Rio archdiocese sells hospital to help pay 39M World Youth Day debt

Pope Francis our humble pope and is oh so concerned about the poor,  how can this be acceptable!!!!!

What waste he also would of been spared that horrific interview on the bus “who am I to judge gay priests.

and let us not forget about the dancing priests and our Precious Lord in a PLASTIC CUP!!!

FROM RIO DE JANEIRO

The Archdiocese of Rio de Janeiro is to receive financial help from the Vatican to pay debts accumulated during World Youth Day in July.

In a statement released yesterday, the organizers of the event said that Pope Francis “proposed contributing financial help in order to cover part of the final investments in World Youth Day 2013.”

The exact figure that the Vatican will pay has yet to be determined. Likewise, no decision has been taken as to how the money will be transferred to Brazil.

World Youth Day, which took place between the 23rd and the 28th of July in Rio, left the Archdiocese with debts of US$39 million.

In August, it sold a building in São Cristóvão, in the north of the city, for US$20 million. The building is the home of the Quinta D’Or hospital. The Archdiocese’s debts now stand at US$ 18.6 million.

In the statement the organizers reiterated that public money was not used to pay for the event: “The participation of the city government was limited to ensuring that essential public services continued to work as normal during the event. The government did not assume the financial burden.”

The statement also emphasized that Pope Francis recognized “the great work” of the organizing committee.

 

http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/internacional/en/brazil/2013/11/1378345-vatican-to-help-rio-archdiocese-pay-debts-from-world-youth-day.shtml

Jesus only pretended to be angry

Pope Francis: Jesus only pretended to be angry when the apostles didn’t understand him!!

Pope Francis: Use intelligence to understand signs of the times

Pope Francis greets pilgrims during his Wednesday audience on Oct. 2, 2013. Credit: Marianne Medlin/CNA.

Vatican City, Nov 29, 2013 / 09:41 am (CNA/EWTN News).- During his daily Mass, Pope Francis spoke of the importance of man’s intellect in understanding the Lord, and cautioned those present against “restricted” thought which keeps us focused on ourselves.

“What path does the Lord want? Always with the spirit of intelligence with which to understand the signs of the times. It is beautiful to ask the Lord for this grace,” the Pope said in his Nov. 29 daily homily.

Pope Francis directed his reflections to those present in the Saint Martha guesthouse of the Vatican, where he has chosen to reside.

He began by recalling of how in the Gospels, the Lord taught his disciples to pay attention to the signs of the times, which the Pharisees failed to understand, emphasizing how one must think not only with the head, but also with the heart and the spirit in order to fully comprehend “way of God in history.”

“In the Gospel, Jesus does not become angry, but pretends to when the disciples do not understand him,” the Pope explained, adding that at Emmaus Jesus says, “’How foolish and slow of heart.’”

“He who does not understand the things of God is such a person,” noted the pontiff, emphasizing how “The Lord wants us to understand what happens, what happens in my heart, what happens in my life, what happens in the world, in history.”

“What is the meaning of what is happening now? These are the signs of the times!”

“On the other hand,” he continued, “the spirit of the world gives us other propositions, because the spirit of the world does not want a community: it wants a mob, thoughtless, without freedom.”

Explaining that while the spirit of the world tries to lead us down a “restricted path,” the Apostle Paul warns that this spirit “treats us as thought we lack the ability to think for ourselves; it treats us like people who are not free.”

“Restricted thought, equal thought, weak thought, a thought so widespread. The spirit of the world does not want us to ask ourselves before God: ‘But why, why this other, why did this happen?’”

Or, the Pope observed, this worldly spirit “offers a prêt-à-porter (‘ready to wear’) way of thinking, according to personal taste: ‘I think as I like!’”

While there are many who say that this attitude is ok, the Pontiff noted, the spirit of the world does not want “what Jesus asks of us: free thought, the thought of a man and a women who are part of the people of God, and salvation is exactly this!”

Pope Francis then encouraged the Mass attendees to think of the prophets who proclaimed that “You were not my people, now I say my people,” stating that “so says the Lord.”

