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demiurgentOne of the things I hear from Christian friends -- meant entirely seriously, and I do not deride them for this -- is "hey, [x] doesn't speak for me. That kind of prejudiced garbage has nothing to do with the teachings of Christ." This is particularly something I hear from folks about the organized and intentional persecution of homosexuals.
(And yes, when the Mormon church, as an example, rallies to get something like Prop 8 passed, overwhelmingly from a different state, that there's organized persecution, and one day it will be written about in the same sympathetic tones we write about Jim Crow laws and whipping slaves. But this is not about Mormans at the moment.)
I'm generally willing to accept that. I really am. I know Fred Phelps doesn't speak for anyone but his own deranged cult made up of family members. I know that fewer and fewer evangelical Christians are willing to accept what their 'leaders' declaim in their name.
Yeah, that won't fly this time. Not for Roman Catholics. Because the Pope does speak for them. The Pope by definition speaks for them. So when the Pope uses his End of the Year Christmas Message, celebrating the birth of savior of Mankind (in their view), a time that we have been told unceasingly is a time of love, of peace, of joy, of brotherhood, of hope and of compassion, to directly attack homosexuals and transsexuals, comparing their existence to ecological disaster? He's speaking for the Catholics.
If you're a Catholic? He's speaking for you. He's speaking for you. And repudiation of that message of hate will take more than just disavowing him. You can't disavow the Pope and still take Communion next week. It doesn't work like that.
If you're a believer, and if you're a Catholic, then -- and I mean this sincerely, without irony -- God help you. Good luck with all this, because you're going to need it.
(And yes, when the Mormon church, as an example, rallies to get something like Prop 8 passed, overwhelmingly from a different state, that there's organized persecution, and one day it will be written about in the same sympathetic tones we write about Jim Crow laws and whipping slaves. But this is not about Mormans at the moment.)
I'm generally willing to accept that. I really am. I know Fred Phelps doesn't speak for anyone but his own deranged cult made up of family members. I know that fewer and fewer evangelical Christians are willing to accept what their 'leaders' declaim in their name.
Yeah, that won't fly this time. Not for Roman Catholics. Because the Pope does speak for them. The Pope by definition speaks for them. So when the Pope uses his End of the Year Christmas Message, celebrating the birth of savior of Mankind (in their view), a time that we have been told unceasingly is a time of love, of peace, of joy, of brotherhood, of hope and of compassion, to directly attack homosexuals and transsexuals, comparing their existence to ecological disaster? He's speaking for the Catholics.
If you're a Catholic? He's speaking for you. He's speaking for you. And repudiation of that message of hate will take more than just disavowing him. You can't disavow the Pope and still take Communion next week. It doesn't work like that.
If you're a believer, and if you're a Catholic, then -- and I mean this sincerely, without irony -- God help you. Good luck with all this, because you're going to need it.
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 02:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 02:09 am (UTC)This right here is him speaking as the Head of Christ's church on earth, and therefore all the followers of said church.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 02:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 02:19 am (UTC)Nowhere in the Catechism that I am aware of does it declare that one must agree completely with everything that the Pope says. Now, action? Action is another matter. If you're a Catholic engaging in extra-marital sex or using birth control, you've got a contradiction to resolve.
But disagreeing with the Pope? Not forbidden.
I mean, the Pope is given a wide authority on theological matters. He gets taken very seriously. And there are official teachings of the Church, and they matter. But outside of papal infallability, disagreement with the Pope is allowed.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 02:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 02:27 am (UTC)It's not OK. It's a fucking appalling statement. I'm mortified, and I'm at best a lapsed Catholic.
But the Catholic Church is not a "love it or leave it" organization.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 02:35 am (UTC)Stand by your convictions or GTFO.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 02:49 am (UTC)And on top of that, I find astonishing beauty and power in the core of their doctrine - a beauty and power that is, frankly, not there for me in other Chrtisian denominations. They have a respect for the mystical, a sense of the sublime, and a focus on wonder that moves me. Combined with the basic Christian teaching of forgiveness, and the hard belief in the power of men, through free will and reason, to better themselves, I find much to respect.
And on the other hand, they are wrong on issues. Birth control. Homosexuality. Women as priests. Abortion. They're wrong.
The courage of my convictions is that I'm willing to fight to make them better. I'm willing to stand up for an organization that does good while still holding a firm line on the stuff they do that sucks.
And if you think that's being a pussy and that the moral obligation is to leave any organization that one does not agree with fully, well then, frankly, I'm going to call you a fucking hypocrite unless you live on a desert island micronation somewhere.
