Pope Benedict condemns gay marriage in Christmas speech on family values
Homosexuals 'choose' their orientation and defy nature
Published Saturday, December 22, 2012, 8:05 AM
Updated Saturday, December 22, 2012, 8:05 AM
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Pope Benedict XVI
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Speaking to the Vatican bureaucracy the pope added that rejecting nature is at the root of the 'choice' to become gay. To embrace being gay is to reject one's true nature. 'Man and woman as created realities, as the nature of the human being, no longer exist. Man calls his own nature into question. From now on he is merely spirit and will.'
The Vatican's heightened offensive on international gay equality has won few new hearers, however. In addition to the recent historic U.S. election gains, the Constitutional Court in predominantly Catholic Spain upheld the law legalizing gay marriage last month.
Earlier this month, the conservative British government announced plans to introduce a bill next year legalizing gay marriage, though it would ban the Church of England from conducting same-sex ceremonies.
In France, President Francois Hollande has said he would enact his 'marriage for everyone' plan within a year of taking office last May. The text will go to parliament next month.
Meanwhile last week the pope met with and blessed Rebecca Kadaga, the Speaker of the Uganda Parliament who has promised to pass the draconian 'Kill The Gays' bill as a 'Christmas gift' to Uganda’s Christians.
The bill, which has prompted an international outcry, proposes the death penalty whenever HIV is knowingly or unknowingly spread from one to another consenting adult; it proposes a seven-year prison sentence for consenting adults who have gay sex, life sentences for people in same-sex marriages and jail terms for anyone who doesn't immediately report a gay or lesbian person to the authorities.
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eiriamach | Dec 29, 2012, 09:42 AM EST
McTire blames relativism, church-hatred, fashion and confusion, and liberal "double-talk" for rejection of the pope's message. It's completely short-sighted and irrational, McTire, to endorse a speech hopelessly flawed by theological and empirical bloopers, as well as a lamentable absence of Christian charity. Now that you've had your say, do you really think your little tantrum could persuade anyone to agree with Benedict XVI?
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McTire | Dec 27, 2012, 09:08 PM EST
The sex-abuse scandals are relevant here only to the extent that they reflect (a) the pervasiveness and depth of human sin and (b) the degree to which modern moral relativism has corrupted all institutions. Of course, they also serve as a useful smoke screen for those who hate the Church or seek to bend her to their own scandalous ways...Science, including medical science, provides no evidence about homosexuality, except that it exists, and that we knew already. The only difference today is that it has, for various reasons, become fashionable among relatively privileged people who are terribly confused about all sorts of other things as well. The Holy Father knows perfectly well that he speaking truths that far too many simply do not want to hear. He must do so nonetheless. Those who claim to be Catholic while engaging in hate-filled double-talk about profound moral and social issues (yes, I mean the "liberals") are wolves among the sheep.
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STEVENSTAR | Dec 27, 2012, 09:00 PM EST
@@Gearoid4 | Dec 27, 2012, 11:44 I TAKE IT YOUR AMERICAN CAUSE YOU ALWAYS HAVE AMERICANS QUOTING THE BIBLE AND BEEN 'VERY' OPIONATED AND OTT... AS AN IRISH MAN WHO LIVES OUTSIDE AMERICA IM WONDERING WAS IT IN GODS PLAN FOR PEOPLE TO GO AROUND SHOOTING INNOCENT CHILDREN IN SCHOOLS AND WAS IT IN GODS PLAN TO LIVE IN A COUNTRY WHERE PEOPLE LOVE TO CARRY GUNS ..WALK IN SHOPPING CENTERS AND SHOOT PEOPLE... I WONDER WAS THAT IN GODS PLAN FOR YOUR COUNTRY ?? IM IRISH I LIVE IN IRELAND AND I PERSOONALLY HAVE NO PROBLEMS WITH TWO PEOPLE OF THE SAME SEX LOVING EACH OTHER ....
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Gearoid4 | Dec 27, 2012, 11:44 AM EST
@Eiriamach, The sexual differences between men and women are what makes their relationship unique in terms,of sexual reproduction and close,mutual bonding which helps them to form that union which is so sacred.
There are only two genders"male and female he made them" and this is key to understanding God's plan for the human race. Gender is fixed but in the world of modern day "gender" studies at universities, it seems that we have a whole range of sexualties to chose from, which seem to be a result more of psycho-sexual confusion, sexual experimentation and narcissim. These sexual "identities" do not seem to be fixed and one cannot see any permanence in them and are rather subjective.
