Morella Decries Catholic Bishops’ “Tortured Explanations” in Homosexuality Guidelines

Gary Morella is a Catholic member of the research faculty of Penn State University, and a father and grandfather who is concerned whether there will be a recognizable faith left to his children and grandchildren. He is also a friend (although we have never met in person) and a bold critic of inane political correctness, especially at his own university. While as a non-Catholic I do not concur with every theological assertion herein, I have the utmost respect for Morella as one who applies faith, reason and courage in debunking the sophistries of the day. — Peter LaBarbera, AFT

By Gary Morella

Thoughts on: Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination: Guidelines for Pastoral Care

The main problem with this document is the mindset since Vatican II that no longer condemns a sin that cries out to Heaven for vengeance but rather condemns those who remind the world of that fact, the latter being called charity by those in the modern Church who are unrecognizable as Catholic. This document is written in “gayspeak” in the same manner that the horrendous Always Our Children was. The biggest concern of the USCCB is homophobia, not helping those inclined to homosexual acts to leave, as opposed to live, lifestyles that are an abomination before God, or resist temptations to same.

The comparisons between the traditional Church teaching on sins against nature vs. the post-conciliar attitude is striking when one uses Sacred Scripture and Tradition in the form of statements from the Popes, Councils, Saints, and Apologists combined with the tradition of civil legislation to show the moral chasm that has resulted when the language of “pseudo charity” replaces the language of “tough love” for salvation’s sake. The result being that the necessary feelings of revulsion toward those proudly trumpeting their sodomite tendencies are no longer there opening the door for a misplaced compassion that such individuals do not deserve. There is a huge difference between an ontological dignity to which all are entitled by virtue of being made in the image and likeness of God, and a moral dignity as a function of being endowed with an intellect and will whereby good can be accepted and evil rejected. Moral dignity does not exist for those having no problem with inclinations to homosexual acts, a distinction that the post-conciliar Church never makes using language that would have us erroneously believe that there exists something called the homosexual person, a concept which turns Christian anthropology on its head making God, Who is Perfect Good, out to be a liar in creating man with a built-in one way ticket to hell in complete ignorance of the effect of the concupiscence due to Original Sin.

Words have consequences with a litany of saints to include St. John Chrysostom telling us that “A murderer only separates the soul from the body, whereas these (sodomites) destroy the soul inside the body” vs. the post-conciliar attitude of Cardinal Basil Hume who was quoted as saying “The particular orientation or inclination of the homosexual person is not a moral failing …. Being a homosexual person is, then, neither morally good nor morally bad; it is homosexual genital acts that are morally wrong.”

By reducing moral culpability only to acts, Cardinal Hume (and the entirety of the post-conciliar Church) appeared to legitimize sinful thoughts and words. However, such concessions incur culpability with regard to the vice of homosexuality like any other vice, as Catholic doctrine has ALWAYS taught.” The rest is history as Hume opened the door for the condemnation of homosexuality in the post-conciliar Church to be needlessly qualified, if at all, something that Saints Peter, Jude, Pius V, Basil of Cesarea, Augustine, Aquinas, John Chrysostom, Gregory the Great, Peter Damian, Albert the Great, Bonaventure, Catherine of Sienna, Bernardine of Sienna, Peter Canisius, and the councils of Ancyra, Toledo, Nablus, and Third Lateran did not suffer.

Posted in Catholic, D - GLBTQ Pressure Within Churches, News, Religious Leaders, The Bible, Churches, & Homosexuality

Homosexual Activists Hopeful That New Congress Will Pass ENDA & Hate Crime, Repeal Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell

Excerpted from Liberals Aim to Push Ideas Through Congress, published Nov 16, 2006, by Associated Press:

…The president of the largest national gay-rights group, Joe Solmonese of the Human Rights Campaign, said he has high hopes for two long-pending proposals that failed to get through the GOP-controlled Congress. One would outlaw employment discrimination [ENDA] against gays, lesbians and transgender people; another would include them among the groups protected in federal hate-crimes legislation.

Gay activists also would like to see Congress repeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that prohibits gay members of the military from being open about their sexual orientation – but a push for this may come somewhere down the road.

“Everyone remembers the fight President Clinton had when he made this his first major political issue in 1993,” said Aaron Belkin, director of a University of California, Santa Barbara think tank that studies gays and the military.

“While opinion on letting gays serve has moved leaps and bounds since then, the new Democratic Congress is not likely to come out strongly on this one from the get-go,” Belkin said.

