It’s frustrating being a Catholic and reading the news reports of events like this synod. This report is a bit of a mess, and the commentary on top of it is a disaster. The report clearly doesn’t represent a balanced view of what’s been discussed by all the diverse bishops in attendance from all over the world. Forget liberal and conservative. It’s clearly written from the perspective of Western countries (where its authors are from) and applies to their political situations. But a synod document can’t afford to be that narrowly focused. It also can’t afford to be as sloppily written (or translated) as this was. Not when the world is watching. And not only are they watching, but they’re interpreting everything through their lenses–again, through the political contests of their polities, which distorts things even further. For heaven’s sake, the synod is about the family, and the most pressing issue is about marriages and divorce and Eucharist, but all anyone talks about is the language regarding homosexuality! And the speculation is whether the Church will one day endorse gay relationships or gay marriage or whatever. Folks, the Catholic Church is not going to change its understanding of marriage, or the sinfulness of homosexual acts. Even what this report is trying to say is underpinned by the same assumptions as the Church has pretty much always had. What’s up for debate–not even debate, as I think a lot of conservative bishops probably are sympathetic to reforms in this area–is the pastoral approach given to divorced, fornicating (I know, it sounds dumb, but that’s the term), and gay Catholics and non-Catholics. Pastoral meaning “How do we guide people lovingly to understand the principles we hold to be true about love, sex, and marriage?” The impulse of those pushing for changes (including the Pope, it seems clear) is that the Church is often failing on the “loving” part. It’s often just failed to adequately explain those principles in the first place–the crucial one being, yes, homosexual acts are sinful but, guess what y’all!, we’re all sinners! That message is never going to get the support of a secular liberal society, but the secular liberal society needs to stop waiting with baited breath for the Church to see things its way.
A lot of what the report tried to say centers around finding what’s good in relationships that the Church understands to be in certain respects misguided. Because in some of the most important respects, they are not misguided, they are loving and self-sacrificing. That there can be goodness in something that is imperfect is not some radical new thought some German bishop had yesterday; it’s at least as old as Thomas Aquinas. Go back to St. Augustine, who basically says all sins are driven by desire for something good, we just fixate too easily on imperfect goods. It will be a great thing if what comes out of this synod are new approaches to recognizing and fostering the goodness and beauty in the messy, difficult, universally sin-stained lives we all lead–straight, gay, married, divorced, confused, etc. Cramming the dialogue into a mold of political understanding that has been relevant for 1/4000 of the time Christianity has existed is doing no one any favors. And the perpetrators are both the media (who are often in no position to understand what’s going on) and the bishops, liberal and conservative, (who should know better) who can’t seem to put away contemporary concerns for eternal ones.
I agree that it’s unlikely to happen, but the church had better see things in the secular liberal society’s way, or the church will die. IMO, all the church is doing now is parrot the old line “hate the sin, love the sinner”, with an extra emphasis on the latter part. That’s not good enough, and frankly, their continued attempts to pretend acceptance of homosexuality while holding onto that base teaching are increasingly annoying.
Homosexuality is not a sin, and the Bible is wrong (oh, the heresy!) when it says otherwise. So the church needs to renounce those teachings (or, more likely to happen, should magically decide these texts only apply to people not in committed relationships). As long as the church continues to hold that homosexuality is a sin, most of the younger generation will have a problem with it.
To clarify, the Catholic Church’s position on homosexuality (as well as birth control) do not derive primarily from scriptural sources. That’s different from the arguments you will get from Protestant, especially evangelical Christians. Instead, they come from natural law philosophy, which underpins Thomist philosophy and has been updated in neothomist thought. Natural law theory was a primary target of Enlightenment philosophy, and so many of our modern values and ethics end up at odds—or at least argued from different core principles—than those espoused by the Church. That’s why the Church is often characterized as “medieval” and the epithet often sticks. And it’s why the perspective that homosexuality is not a sin appears so obvious from a liberal secular point of view, in which individual freedom and self-determination—as opposed to submission to a God-given order—are primary values.
I’m certainly not trying to convince you that you should see things the Church’s way, and it is hard to disagree that this fundamental philosophical discrepancy with modern society could jeopardize the future of the faith. The specific issue of sex aside, I happen to appreciate that the Church continues to propose a radically different moral viewpoint than the individualistic, utilitarian, secular one we are awash in day-to-day; many of the other Christian denominations have given in the towel decades ago.
The Church is not going to step back from “hate the sin, love the sinner” because as trite as that formula is, it’s basically the appropriate attitude, given the Church’s fundamental assumptions. The synod now is trying to tackle the challenge of how exactly to do that second part without losing the first. It certainly is not going far enough for the mainstream opinions of Western societies, which will almost certainly continue to diverge on the particular question of homosexuality. And no one who is not committed to the principles of the Church is obliged to entertain the Church’s teachings. But they should also stop trying to twist the Church’s internal debates on a pastoral problem into another front in the same war they’re fighting in the American (or European) political landscape. (There will be plenty of time in the years to come for a real conflict over discrimination vs. religious freedom, which is truly a political/religious battle that looms ahead of us!)
I think religion is a viral idea. And reproduction is very important in a infection. The biggest problem with homosexual people is that they don’t usually have childrens, so they can’t transfer the idea to their childrens. This is a lost for religion, because failed to transfer to more people.
Another reason religion don’t like homosexuals is because people don’t usualy like homosexuals for whatever reason. Jesuschirst was not born the 25 decenmber, … that date is important for astronomic reasons, so it was very important for farmers, because farmers depend on many astronomy matterns. So christianism adopted a already existing date. Reused something people where already accustomed. Its possible that christianism also adopted this hate for homosexuals from a existing hate. This help, making christianism more desirable and easy to get infected for people that hate homosexuals.