“And this is salvation: to make us people, God’s people, to have freedom.”

Reflecting on how Jesus asks us to “think freely…in order to understand what happens,” the Pope stressed that “we are not alone,” and that “we need the Lord’s help” in order to “understand the signs of the times.”

In order to do this, the Pope went on to say, the Holy Spirit “gives us this present, a gift: the intelligence to understand.”

Emphasizing how the Lord always wants us to walk along the path of intelligence, Pope Francis highlighted how “it is beautiful to ask the Lord for this grace, who sends us this spirit of intelligence, in order that we avoid weak thought, we do not have a restricted thought and we do not have a thought according to personal preference.”

We must only have “a thought according to God,” he stated, adding that “with this thought, which is a thought of the mind, of heart, and of soul; with this thought, which is the gift of the Spirit, (we) look for the meaning of things, and to understand the signs of the time well.”

Bringing his homily to an end, the Pope said that we must ask the Lord for the grace to have “the ability which gives us the spirit” to “understand the signs of the time.”

 

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/pope-francis-use-intelligence-to-understand-signs-of-the-times/?

NUN TRAMPLED AT BLACK FRIDAY SALE!!!

Nun Trampled Near Scapular Section During “O’Brien’s Church Supplies” Black Friday Sale

Biloxi, MS––An O’Brien’s Church Supplies shopper was injured earlier today after an out of control mob of frenzied shoppers smashed through the Biloxi store’s front doors and trampled her, police said. The Black Friday stampede plunged the religious good store into chaos as hundreds of people desperately tried to get their hands on the newly-released Sixfold Scapular, knocking several employees to the ground and sending others scurrying atop statues to avoid the horde. When the chaos finally ended, 57-year-old Sister Angelica Bettington was injured with a cracked rip and a lacerated spleen. “She fell over as she tried to get a scapular and then was trampled,” said O’Brien’s Church Supplies worker Tim Williams. “I haven’t seen anything this bad since ’98 when the new Credit Card Rosary hit the shelves.” 34-year-old Bill Radley, who was looking for a “cheap-looking” cross made of wood from Bethlehem, said that he was temporarily knocked unconscious in the stampede. “When I awoke, I noticed that my cross was broken in half. I still got it because it’s made of some sort of olive wood from Bethlehem. That’s where Jesus was born, so it must be really powerful. Well worth it.” Bettington says that even though all but two of the scapular folds were torn apart in the melee, that she was just happy they were the brown and green folds. “Those are the best two anyway, right?”

http://www.eyeofthetiber.com/2013/11/29/nun-trampled-near-scapular-section-during-obriens-church-supplies-black-friday-sale/

 

At least one woman will end up in a position formally held by a Cardinal

Pope Francis Shaking Things Up In The Vatican

Scholars, the clergy and the faithful are still digesting what some are calling the “road map for the future of the catholic church” released earlier this week in Rome by Pope Francis.

Rocco Palmo, a Philadelphia-based journalist who covers the Vatican and Catholic Church issues, says the pope’s work titled “The Joy of the Gospel,” is his blueprint for how he wants to transform the church.

 

Palmo says Francis writes from the heart — that he wants to create a more “missionary church” in which people feel welcome:

“Will it be taken up so that someone who’s been away from the church or isn’t Catholic who wants to be part of this at ground level, will they feel that same welcome in a parish, in a diocese that they’re sensing from Francis through TV or media from 5,000 miles away? That’s the million-dollar question here.”

Palmo points out that Francis is already letting it be known he plans to shake up the management of the Vatican:

“I’ve heard it from very good sources that at least one woman is probably going to end up being in a position that, until now, has been held by a Cardinal and will head a Vatican office, head a Vatican cabinet department which has never happened before, nowhere close in the life of the church.”

And Palmo says Francis wants a re-focus on the outreach to help the poor, the elderly, the forgotten and the persecuted.

