Not wishing to dilute Kalhoun’s knee-jerk “you go, guy!” reaction, but could you think of a specific example? :dubious:
Like, someone who’s been weighed in on for lust lately?
Not to answer for Miller, but it is my understanding (based on what a co-worker told me) that the church does things like make couples who go to those pre-marriage religious retreats sleep in separate quarters. They also fired a teacher (maybe in New York?) for having a child out of wedlock. I’d call those examples of weighing in.
“Suffer the little children to come unto me!”
[Jesus lies back on couch, crooks finger, rubs crotch, waggles tongue, turns pitcher of wine on end table into Kool-Aid]
[BrainGlutton goes to Hell just for posting this]
Someone with a truly perverse sense of humor from this board, whom I won’t out, sent me a 1950s-vintage picture from what was apparently a Catholic illustrated children’s catechism. This particular picture dealt with confession, and showed a boy with apparent strong remorse for his sins burying his head in Jesus’s lap. Unfortunately, the positioning of the boy’s head, Jesus’s comforting hands, and so on, made it look very much like what was going on was not confessio but fellatio. :o ← perhaps not the best smiley for the occasion, either! 
I’m not entirely sure what you’re asking for, here.
Well, to be fair, the whole “Episcopal Church interferes neither with a man’s politics or his religion” line date’s back to Jonathan Swift.
I guess I would emend “gay” to “non-celibate gay” here. Outing to me would be publicizing the sins of the priest, not the fact that he is gay. My assumption is that our parish priest is gay but that’s not an issue to me any more than if he were straight, as long as he is celibate and true to the vows of his vocation. And even then, does it have to go public? He would be a sinner like everyone else and have the chance to repent and change his life like anyone else.
I have to agree with you, gigi. I have always thought that it is totally irrelevant whether or not a priest is gay or straight. A priest’s sexuality really has nothing to do with his vocation. Part of the vocation is to be celibate. A priest who is out running around having sex…no matter who he is having sex with, is having a serious problem with his vocation, and he needs to figure out whether or not he wants to be a priest, but I have to say that this is really his crisis to deal with.
One thing that is very interesting about the Catholic Church is that even though there is one Catechism and one hierarchy, the Church is made up of a billion individual people. No one priest is the same as the next. My parents used to belong to a parish that had a pastor who was very gay-friendly…gay couples flocked there from all over the city so they could attend mass together in an open environment. The priest there made it his mission to minister to these folks. I don’t know what it is he said to them, but I saw many of the same couples there week after week, being greeted very warmly and given communion by this pastor. Clearly, he was not condemning them, and found a way to reconcile his obvious compassion for them with the Church’s teaching.
I have a strong suspicion that any priest who is having gay relationships on the side is not spending too much time at the pulpit condemning gays, and such a priest may on the other hand be combatting the Church’s teaching about gays in his own way, by preaching tolerance and compassion. Although it may not seem like it from the outside, this is a major theme in the Church today, anyway, at least here in the U.S.
…which makes any and all behaviors moot with respect to christian religion, doesn’t it? I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately and I wouldn’t bother outing a priest who engages in sex (straight or gay) because it doesn’t matter one way or another. I don’t care from a social standpoint, he won’t lose his job, and if there’s a god, he already knows who Father O’Rielly is schtupping. If I wouldn’t meddle in my neighbor’s sex life, it makes no sense to meddle in a priest’s. From a hypocrisy stanpoint, I’m pretty sure the parishoners are aware of the unreasonable demands that are made by their church. And I’m sure most parishoners don’t care.
I would care, just like I care about the fornicators who I know attend church and receive Communion. It bothers me a lot, but it’s not up to me to judge, contradictory as that might sound.
There is also a scandal element to it. “…in a large sense, as when a person without being directly concerned in the sin nevertheless exercises a certain influence on the sin of his neighbor, e.g. by committing such a sin in his presence” IOW, knowing about it may make someone else feel like if he’s doing it, so can I.