Indeed God as in the Creation story of Genesis did place man and woman(all made after His own image) on Earth to mate as a mutual couple, bonded together by love and open to procreation. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them(Genesis 1:27). There was and still is nothing undifferentiated about that reality and this is why people of Faith are determined to preserve marriage in it's properly understood form.
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STEVENSTAR | Dec 26, 2012, 10:11 PM EST
HE'D BE FAR BETTER OFF CONDEMING ALL THE CHILD SEX ABUSE AND SCHOOL KIDS WHO WERE SEXUALLY ABUSED IN SCHOOLS BY THE CHRISTIAN BROTHERS AND CHURCHES BY PRIESTS OVER THE YEARS .. IRISH PEOPLE ARE STILL ANGRY HOW IT WAS ALL COVERED UP FOR YEARS BY THE CHURCH AND BY THE IRISH GOVERMENT UNTIL LAST YEAR RTE MADE A TV DOCUMENTARY AND AIRED WHAT WENT ON.. SOME OF IT I COULD NOT WRITE IN A FAMILY NEWS PAPER... IRELAND IS A SMALL COUNTRY AND WE HAVE LESS ISSUES WITH GAY MARRIAGE THEN WE DO WITH THE EVILS AND SICK ACTS THAT WENT ON IN THE CHURCH FOR YEARS HERE.. SO PLEASE LETS FOCUS ON THAT... AND SORT THAT OUT AS IN MY OPINON ITS FAR MORE IMPORTANT AND RELEVANT !!!
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eiriamach | Dec 26, 2012, 07:38 PM EST
Gearoid, we should remember that the Hebrew words "ha adam," used in the Creation myth of Genesis, were not, first of all, a personal name of the first male. They form a collective noun with article, referring to humanity as a whole. God created "ha adam" as sexually undifferentiated humanity in "the image of God" as both "male and female." Jesus often called himself a "son of adam," a phrase that the RC bishops insist on mis-translating as "Son of Man." "Son of adam" refers to common, sexually undifferentiated "humanity." The creation of animals provided no suitable "partner" for humanity, so God then shaped humanity first into female, then into male individuals. The first parents, "partners" of each other, continued as both "ha adam," or humanity in "the image of God, and as the sexually differentiated individuals Adam and Eve. And common humanity remains the "essence" of all and of every sexual nature. Only at this point in the creation myth could God direct them to "be fruitful and multiply," and they were! Only then could God speak of generations ("mother and father") and set each generation apart ("leave mother and father") so that none would cling to the past but all generations would renew creation together with their peers.
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olovely | Dec 26, 2012, 06:39 PM EST
Bashing gay people is something that a lot of people enjoy. They hope it will stop you from noticing how the leaders of this church have ignored the victimized and raped generations of children worldwide.
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eiriamach | Dec 26, 2012, 01:57 PM EST
Gearoid, theologians have dedicated their professional lives to studying the unity of triune persons in God, and they all concede that this unity remains a "mystery" to human understanding. Accordingly, you attempt mystification of human sexuality when you compare sexual differences (which are relevant only in reproduction) with the "persons" of the Trinity. Yet every day, social scientists, historians, and other workers in various fields of human knowledge are able to explain more of human sexual expression and the nature of human sexuality (knowledge about nature is the form of revelation in our time). We know that sexuality encompasses a range, not only heterosexuality and homosexuality, not only male and female. And that knowledge broadens our sense of who we are as a human family and shapes our attitudes toward human difference -- tolerance, love, inclusiveness -- as decreed by the Gospel as well as by natural law.
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Gearoid4 | Dec 26, 2012, 12:25 PM EST
I know that God forms a perfect unity through the triune Godhead and the unity of male and female as in the Genesis story is analogous to that concept but does not usurp it. So God is only reflecting His own Ideals in that unique bond between a woman and a man as signified through the marriage sacrament.
You seem to be obsessed with this theme of "ancient fertility religion" in relation to the pope's words and really I cannot see how this has anything to do with the points he makes. The fact that God is "monotheistic" in nature does not overshadow the three distinct Persons which form that Godhead. It is a difficult concept to mentally grasp but it has been at the core of Christian theology for 2000 years. The early Church fathers emphasized how the unity of the triune God underpinned the essential criteria for the unity found in the marriage between a man and a woman. Just as both male and female genders are distinct in their own right so are the 3 Persons found in the one God. They all find their completeness when operating as an integral unit in co-operation and harmony.