 

http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2013/11/29/pope-francis-shaking-things-up-in-the-vatican/

 

Tomasica Mass Grave: 470 Bodies Discovered so far

More on that 50 Million Cardinal Timothy Dolan hid from Abuse Victims!

Milwaukee clergy abuse victims ask Vatican to make cemetery money available to settle claims

Photo: Cardinal Dolan praying with the Muslims at  NY. Mosque 

MILWAUKEE — Clergy sexual abuse victims and priests in Wisconsin said Tuesday that they’ve asked Roman Catholic officials at the Vatican to move more than $50 million from a cemetery trust fund and make it available to settle bankruptcy claims against the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.

The letter to the Congregation for the Clergy, the church office that oversees abuse cases, essentially asks it to undo an order that authorized New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan to create the trust fund in 2007, when he was archbishop in Milwaukee.
The cemetery fund had been seen as one of the archdiocese’s few significant assets when it filed for bankruptcy in 2011, but a federal judge declared the money off-limits last summer, saying the trust was protected by the First Amendment’s freedom of religion. That decision, coupled with the archdiocese’s recent announcement of a settlement with one of its major insurers, has raised questions about how much money is available to pay the hundreds of sexual abuse victims who have filed claims in bankruptcy court.
The letter sent Friday has no bearing on U.S. court proceedings but instead is an appeal to the church to do justice according to its own teachings and legal code, said Rev. James Connell, a former vice chancellor of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee and co-founder of the Survivors and Clergy Leadership Alliance. He acknowledged the appeal was unusual and a Vatican response would be “historic.”
But, he said, “We have to try.”
The archdiocese created the cemetery trust fund in 2007 after agreeing the year before to a $16 million settlement with nine people abused by Wisconsin priests while the priests were living in California. In a letter to the Vatican, Dolan said the trust would provide “an improved protection of these funds from any legal claim and liability.”
Dolan’s prediction appeared accurate in July, when U.S. District Judge Rudolph T. Randa determined the money could be used only to care for and operate Catholic cemeteries. The creditors committee, which represents sexual abuse victims as well as others with bankruptcy claims against the archdiocese, appealed that decision after learning that Randa’s parents were buried in one of those cemeteries.
The appeal is pending before the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Tim Nixon, a lawyer for the cemetery trust fund, said that while he respects victims’ right to appeal to the Vatican, he believes the matter should be settled in court.
A Vatican spokesman in the U.S. did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Jerry Topczewski, chief of staff for current Archbishop Jerome Listecki, said the trust merely formalized the archdiocese’s longstanding practice of setting aside income from the sale of graves to maintain the cemetery.
Meanwhile, the archdiocese announced earlier this month that it had reached a deal with Lloyd’s, of London, to buy back insurance policies issued in the 1960s and 1970s, when much of the abuse occurred. The deal, which needs judicial approval, relieves Lloyd’s of liability in return for an undisclosed sum; the archdiocese has said details will be included in its yet-to-be-filed bankruptcy reorganization plan. Negotiations with other insurers continue.
These events have raised questions about how the archdiocese might settle with sexual abuse victims. Individual payments comparable to those in other U.S. church bankruptcy cases would require the archdiocese to come up with at least $158 million, according to the Survivors and Clergy Leadership Alliance. Peter Isely, another co-founder, said victims in Milwaukee shouldn’t expect less, and the reorganization plan will be a sign of the archdiocese’s priorities.
“Money doesn’t lie,” Isely said. “Money says this is what I care about.”

http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/233495201.html

Pope hinted that he wants to see an end to the so-called ‘wafer wars.’

Pope Francis: No more business as usual

(CNN) – Pope Francis on Tuesday called for big changes in the Roman Catholic Church – including at the very top  – saying the church needs to rethink rules and customs that are no longer widely understood or effective for evangelizing.

“I prefer a Church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security,” the Pope said in a major new statement.

“I do not want a Church concerned with being at the center and then ends by being caught up in a web of obsessions and procedures,” Francis added.

