agree with your party analogy. Although, I'm not sure the Catholic Church, whether one agrees with them or not, is telling anyone who they must vote for-- but rather that if an individual supports particular ideas or legislation that Cathlolics should NOT vote for him or her. I'm not sure how I feel about this. I mean, in some instances I would accept this. If there was a politician running on a platform of restoring segragation, I would have no problem with the RCC declaring that it is immoral for Catholics to vote for a politician who supports this immorality.

They make little to no effort to hide the fact that they are dictating who the congregation should vote for.

The press loves to point out when we do not. The church however is just following it's long held beliefs, this move was not unexpected.

BTW - you added abortion in your post. Do you really think the church should be pro-choice? You must be joking.

perhaps that is a little different subject. I guess I was just saying that those are the main issues that alienate many liberals.

the Vatican view on sex. They oppose birth control, biew it as done for procreation only, and oppose abortion. Now that pisses on everyones parade.

It was written by a gay Catholic man who believes the Church is correct in its teachings on homosexual acts. Supposedly he freely chooses live a chaste, celibate life. Apparently, there is some group called "Courage" that is rapidly growing within the Church that is made of similar persons.

Because it sounds like opus dei hype to me.

If I remember correctly from reading it a few years back. I don't think he had any affiliation with them.

When a group like this becomes controversial, do they publicize their membership or their programs? Or they go underground and hide what they are all about?

Interesting they went this far- or bothered too. In fact, by the more fundamental Church dogma ALL humanity is "objectively disordered" so this could have been presented a little more charitably outside the Thomistic theological lockbox that the current Pope reimposed on the post-Vatican Church.

Now blessing Church marriages is one thing and the "domino theory" fear of holding the line is less controversally demonstrated in the absolute ban against female altar girls, lest they be inching toward the male dominated priesthood.

I think the entire Vatican rules and theology establishment has to take a cold shower and get down to earth before they simply perfom kneejerk reactionary functions that have little resemblance to the Gospel. Can't even begin to get at the REAL arguments thanks to this kind of framework aimed at the entire NON-CHRISTIAN world. This is like demanding the Roman Empire release slaves- which curiously they never did. It took a Stoic non-Christian Emperor Piso to finally perform that centuries overdue justice. So a one handed applause to the courage of the Church hierarchy for once again singling out sex as a hot button salvation issue.

The Church also has not quite coped with the "new" issue of overpopulation other than gymanstics around birth control and playing off green progress and social justice against "natural law" requirements. It seems to me "natural law" was mistakenly delimited to a static world view when natural progress of any intelligent species would lead to "new"(to us adolescents) moral decisions consistent with the basic tents of dogma not evolutionary and historical accidents we popularly like to fool ourselves are "forever".

this is a far older and more prevalent Vatican behavior than Opus Dei or even a particular prejudice or Pope. They did try to throw in compassion into the mix so it shows mainly the reflexive doctrine defense play many times repeated in the past. I am reminded of a sillier instance in the sixties and seventies while the unjust war was raging. The American bishops in particular became very focussed on whether to offer "communion in the hand". The ink spilled was probably greater in quantity than the small sea of blood in Southeast Asia. The question of "relevance" of the Church for some reason kept popping up. I wonder why.

Yet hundreds of years ago while Islam was swallowing ancient Christian lands whole the great schismatic debate among that stellar generation was over the use of one syllable in one word of the creed "homousios" vs. "homousion". Bertrand Russell pointed out that gem.

It's just the diseases inherent in long incumbency and poor leadership friends. It's no more the whole Church than Bush is America. Of course if you are charitable and dig you can defer to the positive things they have to say.