This one:
As long as membership in the organization is voluntary, what’s the problem with rules other people choose for themselves for their own reasons?
Disclaimer: I agree that the Church should stop trying to intervene in gay marriage legislation that affects non-Catholics. :mad: Bad Church, bad!
Where are you getting the lake of fire?
This is a point I have been thinking about making, especially since the exchange about my adoption. My parents were not forced to adopt me by a cruel church. (The fact that IVF wasn’t really an option 40 some years ago I will ignore, since I believe they would act the same way if it was to have happened now.) The point is, they AGREE with the Church’s teaching on this, and the decision to adopt brought them joy, not pain (I presume!!! 
). If they did not agree with the Church on this or any other major issue, I’m sure they would leave, as is their right.
Yes. Although I do think it’s important to note, as I implied in my last post, statements like Kalhoun’s start to have a point when the Church makes motions toward trying to enforce its rules on people who never signed up.
No, I was referring to your post and cite. Poly’s may not have been chapter and verse, but he’s fairly well-read on the subject, so whatever tidbit he tosses in I figure to be correct, at least in essence.
Do you think this is a fair statement? The catholic church is an organization that butts in on sexual behavior and reproductive choice. It is an organization that professes to know when and how god wants you to have children, when to make love to who, and to never touch your parts for pleasure. There is no logical basis for these rules and these rules result in emotional pain and suffering for those who want to engage in prohibited behaviors.
I wouldn’t disagree with that, necessarily. As a Catholic, I would not be inclined to support laws that prohibited, say, gay marriage. However, I think that pro-life issues are different, because the aim is to protect those that cannot protect themselves.
Are you kidding? Of course I don’t. They have 2000 years of theology to back up their beliefs, and anyone who doesn’t agree with those beliefs are free to leave. I no more think that is a fair statement than if you made the same kind of statement about any religion. The Catholic Church has a catechism…you can agree with it or not, but they certainly have the right to have one.
WOW! I had no idea my OP would lead to such a Donnybrook!
But to reply to WM, first of all, if you are not gay, sir (or madam?), you will have to admit your experience is not the same as that of a gay person.
I suppose it all depends on what you mean by “common”.
If you are looking for a study with hard statistics that says that X% of RC Priests surveyed said, “Yes, I had gay (or straight) sex in the past week/month/year/since ordination”, forget it! How the Hell would you do such a survey and how would you trust the results?
But there is such a thing as local, anecdotal data and logical extrapolation. In the absence of hard data, scientists use this method all the time.
If I see a wolf at the edge of a large forest and the next day my best friend sees a wolf at the opposite edge of the same forest 100 km away, the only thing we know for reallly, really certain is that there could be one very very fast-moving wolf in the whole forest of say, 5000 square km. But we can extrapolate that we probably saw two different wolves. So we know there are two wolves in the forest. Well, we really don’t KNOW but we extrapolate and use our heads.
Then we wonder how likely it is that there are exactly 2 wolves, no more, in that size of forest and that my best friend and I by sheer coincidence saw those 2 wolves. No, logically, one has to extrapolate that there is most likely a population of wolves living in that forest. You would need more research to confirm it, but it is not illogical to infer it.
I live in Ottawa, Canada. There is an Ottawa RC Archdiocese.
In my sexually active phase in the 1970s when I was young and pretty, I got picked up and had sex with, over a three-year period, at least 4 young men who admitted they were RC priests. They might have been lying, but they seemed sincere, and it is also possible that there were more than 4. After all, “What do you do for a living?” is not a standard question in the “Was it good for you too?” phase of casual sex.
A friend of mine who also lives in Ottawa recently introduced me to two RC priests that he is having sex with. They made no effort to deny it and I looked these people up on the internet and found they are indeed priests.
At a gay resort in Key West a few years ago, I met (but did not have sex with) five or six men who admitted confidentially they were RC priests on vacation, but asked me not to tell others so as not to ruin their “chances”.
That makes a total of about eight or ten gay priests who have told me they were sexually active or even proved in in bed. How likely is it that I met the only 10 in Christendom?
And when I and other gay friends are gabbing and the subject “Have you ever done it with a priest/minioster/rabbi etc.?” comes up, most of my friends seem to have similar experiences to relate.
Plus we have the Metropolitan Community Church, a gay-positive Christian Church whose clergy are often gays who have left their original church. And the former Catholic priests often confirm the fact that gay sex occurs commonly among Catholic priests and nuns.
Now you can believe me and my friends or not. But my guess is that there would be AT LEAST a dozen or more sexually active gay priests that could be outed in many dioceses.