The Pope’s address, called an “apostolic exhortation,” is part mission statement, part pep talk for the world’s 1.5 billion Catholics. Francis’ bold language and sweeping call for change are likely to surprise even those who’ve grown accustomed to his unconventional papacy.

“Not everyone will like this document,” said the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and author in New York. “For it poses a fierce challenge to the status quo.”

And it’s not just a verbal challenge, the Pope said on Tuesday.

“I want to emphasize that what I am trying to express here has a programmatic significance and important consequences.”

Since his election in March, Pope Francis, the first pontiff to hail from Latin America, has made headlines by decrying the iniquities of modern capitalism, embracing the poor and people with disabilities and reaching out to gays and lesbians.

At the same time, the 77-year-old pontiff has sought to to awaken a spirit of joy and compassion in the church, scolding Catholic “sourpusses” who hunt down rule-breakers and calling out a “tomb psychology” that “slowly transforms Christians into mummies in a museum.”

“An evangelizer must never look like someone who has just come back from a funeral!” the Pope said.

Officially known in Latin as “Evangelii Gaudium” (The Joy of the Gospel), the 85-page statement released on Tuesday is the first official document written entirely by Pope Francis. (An earlier document was co-written by Francis and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.)

Although Francis sprinkles the statement with citations of previous popes and Catholic luminaries like St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine, the new pontiff makes a bold call for the church to rethink even long-held traditions.

“In her ongoing discernment, the Church can also come to see that certain customs not directly connected to the heart of the Gospel, even some which have deep historical roots, are no longer properly understood and appreciated,” the Pope said.

“Some of these customs may be beautiful, but they no longer serve as means of communicating the Gospel. We should not be afraid to re-examine them. At the same time, the Church has rules or precepts which may have been quite effective in their time, but no longer have the same usefulness for directing and shaping people’s lives.”

Such statements mark a sharp break from Benedict XVI, a more tradition-bound pope who focused on cleaning up cobwebs of unorthodoxy in the church.

By contrast, in “Evangelii” Francis repeats his calls for Catholics to stop “obsessing” about culture war issues and to focus more on spreading the Gospel, especially to the poor and marginalized.

The outside world, particularly its economic inequalities, didn’t escape Francis’ notice either.

In a section of “Evangelii” entitled “some challenges to today’s world,” he sharply criticized what he called an “idolatry of money” and “the inequality that spawns violence.”

The Pope also blasted “trickle-down economics,” saying the theory “expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power.”

“Meanwhile,” Francis said, “the excluded are still waiting.”

But the bulk of Francis’ statement addresses the church, which, he said, should not be afraid to “get its shoes soiled by the mud of the street.”

The Pope also hinted that he wants to see an end to the so-called “wafer wars,” in which Catholic politicians who support abortion rights are denied Holy Communion. His comments could also be taken as another sign that he plans to reform church rules that prevent divorced Catholics from receiving the Eucharist.

“Everyone can share in some way in the life of the Church; everyone can be part of the community, nor should the doors of the sacraments be closed for simply any reason,” Francis said.

“The Eucharist, although it is the fullness of sacramental life, is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.”

Even so, Francis reiterated the church’s stand against abortion, defending it against critics who call such arguments “ideological, obscurantist and conservative.”

“Precisely because this involves the internal consistency of our message about the value of the human person, the Church cannot be expected to change her position on this question,” Francis said.

The Pope also reiterated previous rejections on ordaining women, saying the topic is “not open for discussion.”

But that doesn’t mean the church values men more than women, he said.

“We need to create still broader opportunities for a more incisive female presence in the Church,” the Pope said.

Francis also said he expects other parts of the church to change, and called on Catholics to be unafraid of trying new things.

“More than by fear of going astray, my hope is that we will be moved by the fear of remaining shut up within structures which give us a false sense of security, within rules which make us harsh judges, within habits which make us feel safe, while at our door people are starving.”

Francis didn’t mention specific reforms, but he suggested that it could include changes at the very top of the church.

“Since I am called to put into practice what I ask of others, I too must think about a conversion of the papacy,” he said.

