Saturday, April 20, 2013

"Conservative" cardinal still soft on same-sex relationships

Cardinal Schönborn, whose Vienna Cathedral in 2006 saw the blessing of unmarried couples -- including homosexual partners -- on Valentine’s day, and who last year (2012) opened a parish council to one living in a public homosexual partnership, is again on the news regarding his call on the Church to "give more consideration to the quality" of homosexual relationships (Rorate Caeli, April 20, 2013).

7 comments:

Mick Jagger Gathers No Mosque said...

Rorate Caeli's post was a depressingly familiar story about sodomites and those who succor them;

And here is the milquetoast FSSPX on sodomites:

The following reads like this man sounds:

http://tinyurl.com/cvnmlao

+++++++++ begin quotes +++++++++

Hate the sin, but the love the sinner... 

Before continuing here, we must first make the distinction between an inclination towards homosexuality (i.e., a temptation - which is not sinful) and the commission of actual homosexual sins by thought, word or deed

+++++++++ end quotes +++++++

We must also always remember the inclination towards cannibalism ( a distasteful temptation which is not sinful unless one has already made a brine, collected the charcoal, and had the knives sharpened) and we must always say that we love Jeffrey Dahmerbefore we condemn his menu.

Am I the only one finds this rhetorical ritual nettlesome whenever we talk about sodomites?

I do not remember reading anywhere of our requirement to profess profess love for Stalin before we condemned his killing of scores of millions of Christians nor do I remember reading about how we are required to love Mao even though we are a mite miffed about his slaughter of scores of millions.

And as for Hitler, he, of course, was loved by God but one is justified in condemning his agenda without noting that God loved Hitler and that man would not suffer any backlash if he did not first observe that God loved Hitler before condemning his evil plans and actions.

But the point is, we Catholics would NOT profess our love for or remind others of their duty to love Dahmer, Stalin, Mao, or Hitler because their crimes are malum in se whereas sodomy is (Thanks homosexualisation and timorous prelates) not that different than the love a Husband and a Wife have for each another or the love Jesus has for His Spouse, The Catholic Church.

The Catholic Church has completely failed to stand-up to the 1% - 3 % of the perverts within society.

The agitprop perverts had a good plan and they put it into action:

http://library.gayhomeland.org/0018/EN/EN_Overhauling_Straight.htm

And after surveying Church and State, what can we say that about Mssrs Kirk and Pill; what have they been doing?

http://tinyurl.com/4qqpmuf

Anonymous Bosch said...

Good point, IANS.

The distinction between "inclination" and "action" has always struck me as a bit tenuous.

In the first place, there is a tendency to see the "inclination" as perfectly innocent. Yet what is meant by "inclination"? Is one born with an "inclination" for anal-rectal sex? I doubt it. Before that ever becomes an "inclination," one would have to have indulged all sorts of grotesque fantasies, which involve culpable "actions."

In the second place, the "inclinations" themselves, even if they were innocent of antecedent culpable indulgent fantasy, are far from being morally neutral. They are "disordered," which means perverted, twisted, pathological, sick. The fact that one would have such an "inclination" is so far from being innocent or innocuous that this language begs to be dismissed with derision.

Sheldon said...

IANS,

I just had a chance to read the linked article by the FSSPX, which did not seem much like "milquetoast" to me. It seemed to me that much of it was a review of the Church's recent statements on homosexuality, including references to CDF and CCC, etc.

The sinner/sin distinction is clearly part of the official discourse, however much we may dislike it. Yet the linked article wasn't approving of quite everything that was being cited, it seems.

For example, it notes that the CCC makes NO reference to any of the OT passages about homosexuality, which are much more explicitly damning than those in the NT.

Yet again, it hardly seems approving when it states:

Unfortunately, the latest declaration of Cardinal Vincenzo Paglia, the Vatican’s president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, is leading the Church towards a slippery road. On February 5, 2013, he speaks of the need of juridical recognition of "homosexual couples" and wishes to ban those countries which still hold homosexuality as a crime. This is grounded on "the dignity of all the sons of God. An untouchable dignity. All men are equal since they are the sign of God. In about twenty countries, homosexuality is a crime. I wish that we open the fight against this."

Mick Jagger Gathers No Mosque said...

Also, for a Prince of the Church to be favorable to civil legislative protection to gay partnership is to give rights to error and vice, and it is a slap on the face of those faithful to proper ecclesiastical and civil laws of marriage..

When I read the putative hard-core schismatics write gay I hear Percy Dovetonsils speaking.

Can't we soi disant traditionalists agree never to use that word again?

Anonymous said...

"This is grounded on 'the dignity of all the sons of God. An untouchable dignity. All men are equal since they are the sign of God. In about twenty countries, homosexuality is a crime. I wish that we open the fight against this.'"

