Pope Benedict: Blessed Bigotry

Pope Benedict XVI is visiting the United States.  Good for him.  But you know me, I have to tackle the Pope’s view on homosexuality.  I don’t expect him to say that being queer is acceptable.  He is the Pope after all.

 

I do sometimes think that people with great influence should think before they open their money makers.  People in a religious position should do some soul searching and think to themselves, “If I say this will I turn more people away from God, than bring them to God?  Will my words condemn or encourage?”

 

I guess for me telling someone how great their sin is and not allowing them to be as ‘holy’ as the person next to them gets on my nerves.  I don’t under stand why there is a scale for sin.  How can a homosexual be less worthy of God’s love than the person standing next to them in line at the grocery store?

 

Pope Benedict has been dubbed “God’s rottweiler”, and “the enforcer”.  He was given these nick names before he became Pope.

 

Benedict’s anti-gay action that got worldwide attention was the Vatican’s “Instruction concerning the criteria for the discernment of vocations with regard to persons with homosexual tendencies in view of their admission to the seminary and to Holy Orders,” released Nov. 29, 2005.  The document essentially bans gay priests.

 

The official “Instruction,” from the Congregation for Catholic Education, stated, “One cannot ignore the negative consequences that can stem from the ordination of people with deeply-rooted homosexual tendencies.”

 

The “Instruction” also said men “who practice homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called ‘gay culture’ cannot be admitted to seminaries.” The only exception would be for those with a “transitory problem” that had been overcome for at least three years.”

 

Really?  What about the priests who lie, steal from the offering, molest children?  What about those negative consequences?

 

Here are some anti gay things that Pope Benedict has said:

“Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder.”Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons (October 1986)

“Homosexual activity is not a complementary union, able to transmit life; and so it thwarts the call to a life of that form of self-giving which the Gospel says is the essence of Christian living. This does not mean that homosexual persons are not often generous and giving of themselves; but when they engage in homosexual activity they confirm within themselves a disordered sexual inclination which is essentially self-indulgent.”  Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons (October 1986)

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“The Church teaches that respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behavior or to legal recognition of homosexual unions. Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behavior.” Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons (July 2003)

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‘Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children, in the sense that their condition of dependency would be used to place them in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development.” Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognitions to Unions Between Homosexual Persons (July 2003)

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“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. Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law.”  Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons (July 2003)

 “The various forms of the dissolution of matrimony today, like free unions, trial marriages and going up to pseudo-matrimonies by people of the same sex, are rather expressions of an anarchic freedom that wrongly passes for true freedom of man.”
Speech by Pope Benedict XVI at the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome (June 6, 2005)

 

 “[T]he church, while deeply respecting the people in question, cannot admit to the seminary and the sacred orders those who practice homosexuality, present deeply rooted homosexual tendencies or support so-called gay culture. Those people find themselves, in fact, in a situation that presents a grave obstacle to a correct relationship with men and women. One cannot ignore the negative consequences that can stem from the ordination of people with deeply-rooted homosexual tendencies.”  Instruction concerning the criteria for the discernment of vocations with regard to persons with homosexual tendencies in view of their admission to the seminary and to Holy Orders (Nov. 4, 2005, approved by Pope Benedict XVI on Aug. 31, 2005.)

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“If instead it is a case of homosexual tendencies that are merely the expression of a transitory problem, for example as in the case of an unfinished adolescence, they must however have been clearly overcome for at least three years before ordination as a deacon.”  Instruction concerning the criteria for the discernment of vocations with regard to persons with homosexual tendencies in view of their admission to the seminary and to Holy Orders (Nov. 4, 2005)