Cardinal Francis George: gays are the new KKK
Posted on Sunday, January 01, 2012 at 09:04 AM
Larger Text
Print
E-mail
35 Comments
RSS 
Recent Posts
- Violent attacks on gays in New York up 70 percent in 2013
- Will New York Senator Chuck Schumer ditch gay couples for an immigration deal?
- If nobody's happy, it's working – the abortion debate and Irish politics of stalemate
- Conservative news entertainment complex claim Barack Obama leader of Al Qaeda
- Why Irish grudges are passed on - a long tradition of never forgetting
Archives
Hours after he learned the organizers of Chicago's annual gay pride parade would delay the start of 2012's citywide pride march to avoid disrupting morning Mass at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, the Cardinal still found the opportunity to take (and give) further offense.
'You don't want the gay liberation movement to morph into something like the Ku Klux Klan, demonstrating in the streets against Catholicism,' he told visibly startled Fox News host Dane Placko.
Let's just reflect on the Cardinal's total inversion of reality for a moment. Essentially he's telling a group that fosters strength through diversity (in the face of widespread social exclusion) that they're the equivalent of a longstanding racist hate group that lynched people for the color of their skin.
Perhaps there's been a competition waging in right wing Catholicism to formulate the most toxic and insupportable anti-gay rhetoric? If there is, then Cardinal George is this month's winner.
Even Fox's Dane Placko was visibly appalled by the analogy, telling him it was a 'little strong.' But the Cardinal was resolute. And he hasn't apologized. In fact, he has since claimed it is 'an obvious comparison.'
The former president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops from 2007 to 2010, the Cardinal would be familiar with other holders of over-the-top opinions like Daniel Avila, who advised the Cardinal on Marriage and the Family (the capital letters are his own, of course).
-----------------
Read more:
‘Nothing gold can stay’ - throwing the first punch and being forced to leave small-town Ireland
Read more LGBT news on IrishCentral.com
Rory McIlroy's acceptance of Queen's award will raise eyebrows with some Irish Catholics
----------------
Avila suggested recently the Devil can enter a mothers womb to make her child gay. No, he's not kidding: 'Whenever natural causes disturb otherwise typical biological development, leading to the personally unchosen beginnings of same-sex attraction, the ultimate responsibility, on a theological level, is and should be imputed to the evil one, not God,' he wrote, in an article that was published and then pulled by The Boston Pilot, the nations oldest Catholic newspaper.
To be clear, the route of this years Chicago pride parade was selected to address safety concerns, including accessibility for emergency vehicles, for a march that attracts up to 800,000 spectators. The route was certainly not selected to antagonize the Cardinal, and it will not start until two hours after mass has been said in the Catholic Church on Belmont Avenue in the city.
Cardinal George already knew this. Apparently he wasn't concerned with mending fences with Chicago's gay community. The church recently opposed a new law allowing civil unions for gay couples in Illinois, and they abandoned state foster care contracts because they refused to license gay couples as foster parents.
Now it's quite possible for a gay pride parade to march past a church without throttling anyone's religious beliefs. The fact is the parade has already been doing so for decades. Amping up the anti-gay rhetoric to operatic levels doesn't draw attention to the rightness of Cardinal George's bizarre claims - it rather highlights how far he has to go these days to take offense or dismiss their calls for equality.
It was unfortunate talk for the Christmas season, which we usually associate with good will to all. Haven't we all had enough of the Church's pretzel theology that says you must love gay people whilst condemning them, relentlessly, for who God made them to be?
35 comments
Next
Page 1 of 3 pages
Collette2 | Jan 06, 2012, 06:06 PM EST
I wonder what his Mormon friends who play both sides of the fence to be politically correct, have to say about this recent outburst.
Report abuse
eiriamach | Jan 06, 2012, 09:21 AM EST
Correction to my 7:52 posting: According to this morning's NY Times report, Timothy Dolan is now Timothy Cardinal Dolan of the NY Archdiocese. No surprise again: I predicted that he would soon qualify for his Cardinal's scarlet when he was waging war against New York State's marriage equality legislation. As retiring Senator Barney Frank commented recently, one of the few pleasures of life that improve as one ages is the pleasure of saying "I told you so." But not without adding a wake-up call to it.
Report abuse
eiriamach | Jan 06, 2012, 07:52 AM EST
According to Pew Forum research, October 2010, "among white Catholics 49% now favor same-sex marriage while 41% are opposed." And 66% of white Catholics believe that homosexuality should be accepted. Archbishop Dolan and Cardinal Francis George have done much, I'm sure, to increase the number of Catholics who would like their church to give equal treatment to gays. The cardinals and bishops are not listening to the PIPs-- strange--because listening and responding to Catholics in the pews is the primary responsibility of bishops.