As for your point regarding Plato's symposium and homosexuality, Plato described homosexual activity as "unnatural" and this was before Christianity came into being. Certainly homosexuality was tolerated to a certain degree within the societies of ancient Greece and Rome but somewhat frowned upon.
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eiriamach | Dec 26, 2012, 11:01 AM EST
Talk about 'bizarre': Gearoid writes, "the Pope has expanded on the understanding of man and woman in the light of God's Revelation with respect to the properly understood nature of their genders and how they interact with each-other." Really? Maybe the pope should ask God whether God's revelation needs expansion by a pope, especially a pope who rejects our understanding of nature, including human nature, brought to light by science. Those words are bizarre the way any expression of religious hubris is bizarre. As Reinhold Niebuhr wrote, "The weaknesses of the spirit of love in solving larger and more complex problems become increasingly apparent as one proceeds from ordinary relations between individuals to the life of social groups." Christmastide is hardly the time for the pope's "spirit of love" to fail in addressing problems of social change and instability.
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eiriamach | Dec 26, 2012, 10:20 AM EST
Gearoid, God does not need "the sacrament of marriage" to be ONE! Again you invoke primitive notions of ancient fertility religions to try to reconcile the pope's words with monotheism. If male and female need to marry-- "unifying" their disparate "essences" --to find unity as one human being, then the same is true of the god in whose image they are created. It's an oxymoron to say that a God who is ONE reproduces and that we are not "human" if we do not reproduce. Also, 'male' and 'female' are not analogous to the divine 'persons' of the trinity; rather, in the pope's words, 'male' and 'female' are two irreconcilable human "essences," two forever disparate ways of "being human." There's no way out of it--the pope went too far to find a theology that excludes homosexuality from creation. Also, Gearoid, your wishful thinking that "Even ancient pagan societies ... Rome or the Greek city states recognized the naturalness of marriage ... between a man and a woman and open to procreation" shows ignorance of ancient epics and philosophy. Begin with Plato's "Symposium," the dialogue in which various men of ancient Athens discuss love and speculate about the origins and purposes of homosexual as well as heterosexual love. The ancient gods of Greece and Rome had a far more open and generous understanding of human sexuality than you and your pope have.
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Gearoid4 | Dec 26, 2012, 09:56 AM EST
@Eiriamach,
I find your conclusion that the Pope's view on the unity of the Godhead is similar to that of a "bi-theist" or "poly-theist", very bizarre. The pontiff is only expressing the Classical understanding of the tree distinct but unified persons in one, which is re-iterated every Sunday during Mass or service. In fact, this characterizes the biblical understanding of the separateness of maleness/femaleness but also their unity as in the sacrament of marriage. So therefore, your attempts to bring in "male/female fertility gods" to the equation falls flat.
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Gearoid4 | Dec 26, 2012, 09:37 AM EST
@Alisaann,
I apologize for misspelling your name as no offence was mean't. I do not know how you can say I'm forcing people to obey the tenets of my religion, as I do not have either the authority or coercive means of enforcing them. I would not want to do this anyway, as I believe that ultimately everyone should act in accordance with one's conscience(but a properly informed one). There is no need to capitalize certain letters as in your last post as it is the written equivalent of shouting, and does not impress.
@Will,
No, Eiriamach, the Pope has expanded on the understanding of man and woman in the light of God's Revelation with respect to the properly understood nature of their genders and how they interact with each-other. In fact the 3 great Monotheistic religions teach those very same values.
God made man and woman to mate and to become "one flesh" in a unity that does reflect the Beauty, Truth, Goodness and indeed totality of the triune God.
And what is your point in relation to the maleness/femaleness of the human species and the unity of the "Godhead"? The traditional Christian vision of this is that it reflects God's spiritual vision of human anthropology in so far as it guides the direction of the relationship between a man and a woman on a social, sexual and psychological level.
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eiriamach | Dec 26, 2012, 09:27 AM EST
The pope's words put him in the religious category of pagan. I'm not surprised that he stumbled into such an embarrassing position. He is obviously obsessed with homosexuality and is trying to erase it from the work of the Creator. Better to accept it as a natural expression of human sexuality and overcome his fear of it. Maybe then he'd also overcome his fear of women. The Creator never intended any attribute of humanity to render any of us anything less than equal to all others and one with them.
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