I’m not Catholic, but I do spend a lot of time working through the teachings of Christ. As far as the sex outside of marriage and homosexuality issues, I think the Catholic position is the same as mine.
If it is someting that could end up hurting you, or someone else (involved or not) then it is not what God desires for your life. Your choice sure. Absolutly. But God strongly advises against it. He has a better view of the whole ‘life’ situation than I do, so I try to listen.
Did you catch that? I try to listen. For me. In MY life. I don’t judge anyone else on what decisions they decide to make. I do believe that those decisions can hurt them, and that greives me, but I refuse to judge, or look down on them. (Sorry, I just wanted to make that clear. Lest I get 85 posters jumping down my throat… been there, done that!)
The birth control part… well I don’t understand the Catholic position on that one…
Not at all. The Pope may on occasion speak ex cathedra, i.e., infallibly, but that is an extremely rare event. And a council of the whole Church (for example, and most recently, Vatican II) can also be infallible. And councils of the Church happen more frequently than ex cathedra pronunciations from the Pope.
When not speaking infallibly, the Pope’s words must, of course, be given great weight, but that’s all.
It is also possible, theologically or canonically speaking, that a Pope may believe himself to be speaking infallibly, but be wrong in that belief.
Being raised Catholic in Ireland (now atheist) didn’t have any influence on my opinion of the child raping, sadistic, back covering, superior mother fuckers at all*.
Anyhoo.
The Pope arrives on a trip to Ireland and while being driven to his first gig he leans forward to the driver and askes can he have a go at driving the stretch limo as he never has driven one and very rarly gets the chance to drive anymore.
The driver says “No problem JP”, and gets into the back and puts his feet up.
The Pope get a bit to enthusiastic and pushes the limo up to 120km/h and gets pulled by the cops.
Cop walks up to the car. “Pull down your window sir… Holy Shit, I’ll be right back”. He goes to his partner “Jesus we better get the Sarge we’ve got a major VIP here”. “Who?” says his partner.
“Fucked if I know but the Pope’s his driver”
The church that is and I know there are lovely jubbly people in the church as well but IMO they are drowned out by scum
Okay, so the Pope makes an official visit to Buckingham Palace, and he and Queen Elizabeth are out on the balcony, above a huge crowd.
Out of the corner of her mouth, the Queen says, “I bet you a tenner I can make all the English people in the crowd go crazy with just one wave of my hand.”
And John Paul II snorts and says, “No way, it can’t be done.”
So the Queen waves, and the crowd goes nuts, cheering and waving their little plastic Union Jacks. And meanwhile, the Pope is thinking oh man, what do I do? Then he gets an idea.
“Your Majesty, I’ll bet you that with just one nod of my head, I can make all of the Irish people in the crowd go crazy-and not just now, but for a week, and possibly longer.”
And the Queen laughs and says, “No WAY Your Holiness! You can’t do that?”
The trick with “is it something that could end up hurting you or someone else” is that every significant decision, and every lack of such decision, is probably going to hurt someone.
Every beginning of a relationship will lead to issues and opens the possibility of the relationship ending. Every relationship turned down probably stings the person who asked, and may hurt the person who turned it down, too.
Is sex outside of marriage going to hurt someone? Is it going to benefit them? I don’t think the person involved can judge without some sort of precognition, but they’ve certainly got a better shot at it than I. Is being gay going to hurt someone? My gut response is that denying one’s love is probably going to hurt more than expressing it, even if that expression has drawbacks, but I know that I’m someone for whom any form of closetedness causes severe trauma, aggravates my depression, and generally makes me a nervous wreck in a state of hellish torment.
“God doesn’t want you to make decisions that could end up hurting you or someone else” as a guiding principle is a good way to wind up in stasis and guilty about the stasis because stasis doesn’t allow for making any positive changes, either.
So, this Catholic postman’s delivering mail in Ireland, right? And he walks into a Protestant neighborhood to deliver mail. And…get this, its a killer… they Shoot Him Dead! Get it…?
*
So these three Popes get lost in the woods. After wandering around they find this farm, and the farmer takes pity on them and says they can sleep in the barn as long as they don’t try to have sex with his beautiful daughter. The Popes all agree.
The next day they have to pay for their rent, and so the farmer says to go out and pick some crops for the morning.
The first Pope comes back with a basket of tomatos. The farmer pulls out a shotgun and says “I know you slept with my daughter. You have a choice. Either shove one of those tomatos up your butt, or die.”
The Pope with quite a bit of effort shoves the tomato up his ass.
The second Pope comes back with a bushel of corn. The Farmer says “I know you slept with my daughter. Either shove an ear of corn up your ass or I’ll blow your head off.”
This Pope shoves the corn up his ass, and then goes over to the other Pope, and the two Popes start laughing.