Fuck it. If those are my options, I'll take the Church any day. If my options are "get the fuck out if you disagree" or "be a Catholic," I'll take be a Catholic. And I'll say, as a Catholic, that the Pope is dead fucking wrong on this, that for all his understanding and knowledge of philosophy and theology, and his insistence on absolutes is a childish naievete that does a disservice to his faith.
If your position is the alternative, I'll take the church. The disagreements I have with it are far less than those that I have with the cowardly ease of absolute denunciation.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 03:06 am (UTC)And this, right here, is the crux of the equation.
Because it's not A La Carte. You can't put charitable works and the sanctity of the sacristy on your plate and leave off homophobia and birth control. You get the whole package with your membership. If you think their views and policies are wrong, then as you say you have to actively fight them.
Because these are the positions of your church, and when you declare your membership in that church to an outsider, that outsider is going to ascribe those positions to you. And when Benedict makes this kind of horrible statement, it reflects on you.
Put bluntly, the Catholic Church, in the person of the Pope -- the Leader who was given the Keys to Heaven as Christ gave them to Peter in founding said Church, by Catholic doctrine -- has stated that Birth Control is a sin and homosexuality is an abomination. If you find those positions reprehensible, you have to do so actively and loudly, or else you're going to be counted on that side of the equation.
Because I promise you -- I promise you -- that when lawmakers are considering appropriate legislation on these issues, representatives of your Church are saying "the one hundred and seventy-three million American Catholics agree with us on this." And those lawmakers believe them.
Do I seem angry? It's because I am. And like I said in the title, I'm not inclined to be 'fair' right now. Not when the avowed leader of one point one billion Catholics is making horrible statements like this one. If Catholics don't pitch a fit about it, then it does a huge amount of damage to people who've already suffered plenty.
Honestly, whether or not you forswear the Catholic church, why you wouldn't want to denounce that statement, completely and unequivocally, as bigoted, hateful, and innately unChristian is beyond me. Christ knows (no pun intended) I wouldn't want anyone thinking otherwise.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 03:54 am (UTC)The avowed leader of the United States of America has made his own set of horrifying bigoted frequently-trivially-falsifiable statements. The avowed leader of Canada has as well. I don't remember offhand which of those countries you're a citizen of, but I believe it's at least one of them.
Are you planning on leaving this continent?
From my own perspective - The USA has made a bunch of truly horrific ghastly decisions lately, that I disagree with and loathe with every fiber of my political being. However, I still fundamentally agree with the tenets that the USA was founded on, and while I'll quickly add qualifiers, I'd still describe myself as "an American". I think the concept was good, as corrupted as it's becoming now. And while I cringed every time Bush opened his mouth, and said "goddammit I think he's evil, I don't know how he ended up as President", I still considered myself American - I just didn't consider him American.
Perhaps other people feel the same way about Catholic Christianity with regards to the Pope.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 05:26 am (UTC)George W. Bush speaks for this nation for another 28 days. This administration has advocated torture and spying and a war that clearly had no clear grounds in international law. We're not all renouncing our citizenship, tempting though it might be at times.
Now, I did leave the Catholic Church for myriad reasons of disagreement. But I think you've expressed it perfectly. When I say "I'm Christian and believe in these ideals, and I don't see that in these views" it is identical to the sentiment that "I am American and believe in American ideals and I don't see them in these policies."
I get that non-religious people do not understand the level of identity that Catholics feel for the church, but it took me years to really think of myself as not Catholic. And I didn't have a serious Catholic upbringing. Huge influence, but my parents were agnostic.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 06:03 am (UTC)Catholics can endure doctrine they disagree with, or they can loudly debate it, or they can leave the Catholic church. However, they can't actually reform the church unless their Ecclesiastical Authority chooses to do so. They can't vote the Pope out of office, any more than they had any say in putting him into office. But as he is the Pope, he speaks for them.
The advantage of Protestantism is the capacity to move parishes or even denominations when doctrine becomes offensive or immoral. And when a Protestant leader -- even at the head of a given convention -- pushes beyond what the flock will endure, there are inevitably means to remove them and start over. The Catholics have no such luxury.
It is a damnable position to be in, but it's one no one but they can resolve.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 05:49 am (UTC)And yes, when the American leader makes an outrageous statement, I believe we have a responsibility and a duty to call it the bullshit it is, make it clear he does not speak for all Americans, and pressure to make change.
