While Benny’s opposition to same-sex marriage is about as unexpected as a Monty Python reference in a thread with this subject matter, it’s still pitworthy, if only for how fast and hard he’s come down on the homos:
See folks, this is why liberal non-Catholics were perturbed to see Ratzinger get the funny hat. The Church is here calling for its members to unilaterally deny the democratically-granted rights of Spanish citizens. Ultimately, it may only be an inconvenience, but it’s still an attempt to undermine the will and laws (and it’s a good law) of a free government. this isn’t merely advocating a moral position to the faithful, it’s an attempt to dictate secular policy through non-democratic means, all to squash the rights of homosexuals.
It’s also a pitiful attempt to bully Europe into being less secular. I’m hopeful that it will backfire. Not that I want to see the RCC decline, so much as I want to modernize or at least back the fuck off.
I stayed out of the previous Benedict XVI threads because I wanted to give him a chance. Maybe a miracle would occur, maybe the responsibility would change him. Nope. He’s an asshole.
It’s not as if any priest is forced to perform a ceremony. I’m sure that quite a few of the marriages would be more civil ceremonies.
Of course, I doubt Airman Doors, Mr. Moto, or the rest of the noisy horde defending the new pope will recant and apologize for their vitriol and the fact that they are already being proven wrong.
Meh. They tried to do the same thing here in Soviet Canuckistan – first the Archbishop of Ottawa threatened Jean Chrétien with excommunication, then the Bishop of Calgary suggested that homosexuality should be recriminalized.
They were basically laughed off the stage, much like what happened when John Paul II summoned Rodríguez Zapatero to Rome last year.
Anyway, their choice is clear: continue to attempt to bully its faithful into obedience of anachronistic hogwash, thereby dooming themselves into irrelevance, or get with the times.
Well, Ratzinger was in charge of the Holy Office of the Inquistition, er, I mean he was the Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, the name given to the Inquistion in 1965.
Yeah, right, and if one of the other Cardinals had been elected to the papacy he’d have given his blessing to this.
Is that really what you guys are saying? Reality check: Ratzinger is not some lone nut far out on the extreme edge of the Roman Catholic church. Like it or not, he represents the mainstream.
Well, it would be unexpected!
Odds are that any same-sex marriage in Spain would be a civil one; I don’t believe there are any churches there that would perform them, though I could be mistaken.
Of course he is. Nobody expected him to bless Spanish same-sex message. My complaint here is that he’s making a public fight about it before he’s even introduced himself and the strong-arm tactics. My two complaints are his priorities and the fact that he’s urging for a bureaucratic coup against the will of an elected legislature and the general bigotry…
I’ll come in again.
Nobody expected him to bless Spanish same sex marriages. Amongst my complaints here is that he’s making this fight now when he’s setting the tone for his papacy, that he’s urging Catholics to not do their legal duty and to deny meeting the rights of fellow Spanards, and of course, fighting against gay marriage, especially outside of your own folk, is an asshole thing to do.
AFAIK, marriages in Spain always start with the secular ceremony. For legal purposes, that’s the marriage that counts. The ceremony in church is purely religious, and of course, as such, La Santa Sede can decide whatever they want.
And El Papa can blather on all he likes. Most Spaniards under 50 won’t give a rats ass. Especially since Spain’s been a very good place for gays for quite a long time. I saw gays holding hands in public, kissing in bars, a long time earlier in Spain than in ‘liberal’ Sweden.
Spain is also the first country as far as I know that has a city (Barcelona I think) where naturalism is legalised in the whole city. You are legally allowed to walk around there bare-naked. Impressive.
My point being that, pace an earlier poster who commented “See folks, this is why liberal non-Catholics were perturbed to see Ratzinger get the funny hat.”, no matter whose brows the funny hat towered over the response from the Vatican would have been identical.
All the more astonishing when you consider that it was severely illegal no more than thirty years ago. There was, in fact, a recent case of a guy who was hassled going through the border (returning to Spain, IIRC) because he had a criminal record for gay sex from during the Franco era.