The church’s centralization, where all roads lead to Rome, and the “we’ve always done it this way” type of thinking have hindered Catholics’ ability to minister to local people in far-flung places, Francis suggested.

“I invite everyone to be bold and creative in this task of rethinking the goals, structures, style and methods of evangelization in their respective communities,” the Pope said.

Martin, the Jesuit priest and author, said he could not recall ever “reading a papal document that was so thought-provoking, surprising and invigorating.”

“The document’s main message is that Catholics should be unafraid of new ways of proclaiming the Gospel and new ways of thinking about the church.”

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/11/26/pope-calls-for-big-changes-in-the-church/

Pope Francis calls for power to be taken away from Vatican

Pope Francis calls for power to be taken away from Vatican – Bishops should have ‘genuine doctrinal authority’

PHOTO: Pope Francis outlined his suggestions in his first ‘apostolic exhortation’.

Pope Francis has outlined a mission statement for his papacy, arguing the power of the Roman Catholic Church is too concentrated in the Vatican.

The Pontiff also called on Catholics to be more engaged in helping the needy and to welcome those of other faiths.

Continuing his markedly different path, Pope Francis says excessive centralisation within the church is complicating life and the papacy does not have all the answers to issues facing the world.

The Catholic leader said he was “open to suggestions” on how his role should change, using an informal style in his first “apostolic exhortation”.

“Nor do I believe that the papal magisterium should be expected to offer a definitive or complete word on every question which affects the Church and the world,” he said.

Bishops should have “genuine doctrinal authority”, he said in the document – a type of long open letter used by popes to communicate with their faithful.

Pope Francis has instituted a council of cardinals to advise him on reforms including a shake-up of the Vatican bureaucracy after a series of high-profile scandals in recent years and disgruntlement in many local churches.

He added the church had to embrace change rather than stick to old habits.

Pope Francis said he would rather a church that was bruised, hurting and dirty because it had been on the streets rather than one unhealthy clinging to its own security.

The pontiff said ordination of women priests was not open to question, but said the church needs to do more to support pregnant women who are victims of rape or in extreme poverty.

The Vatican this month also launched a worldwide consultation of Catholic dioceses including questions about pastoral care for same-sex couples and re-married divorcees, but there was no mention of any changes foreseen on these hot-button issues.

Emphasis on helping the poor, reaching out to other faiths

In the document Pope Francis stressed the importance of the Church’s social message, which he has made a priority.

“The poor and the poorer peoples are accused of violence, yet without equal opportunities the different forms of aggression and conflict will find a fertile terrain for growth and eventually explode,” he said.

Turning to other faiths, the pope said ties with Islam had taken on “great importance” for the Catholic Church because of the growing number of Muslim immigrants in many traditionally Christian countries.

“We Christians should embrace with affection and respect Muslim immigrants to our countries in the same way that we hope and ask to be received and respected in countries of Islamic tradition,” he said.

“I ask and I humbly entreat those countries to grant Christians freedom to worship and to practice their faith, in light of the freedom which followers of Islam enjoy in Western countries.”

Much of the exhortation was devoted to spiritual issues, particularly the need for a more joyful approach to faith reflected in the document’s Latin title “Evangelii Gaudium” (The Joy of the Gospel).

“There are Christians whose lives seem like Lent without Easter,” he said, adding that the Christian message should not be “a catalogue of sins and faults” and should be about striving for “the good of others”.

The document included practical tips from Francis for priests on how to give better homilies as well as a call for them to be closer to their parishioners.

“Our church doors should always be open, so that if someone, moved by the Spirit, comes there looking for God, he or she will not find a closed door,” he said.

“I do not want a Church concerned with being at the centre and then ends by being caught up in a web of obsessions and procedures,” he said, condemning “structures which give us a false sense of security… while at our door people are starving”.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-27/pope-francis-calls-for-power-to-be-taken-away-from-vatican/5118636

Pope backs us on Communion for the remarried

Pope backs us on Communion for the remarried, says German official

Church officials in Germany have defended plans by the country’s bishops’ conference to allow some divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Communion, insisting they have the Pope’s endorsement.