Catholics who think such statements as Pope Benedict's are reprehensible have a responsibility to stand up and firmly, sharply make that clear -- and all the moreso because they have no power to remove the Pope from his position. All they can do is rail against the positions he and hte Church take when they veer into hatefulness and spite, and indeed they must do so. If they do not, then they are going to be tarred with their pontiff's opinions as surely as I would be tarred with those of President Bush.
I will not soften a thing about this. We are discussing hatefulness and prejudice, persecution and simple meanness. We are discussing trivializing our fellow man, taking away their right to pursue happiness or indeed just live their own lives away from us. We are discussing bigotry, pure and simple. And it is being done by the leader of the Catholic Church in the name of the Catholic Church -- a leader who can't be removed short of death, and whose doctrines are not subject to revision or review.
What if George Bush declared Martial Law tomorrow, suspended Congress (setting aside blatant illegality for the moment), and made Signing Statements and Executive Orders the only means of disseminating law in the land? What if he could direct the course of education without a legal challenge or without any check on him. What is your responsibility then? To quietly seethe, or to scream from the hilltops?
As I said to Snowspinner -- you can't take Catholicism a la carte. If the Pope or other Ecclesiastical Authority makes statements you find reprehensible, you have three choices: 1) you can say nothing save maybe to close friends, granting tacit approval despite your disagreement; 2) you can speak out, debate, cause a ruckus, and try to do something about the things you find reprehensible while preserving the things you love; 3) you can decide that the offensive doctrinal points can't be reconciled with your worldview and you can seek a spiritual or theological system and organization more in keeping with your personal views.
You mention that you fundamentally agree with the tenets that the USA was founded on. One of those tenets -- the core reason any of us are here -- comes from people who decided they couldn't abide the untenable positions their society held any longer. And when that society imposed the Intolerable Acts on their colonies, denying the Colonists the right to even protest or be represented in their legislature, we said "fuck that" and went to war.
Right now, we have the power as a people to force governmental change. And we have the responsibility to use that power when our government goes corrupt, venal or actively evil. The only power a Catholic has to force Catholicism to change is vigorous debate. Absent that, or absent a receptive audience, their only power to stand up for what is right, in the end, is to leave.
My original post's core point is this: Catholics don't have the innate defense others have had. They can't claim that Pope Benedict "doesn't speak for them." He does speak for them. If they don't like what he's saying, then they're the ones who have to do something about it. Otherwise, they bear the burden of tacit approval.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 02:47 am (UTC)However, the Pope, absent speaking ex cathedra, is still the ruling agent of the Church. The Pope sets the formal policy and the formal belief of the Church. The Pope, to go back to the phrasing I used above, speaks for the Church. That is, in fact, his job.
When we speak of someone like Rick Warren or Pat Robertson, we speak of them as "religious leaders," and in one sense that's true. They're influential in their churches. They are given great credence and great authority. But they do not speak for their churches. There are rather involved bodies of authority in the Protestant churches. At most, a given Pastor can be said to speak for his Congregation, with his Bishop standing as his supervisor. And plenty of times in the last few hundred years Protestants who disagree with their Pastors on fundamental theological questions stand up and walk out, and attend a different church in the same or a related denomination.
But for Catholics, the Pope is the end of that chain. The College of Cardinals can come up with anything they like -- if the Pope disagrees with them, the Pope's word goes.
A Catholic can disagree with Pope Benedict XVI. But what he can't do is claim the Pope doesn't speak for Catholicism -- there can be rigorous debate about his decision or opinions, but those opinions are the ones that go out on the official Catholic stationary, and no one can gainsay them. One must actively disagree with the Pope. One must go on the record. One must state, directly or indirectly, that the Pope is wrong, if one wants to step out from the Pope's umbrella. And sooner or later, the more someone does that the more they end up standing away from the Catholic Church in toto.
If a Southern Baptist says Pat Robertson doesn't speak for them, that's all there is to it. Pat Robertson doesn't even have a current congregation -- and his views are significantly more in the Charismatic camp than the Southern Baptist Convention holds to. But when the Reverend Sun Myung Moon speaks for the Unification Church, there is no body or convention jurying his statements. His statements are what the Church holds, and a Moonie who wants to dissent must do so openly, and accept the consequences.
A Catholic who doesn't believe that Homosexuality is innate self-destruction that is condemning the human race on a par with the ecological destruction accompanying the loss of the Rainforests will still be held to their Pontiff's beliefs. They have to make it clear they think the Pope is wrong. And in doing so, they have to risk the consequences.
