Wow. Abortion and gay marriage join nuclear proliferation on the Pope's list of threats to peace.
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Threats to Peace
12 Dec 2007 11:30 am
Comments (29)
I thought I would add that the Pope is also saying this:
"...In his message, the pope also endorses greater cooperation on environmental protection, writing that "further international agencies may need to be established" for the purpose. He also calls for an "equitable distribution of wealth" in a globalized world."
Every once in a while, the Pope writes something like "Spe Salvi," and I think he's really cool for a while, forgetting everything he's ever said about homosexuality, and then he says stuff like this and reinforces my mixed feelings.
Gay marriage and abortion are only threats to peace to the extent that reactionaries like the Pope make them.
Galileo performed my gay abortion.
"Every once in a while, the Pope writes something like "Spe Salvi," and I think he's really cool for a while, forgetting everything he's ever said about homosexuality, and then he says stuff like this and reinforces my mixed feelings."
Amen to that. Deus Caritas Est was also really fascinating and cool. Or his discussions with Habermas, but yeah, the gay thing is uncool and certainly detracts from the whole.
Ok abortion I can understand (I don't agree but I understand).
In what way could gay marriage possibly be a threat to peace?
Note also:
"At a press conference held to present the document, a top Vatican official criticized the U.S. for its handling of Iran's suspected nuclear arms program, saying that Washington's rhetoric had fomented international tensions."
Reality Man: Re: Galileo. If you really want to understand the Galileo issue, go read Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Thanks pope -- get back to us after you deal with the child rapers in your own organization.
Oh, great! Thanks a lot for the disastrous Iraq War (and all it's wrought) fags and abortionists. Thanks a yahoo.
Meanwhile, planetary overpopulation has NOTHING to do with violence, injustice, misery, disease, starvation or war.... We just need to pump every child we physiologically can into the great void.
How convenient for a dying church that the very 3rd world populations around the world that will listen to this dope will eventually give them the numbers that he needs to pretend his church has a following.
Please explain to me--seriously--how Mormons are a cult and the Catholic Church is not?
Oh come on. Go read the actual document (here).
It doesn't even mention abortion or gay marriage by name, and spends a lot more time saying things that we progressives would generally agree with than pressing social conservative hot buttons.
The article that Matt linked to was clearly written with the intent of drawing as many clicks as possible by distorting the document into something controversial. And when Matt links to things like this, he helps ensure that this kind of tactic works.
It doesn't even mention abortion or gay marriage by name, and spends a lot more time saying things that we progressives would generally agree with than pressing social conservative hot buttons.
Yes, and if there's one thing the 2004 US presidential election taught us, it's how well progressives can find common ground with the Catholic Church as an institution, once we get past those pesky little hot buttons that members of the church hierarchy were loudly and publicly using as litmus tests.
From the document:
"This point merits special reflection: everything that serves to weaken the family based on the marriage of a man and a woman, everything that directly or indirectly stands in the way of its openness to the responsible acceptance of a new life...." (italics mine)
These are well understood code phrases for gay marriage and contraception from the Catholic church so let's not pretend he wasn't talking about them.
Of course some Catholics might take this post as disparaging their faith which will force them to vote for Republicans. Regardless of their distaste for their policies.
Meh... I just take it as a given that the RCC is going to be fairly decent on most issues except for virtually anything to do with gender/sexuality/reproduction. Unfortunately, those nutty ideas can't be properly separated from the decent ones, and political churches all suck as far as I'm concerned anyway.
Don't worry guys— there's a 2000 year old ManGod who's gonna be born again on the 25th— not to be confused with when he's resurrected, which is sometime in late March or early April. Either way His Father (who is Him and, like, vice-versa) who dwells in kingdom in the sky thinks marriage is between a pink dot and a blue dot so, you know, if you wanna marry your Gomorran bedfellow, get gender reassignment surgery, 'kay? It's what Jeebus wants. Oh and stop sending him dead fetuses, they're messy and just flop around retardedly— he's already got enough cherubim.
The catholic church in its current incarnation can never say that homosexuality is acceptable, and not for scriptural reasons (never the prime motivator of catholic reasoning afaict).
