Pope Makes Totally Gay Analogy Between Gays, Trees

Oh. My. GOD! Pope Benedict XVI, did you really say this today? With a straight (Ha ha, get it? Straight!) face??

The Church should also protect man from the destruction of himself. A sort of ecology of man is needed. The tropical forests do deserve our protection. But man, as a creature, does not deserve any less.

Um, uh, where to start, where to start?... Is the pope implying that homosexuals are being harvested so that there is more and more land available to grow soy beans which are then processed and fed to the birds that eventually become McDonald's Chicken McNuggets? Or that homosexuals, like lush rain forest fauna, help regulate CO2 emissions and serve as a buffer against global warming?

Or, has the pope actually, simply lost his mind? I pose this question in light of his comments today, as well as in the broader context of Catholic Church priorities that have been brought to the fore under his papacy, including...

• More exorcisms,
• The return of the Latin Mass,
• No abortions ANYWHERE! EVER!, and
  
• Dismissing the need for and the usefulness of interfaith dialogue,
  

...to name a few.

The pope went on to say that we need to "listen to the language of creation" to understand the intended roles of man and woman. Apparently, the Church views the intended roles of man and woman is to be available to have sex with each other and make little Catholic babies, the little ones without whom there is no other conceivable (ha ha, get it? Conceivable!) reason to have sex, The End.

Oh, Lord, this is just embarrassing. Honestly, the science exists demonstrating that whatever the cause of any person's homosexual orientation may be, it is a natural state of being and is not an elective choice. Jesus himself says nothing- NOTHING- about the subject of homosexuality anywhere in any of the four canonical gospels. Maybe the pope and his Church need to stop and listen more carefully to what Nature is saying about the intended roles of man and woman. If he clears his mind of all of his preconceived notions about what homosexuality is, he might hear Nature calling all people to live in peace, to support equality and justice, and to make room for the wide range of human possibilities that Nature Herself provides for. As such, he might also hear the voices of homosexual members of his own Church, voices that are as filled with the pain caused by the Church's position on homosexuality as with the hope for inclusion as full members of the Church just as they are, just as God made them. Stop this preoccupation with sex and sexual orientation, put an end to the need for special ministries for homosexual Church members, and minister to them as people who have the same spiritual needs as all other people and allow them to enjoy equal standing as Church members among their straight brothers and sisters.

Gay Catholic Youth Forum, Clip 1 of 10 (World Youth Day 2008, Sydney, Australia)


FOR FURTHER REFERENCE:

Is The Pope a Homophobe?, by Damian Thompson (Spectator.co.uk, October 1, 2005)

What the bible says and means about homosexuality (ReligiousTolerance.org, December 13, 2007)

Dignity USA

Gay Catholic Forum

Gay Catholics Implore Pope to Listen and Love, by Jonathan Rubin, Religion News Service (The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, April 10, 2008)

Human Rights Campaign

Obama-Nation = Abortion-Nation?!?

Did you know that President-Elect Barack Obama is the "most radical pro-abortion presidential candidate ever"? Don't believe me? Just Google search that term, and your resulting hits will reveal the dregs of the American Right Wing universe, the members of which spent the better part of this past summer and fall braying about how Barack Obama is not just pro-choice on the question of abortion, he is actually pro-abortion. This is probably news to anyone who was paying attention to any of Mr. Obama's comments on the issue of abortion during the very long presidential campaign.

Regardless of these facts, they haven't stopped various extremists from making the claim. Mr. Obama's candidacy, and now his impending presidency, have worked many people in the pro-life community into a lather. Within this community, the Catholic Church regards itself as First among equals, and continues to lead the charge in tagging anyone who is pro-choice as being pro-abortion. In a rehash of the 2004 presidential campaign, when certain American bishops refused to serve Holy Communion to pro-choice Democratic nominee John Kerry (D-MA), additional Catholic leaders have issued stern warnings to parishioners not to support Obama on the sole basis of his pro-choice stance, and to either skip communion or go to confession if any of them actually voted for him.

I continue to find it saddening, as well as more than a little insulting, to be categorized as pro-abortion by virtue of the fact that I am pro-choice. As I've written before, I don't know anybody who is pro-choice who actively and enthusiastically promotes abortions no matter the circumstances. For the majority of pro-choice citizens, the circumstances matter big time. Even those who are ardently pro-choice can find their level of support for this right challenged in the face of how different individuals choose to have an abortion, as this recent Washington Post Magazine article illustrates.