This 'message' is reprehensible and hateful -- the direct codification of a policy that comes down to 'we feel these people are subhuman and their mere existence is an affront to God, so we must see them destroyed.' And it's being done in the name of the Catholic Church, as a whole, and in the name of the Catholics who make it up. Dissent can only come when it is active.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 02:54 am (UTC)In fact, I would say that there is a bravery I wish I had in me to take communion and declare one's self part of the body of the church while dissenting. My position - of estrangement from the church - is more cowardly than those who demand change from within.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 03:06 am (UTC)*nods enthusiastically* I think you're right on that one. :D
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 03:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 03:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 09:01 am (UTC)I'm not sure you're right about Rick Warren. He's not empowered to speak for the Southern Baptist Convention, but as pastor and director of Saddleback Church? I do believe he can actually speak for that. Once you're running a megachurch, the terms change quite a bit.
Robertson does not have a church to speak for. (CBN is a complicated borderline case, though.)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 02:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 02:10 am (UTC)Oh, and Happy Holidays to you and Weds. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 03:35 am (UTC)(I'm also using stuff from http://www.wouldjesusdiscriminate.com/scripture/ to allow him to politely and quietly use Scripture to promote his agenda. His assignment is to minister to the super-powered people of Earth, and he follows as best he can, but sometimes His Excellency The Holy Father makes it so difficult...)
Thank you for helping pull this together in my head for this character. I expect it will be interesting the next time he goes to the Vatican...
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 04:15 am (UTC)This is hardly news to anybody who has followed Catholic dogma in the last 2000 years or so. And in fact the pope is speaking for me when he says it. I too think that there are men and women, that they're different but with equal dignity, and that vague talk about "30 possible genders" and other such nonsense is obscuring the real state of things. This position is based on some philosophical concepts which have a long and stories history and I do not it this makes me a bigot.
I'm not expecting you to agree with the pope's view. You're coming from a very different philosophical viewpoint, and while I think the philosophical basis for that viewpoint is mistaken it's still yours. I would however appreciate it if you didn't link to a story saying one thing with link-text saying something completely different. It's unfair, it's inaccurate, it closes down debate, and it diminishes all of us.
Nowhere do you back up your claim of direct attack or comparison of gays/transgenders to ecological disaster. I argue that you don't do this because the facts don't allow you to. Don't be blinded by your anger, read the text. Authorial intent might be dead, but you still have to stick by the literal reading of the text, and I don't think you've done so in this case.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 04:17 am (UTC)That should say "neither of which I can speak". I apologize for the error.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 04:47 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 05:17 am (UTC)In any event, my reply was more of a statement saying that the post was a bit unfair in characterising the pope's words than an attempt to prove or disprove binary sex in humans. I'm not saying you have to believe there are only two genders that come from only two sexes. I'm saying that saying that this is the case is hardly the same as "directly attacking" any group of people.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 06:03 pm (UTC)I'm not sure how they fail to disprove the rule. If all of Creation is in God's Image and by God's Will, then the intersexed and chromosome sexual division deviations must demonstrate that the binary state of man/woman is not, in fact, God's Image or God's Will. We're not discussing statistical norms here, we're discussing God the Almighty. For the world to be simple and black and white in this regard, there must be no exceptions. If there are exceptions, then things are more complicated than otherwise claimed.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 07:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 10:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-25 03:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-26 12:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 05:53 am (UTC)You see, I have seen the actual wording of the speech.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 04:06 pm (UTC)I'm just saying that what you are doing right now would be the same as if somebody linked to your post here with the link text "Eric Burns attacks Catholic Church, calls for pogroms in American cities" and pretends that this inaccuracy is excused by putting down the fact they're angry and don't need to be fair in the title.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 05:53 pm (UTC)The Church has a responsibility to both protect the World and keep humanity from destroying himself.
There is a specific plan and design. Men are men. Women are women. Men should follow the natural order and act according to male nature, women according to female nature. Failure to do so invites self-destruction and the destruction of God's Creation.
In the modern world, there are those who discuss gender identity and gender politics, wanting to liberate themselves from what God has intended and instead claim the freedom to express their gender identity and gender preference alike by their own terms. This goes against God and his Works.
Even as we acknowledge the dangers of environmental destruction, we must also acknowledge the dangers of spiritual environmental destruction. We must acknowledge that the world and creation are endangered by the immoral choices that those who would confuse gender and God's intent are making in the name of a freedom they do not actually possess.
God gave us marriage. There is no marriage without God. And God defined it as being between a man and a woman. Christ affirmed that. And that's all there is to say.