Either way, everything about this is what is better for the reproduction of the meme “religion”. It has nothing to do to what is best for us, human beings. This trait is a negative behavior of the religion meme parasite for his own good, and against our own good. People that can’t get rid of the religion meme parasite, should (if they can) at least get rid of bad traits like this one. Theres nothing wrong with homosexuals (I am being honest here), hating on them is uncalled for and is against productivity or the happiness of people.
Most religious institutions allow, and encourage, clergy to marry and procreate. The Catholic Church created this restriction to prevent heirs from claiming church property. They chose wealth over increased growth through clergy procreation. Though it’s possible this wealth was leveraged to gain and keep more believers than priest having kids.
True, the celibacy of priests is more of a Roman Catholic convention (albeit a deeply ingrained one) and not doctrine. There are currently a number of married Catholic priests—they were priests in other denominations and then converted to Catholicism and remained priests. However, there is still a long tradition of celibacy as a vocational calling, notably with monks and nuns, as Starlight said.
Like biological life, memes don’t need to be logical. They may have traits that are just caused by their evolution story or random events.
The human body is full of stuff that don’t make sense just now, like 5 fingers on your foot. Going back, the humans evolved from apes that where on trees, so they would use these fingers to avoid failing to the ground from the tree, but they are not useful anymore.
To refocus the thread. I was talking about why homosexuality (of all things) is considered “bad”. There are many possible reasons, I trough two are very probable. It can be a third one I can’t imagine just now.
I think for the islam, “bacon” is evil. So maybe is pretty dumb to attribute any logic to this. Maybe is more or less random.
After a rather turbulent week, the preparational synod has concluded in an unprecedented outbreak of democracy and transparency. The final report has been published as-is, along with the individual voting results for each paragraph. Three of them failed to reach the required two-thirds majority and were thus rejected. That includes the section on homosexuals couples, although it already had been heavily modified.
Wow. Extraordinary result. I haven’t looked at the report, but procedurally, it seems like quite the response to the last couple weeks’ chaos of opinions.
Every year at around this time, Pope Francis and the senior governing cardinals, bishops, and priests of the Vatican – referred to as the Curia – meet for an exchange of Christmas greetings. This year, Pope Francis brought a little something extra for the Curia: a 15-point “catalog” of spiritual diseases he’s seen among leadership there, and how a little bit of Christmas spirit might help to make things better.
It’s not a perfect analogy, but Francis’s Monday Christmas greeting was roughly the equivalent of a CEO sending his or her top executives off to Christmas vacation with a cleverly-worded list of everything they do wrong at the company. Merry Christmas?
The list of diseases included “spiritual Alzheimers,” “spiritual petrification,” a feeling of being “immortal,” and “funeral face,” a concept Francis referred to earlier this month to prepare for Christmas with “joy,” instead of dourness or anxiety. The pope also blasted gossiping among officials as a form of “satanic assassination.” He said: “Sometimes, [officials of the Curia] feel themselves ‘lords of the manor’ – superior to everyone and everything.”
The full list of 15 points. They sound to me like advice given by a CEO to his office workers about not working too hard or being too serious, remembering why you love your work, and avoiding office politics. Probably advice most people in that context could benefit from.
“If my good friend Dr Gasparri says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch. It’s normal. It’s normal. You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others.”
This seems extremely anti-Christian (meaning, Christian in the sense of things Christ taught, not things Christians do).
Christ said that even if someone were to physically assault you, that your response should be to show them love and compassion… Which seems directly at odds with the idea that if someone merely insults you, that it’s reasonable to physically assault them in response.
Now, I won’t go to far as to judge the man’s entirety based upon this one statement, but I find the statement hard to reconcile with the supposed principles of his faith.
I think you’re reading it backwards. He’s saying that insulting someone intentionally is causing them harm, and thus bad. The “expecting a punch” thing is a secondary point that if you cause someone harm, you should not be surprised if they react in a manner that causes you harm in response.
It IS an odd way of phrasing it, as it does imply that the Pope himself would not remember one of Jesus’ most famous dictums if his family were to be maligned, but he’s certainly not advocating hitting people.
I guess it could be interpreted like that, but it still seems wrong. Especially since he’s talking about his friend, who is presumably a good Christian. If you insult a good Christian, you really should NOT be expecting physical violence in return.
I have to agree, his remarks seem wildly inappropriate. He may view criticism of religion as “harm,” but “they had it coming for being rude” is not what you want to be saying in the wake of mass murder.
Honestly, the timing of it isn’t the problem, at least to me. It makes it more obviously wrong, but its inherent conflict with the teachings of Christ are more of an issue.
For Christ, violence was NEVER the appropriate response, to ANYTHING. His teachings are based entirely on forgiving your enemies, no matter how horrific their actions, and showing them compassion. And it’s a potentially effective way of handling conflict, especially in cases where you are up against a vastly superior enemy (like Christians/Jews against the Roman empire, or Indians against the British, etc.).
In that regard, I could see Francis forgiving the actions of the terrorists who committed the attacks, but his statement (which, I admit, may be out of context, as I’ve only seen it taken alone in various articles, and haven’t heard his whole statement) seems to be excusing their actions to some degree. And that just seems really weird and wrong.
Also, it’s worth noting that I’m not really Christian, and don’t attend church or anything. I studied Christianity and other religions while in college, so my perspective regarding it is more academic than personal.
I saw his punch remark as an acknowledgement that like us, he is only human, and the point of view of latin culture where mother insults don’t go down to well.
I don’t agree with his statement regarding Charlie Hebdo mind you. All religion should be able to be mocked.