You know, opponents of the landmark Civil Rights Act were led by Senator Barry Goldwater, who argued that "you can't legislate morality." Yet these same right-wing types who opposed legislating civil rights-based morality are more than happy to support legislation that enforces their own moral code, namely the outlawing of any and all forms of abortion, no matter the circumstances. This is the very position taken by the Catholic Church, a position that has led more than one member of the U.S. Catholic priesthood to come out with outrageous edicts such as the prohibition against serving communion to Obama supporters, or demanding that parishioners who did vote for Mr. Obama go to confession in order to be absolved of this supposed sin. But honestly, would a vote for the supposedly pro-life ticket of McCain/Palin have been a vote for a reduction in the number of abortions, if not the outright elimination of this practice. I truly don't think so. In fact, since the Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973, the greatest drop in the annual number of abortions performed in the United States occurred during the administration of one William Jefferson Clinton, a pro-choice Democrat whose stated position on abortion is that it should be "safe, legal and rare." It seems that abortion is most likely to be safe, legal and rare in a country that provides for shared prosperity and a robust social safety net, progressive sex education, makes contraception and other family planning services available to all people regardless of means, and concedes that legal abortion is a medical procedure that is in fact sometimes necessary for health issues relating to the fetus, the mother, or both. The current pro-life strategy that is championed by the Catholic Church does not allow for any such circumstantial consideration. It is an approach to a highly complex social issue that is wholly lacking in nuance, and one that some Catholic leaders are finally suggesting needs to be replaced by a strategy designed to effectively address the reality of this issue as it is, not as how the Church wishes that it would be.

Where is the Gospel message of Jesus Christ in the Church's singular fixation on abortion? Does the Church really intend to mortgage the richness of its vast body of social and ethical teaching for the sake of pursuing this one particular end? It is not a reasonable, and therefore not a tenable, position for the Church to be taking. As then-candidate Obama remarked in response to a debate question on abortion,
"But there surely is some common ground when both those who believe in choice and those who are opposed to abortion can come together and say, 'We should try to prevent unintended pregnancies by providing appropriate education to our youth, communicating that sexuality is sacred and that they should not be engaged in cavalier activity, and providing options for adoption, and helping single mothers if they want to choose to keep the baby.' Those are all things that we put in the Democratic platform for the first time this year, and I think that's where we can find some common ground, because nobody's pro-abortion. I think it's always a tragic situation."

My final question: Does the Church intend to be counted among the reasonable participants in that search for common ground?

- Doug L.

PS- I usually try and limit the number of reference links to ten. However, because of the gravity of this particular issue, my thinking is that the more information that is available, the better. Please avail yourself of the resources I've assembled below. Shalom.

FOR FURTHER REFERENCE (UPDATED, December 7, 2008):

Nursing Grudges, by Dahlia Lithwick (Slate.com, December 6, 2008)

Barack Obama on Abortion (On The Issues.org)

A Hard Choice: Online Discussion with Lesley Wojcik and Patricia Meisol (WashingtonPost.com, November 24, 2008)

Maria Shriver: Pro-Choice, not pro-abortion (WashingtonPost.com, OnFaith, November 2008)

Will the Pope and Obama Clash Over Abortion? (Time.com, November 18, 2008)

Pope Says Catholics in Politics Must Follow Faith (Christianpost.com, November 16, 2008)

Obama's Promise to Pro-Lifers, by E.J. Dionne Jr. (The Washington Post, November 15, 2008)

Catholics for Obama.org

A Catholic Shift to Obama?, by E.J. Dionne Jr. (The Washington Post, October 21, 2008)

Can Democrats Reduce Abortions More Than Republicans??, by Steven Waldman (BeliefNet Blog, October 7, 2008)

Born Alive Baloney, by Jess Henig (Newsweek.com, September 24, 2008)

Obama and Infanticide (FactCheck.org, August 25, 2008)

Obama Statement on the 35th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade Decision (BarackObama.com, January 22, 2008)

Freedom of Choice Act would Guarantee Roe Protections in U.S. Statutes (National Organization for Women, April 30, 2007)

Why do women seek abortions? (ReligiousTolerance.org, April 27, 2007)

Freedom of Choice Act (U.S. Senate Version, S. 2020)

Freedom of Choice Act (U.S. House Version, H.R. 1964)

Fetal Viability, by Franklin Foer (Slate.com, May 25, 1997)

The Real Dream Ticket: Martin and Bobby for Sainthood

This week's Washington Post reports that the Catholic Church is moving with great speed to beatify the late Karol Józef Wojty, better known as Pope John Paul II. John Paul presided as pope for 27 years, second in duration only to the papacy of Pius IX. For those unfamiliar with Church terminology, beatification is a necessary step in a candidate's journey to sainthood, or canonization. Some candidates stall out at the state of beatification, while others make it all the way to sainthood.