This is rhetorical smoke and mirrors. Do you ever hear such talk about racists? About Bishop Williamson? Etc.? If every single utterance on gay sex is prefaced with, "These people are deserving of love! They have dignity!" is neuters what comes after unless the point is made the sin blemishes and tarnishes dignity, and can lead to tragic ends. Otherwise, we have the clap-happy, "Don't Try So Hard" of Amy Grant's latest song, which boils down to, "We're all ok, cuz we're all God's children. Go color your world." What ensues is the Rainbow affirmations we now have in our midst. The faft that communication is now more possible, accessible, and clearer than ever, and yet the Vatican insist on halting and fuzzy statements is a bona fide scandal. The message is far from clear. And it is not at all hard to imagine us going the way of the ECUSA. After all, if we can redefine "Outside the Church..." to include atheists, since tghe interior orientation of a soul is what matters, certainly we can redefine sinful homosex to that which is unduly selfish and lustful in its *interior* orientation, right, and not that which is of so obviously on its surface and of its essence self-goving, right? You just watch...

JM

Ralph Roister-Doister said...

"Protection of the innocent" once had a clear and unmistakable meaning in society. Women who consented to murder or have murdered their unborn children were marginalized, if not made subject to criminal penalty. Those with the inclination to seek out the anal cavities of others to fulfill their sexual appetites were also marginalized and in some way criminalized. But this is no longer the case. Today, such people are regarded as “different”, and those who were formerly regarded as their victims are these days regarded as nullities, empty categories of human beings. If these victims are granted status as human beings at all, they are human beings of a generic, faceless variety. When their rights collide with the claims of “differentness,” the latter wins. Their status is uncomfortably close to that of slaves: as slaves were the chattel of their owners, so in a similar way, victims of the “differentness” of others are the chattel of those others. De Sade must feel vindicated.

Does "protection of the innocent" have a more robust status within the Church? Women who consent to have their unborn children murdered are not marginalized. They are embraced much as society today embraces chronic drunks who repeatedly maim and murder people in automobile accidents: "good people who make mistakes." What would once have been regarded as a horrendous sin is now regarded as a terrible mistake. To bring up the sinfulness of it is unforgivably "old school." How about those with the inclination to seek out the anal cavities of others to fulfill their sexual appetites? Again, they are not marginalized, but embraced as "good people" who are "inclined" to make “mistakes.” They are not exactly sinners – none dare call “differentness” sinful. In any case, we are more concerned with their feelings than their sins.

Based on the behavior of numerous bishops and archbishops, some of them the pride 'o' the USCCB, how can one avoid the conclusion that aborted and violated innocents are regarded by AmChurch as no better or worse than their murderers and violators -- generic children of God, to whom stuff happens. Victims, that is, who ought to be passively forgiving of their victimizers' "mistakes" and "inclinations" -- should they happen to survive their ordeal. After all, are we not all saints these days?

This is why Maria Goretti has not been thrown down the Well of Forgetfulness with the likes of Peter Damien and the rest of the canonized exemplars of “old school” morality. A young girl’s extraordinary capacity for forgiveness of her predator’s “mistake” makes her useful, ironically, to the V2 cult of generic sainthood. Once it was thought that extraordinary graces gave her an extraordinary power to forgive. For the nouvelles and for AmChurch, however, the twist is that her capacity for reception of grace must be thought of as more esophageal than extraordinary. It helps to promote the revelation, recently granted to the nouvelles, that we have all been found to be saints, by virtue of our ”natural supernaturalism” -- our natural, almost organic openness to graces thought to be extraordinary in nature (perhaps THIS is the function served by that mysterious, apparently useless organ, the appendix!).

The upshot of all this is that innocence and guilt, sin and virtue, no longer have power as antipodal states. Thesis and antithesis have synthesized not into a higher state, but into a lumpy gravy of generic sameness, less theo-drama than theo-torpor. Is it any wonder that from such contrived patterns of thought further contrivances bloom? Empty hell, anyone? It is all part of the same dysfunctional spirituality.

Chris Garton-Zavesky said...

Surely the point of the distinction between sin and sinner is that a sinner can choose not to sin, and to (therefore) become detached from his sins, through the action of grace in his life, and his response to it. We are reminded that no sin is so great that God is incapable or unwilling to forgive it, if only the sinner is repentant.


On the other hand, those who give aid and comfort to sinners, TO KEEP THEM IN THEIR SIN, are responsible for the sin. Those who through their example try to lead evil-doers out of their evil are not condoning the sin.

Remember, also, the definition of "love". Love exists only in so far as it corresponds to the truth. Therefore, leaving someone in his (tacitly approved) sin is not love, and so does not fall within the confines of "love the sinner".

Cheers,

Chris