I’m talking specifically about the issues with sexual orientation and Official Catholic Opinion on the matter.
I say this because I’ve known a statistically significant portion of the Catholic population that turned out to have ‘Sexual issues’, at least in the eyes of the church.
Let me be perfectly clear in my phraseology:
I am NOT condemning people for their sexual preferences, I’m merely stating that, as a person that may not be getting adequate education and insight into their tendencies and feelings, the Catholic church and celebacy may SEEM like a good idea at the time, but as they mature, they find a big part of their life is at odds with the Church.
I find there are also two major issues here, Pedopillia(sp?) and Sexual orientation. The Former is a major issue and inexcusable as it takes advantage of a child by a person in power. That abuse in power appears to be VERY damaging to the people on the receiving end. As for the latter, I’ve got a friend who is a ‘retired Catholic father’ and from talking to him, it sounds like there’s a population of people who have left the church based on sexual orientation issues.
The end result being: The Church should probably take a less rabid stance on the issue, as they probably have a larger homosexual population than they realize.
this would be a perfectly logical stance and argument … if the Church was based solely on logic.
instead, you get dogma, pronouncements by Doctors of the Church, Papal Bulls (don’t! just…don’t), Biblical interpretations, yaddayaddayadda .
the faith vs. logic debate would probably just continue a long and bloody history. but the ‘logic’ side is most likely what causes a number of people to lose or drop their religion anyway.
Funny that, I find myself to be religous, but don’t regularly attend because I’m also pretty smart. I got the whole born-died-risen schtick about the first 24 times I saw it. Once you get to that point, if you don’t want to spend your life studying minutae of dogma, that’s not a whole lot else to do. But that’s kinda tangential to this thread.
Now are you talking about gay marriage or child-molesting priests?
The Roman Catholic Church’s position on gay marriage is crystal clear – they don’t accept it. You can disagree with that, but at least there’s no mistaking it.
Now, if you’re talking about priests and child molestation, I’m going to stipulate two points.
One does not become a priest overnight. In fact, the Church does not want one to become a priest overnight. The long training period is supposed to familiarize the applicant not only with the rules and policies of the priesthood, but also with his own needs and ability to fulfill the role.
Despite that, I would guess that there are a fair number of men who flee to the seminary with doubts about their sexuality, and feel that an oath of chastity will magically make their problems disappear. Sadly, it doesn’t always work that way.
Actually, I was referring to the church’s view on homosexuality in general and specifically excluding the issue of child molestation. You second point sums up my observations nicely, I’m just wondering if the Church’s responce to #2 should be different as someone with these issues may have a predisposition to become a priest BECAUSE of their sexual identity issues.
I guess I’m trying to say that there are aspects of the church that may attract a conflicted person, and the church isn’t doing a very good job of accomodating that.
Generally speaking, organizations that have a high tolerance for issues such as homosexuality, interracial marriage, or what have you traditionally become havens for folks who wish to be left alone. If the church turns a blind eye to pedophilia, then it will almost de facto become a haven for pedophiles.
The U.S. Foreign Service (State Department) was (and still is, to some extent) a haven for homosexuals who wished to work in an environment where there was more tolerance. It is also a haven for people who racially inter-marry and don’t wish to be stared at wherever they go or put up with ignorance and prejudice.
Now, I’m NOT comparing pedophilia to homosexuality, so just back off with the damn slings and arrows.
I was born and raised as a Catholic. I got all the dogma, nonsense and superstition from the age of 0 upwards and most of my high school education was provided by RC priests. In other words, I got to know the Church and its teachings very well for the first 18 years of my life.
In my opinion, there is little in this world that is as neurotic, messed up, inherently dumb, willfully ignorant, life-negating, insecure, hateful, spiteful and self-contradictory as the RC church and its attitude towards any sexual matters.
Mind you, the Church’s pathetically antiquated stance does have its fun side. An ordained RC priest is deemed to have many gifts of the Holy Spirit, one of them being ‘wisdom’. Well, one of the priests we had was sincerely of the view that it was impossible for girls to masturbate. So much for the Holy Spirit’s version of ‘wisdom’. And this guy was supposed to be teaching us!
To answer the OP, yes, in my opinion the RC church brings many problems on itself, because any institution that propagates ignorant, hateful, ill-conceived, dogmatic prejudice tends to cause problems for itself and its brainwashed followers.