Robert Eberle, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Freiburg: “We already have our own guidelines, and the Pope has now clearly signaled that certain things can be decided locally.

“We’re not the only archdiocese seeking helpful solutions to this problem, and we’ve had positive reactions from other dioceses in Germany and abroad, assuring us they already practice what’s written in our guidelines.”

Mr Eberle’s comments followed the disclosure by Bishop Gebhard Furst of Rottenburg-Stuttgart on November 23 that the bishops’ would adopt proposals on reinstating divorced and remarried parishioners as full members of the Church during their plenary in March.

In an interview with Catholic News Service, Mr Eberle said “many points” in the Pope’s apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium (“The Joy of the Gospel”) suggested the German Church was “moving in the right way” in its attitude toward remarried Catholics.

Uwe Renz, spokesman in the Diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart, also defended the bishops’ stance. He said he believed the bishops were acting “in the spirit of the Pope’s teaching.”

“Our own dialogue process has shown this is a major issue for both lay Catholics and priests,” Mr Renz said.

“Pope Francis has called on bishops to exercise a wise and realistic pastoral discernment on such problems, and our bishops want divorced and remarried Catholics to be a full part of the church community, with full rights.”

Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller, prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, reaffirmed in October Church teaching that prohibits divorced and remarried Catholics from receiving Communion without an annulment. His announcement came after Freiburg archdiocese issued guidelines making Communion available to divorced and remarried parishioners.

In a 4,600-word article in the Vatican’s L’Osservatore Romano on October 22, Archbishop Müller said the “entire sacramental economy” could not be swept aside by an “appeal to mercy”, adding that if remarried divorcees were “convinced in their conscience a previous marriage was invalid,” this should be “proved objectively” by a Church tribunal as required by canon law.

In an October 8 letter to Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, president of the German bishops’ conference, the prefect said the archdiocese’s guidelines contained “unclear terminology” and violated Church teaching by suggesting remarried Catholics could take a “responsible decision in conscience” to receive sacraments after consulting their priest.

But Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising, one of eight members of the international Council of Cardinals advising the Pope on reform of the Roman Curia, criticised the stance. He said Archbishop Müller could not “end the discussion”.

Meanwhile, Bishop Stephan Ackermann of Trier told the Trierischen Volksfreund daily that the sacraments offered a “chance for reconciliation and a new beginning.” He said the Church needed a “more intense and honest account of the concrete reality facing many couples and families”.

Several German Church leaders earlier welcomed the Freiburg guidelines, including Cardinal Rainer Woelki of Berlin. He told KNA, the German Catholic news agency, Oct. 9 that divorced and remarried Catholics were “welcome in our parishes” and “belong to us.”

In a speech to the lay Central Committee of German Catholics, Bishop Furst said a commission of six bishops had been drafting guidelines since 2010 for faithful couples to “gain readmission to the sacraments in justified individual cases”, and would present them for approval at the bishops’ March meeting.

He explained that the commission had drawn on the Freiburg archdiocese’s document as well as a 1993 pastoral letter on the subject by three other bishops.

The bishop told the central committee to applause that he would “make arrangements” in his own diocese if the bishops’ plenary failed to “agree a common line”.

Speculation about a change in church practice has grown since Pope Francis told reporters in his plane back from World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro in July that a synod of bishops in October 2014 would explore a “deeper pastoral care of marriage”, including the eligibility of Catholic divorcees to receive Communion.

In his apostolic exhortation, the Pope said the magisterium should not be expected “to offer a definitive or complete word on every question which affects the church and the world” and cautioned against “a monolithic body of doctrine guarded by all and leaving no room for nuance”.

He added that the “doors of the sacraments” should be not “closed for simply any reason”, and said the Eucharist was “not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak”.