Beatification is tough, but Canonization is even tougher. To be beatified, a candidate must be judged to have lived a life worth emulating by others, AND there must be proof that he or she committed at least one miraculous act. In order to be canonized, a second, posthumous miracle must be documented. Typically what the Vatican is looking for is solid proof that the deceased candidate is in God's good graces in Heaven, and has the power to literally respond to prayers of people on earth. No small feat!

The waiting period that is typically required before any of these proceedings can begin is five years after the death of the candidate in question. The pope reserves the authority to waive this requirement, as Pope Benedict the XVI has obviously done for his predecessor. I have no personal beef with this, but would like to suggest that if we are going to pull out all the stops for someone who has been dead for only three years, can we give some serious consideration for two men who have been dead for 40 years? I am referring to both Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Please stay with me, because I am not kidding and I don't mean for this suggestion to be taken lightly. Apply the Church criteria to the life and actions of each man, and tell me that they don't sail to sainthood:

• Lives worthy of emulation of others: King and Kennedy lived lives of intense passion and courage, which they, in their own fashion, dedicated to peace and social justice for all Americans. Their shared commitment to these causes continue to serve as touchstones for those of us who have come after them, living guideposts for those who aspire to realize the dream of a just and prosperous world for which they lived and died.
  
• Miracle #1: Dr. King harnessed a movement that would come to define the history of the second half of 20th Century America. He transformed the legal, political and social landscape for African Americans and White Americans alike. The descendant of slaves, he reshaped American history and made it more possible for America as a nation to be more true to its constitutional heritage than ever before.
• Miracle #1: Senator Kennedy was born a son of privilege, wealthy before he ever needed to earn his own living. He attended the finest schools in the country and saw more of the world as a young boy and young man than most adult Americans. Yet he made common cause with the poor, the dispossessed and the voiceless of our nation.
• Miracle #2: The Church stresses that the second miracle needs to be performed posthumously, providing evidence that the deceased lives with God in Heaven and has been granted power by God to intercede in the lives of people here on earth. I don't personally know of anyone who prays or has prayed to either Dr. King or Sen. Kennedy. Nevertheless, when Sen. Barack Obama became the first African American to clinch the presidential nomination of any major political party this week, I could not help but feel that both Dr. King and Sen. Kennedy both lent spiritual support to the Obama campaign from beyond. Sen. Obama will give his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in Denver 45 years to the day from when Dr. King gave his historic I Have a Dream Speech. Sen. Obama has also literally been handed the Kennedy mantle of leadership by none other than Sen. Ted Kennedy, the late senator's brother. All of these intersections with King and Kennedy, and we're supposed to believe that the two of them aren't working in support of Barack Obama? I don't think so!
  

Tom Toles political cartoon
The Washington Post, June 6, 2008

The event that is central to Christianity is the death and resurrection of Jesus. In the wake of his arrest and crucifixion at the hands of the Romans, his mother and disciples were thunderstruck by grief at the magnitude of their loss and the violent manner by which it occurred. On the Sunday after he was crucified, however, the Gospels relate that Jesus appeared to his disciples after rising from the tomb. While some were incredulous and some were confused, they were all eventually overjoyed at his return. Their pain and loss had been redeemed, their hope restored that Jesus' message could still be realized.

Neither Dr. King nor Sen. Kennedy were Jesus Christ, and when they were assassinated, everyone who experienced that loss knew that it was for real and it was permanent. Two of the most special, transformational leaders in the history of America had been brutally taken, with no hope of their return. It has been 40 years since that awful spring when the hopes and dreams of a generation aching for a better America were snuffed out in a puff of smoke from the barrel of a gun. Forty years is a much longer time to wait for redemption than 3 days. After so much time, do we dare to dream and hope again, now that Sen. Obama is the presumptive Democratic nominee, that everything that Dr. King and Sen. Kennedy both worked to achieve is once again within our grasp? Maybe so, but I'm not taking any chances. Hoping and dreaming are fine, but for myself I'm gonna pray to St. Martin and St. Bobby every day from now until the election! Shalom.