Solmonese indicated that leading gay-rights groups will be patient with the new Democratic leadership, not pushing to have their issues be at the very top of the 2007 agenda.

“What we’ve got is a new and respectful Congress that’s open to our community, to learning the specifics of our issues,” he said. “To stress right now – ‘This is what we want and this is when we want it’ – would be premature.”

Continue reading at MSN…

Posted in HRC, Military, News, Pending Legislation

Why Homosexual Activists Despise Marriage

Radical homosexual activists hate biblical marriage, because to achieve its benefits and blessings they must first conform to God’s plan for sexuality…

Excerpted from Why Homosexuals Despise Marriage, by Kevin McCullough, published Oct, 2006, by WorldNet Daily:

…With utter contempt for God and for the voters of their state, the New Jersey seven unanimously said that all who live in the confines of its borders must fundamentally agree to the moral premise that what the Bible terms perversion the voters should call healthy.

But why? What’s the real goal of the activists, the judges and the radicals who seek to subvert a moral worldview?

The answer is simple: No longer satisfied with practicing the unspeakable perverse sexual pleasures that their hearts seek in private bedrooms, they wish to be able to do so in public. They are also suffering from such immense guilt over their sexual behaviors, because they know inherently that the actions they perform are in fact unhealthy, that they will go to any means necessary to try and shut down the voices in their heads that tell them it is wrong.

They wrongfully believe that the guilty voice within them is an echo of a prudish state that seeks to limit their freedoms. They wrongfully believe that the judgment they feel is emanating from “Bible thumpers.” And what they fail to admit is that the voice that condemns them the loudest is never a human voice – but in fact the voice of their own conscience informed by the truth of the God who created them.

There are attributes of marriage that same-sex couples will never achieve.

Posted in "Civil Unions" & "Gay Marriage", A - What does the Bible say about homosexuality?, News

Priest Back on Duty in San Francisco Despite Hosting “Sisters” and Blessing “Pride” Paraders

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Excerpted from Scandalous San Francisco ‘Gay Pride’ Pastor and Chancellor Back in Saddle after “Leave”, by Hilary White, published Nov 17, 2006, by LifeSiteNews:

The pastor of Most Holy Redeemer Catholic parish in the heart of San Francisco’s heavily homosexual Castro neighbourhood, is back in his position after spending some time “on leave from his duties,” following a scandal involving a homosexual activist group.

Father Stephen Meriwether, who also serves as Chancellor of the San Francisco Archdiocese, was placed “on leave” after his permission to allow a virulently anti-Catholic homosexual activist group to hold “revival bingo” games was revealed by faithful Catholic bloggers.

…The “Sisters,” whose motto is “go and sin some more” and describes itself as a “leading-edge order of queer nuns,” planned to hold regular bingo games including one that featured, as master of ceremonies, “Peaches Christ” (pictured left) on the Feast of All Souls, the day on which Catholics traditionally pray for their dead. The money raised by the games was to go to a number of AIDS and homosexual organizations including the parish’s own AIDS outreach group.

After a local Catholic posted information about the event to the popular ‘blog of Catholic apologist and writer, Mark Shea, the Archdiocese issued a statement on Oct. 30 saying that permission should not have been given and the group’s activities at the parish were to cease “immediately.”

Archdiocesan spokesman Maurice Healy said, “For years the group has directed contempt and ridicule at Catholic faith and practices… Fr. Meriwether is on leave from his duties.”

Another Catholic blogger and former editor of the magazine Catholic World Report, was sceptical of the veracity of the Archdiocese’ action.

“This is public relations damage control,” Domenico Bettinelli wrote. “A true attempt to stop the scandal to the faithful and assert Church teaching would take stronger and more public steps. This sounds like they’re doing just enough to take the heat off without having to do anything substantive that would annoy certain people.”

…Bettinelli’s scepticism seems to have been justified. Most Holy Redeemer parish website now carries a notice for a celebratory pancake breakfast, set for November 19, in honour of Fr. Meriwether’s return from “leave.”

The parish website carries a message from Fr. Meriwether saying,

“You will find the good people of our parish old, young, married, gay, lesbian, transgender, affluent, homeless, blue-collar, converts, cradle Catholics, radical, traditional, questioning, fervent.”

The website also includes links to various homosexual activist groups including Dignity San Francisco, the Gay Catholic Forum, the Conference of Catholic Lesbians, and the dissident anti-Catholic organization, Voice of the Faithful.