The reason it can't is that then it would have to _deal_ with homosexuality within the church (clergy)* and that will be a big, big mess that it doesn't want to start.
*nb I'm _not_ referring to pedophilia here,
You know, I don't need a lecture on the evils of moral relativism from a guy who manned an anti-aircraft gun outside a BMW plant that used Jewish slave labor. I wonder if there were any homosexuals in there with pink triangles on...
It's like seeing Keith Richards in a anti-drug ad. I just can't take it seriously.
Col Bat Guano,
These are well understood code phrases for gay marriage and contraception from the Catholic church so let's not pretend he wasn't talking about them.
Did you read the rest of the paragraph in which the sentence that you quoted appeared? (in the document, not in the article...) To indicate some of the "objective obstacle[s] to the road to peace" facing families that he had in mind, the pope wrote:
The family needs to have a home, employment and a just recognition of the domestic activity of parents, the possibility of schooling for children, and basic health care for all. When society and public policy are not committed to assisting the family in these areas, they deprive themselves of an essential resource in the service of peace.
Admittedly this isn't presented as an all-inclusive list of things that "weaken the family," and it's fair to assume from prior church teachings that the pope also considers abortion and gay marriage to also be in this category. However, in this particular document, he didn't mention those, whereas he did mention things like universal health care. Yet oddly enough, in an article about this document, the headline
is "Pope Says Abortion, Gay Marriage Are 'Obstacles' to World Peace," not "Pope Says Lack of Universal Health Care is an 'Obstacle' to World Peace."
With media coverage like this, one begins to understand why a lot of American Catholics labor under the delusion that their faith obliges them to be single-issue voters on abortion, in spite of repeated teachings (here, for instance) from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and others to the contrary.
With media coverage like this, one begins to understand why a lot of American Catholics labor under the delusion that their faith obliges them to be single-issue voters on abortion, in spite of repeated teachings (here, for instance) from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and others to the contrary.
Right, because in 2004 the U.S. Catholic Bishops spent a lot of time condemning Bush for his opposition to health care coverage and the war in Iraq. Now if only I could come up with a single example of this....
If you really think fetuses are human persons then, yes, Abortion will seem Holocaust 2.0. But gay marriage? Even if you think gay sex is always sinful, that should presumably go rather far down the list of Bads where you put unmarried rolls-in-the-hay and other pecadillos.
"Right, because in 2004 the U.S. Catholic Bishops spent a lot of time condemning Bush for his opposition to health care coverage and the war in Iraq. Now if only I could come up with a single example of this...."
Mmm, heard of google?:
Texas Bishops talk about the importance of S-Chip:
http://www.txcatholic.org/documents/health_care.pdf
"The Bishops are also calling upon Catholics and health care organizations to add their
voices to the call for attention to the crisis. The Bishops are communicating with
Catholics through their parishes and through the media.
“The Catholic Church has a rich tradition of caring for the poor and sick in Texas, and
Catholic health facilities have led the way in providing care to all people, regardless of
ability to pay. Still, our state’s health care crisis continues to worsen,” says Cynthia
Colbert, president of the Catholic Health Association of Texas. “We need the advocacy
and prayers of all Catholic faithful to work toward solutions.”"
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0403348.htm
"The U.S. bishops do not comment on candidates' specific proposals, but they outlined their hopes for health care reform in the 2003 document, "Faithful Citizenship: A Catholic Call to Political Responsibility."
"This reform must be rooted in values that respect human dignity, protect human life, and meet the needs of the poor and uninsured," they said. "With tens of millions of Americans lacking basic health insurance, we support measures to ensure that decent health care is available to all as a moral imperative. We also support measures to strengthen Medicare and Medicaid as well as measures that extend health care coverage to children, pregnant women, workers, immigrants, and other vulnerable populations.""
There is more where that came from, but it would be tedious to list ALL the examples. In any case, if many of you want to laugh about pedestry and fulminate about abortion, well, fine, but Catholics are some of the most socially democratic people out there. If you want to alienate them with non-reflective stereotypes, please go ahead. It isn't like any of these liberal values we hold actually matter right? I mean we just care about some economic justice, death penalty etc. as a game, or if we do actually care about these things we need to insist that others who might be right there supporting us agree with EVERYTHING we think.