Report abuse
eiriamach | Jan 06, 2012, 07:33 AM EST
San Francisco! oh yeah, the more-Catholic-than-the- Pope Bill Donohue tried to sue San Francisco's board of supervisors for alleged anti-Catholic bias. The Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal when the Circuit Court dismissed his case. According to the Huffington Post 7/3/11 story, the San Fran supervisors' resolution called it "an insult to all San Franciscans when a foreign country, like the Vatican, meddles with and attempts to negatively influence this great city's existing and established customs and traditions." Does this comment sound familiar? Isn't it similar to the charge that Enda Kenny made in the wake of the Cloyne Report? The Huff Post continues, "The [supervisors'] resolution also strongly denounced Cardinal William Levada's statement that allowing gay couples to adopt would mean doing violence to these children.'" Whose language was inflammatory, the supervisors" or the Cardinal's? But a cardinal's using inflammatory language should come as no surprise: Cardinal George of Chicago is carrying on an established Catholic tradition of demonizing gays. "Could it be the sin thing?" Yes, it could be the sins of the Church that San Fran gays are reacting to!
Report abuse
jnewnam | Jan 06, 2012, 02:55 AM EST
There would appear to be quite an anti Catholic bias by gays especially in San Francisco. Church invasions, disruptions of Mass - google it. Could it be about the sin thing? I think there are many Catholics that oppose same sex marriage but I think they also support equal civil rights. No one can demand a priest commit an act against conscience. But you are perfectly in the right to ask for a civil government union/marriage. Quite frankly, I think gay marriage, abortion and euthanasia will create a schism in the church and I think it is happening right now.
Report abuse
seanomelbourne | Jan 05, 2012, 06:15 PM EST
Christ(I presume you mean Jesus) never founded any church he was born a Jew and died a Jew.
Report abuse
eiriamach | Jan 05, 2012, 10:29 AM EST
Christ founded his church not as an instrument of tyranny but as an organization for community-building. The Cardinals and bishops are increasingly out of sync with Catholics in the pews, who have no quarrel with same-sex unions, equal rights for LGBTs, or sharing church pews with LGBTs. They already share their workplaces, civic groups, and social lives with a great diversity of other Americans. American political tradition requires equal treatment, equal rights, for everyone we consider equal-- and who is not equal? Up against this thinking, the cardinals and bishops look like bigots, and this appearance is bound to influence Catholics to dis-associate themselves from anti-gay Church politics and ultimately from a Church focused on sexual politics rather than on building local and global communities of faithful. The people in the pews are responsible for holding church officials to account for their political power plays. I'd like to know: if they cannot exert that influence, why do they stay in the pews?
Report abuse
hollabackgurl | Jan 04, 2012, 08:07 PM EST
I think in fairness Rebelforce that you're too bright to buy your own b.s. Until gays start wearing pink sheets and lynching straight people your insupportable contention won't wash. The reality is that its straight men who fill the ranks of the KKK and its straight men who gaybash. Besides, you didn't read the article: the gay groups are starting the parade two hours after the last mass as a mark of respect that was not returned to them.
Report abuse
seanomelbourne | Jan 04, 2012, 05:43 PM EST
Tennessee lawmakers are considering changes to their anti-bullying legislation to allow school children to protest their anti-gay sentiments on religious grounds.Thus cementing anti gay bullying as legitimate.I wonder would his eminence agree with this.This could only happen in the backward backwoodsmens collective narrow mindness of a an extreme evangelical state.
Report abuse
Rebelforce | Jan 04, 2012, 12:25 PM EST
I think in fairness to Cardinal George, he was only expressing the concern that some gay people have shown themselves to be as virulently anti-Catholic as a toothless, hillbilly, KKKer from the backwoods of Georgia. He might have a point. You don't fight ignorance and bigotry by being ignorant and bigoted yourself.
Report abuse
jamieLM | Jan 04, 2012, 09:05 AM EST
The post on Jan. 3 10:48 AM is not mine.
Report abuse
Caoimhin1937 | Jan 04, 2012, 07:23 AM EST
It should be nobody's business how couples live together and have any kind of sexual relationship that they want. For my part, marriage should be done away with. The only people who make money on marriage breakups are corrupt lawyers, who make millions of dollars on divorces, then use the money to send their children to high priced catholic schools controlled by the likes of the Cardinal.
Report abuse
warlocks | Jan 04, 2012, 01:33 AM EST
WE live in a different world today. where Gay Men &Gay Women want to marry i say as free Thinking people why not let them . maybe their marriage will last longer then the so call Natural Man & Women Marriages. as Far as leting them Marry in the Catholic Church, that would be up to the Vatican it really doesn't matter to me. as the Bible states God Created all living Beings on Earth. God created the Gay human Beings also. the DNA IS The same. But i think someware in the Development stage before birth something Happened in the Gentics Stage .People forget normal Males have Both the x y Factor --Male & Female Genes where as the Femal only the x Factor. is God Perfect ??? I Doubt it! God Makes mistakes in nature. Lets not be so narrow minded.as Christians we should Practice what Jesus Said and Did. ----He who has not sinned let them cast the first stone .
Report abuse
stephen1553 | Jan 04, 2012, 12:04 AM EST
Thank you Seamus Martin - well spoken. Sure I'd like to see civil marriage for gays now, but maybe we need an intermediate step while our society gets over the anxieties such a change creates.
Report abuse
Next
Page 1 of 3 pages
Report abuse