The conflation of same six civil unions and religious marriage is perplexing. State marriage and all of the benefits it confers have nothing to do with religious marriage and the benefits and beliefs therein. I've got family in the cloth in other countries and they saw no dissonance between the spiritual and the civic when they had to get legally married in front of a government employee prior to getting spiritually married in their church. I do not wish for the state to represent religious views in a pluralistic society. The shoe could just as easily be on the other foot tomorrow when, after fighting for "religious liberty" to deny recognition of same-sex couples, an evangelical is denied their freshly cut ham at the deli counter by an observant Jewish employee.
So, first and foremost, the Pope said nothing about marriage. He specifically cited the reasons a civil union are beneficial in the eyes of the government. As far as we know, he said nothing about gays getting married in the church. Also, according to the scripture you cited, I suppose it's okay for women to commit "shameful acts" with women.
Yep... every 'marriage' should be a civil union and if the couple wants to get married in the eyes of their church, they can have a ceremony there.
The Dems? Never pass up a chance to take a shot do you. I guess you just forgot about Reagan and the silent majority or the welfare queens.
By talking about civil unions, the Pope is very conspicuously excluding religious marriage. Without addressing it, I have to assume he's still in line with the traditional Catholic and Biblical position that marriages are between men and women. By asserting the Pope should have the same Biblical requirements for a civil union as he'd have for a Christian marriage, you implicitly endorse a theocracy where you think the church, Catholic or otherwise, should impose its moral views on secular civil society. The Catholic church has been far down that road before and it didn't end well. I think Pope Francis' position is the more Christian stance because it recognizes that believers need to choose to join the body of christ and not be forced into submission to it. It is out of his compassion for people, wanting them to be accepted and free from oppression, that makes him accept this secular policy that relieves suffering, which is another pretty big Biblical virtue. He intentionally keeps out that other demand, that the church actually consecrate those 'sinful' marriages, a step I'd be surprised to see him take.
How does this work with like indigenous Amazonian and African tribes who don’t have much contact with the outside world, or places like Japan where less then 1% of the population is Christian. Do they all burn in hell for eternity?
There are many Catholics world wide that will. I am referring to those Catholics that attend mass weekly. Even in the Vatican the Pope has Cardinals and Bishops releasing cartoons lampooning him. So the reality is people are ultimately just people. In the short term I do not believe that the recognition of Civil Unions will matter much, but over the coming decades it likely will.
You don't think that it is hateful to support preventing two adults from being able to enter into a legally binding, civil union?
Of course, referring to The Church, the institution.... it's always behind science and culture I'm agnostic and don't delve too deeply into it, but I've heard it said Jesus never spoke on Homosexuality. And we know tenets of the Old Testament are archaic even to Jesus.
What's interesting is that when this was a wedge issue in the US, it was about "preserving the sanctity of marriage" and civil unions were a throwaway compromise for both parties. Pope is just dragging it's 1000+ year old institution to that starting point... Now that gay marriage has become more legitimized in the US, I suppose the less moderate Conservatives are now trying to claw back everything, coming out of their closets, and revealing their true colors...
Ms Barrett, the woman being shoved through the confirmation process during a presidential election for the first time in the history of the United States, by Mitch "The b****" McConnell and Lindsey "The Weasel" Graham, kept some important information from the Senate during her hearing. From Associated Press: Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett served for nearly three years on the board of private Christian schools that effectively barred admission to children of same-sex parents and made it plain that openly gay and lesbian teachers weren’t welcome in the classroom. The policies that discriminated against LGBTQ people and their children were in place for years at Trinity Schools Inc., both before Barrett joined the board in 2015 and during the time she served. The three schools, in Indiana, Minnesota and Virginia, are affiliated with People of Praise, an insular community rooted in its own interpretation of the Bible, of which Barrett and her husband have been longtime members. At least three of the couple’s seven children have attended the Trinity School at Greenlawn, in South Bend, Indiana. The AP spoke with more than two dozen people who attended or worked at Trinity Schools, or former members of People of Praise. They said the community’s teachings have been consistent for decades: Homosexuality is an abomination against God, sex should occur only within marriage and marriage should only be between a man and a woman. Interviewees told the AP that Trinity’s leadership communicated anti-LGBTQ policies and positions in meetings, one-on-one conversations, enrollment agreements, employment agreements, handbooks and written policies — including those in place when Barrett was an active member of the board. Trinity Schools Inc. is a tax-exempt non-profit organization that receives some financial support from government-funded tuition voucher programs, according to its federal tax returns. https://apnews.com/article/south-be...ota-virginia-a8bbabea9ee4d2fb13c6079c09f2f075
I'm not going to claim to be a Biblical scholar but my understanding is that some of the terms that you're referring to here were not exactly "homosexual" and that this this has to do with translation. In King James Mark 22 Jesus does say "Render unto Ceasar what is Ceasar's and render unto God what is God's" It appears to me that what Pope Francis is proposing is a render onto Ceasar compromise that governments can have civil unions for homosexuals but that marriage for the church would only be recognized as heterosexual.
I've felt this way for awhile. During the initial debates regarding same sex marriage my view was that all government sanctioned unions should be "civil unions". I would even go farther and say as far as secular marriage that should be governed by contract law.
None of this has anything to do with civil unions. Two men or two women can have sex whether they are in a civil union or not. If you are concerned with people being "inflamed with lust" and adultery and so forth, then you should support civil unions as it encourages monogamous relationships. I'd also note that if a man is actually gay, then it would be "unnatural" for him to be sexually intimate with a woman. So why should society force him to enter into a relationship that is contrary to his nature.