I am not saying that the majority of gay (or straight) priests break their vows of chastity. I just said sexually active gay priests is a common phenomenon. Guess it depends on your definition of “common”.
Does the church allow you to pick and choose which rules you support as long as you don’t engage in the behavior? Or would your support of gay marriage make you a Bad Catholic? If you staged a same sex union ceremony in your yard for a friend or family member, would the church approve?
I wasn’t talking about whether or not they have a right to their rules. I simply asked if the statement was truthful. I believe it is.
A couple of points, here. First, there is no Catholic in the world who personally agrees with or fully understands EVERY doctrine of faith. No, the Church does not exactly “allow” you to “pick and choose,” but they DO teach that each person’s conscience should be his or her ultimate guide. I doubt that the Church would get behind my staging, or even attending, a same sex union, but I would not necessarily be adverse to doing it. Certainly, I would not expect the Church to be involved, and if I felt that it was more important to support my friend or relative than worry about what the Church thought, then I would do it. I might consider talking to a priest about it, and my experience with doing so is that they usually help you find a way to deal with such a situation in a way that you feel spiritually comfortable with.
Second, You are confusing my feelings as a Catholic with my feelings as an American. I do not necessarily “support” gay marriage, but I do not think that my personal religious convictions are relevant on this issue when it comes to LEGALITIES. I do not support the marriage amendment, as I believe that it is a matter for states to decide, not the Feds. In this way, I am politically a libertarian.
And I believe it isn’t. What does this prove?
Unfortunetly, it’s not quite as cut and dried as that. Your parents were, I assume, Catholic, and you currently hold that faith because of your upbringing, correct? Did you have any say in that? Do you think you would be a Catholic today if you hadn’t been raised as one? If you left the Church tomorrow, how would your family react? “If you don’t like your Church, just leave,” is a rather facile response to a very complex and difficult situation. A lot of people, especially homosexuals, are trapped from birth into a belief system that condemns them constantly for something that is both harmless and beyond their control, but which they can’t simply leave because they believe in it as strongly as anyone else in their church. For a lot of people, changing your religion is just as impossible as changing your orientation. Its an impossible situation all around, for them, and one that they did not choose for themselves in any sense.
I’m not saying it’s wrong to teach kids religion, and I’m not saying the Church should never take a stand on any position that might discomfit its members. But you can’t waive away criticism of Church policy by just saying, “If you don’t like it, leave.” It’s just not that simple.
Fine, I’ll try to get around to starting a new thread.
Back on topic, instead of arguing back and forth about whether gay priests should be outed perhaps it’s worth discussing the best way to go about doing it.
If Valteron is correct about the ease of getting photos. It would be a simple matter to start posting names and pictures of priests in compromising places on a website. With a good URL it would probably get a lot of publicity too.
GayPriests.com is already taken, GayCatholics.com is for sale, GayHypocrites.com is free and clear as is HomosexualPriests.com and HypocriteCatholics.com, etc.
Considering the precedents set with the tabloids I can’t imagine there being any legal issues.
Oh, come on…how could they possibly avoid taking a stand on things that might discomfit its members? Someone might decide that the Church telling them God exists makes them uncomfortable. The job of the Church is to help guide us morally and spiritually.
You misread me: I’m not saying that.
As long as you discuss hypothetical ways to do it and do not attempt to carry out the action (or recruit anyone to the action) on the SDMB, that seems permissible.
Ack! You are right, Miller…so sorry! :smack:
Thanks for the caution, Tomndeb, but I don’t think anyone is planning to use SDMB to do this. In fact, I merely put the OP up for discussion. There ARE more radical groups in gay society (as in any other society) that have actually proposed this as a method of retaliation against Catholic attacks against gays in the political arena, such as when they appear before government committees to demand that civil marriage (which they do not recognize 
be denied to gays and lesbians.)
I am not actually a member of any gay rights group, radical or otherwise. Too old for all that shit. Although I do send a fat cheque to Canadians for Equal Marriage every time the local Catholic Church sends me a general mail-out asking for money (they still think I am a Catholic). I always get great pleasure out of telling them that the donation is being made in their honour (not in their name, in their honour). For example, I like to send the Catholics back their own return envelope with a cheque for $1000, only it is made out to *Canadians for Equal Marriage * and stamped (specimen only- not negotiable). I then explain that the $1000 has been given to people who are fighting FOR my civil rights, not against them. It gives me great pleasure.
Canadian for Equal Marraige (they have a web site) are not the ones who propose outing priests. I believe it is a group called “Queer Nation”. However, I would support the “outing” strategy of Queer Nation with a donation if I liked their plan.