- Doug L.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"I've Been to the Mountaintop"
Memphis, TN- April 3, 1968


Robert F. Kennedy's Impromptu Speech
on the Assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Indianapolis, IN, April 4, 1968


FOR FURTHER REFERENCE:

The King Center

Robert F. Kennedy Memorial

Robert Kennedy, Arlington National Cemetary

What He Overcame, by Eugene Robinson (The Washington Post, June 6, 2008)

Obama's Bridge Between MLK and RFK, by John Avlon (RealClearPolitics.com, June 6, 2008)

Kennedy: "It's now time for Barack Obama." (CNN.com, January 28, 2008)

Catholic Church Declares War on Sanity

SATAN, I mean War on Satan. My bad. Anyhow, "Pope's exorcist squads will wage war on Satan," reads Saturday's headline in the Daily Mail. I just don't know what to even say about this one, other than that it has truly been a red letter year for Pope Benedict XVI. First, he reinstates the Latin Mass. Then, he declares that the Catholic Church is the only TRUE Church. Now he's ordering Catholic bishops worldwide to line up "exorcist squads" because, according to head Vatican exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth, "Too many bishops are not taking this seriously and are not delegating their priests in the fight against the Devil. You have to hunt high and low for a properly trained exorcist." This need to "hunt high and low for a properly trained exorcist" is apparently tagged to a supposed increase in worldwide occult activity, which in turn has been blamed by the Vatican on those who have lost faith in the Church. In its efforts to continue obliterating the legacy of Pope John XXIII, the father of the Modern Church and leader of the Second Vatican Council, the Church is reinstating a particular prayer that had been discontinued as a result of the Vatican II liturgical reforms:


St. Michael the Archangel,
defend us in battle.
Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the Devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray,
and do thou,
O Prince of the heavenly hosts,
by the power of God,
thrust into hell Satan,
and all the evil spirits,
who prowl about the world
seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

I guess just mark me down under Skeptical on this one. For one thing, the actual need for an exorcist to actually expel a demonic presence is a rare thing indeed. The majority of cases that diocesan exorcists are asked to investigate are ruled to be something other than demonic possession of a human being (and are typically mental-health related behavioral issues). For another thing, unless the Church can put up some hard numeric evidence to prove it, I highly doubt that people are leaving the Church in droves and fleeing into the waiting arms of Satanic occultism. Now, don't get me wrong, people are leaving the Church, but for reasons such as the clergy sex abuse scandal, and for its increasingly conservative positions on social issues such as abortion, gay rights, and female clergy.

Yes, we make house calls.

At any rate, if the pope wants to initiate his own surge against the forces of evil, that's certainly his prerogative. In the meantime, while he is busy making important decisions about Latin liturgy, who is and isn't a Church, and deputizing a whole slew of Catholic GhostBusters, social issues that the Church used to confront head-on continue to plague people and societies across the world. Poverty, the expenditure of tax dollars on exorbitant defense budgets, and the stagnation of wages for working people are but a few of the issues with a direct impact on peace and prosperity that were once of great concern to the Church.

So, the list of Church priorities continues to expand in favor of a narrowing scope of beneficiaries (e.g., liturgical fetishists and the demonically possessed). In the meantime, the peace and justice issues of our times, and those that Jesus spoke most often and most passionately about, are left to others to sort out. Perhaps Jesus' condemnation of his Pharisaic contemporaries applies to today's Church leaders as well:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You pay tithes of mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier things of the law: judgment and mercy and fidelity. (But) these you should have done, without neglecting the others. Blind guides, who strain out the gnat and swallow the camel! Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You cleanse the outside of cup and dish, but inside they are full of plunder and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee, cleanse first the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may be clean. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You are like whitewashed tombs, which appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of dead men's bones and every kind of filth. Even so, on the outside you appear righteous, but inside you are filled with hypocrisy and evildoing.

- Doug L.

FOR FURTHER REFERENCE (UPDATED, January 1, 2008):

Pope calls gays a threat to world peace (365Gay.com, January 1, 2008)

A Return to Tradition (U.S. News and World Report, December 13, 2007)

How Exorcism Works (HowStuffWorks.com)

NETWORK: National Catholic Social Justice Lobby

Voice of the Faithful: Keep the Faith, Change the Church

SocialAction.com: An Online Jewish Resource for Repairing the World

Rerum Novarum: The Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor (Pope Leo XIII, May 15, 1891)

The Exorcist (WarnerBros.com)

Ghostbusters (Sony Pictures.com)

Rudy: Night and Day on Rights for Gays

Is Rudy Giuliani Catholic? He certainly thinks so. "My moral views on this come from the, you know, from the Catholic Church," he said this past weekend on Meet the Press in response to a question on homosexuality.

I've already weighed in once before on the type of Catholic I think Rudy is. For now, I'll just cut to the chase and say that we can automatically presume that every statement that comes out of Giuliani's mouth from this point forward is either a calculated misstatement of the facts, or simply utter bullshit. Actually, he scores a bullshit twofer on the issue of gay rights:

• One: Until he was a candidate for president, and most likely not until he was interviewed by Tim Russert, Giuliani's "moral views on this" sure as hell did not come from the Catholic Church.