We are created in the image of God, with an intent on God's part enbodied in that creation. To change that image or pervert that intent is to desecrate God's work and a failure to affirm what God has done.
(Analysis to follow. I'm working against LJ's charater limit.)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 05:53 pm (UTC)It would be very convenient if hate and bigotry were always announced as hate and bigotry. It would be nice if those who spread anger and persecution would be good enough to be ugly when they do it.
But they don't.
The attack you didn't see is clearly there. The conflation of the destruction of the environment and the destruction sown by homosexuality and gender reassignment or identity shift is clearly there. The stark warning that these things deny God and God's creation and that way lies destruction of the self and ultimately the world are clearly there. The Pope is explicating a doctrine that comes down to "homosexuality and gender reassignment is immoral, God creates all marriage, and God doesn't create it for single sex couples."
And you're saying you don't see the hatefulness, the meanness and the attack? And you're saying that the Pope and I have a 'disagreement on the gay marriage?'
I submit that a gay man who wants to marry the man he loves with all his heart would see the hatefulness. I submit that the lesbian widow who watched her wife die and now can't get custody of their child because the courts won't recognize parental rights would see the meanness. I submit that the woman who has wrestled her entire life with gender identity, with feeling alien in her own skin, and who finally took the step to make her male exterior resemble what she feels inside would see the attack.
I didn't call for a pogrom in American cities. The Pope did meanly and hatefully attack homosexuals and transsexuals. That's the difference. And you'll forgive me, I hope, but I no longer see 'gay marriage' as a controversial issue. I see it for what it is -- the systemic and organized dehumanization of the different. The denial -- or in the case of Prop 8 the revocation of the basic rights of others in matters that could not matter less to the people doing the revoking. They don't like homosexuality. It seems ooky to them. And rather than growing up and getting over it and realizing that what two people do in their own house doesn't matter a tinker's damn to them, they organize and they legislate and they set agendas and policies and they claim that it's God's will.
And when they do it in the name of their religion, there are plenty of people in their religion who say 'look, these small minded bigots are ugly and horrible, but they don't represent me.'
The Pope, when he equates homosexuality with self-destruction, gender issues with the perversion of God's will, and the complete incapacity for homosexuals to marry, does represent the Catholic Church.
Beyond that, I don't know what we can say on this subject. If you can honestly read those passages and think they're just a reasonable and sober assessment of doctrinal points without devastating impact on the lives and very identity of the people he's talking about, then nothing I write will convince you otherwise.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 07:20 pm (UTC)As an aside, your position reminds me more of those people that denounced anyone who refused to support the invasion of Iraq as unpatriotic. You're denouncing the opposition ad hominem while not feeling the need to explain the grounds of your position since it is obvious and only bigots would disagree.
All that's left to say, and I mean this sincerely, without irony -- God help us both.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 09:36 pm (UTC)The core difference between our positions, it seems to me, is that you see rights as deriving and devolving from the divine, whereas I see them as innate. I think, more than anything else, that what two people who aren't me do with each other, when it makes them happy and they both consent, is none of my fucking business. And I think that if I am given certain rights and privileges when I enter into a romantic, intimate and personal partnership with the person I love, then those folks deserve the same rights and privileges that I get, even if my love is a woman and they're both men.
These are peoples' lives we're talking about. This is their very pursuit of happiness. And it doesn't take anything away from you to let them pursue it.
I said it above, and I'll say it here. We are discussing an innately mean concept. It is, to put a direct word to it, cruel. And yeah, I'm saying it's not possible to take the opposite view from mine on this issue without being cruel to people who just want to live their own lives, their own way, without taking a thing away from you.
If the God you venerate requires this, then that God is cruel. If your religious leader puts forth that said God requires this, than that leader is, in fact, cruel. We're not talking about a theory, here. We're talking about millions upon millions of your fellow man.
And that's the thing. My position makes many, many people uncomfortable, because Homosexuality scares them. But my position doesn't invalidate their relationships or take away their rights or make their lives worse in any way. Your position ghettoizes people and leads to pain and despair.
It's hard to agree to disagree in situations like that.
I hope only the best for you. I really do, and I mean it as sincerely as you meant your closing invocation for both of us. But let me leave you with this. Luke 6:30-31 (KJV) reads "Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again. And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise." Consider what is being asked of all of us, and consider what we as a society have given and taken away as a result. And consider how you would want others to treat you and your rights in this situation.
