Read between the lines and you realize that he and the RC Church have not changed ONE IOTA! It is still all right to be gay as long as you are totally sexless.
One of the slickest tricks of Catholics in the modern era is their ability to come across as liberal without changing at all.
Imagine if I were to say this: “There is nothing wrong with being a Catholic; it is only the practice of Catholicism that is a grave moral disorder and an intrinsic evil.” Would you consider me a tolerant person or a flaming bigot? Yet when the Catholic Church and the present Pope espouse that very position relative to gays, it is supposed to represent tolerance and broad-mindedness.
Poor Pope Francis humbly asks “Who am I to judge?” What a saintly man! What you are, sir, is the head of a reactionary, conservative organization that uses its money and power to block equal marriage rights of same-sex couples, even though your church does not even recognize civil marriages, and even though your Church has NEVER been forced to marry anyone they did not want to marry, whether same-sex couples or divorced Catholics.
Be a reactionary if you wish, Francis, but don’t try to bullshit me with faux liberalism!
:dubious: Hm. That does not sound like very . . . pontifical thing to say.
Look, this is at least a step forward for a Catholic prelate. He’s not saying sodomy is no sin, of course not. If the Church/Pope ever says that, you will see the pronouncement coming years in advance, after much acrimonious debate and a great many other doctrinal sea-changes. But he is at least embracing common sense WRT priests: They’re supposed to be celibate anyway. If a priest keeps that vow, what difference does it make what kind of fleshly temptations he’s resisting?
It’s a change in the tone. I’d expect him to enter the pool at the shallow end if he intends to swim all the way across. You could give him more time to see if it’s a trend or just bullshit. Not that bullshit as the result would surprise me.
Believe it or not, I agree with your last statement. Assuming that a Church does demand chastity and celibacy (two different things, btw, that are often confused) of its clergy, and assuming that the clergy make this vow of their own free will, then it really does not matter if the priest is turned on by women, men, little boys, little girls or sheep. It does not matter if the idea of strangling a 14-year-old crack whore while he ejaculates is his fantasy of choice. As long as none of them do anything, what is in their heads foes not matter.
BTW, I find the idea that the RC Church can redefine truth with a “sea change” like Big Brother in Orwell’s 1984 is one of the most convincing reasons to believe they are full of crap.
Did the dead babies in Limbo receive notice that their special little place was about to be closed down by the RC Church? What’s that you say? Limbo never existed? Then was the Church lying or in error about a place that must have contained BILLIONS of unbaptised babies?
Well, of course, if you’re Catholic, even what stays in your head can be a sin. IIRC (not Catholic myself), a sin is any thought, word, deed or omission contrary to the will of God.
But, that’s not what you get defrocked/excommunicated for, it’s what you go to confession for. By those standards, nobody can avoid sinning, so there has to be a sin-wash available. In fact, if a Catholic somehow does manage to avoid sinning entirely and never has anything to bring to the confessional . . . well, that’s just not playing the game!
Chastity means being true to your current state, so a chaste single person does not have sex, while a chaste married person does, but only with their partner. Celibacy means refraining from sex altogether. Single people are chaste and celibate. Married people are only chaste.
You have to keep in mind that this is a personage whose every utterance is analyzed for meaning, moreso perhaps than even the President. It’s a vague statement and from almost anyone else it would be insultingly patronizing, but coming from him it’s of tremendous import. I think it’s unfair to diss him because he didn’t suddenly swing all the way to the opposite of ca. 2,000 years’ opinion.
Limbo was sure as Hell (pardon the pun) not presented to me as a place that “might” exist when I received 14 years of Roman Catholic education in the 50s and 60s. What this sounds like to me is that the Church realized what idiots they would sound like for suddenly declaring it did not exist after saying it did for all those years, so all of a sudden the existence of Limbo becomes an optional belief.
I am pretty sure that if I had told one of the brutal nuns and priests of my childhood that I chose not to believe in Limbo, I would have gotten a few more strappings and other forms of child assault in addition to the ones I was already getting.
Just to answer your question, I think it is your personal dislike for me that makes you judge that almost anything I post is a rant rather than a debate. I do not deny that I express my viewpoint in strong language, but that does not automatically change it from a debate to a rant. If you look at my OP you will see that I am clearly inviting others to debate whether the Pope’s declaration is a move towards tolerance and a more liberal attitude, or whther he is just using an old bait-and-switch trick to make people believe he is more accepting when he is not. It is quite a legitimate debate.
What can you do? It ain’t going away. I’d love nothing better than to outlive Christianity, and Judaism, and Islam, every form of Abrahamic Yahvism – to see the world cleansed of Yahweh’s evil name within my threescore and ten – but I know I ain’t gonna. We just have to make the best of it, which is what Pope Frank is trying to do.
If that’s a debate then every thread on this board is a debate. (Which, they are, in that most of the time you are capable of disagreeing with the OP and expressing that disagreement. But that doesn’t mean they all should be in GD.)
I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.
And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And Thou shalt not. writ over the door;
So I turn’d to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore.
And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be:
And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars, my joys & desires.