• Two: The Catholic Church's position on homosexuality is bullshit.

Now, that second bullet may be my own opinion, but the first one is a cold, hard fact. Giuliani has been far to the left of his Church, not to mention his beloved Republican Party, when it comes to the question of gay rights. I guess, what with how busy Rudy was single-handedly saving New York City from 9/11, and then talking about it ad nauseum for over six years straight, he must not have realized that we live in an electronic information age- you know, the historic type of period where the stuff you say and do as, you know, an elected public official, is easily discovered. So, let's compare and contrast how Roman Catholic Rudy Giuliani has addressed the issue of gay rights in the recent past:

• Has Giuliani Really Flip-Flopped on Gay Rights? (National Journal Hotline, April 30, 2007)

• Rudy Giuliani appears to be distancing himself from pro-gay past (Advocate.com, April 20, 2006)

• What will Rudy say to his gay friends? (Eric Boehlert, Salon.com, February 26, 2004)

Rudy Giuliani is a former federal prosecutor. As such, I'll tip my hat to his former role and simply say, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I rest my case.

- Doug L.

FOR FURTHER REFERENCE:

It's All Because (The Gays Are Getting Married)


Bishops Urge Constitutional Amendment to Protect Marriage (AmericanCatholic.org)

The Roman Catholic Church and Homosexuality: Years 1998 - 2001 (ReligiousTolerance.com)

Rudy to Run for President of 9/11 (The Onion, February 21, 2007)


The Paradox Called Gay Republicans (Ramone Johnson, About.com Gay Life)

AIDS, Condoms and Dogma (Christopher Dickey, WashingtonPost.com On Faith, December 13, 2007)

Human Rights Campaign.org

We're Not Number One, We're the ONLY One!

Yes, it's going to be pretty hard for the pope to show his face in public after the Vatican issued a statement today to clarify just who is and isn't a church as far as the Holy Roman Catholic Church is concerned. To wit, a document released today by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith states that the Catholic Church is "the one true Church of Christ," and that other Christian churches (i.e., Protestant and Orthodox), are not actually churches since they "lack elements considered essential to the Catholic Church."

Wow. For a German pontiff, Benedict is really getting his braggadocio on. But it all seems to be in keeping with his strategy of completely offending as many people of faith as possible. His reinstatement of the Latin Mass has upset both progressive Catholics as well as Jews who are not eager for the Church to resume praying for their conversion every Good Friday. Obviously this move had limited offensive impact, affecting only those Catholics who are still paying attention and those Jews who can still bring themselves to dialogue with the Church, which, until 1959, referred to them as "perfidious Jews" during each Good Friday liturgy. Today's move, however, is more far-reaching and guarantees that long-simmering tensions between Catholicism and the rest of the Christian world will boil over and erode any amount of rapprochement that has been achieved over the years. Seriously, why would any member of any non-Catholic Christian church have any interest in engaging with the Church which clearly considers all other faiths to be "less than"? This all reminds me of an Onion article that ran about ten years ago with the following headline: "Pope Calls For Greater Understanding Between Catholics, Hellbound."

I guess that His Holiness did not give a great deal of thought to the impact his pronouncement would have in places like Northern Ireland, where a fragile coalition government of shared power between Protestants and Catholics has, at very long last, begun governing this war-weary land. Ian Paisley, the divisive hate monger and leader of the extremist elements within Ulster's Loyalist movement, has opposed all attempts on the part of the English government to extend any semblance of civil rights protections to Irish Catholics unfortunate enough to live in Ireland's six northern counties. The pope's comments can only serve to enflame the hatred that Paisley and his supporters hold toward Catholics, and further endanger the already precarious position that the fledgling coalition government now occupies. What a thoughtful way for the pope to say "Thank You!" to some of the most devout Catholics in all of Europe, an embattled minority in British-controlled Ulster that has suffered under Protestant oppression for centuries all because of their Catholic faith. Thank us? No, thank YOU, your Holiness.

It is certainly the prerogative of the Church to hold this view of itself. However, I posed this question recently with regard to the reinstatement of the Latin Mass, and I'll ask it again in this context: what good, constructive purpose is served by making such a declaration?

- Doug L.

FOR FURTHER REFERENCE:

"Vatican reiterates hardline on primacy of Catholic Church." WorldWide Religious News, July 10, 2007.

"Police pay for anti-Catholic bias." BBC News, July 9, 2007.

"Two Former Enemies Are Sworn in to Lead Northern Ireland’s Government." New York Times, May 8, 2007.