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2013/11/28/we-have-authority-to-decide-on-communion-for-remarried-says-german-official/

“HOMOSEXUAL MARRIAGE”: HOW CATHOLICS LOST OR MAY LOSE THIS BATTLE, IN TEN STEPS

In Italy, the change of the Catholic “mood” indicates that the redefinition of marriage to include counternatural unions may be a matter of time – it was exactly in such a climate that abortion was approved in the country under a DC(Democrazia Cristiana) prime-minister who was a “daily mass-goer” (!) and as close as possible to Paul VI. Montinian Church, Montinian consequences. It would hardly have happened so after one single decade of Wojtyla, but then it was too late.

Anyway, in this fine article published in October, Mario Palmaro explains how Catholics in Italy may lose this battle (as Catholics in many other places have already lost it) if they follow the ten steps to the “homosexual marriage” precipice.

__________________________

Mario Palmaro

With the laws on “homophobia” mankind is torn to pieces, a bit at a time, to the triumphant chorus of approval from the enemies of the Church.

 

Homophobia. The Italian Parliament is about to approve a law that will prosecute, with specific sanctions, behaviour that is part of this new conceptual categorization. But what does being a homophobe mean? In reality, no-one is able to define it with precision, because homophobia is an ideological invention. It is an idea from the Soviet penal-code, which will allow public ministers and judges to prosecute the most diverse behaviors, in the most grotesque victory of creative jurisprudence.

 

Homophobia as a category of the absurd

Homophobia presupposes that the world is made up of heterosexuals and homosexuals, along with other categories eventually definable, connected to the sexual sphere. But the concept of heterosexuality is already fake: in fact, when men and women have sexual relations, they are simply behaving like normal people. It is all the rest that is abnormal. Once the juridical category of homophobia is accepted, this statement will be impossible to make publically, without risking the prosecution of the law. The same can be said about a professor or teacher who teach their students that relationships between persons of the same sex are abnormal, or that having two fathers or two mothers is damaging to children. A penal denunciation will also hang like the Sword of Damocles over the head of any priest or catechist who defines homosexual acts as sins against nature, and therefore sins “that cry out to God for vengeance.”

 

Homophobia is a category of the absurd. If a person is attacked or insulted, the juridical order already provides sanctions applicable to everyone on the basic principle of equality. By inventing new penal laws in the case of a homosexual victim (or claims to be, since how can it be verified?) signifies inaugurating a potentially infinite proliferation of protected categories, reinforced by the penal code. You could hypothesize laws to punish severely “fat-phobia” in order to protect the obese from being mocked by colleagues and class-mates; or even “tobacco-phobia” to defend smokers against those who discriminate them for their smoking habits; or even “bald-phobia” to bring an end to the shameful discrimination of people who have hardly any hair. As you can see, there is no limit to this insane competition in the proliferation of civil rights.

 

Gender, Homo-marriage and Homosexual Adoptions

A nation that introduces the category of homophobia into its laws inevitably accepts the ideology of gender. What does this mean? According to the theory of gender, a person’s sex is not a fact that inexorably comes from nature i.e. one is born a man or a woman and tertium non datur – but each individual chooses, and not once and for all, whether they want to be a man or a woman with [total] disregard to their body and genetics. Homophobia certifies through jurisdiction, the destruction of natural sexual identity, transforming it into an individual and arbitrary choice. Being a man or woman will be like deciding whether to eat peach or cherry jam. Man literally “makes himself” which brings to fruition the devastating anthropological and social project initiated by the illuminist thinkers and revolutionaries like Rousseau. A project which is summed up in the total rebellion against God, and which culminates in rejecting the sexual constraints imposed by the body and its organs. It also makes a mockery of the Divine project for man “be fruitful and multiply.”

 

It must be made clear immediately that, once a law is passed on homophobia, whatever it is, the follow-up will automatically be a law on homosexual marriage. And consequently there will be the legalization of adoptions for homosexual couples and the access of the same to artificial insemination.