"The Catholic Church has a rich tradition of caring for the poor and sick in Texas..."
So we can expect the Pope to do an Anthony Quinn in "Shoes of the Fisherman" and give away all the Catholic Church's wealth to the poor and the sick?
Email me when this happens.
Besides which, we're not talking about Catholics - we're talking about the Pope and the corrupt clergy and the corrupt church he represents. The Catholic laity are just the usual dupes every religion relies on to get rich.
There's no distinguishing characteristic between the Pope and this bozo in Colorado who made a ton of money denouncing homosexuals until exposed as one.
By the way, the Catholic Church in the US has pissed away an estimated TWO BILLION DOLLARS in settlements for child abuse cases since 1950 - a quarter of it from the Los Angeles diocese alone.
That would taken care of a lot of the "poor and sick".
d and myq
It's pretty simple: unless the catholic church gets over their archaic and destructive sexual politics, liberals like myself won't take them seriously and be in fact vigorously opposed to them. I sit in an office with, amongst others, 3 gay/lesbian people which I value a lot and simply cannot in any way condone the bigoted positions of the catholic church as it relates to them. I agree that the catholic church could actually be a wonderful counterweight to rampant capitalism and warmongering but unless the church gets rid of its obsession with sex and is willing to embrace modern society there is no possibility of even an uneasy alliance. I don't care if catholics believe in the immaculate conception and other odd things, whatever, but their sexual politics for me are the dealbreaker. And before you so nonchalantly dismiss the issue of pederasty by catholic priests, d, you might want to take a close look at what happened to the catholic church in Ireland when all these cases surfaced - nothing has eroded the trust in the church more than these crimes against innocent children.
novakant: You makes good points novakant. I certainly didn't mean to underplay the priest sex scandals--it is a huge breach of trust and truly disgusting the way it has been hushed up. Moreover, I am 100% on board for equality for gay people. Your comment doesn't bother me. What does bother me is that the Pope says something, only his positions on abortion and homosexuality get blown up in the press and then when posted on a liberal blog the predictable response is: Galileo! The Inquisition! And sex scandals. Always the same. I am happy to have a conversation about any of that, but as soon as Catholicism is mentioned this is the response. It bothers me because as you say, "I agree that the catholic church could actually be a wonderful counterweight to rampant capitalism and warmongering." There are a lot of Democrats elected in America from only moderate disctricts based on votes from Catholics. A cousin of mine is a liberal in a conservative area of the country because he was politicized by Jesuits in the 80s against the shit going down in Central America. A friend of mine's family vote party line Democratic because they are liberal Catholics and support universal healthcare and hate the death penalty. So, my point is, why piss those people off. A lot of the more liberal people in our society are not just liberal Catholics, but liberals because they are Catholic.
Yeah, that Pope and those Catholics man, they just don't understand sex like the rest of us. I mean, what culture has better proven how those rubes who practice the Catholic faith don't understand the human body than ours?
From the strength of our families, to our total control of STDs, to the ways in which we honor and respect the sexes equally, especially when it comes to their bodies--I mean, Western and especially American culture has it all over those Papists! Nobody honors women's bodies like we do--just watch TV! It's why we don't have eating disorders or any of that stuff (probably also invented by Catholics).
Plus, their priests are rapists! In our non-Catholic culture, we are very open about sexual abuse in homes and schools, because we are better than they are--we always report the problems, punish the abusers, and let the problems see sunlight. They are so much worse than the rest of us. I'll bet statistics would show that married people never molest kids, and that if they do (which they don't) they are always turned in and nobody turns a blind eye.
Plus, the pope was a Nazi? Did you know that?
I'm just glad we have such progressive and enlightened attitudes about sex over here; those Catholics should lighten up and join the bliss! If only THEY were not obsessed with sex.
Comments closed December 26, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
Well, those guys in 300 seemed both a) very war-like and b) gay as all get-out, so...
Posted by nitpicker | December 12, 2007 11:37 AM