Father Meriwether was appointed to his post as archdiocesan chancellor by the former archbishop of San Francisco, William Levada. Levada is now a cardinal and serves in Rome as the head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. As such, he is considered the second most powerful man in the Catholic Church.

…The website of the parish features photos of Fr. Meriwether blessing the regular parish contingent of marchers preparing to participate in the San Francisco “Gay Pride” parade. Included is a shot of Fr. Meriwether sprinkling the marchers with holy water while wearing full Mass vestments. Marchers from Most Holy Redeemer carried a banner sign and marched in the parade as a group. The photos show participants carrying the homosexual emblem of the rainbow flag and wearing t-shirts with the slogan, “Most Holy Redeemer, Pride 2006”.

Continue reading at LifeSite News…

Posted in Catholic, News, Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence

You Made a Difference! Wal-Mart Takes Lesbian Sex Ed Book for “Girlz” Off the Shelf

(For the background on this update, click HERE.)

Excerpted from Wal-Mart Drops Gay Sex How-To Manual for Teens after LifeSiteNews.com Expose, by John-Henry Westen, published Nov 15, 2006 by LifeSiteNews:

…A Wal-Mart advertisement for the book was listed on the Wal-Mart website, but the web page which listed the information now says: “Product Not Found!”

LifeSiteNews.com contacted Wal-Mart spokesman Kory Lundberg for comment on the book’s removal, but no comment has yet been received.

Continue reading at LifeSite News…

Posted in Books & Required Reading in Public Schools, News, Sex-Ed Curriculum, Wal-Mart (PRIDE)

Christianity is Counting the Cost and Not Sweating the Small Stuff

From Christianity is Counting the Cost and Not Sweating the Small Stuff, by Jan LaRue, published Nov 16, 2006, by Concerned Women for America:

“Episcopal leaders vote to leave,” reads the caption today announcing that “two of Virginia’s most historic Episcopal parishes have voted to split from the Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Virginia.” It’s a move that will likely lead to litigation and could cost the congregants of Truro Church in Fairfax (est. 1732) and The Falls Church (est. 1752) millions of dollars in prime real estate. George Washington was a member of the vestry of both churches. [Julia Duin, Washington Times, Nov. 16, 2006, p. 1].

When the Episcopal Church consecrated Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire, an exclamation point was added at the end of the handwriting that had been on the Church wall for many years. Robinson is an open homosexual who left his wife and children for a man.

By the way, if they had consecrated as bishop an unrepentant heterosexual adulterer or unmarried fornicator, the sin would be just as grievous. Sin brings equal opportunity condemnation.

Christianity is all about choices, costs and consequences. The congregants of Truro and The Falls Church reportedly told their leaders that “the theological disconnect between Biblical Christianity and the road the [Episcopal] Church had chosen to walk was so profound, the time had come to separate from the denomination.”

One of the countless characteristics that makes Jesus unique as the greatest leader of all time is that although He came to save all mankind from the condemnation of sin, He never stayed where He wasn’t wanted, and He never kept anyone from leaving. His words had a thinning effect on crowds. “For many are called but few are chosen.” (Matthew 22:14)

In fact, He said that when someone leaves Him, it’s proof that the person isn’t one of His. “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us.” (I John 2:19)

Shaking off the dust of an unfriendly town and dodging stones came with Christ’s calling. But He never compromised. Everything He did was consistent with everything He said. He leaves no space between following Him and obeying Him.

“Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” (Isaiah 5:20) Christ suffered the agony of the Cross because of His intolerance of sin and love of sinners. We can’t bless and make holy that which God has condemned as sinful.

Posted in A - What does the Bible say about homosexuality?, Anglican/Episcopal, News

Brokeback Mountain to Disgrace Catholic Seton Hall University

A press release from TFP Student Action (the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property), published Nov 16, 2006:

Hollywood movie Brokeback Mountain is scheduled to stage at Seton Hall University, a Catholic institution founded in 1865. The film is currently listed on the university’s web site under “Multicultural Program Film & Lecture Series.”¹ TFP Student Action is calling for a peaceful protest because the film:

• Approves same-sex relations, adultery, nudity, profanity and drug use. It is a blow to Catholic education, America’s Christian roots, the institution of the family and very foundations of morality and society.
• Brokeback Mountain is the antithesis of authentic Catholic education. It scrambles human emotions and encourages students to tolerate sin. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops classified this pro-homosexual film as “morally offensive” – the lowest possible rating.

Click here to protest now. Your signature will make an impact.

Posted in Catholic, Movies, News, Universities & Colleges

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