 

 

CATHOLICS: How to lose in ten steps

In short, the effects of this law on homophobia are apocalyptic. In Italy, a strong reaction from the Catholic world i.e. the Church, the Conference of Bishops, ecclesial associations and the main Catholic newspapers, would have been completely normal. Instead – they are all silent. The only Catholic entities that have not been, are: ‘Alleanza Cattolica’ who having been fighting non-stop with a a clear and very lucid manifesto of opposition; the ‘Nuova Bussola’ on-line, with an intense and tenacious campaign; the weekly ‘Tempi’, by supporting the campaign against the law, plus there are other sites or organized groups which are combative but small.

 

How can this lapse in neglecting the truth be explained? I would suggest three causes:

a. The habit of compromise: for years now the Catholic world has become used to pursuing the lesser evil instead of the good and the true: a law on bad homophobia rather than a worse one.

b. The existence of a homosexual lobby in the Catholic world which paralyzes it on this and other battles.

c. Fear of clashing with the world and of losing a political battle.

When all is said and done, this “surrender” explains how homosexuality, judged as a harmful abnormality by the greater part of public opinion until not so long ago, has become not only licit conduct but worthy of special juridical protection; making it become even more meritorious than the traditional man-woman relationship. It is clear that it is the work by the homosexual lobby and the favourable ground created by the mass-media which have contributed to this situation. Nonetheless, it needs to be added, that Catholicism, you might say, “has dug its own grave”, through ten earth-shatteringly erroneous moves: 

1. Christianity’s judgment on homosexual conduct has been undoubtedly very severe for two thousand years: the first losing move consists in progressively softening this judgment of truth, which anyway does not take away the message of forgiveness and redemption for the sinner, as the same for every other sin.

 

2. Being silent about the fact that homosexual behaviour is a sin. Out of human respect and because of the complexity of the causes, it is deduced that this behavior cannot be substantially judged. If you notice, even the most rigorous Catholics feel the need to state beforehand “that they do not have anything against homosexuals”. On the other hand, when speaking about the ninth commandment, they would never say as a premise “I have nothing against adulterers.”

 

3. The subsequent step is to deny explicitly that it is about sin: there are those who are born like that and so nothing can be done to change things.

 

4. The term “against nature” is abolished from language use in sermons, conferences and books, liquidating also the idea of nature in the philosophical sense. What remains is merely the “nature” that you find in Piero Angela’s TV documentaries.

 

5. Every pretension at conserving a distinction in judgment with regard to the homosexual in the juridical order, is abandoned. For centuries, laws considered this phenomenon tolerable, or as totally irrelevant on a juridical level, but they always maintained an implicit negative valuation towards this condition, which can have problematic aspects of public relevance. For example, the possibility of the role as educator, or of being part of a community organized in a specific way, such as the military or a religious order. Specific and motivated distinctions that came from recognition of the pathological character of this condition, were recognized world-wide until 1973.

 

6. At this point the effect of “the lay state” spreads: since the law cannot give ethical judgment, everyone must be treated in the same way; ergo every emotional relationship is of the same moral and social value; therefore, the laws will treat homosexuals and heterosexuals, and eventual ulterior categories, in exactly the same way.

 

7. Now, at this point, the person who tries to say homosexuality goes against nature, and that they would not want a homosexual teacher, becomes an outlaw, first at the level of the mass-media (pilloried by TV and newspaper journalists) and then at the juridical level (laws on homophobia); and here, the Catholic world abandons to their fate, all those who run into the executioner’s axe which has been set up by the new “homo-cracy”, liquidating them as “imprudent” or “integralists.”

 

8. So then the law on “homosexual unions” is passed, and here the Catholic loser displays satisfaction because “they have not been defined as marriages”.

 

9. “Homosexual marriages” obviously then are passed and here the Catholic loser displays optimism, because “adoptions by homosexuals are not foreseen.”

 

10. Adoptions by homosexuals are passed and here the Catholic loser concludes, with satisfaction, that anyway “the idea of the family still exists.”

[Source: Il Timone October 2013 (n.126). Translation: Francesca Romana]

 

http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2013/11/homosexual-marriage-how-catholics-lost.html