A homosexual priest grabs the lime-light just before an important Roman Catholic synod, led by Pope Francis, focusing on how divorced and remarried people, people living together without marriage, and homosexuals, should be treated in the Church:
Pope Francis is celebrating Mass at St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, at the start of a synod of Roman Catholic bishops focusing on family issues.
The run-up was dominated by a row over a Vatican priest who on Saturday announced he was in a gay relationship.
Poland-born Krzysztof Charamsa said he wanted to challenge the Church’s “backward” attitude to homosexuality.
He was later dismissed from his post at the Vatican’s office in charge of guarding Roman Catholic doctrine.
A Vatican spokesman said Monsignor Charamsa’s decision to give interviews on the eve of the synod was “grave and irresponsible” and would put Pope Francis under “undue media pressure”
In an interview with the Corriere Della Sera newspaper, the 43-year-old priest said: “It’s time the Church opened its eyes and realised that offering gay believers total abstinence from a life of love is inhuman.”
The controversy has set the scene for what some fear could be a fractious three weeks, says BBC religious affairs correspondent Caroline Wyatt.”
What is so bizarre about Msgr. Charasma’s claim about “inhumanity” is that millions of heterosexual people have accepted the Church’s teaching on the subject without difficulty.
Millions of single women and men who weren’t able to find a spouse have led celibate lives contentedly.
What’s more, millions of couples, who do not have sex either because of illness or choice, have led abstinent lives, without complaining about “inhumanity.”
Christianity doesn’t forbid anyone from loving anyone else.
David loved Jonathan very deeply.
Same sex devotion is not only not condemned, it occupies plenty of space in the Bible.
There’s Ruth’s love for her mother-in-law, Naomi. There’s Jesus’ love for John.
But devotion and sexual desire are two different things.
The Bible doesn’t object to same-sex love; it objects to same sex…sex.
It also objects to many other kinds of sex – between unmarried men and women; between men and women married to other people; between people who have divorced other people; between parents and their children of any age; between brothers and sisters of any age; between adults and minors; between minors; between the living and the dead; between human beings and animals; between groups of human beings; between people consecrated to abstinence….
All these millions of people have managed to refrain from sex in all these forbidden situations, for centuries, without suffering inhumanly…or even making it an issue.
They’ve also managed to fill their lives with love.
Love is not sex and conflating the two produces the propaganda of the homosexual activists.
Thus, perhaps, it is not sex, but instruction in semantics, that Monsignor truly needs.
I agree with your general sentiment here. Not that I think homosexuality is immoral. I am neither a Catholic nor a theist. But what I am against is the idea that ‘This moral code that I believe in causes me to sacrifice more than I would like to, and therefore I will replace it with a watered down version for my own convenience.’
If one truly believes in the Catholic moral code, then follow it! Some parts of any moral code are pleasing to us, and other parts are not. So what? If one wants to live a life that fulfills whatever you want to fulfill, including sexual desire, then do so within whatever you honestly believe is moral. This watering down seems a result of the culture of narcissistic humanism that has infected us.
Yes, me too.
or.. (cough) I as well.
I am not a Catholic, but I still think – from observation and not solely from Christian teaching – that homosexuality is disordered. Not any more disordered than lying, raging, tom-catting, or cheating, of course.
But my main problem is why people want to call themselves Catholic and then play tennis with the net down.
Go make up your own game.
But the reason is they want the prestige accumulated by the word “Christian” or Catholic.
It’s good advertising for whatever shoddy goods they’re actually selling.
Personally, a religion that didn’t demand a lot from me would not be worth my time.
I can do that on my own steam – no need for God for that.
I agree, people want the prestige with certain labels, like Catholic. They also want the prestige of being labeled a ‘good person’. But that term comes loaded with all sorts of connotations of self sacrifice. To me, being a ‘good person’ doesn’t really mean anything anymore because it costs nothing.
Yes, like “nice.”
What does “nice” in the world mean today?
Someone who never offends.
Now, if one is saintly and so filled with charity that nothing truly offends one, that is something else.
But the average person is “nice” so that he doesn’t tread on powerful toes or because he is too weak to defend his beliefs.