True, and it was a just remark about latitudinarian views.
What I’m talking about is that, ever since the 1976 adoption of the 1979 Prayer Book (don’t ask) and ordination of women, but getting really bad with the consecration of Gene Robinson in 2003, there has been a really strong tendency to snipe at the Episcopal Church on the part of everyone who disagrees with it. And that sniping has increased both in frequency and in nastiness the last few months. (Not so much on this board, but generally, in public.)
Well the church can’t very well instruct an unmarried couple to wait until marriage and then give them a room together during a pre-Cana retreat. (Note: I did in fact get married in the Catholic Church, and had pre-Cana waived)
Also the teacher recently fired was getting fertility treatments. She said she was doing it in class and to the administration. This is one of the biggest no-nos in the church.
Well I think the point I’m making is that the church will tell someone they can’t sleep with another person (enforcing the “lust” thing) but they won’t go up to a fat parishoner and tell him he’s a fat, gluttonous sinner. Sexual behavior is weighed in on all the time, but many of the other sins go pretty much unpunished (unmentioned!) by the church.
!!! I thought the Church encouraged fertility!
I understand you’re not supposed to receive communion if you’re in a state of “mortal sin.” But you can solve that by making confession at some point between your most recent fornication and taking communion. Am I right?
OTOH, a priest who is in a state of mortal sin can still administer a valid sacrament. I think that was settled shortly after Constantine legalized Christianity. Some Church leaders insisted priests who had committed apostasy by making sacrifice to the emperor to avoid persecution could not administer valid sacraments, but that position was ruled heretical.
Well I think the point I’m making is that the church will tell someone they can’t sleep with another person (enforcing the “lust” thing) but they won’t go up to a fat parishoner and tell him he’s a fat, gluttonous sinner. Sexual behavior is weighed in on all the time, but many of the other sins go pretty much unpunished (unmentioned!) by the church.
Not really. In order to make a sincere confession (and therefore a valid one), you have to have the intention not to commit the same sin again.
To give an example, this is why remarriage, and not divorce, is the bigger problem in the eyes of the church. If you remain unmarried after your divorce, you could theoretically live, or intend to live, a celibate life, thereby remaining true to the marriage vows. Once you remarry, that is out the window, because you can’t keep confessing the sin of adultery when you are clearly not intending to stop the adultery in the future. I know many Catholics who have been divorced for years, and will never remarry because of this.
How this applies to homosexuality is basically the same. If you confess the sin fornication with the full knowledge that you plan commit the same sin again in the future, then it is not a valid confession.
This isn’t exactly true. Most Catholics, when going to confession, use an “examination of conscience,” which helps them to identify the areas they have been lax in. No, I don’t think that a priest would “go up to” a fat person and tell them they have sinned by being fat. (Most priests probably wouldn’t do this to a gay person unless the person went to the priest to talk to him about it. Many examinations of conscience that I have seen go down the 10 commandments, and are in a format of questions you ask yourself about your recent thoughts and behavior. Here is an example:
In any good examination of conscience, ALL the 10 commandments are covered. There is a range of the seriousness of sin within each commandment, but not compared one to the other, like “it’s worse to violate commandment #3 than commandment #7.”
I go to mass every week, and I can’t remember the last time I heard a fire & brimstone lecture on fornication…either the heterosexual or homosexual kind. Just isn’t as major a focus these days as what you might think.
Oh, and BTW, I don’t have an example right now, but I have definitely seen both overeating and excessive drinking on these examinations of conscience! It’s the sin of intemperance.
The Church covers all the bases…those E of C will make you feel guilty for breathing, believe me. 
Right but the analogy for the example would be if they had a retreat, they would not provide you six 1,000-calorie meals.
I’ll take the chance that you’re serious. Just go easy on me if you’re whooshing me. I hate it when my ears pop.
The Catholic Church does not believe that individuals should interfere with fertility. Not by using birth control or by having fertility treatments. Is it a good idea? No. But it is a consistent approach.