Peace.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-27 03:06 am (UTC)I think we both see rights coming from the nature of humanity, though I see them as God-given and you don't. The disagreement, I think, is actually a more deep-seated a philosophical one.
I think you are looking at it from the starting point of the human person. I'm getting this from your phrasing, it's very personal. Things are "cruel" and you place the main motivation of people down to what makes people comfortable or happy.
The Church's understanding of the world, on the other hand, is mitigated realism. This starts from outside the person, in the reality of things. Everything has a purpose, it strives fulfil its nature. A tree is fulfilled by growing and maturing, a person is fulfilled by growing in virtue. These, for the Church, are not personal opinions, they're real truths.
The Church isn't against homosexual marriage because she is scared of homosexuals, rather she's against it for the same reason that she's against premarital sex. She holds that human sexuality is a good given for a particular purpose (growth of mutual love in spouses and the procreation of children). The Church isn't trying to legally ban the use of that gift in other ways, but she is obliged to remind the faithful that certain actions go against a person's calling in life. Furthermore she is called to speak truth on issues and hope to convince the majority.
The pope does not speak on things based on his personal feelings, he speaks based on a scholarly understanding of the truth developed by the Church over centuries under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. He can no more come out in favor of gay marriage than a chemist can come out and declare that carbon monoxide should stop killing people because that would be nicer.
That's where the analogy of the rain forest actually works. Some people might think it's cruel to prevent a poor farmer from burning some forest to have land to feed his family. But it's not being done because somebody doesn't like farmers, it's done because we hold the forest as worth protecting. Same for the Church, she doesn't fear homosexuals, she just holds a definition of marriage as genuinely true, and therefore worth protecting.
I don't expect you to agree with any of this. I think you have reached your position in good faith and are committed to it since you believe it right. Nor do I expect you to not get angry when you think others are doing wrong, that's a human reaction. I am merely trying to suggest that the whole thing isn't a clear division between common decency and evil gay-bashers. There are good intentioned people on both sides, following to the conclusions based on different premises.
Peace to you as well.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 04:29 pm (UTC)If you're a Catholic? He's speaking for you. He's speaking for you. And repudiation of that message of hate will take more than just disavowing him. You can't disavow the Pope and still take Communion next week. It doesn't work like that.
I take communion every time I go, and I've never heard a word of what a Pope has said. I didn't even know you're "supposed" to listen to them. So it works like that for me.
Personally, I think you're supposed to 'judge' people based on their individual actions and not what organization they say they are in. You can tell me that I have to choose to be a Catholic that blindly follows the pope or I'm not Catholic at all. And I'll just look at you funny.
So, I will say, I'm a Roman Catholic and the Pope doesn't not speak for me. Never paid attention to the guy before, not really gonna start to now. Guess I'm just a different kind of Roman Catholic.
I'm still going to say I go to Catholic church, and I advocate for birth control, gay rights, and for doing whatever the fuck makes you happy as long as you aren't hurting someone else. I don't see or feel a conflict in this at all.
If you're a believer, and if you're a Catholic, then -- and I mean this sincerely, without irony -- God help you. Good luck with all this, because you're going to need it.
Don't understand what you mean by this at all. Good luck with what?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 04:46 pm (UTC)(Never dressed up as a pirate though. Guess I never follow religious rules.)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 06:11 pm (UTC)I mean, one of the key differences between your church and almost all Protestant Denominations is the presence of Christ's Representative on Earth, granted the Keys to Heaven as Christ granted them to Peter, the rock on which He built His Church. Disagreement with the Pope and his Priests, in the end, has led to essentially every schism the Catholic Church has had -- both the Protestant sects (whose name reflects their innate protest against Papal and Catholic authority) and the direct schismed churches like the Church of England (who replaced the Pope with the British Monarch) or the Greek Orthodox church (who replaced the Pope with their Patriarch.)
Regardless, I'm going to reiterate my core point. If you're a Catholic, then this is being put forth by the leader of the Church in your name. If the leader of your Church doesn't speak for you... then in what way are you a follower of that Church?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 06:35 pm (UTC)I could give a crap about what the 'leader' says. He's just another person who has faults like everyone else.
I don't follow your strict definition of Catholicism, and I don't understand why someone has to in order to identify with the religion. Honestly, if the Pope came up to me today and excommunicated me personally, I'd still go around and say I'm Catholic and go to church whenever I felt like it.
Religion isn't about rules to me, its about how you as an individual choose to connect to a higher power (if you believe that sorta thing.)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-24 06:54 pm (UTC)