Vatican bars gay union blessing, says God 'can't bless sin' ROME -- The Vatican decreed Monday that the Catholic Church won't bless same-sex unions since God “cannot bless sin.” The Vatican’s orthodoxy office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, issued a formal response Monday to a question about whether Catholic clergy have the authority to bless gay unions. The answer, contained in a two-page explanation published in seven languages and approved by Pope Francis, was “negative.” The note distinguished between the church’s welcoming and blessing of gay people, which it upheld, but not their unions. It argued that such unions are not part of God's plan and that any such sacramental recognition could be confused with marriage. Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, which advocates for greater acceptance of gays in the church, predicted the Vatican position will be ignored, including by some Catholic clergy. “Catholic people recognize the holiness of the love between committed same-sex couples and recognize this love as divinely inspired and divinely supported and thus meets the standard to be blessed,” he said in a statement. The Vatican holds that gay people must be treated with dignity and respect, but that gay sex is “intrinsically disordered.” Catholic teaching holds that marriage, a lifelong union between a man and woman, is part of God’s plan and is intended for the sake of creating new life. Since gay unions aren't intended to be part of that plan, they can't be blessed by the church, the document said. “The presence in such relationships of positive elements, which are in themselves to be valued and appreciated, cannot justify these relationships and render them legitimate objects of an ecclesial blessing, since the positive elements exist within the context of a union not ordered to the Creator’s plan,” the response said. God “does not and cannot bless sin: He blesses sinful man, so that he may recognize that he is part of his plan of love and allow himself to be changed by him,” it said. Spoiler TO THE QUESTION PROPOSED: Does the Church have the power to give the blessing to unions of persons of the same sex? RESPONSE: Negative. Explanatory Note In some ecclesial contexts, plans and proposals for blessings of unions of persons of the same sex are being advanced. Such projects are not infrequently motivated by a sincere desire to welcome and accompany homosexual persons, to whom are proposed paths of growth in faith, “so that those who manifest a homosexual orientation can receive the assistance they need to understand and fully carry out God’s will in their lives.” On such paths, listening to the word of God, prayer, participation in ecclesial liturgical actions and the exercise of charity can play an important role in sustaining the commitment to read one’s own history and to adhere with freedom and responsibility to one’s baptismal call, because “God loves every person and the Church does the same,” rejecting all unjust discrimination. Among the liturgical actions of the Church, the sacramentals have a singular importance: “These are sacred signs that resemble the sacraments: they signify effects, particularly of a spiritual kind, which are obtained through the Church’s intercession. By them men are disposed to receive the chief effect of the sacraments, and various occasions of life are sanctified.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church specifies, then, that “sacramentals do not confer the grace of the Holy Spirit in the way that the sacraments do, but by the Church’s prayer, they prepare us to receive grace and dispose us to cooperate with it.” Blessings belong to the category of the sacramentals , whereby the Church “calls us to praise God, encourages us to implore his protection, and exhorts us to seek his mercy by our holiness of life.” In addition, they “have been established as a kind of imitation of the sacraments, blessings are signs above all of spiritual effects that are achieved through the Church’s intercession.” Consequently, in order to conform with the nature of sacramentals, when a blessing is invoked on particular human relationships, in addition to the right intention of those who participate, it is necessary that what is blessed be objectively and positively ordered to receive and express grace, according to the designs of God inscribed in creation, and fully revealed by Christ the Lord. Therefore, only those realities which are in themselves ordered to serve those ends are congruent with the essence of the blessing imparted by the Church. For this reason, it is not licit to impart a blessing on relationships, or partnerships, even stable, that involve sexual activity outside of marriage (ie, outside the indissoluble union of a man and a woman open in itself to the transmission of life), as is the case of the unions between persons of the same sex. The presence in such relationships of positive elements, which are in themselves to be valued and appreciated, cannot justify these relationships and render them legitimate objects of an ecclesial blessing, since the positive elements exist within the context of a union not ordered to the Creator’s plan. Furthermore, since blessings on persons are in relationship with the sacraments, the blessing of homosexual unions cannot be considered licit. This is because they would constitute a certain imitation or analogue of the nuptial blessing invoked on the man and woman united in the sacrament of Matrimony, while in fact “there are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family.” The declaration of the unlawfulness of blessings of unions between persons of the same sex is not therefore, and is not intended to be, a form of unjust discrimination, but rather a reminder of the truth of the liturgical rite and of the very nature of the sacramentals, as the Church understands them. The Christian community and its Pastors are called to welcome with respect and sensitivity persons with homosexual inclinations, and will know how to find the most appropriate ways, consistent with Church teaching, to proclaim to them the Gospel in its fullness. At the same time, they should recognize the genuine nearness of the Church – which prays for them, accompanies them and shares their journey of Christian faith – and receive the teachings with sincere openness. The answer to the proposed dubium does not preclude the blessings given to individual persons with homosexual inclinations, who manifest the will to live in fidelity to the revealed plans of God as proposed by Church teaching. Rather, it declares illicit any form of blessing that tends to acknowledge their unions as such. In this case, in fact, the blessing would manifest not the intention to entrust such individual persons to the protection and help of God, in the sense mentioned above, but to approve and encourage a choice and a way of life that cannot be recognized as objectively ordered to the revealed plans of God. At the same time, the Church recalls that God Himself never ceases to bless each of His pilgrim children in this world, because for Him “we are more important to God than all of the sins that we can commit.” But he does not and cannot bless sin: he blesses sinful man, so that he may recognize that he is part of his plan of love and allow himself to be changed by him. He in fact “takes us as we are, but never leaves us as we are.” For the above mentioned reasons, the Church does not have, and cannot have, the power to bless unions of persons of the same sex in the sense intended above. The Sovereign Pontiff Francis, at the Audience granted to the undersigned Secretary of this Congregation, was informed and gave his assent to the publication of the above-mentioned Responsum ad dubium, with the annexed Explanatory Note.
