In a recent interview the Pope said:
If a person is gay and seeks the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge that person?
Since the Catholic Church hasn’t changed its view that while same sex attraction is not sinful, homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered”, the Pope was obviously referring to a celibate gay person.
This did not deter the Diocese of New Westminster’s Dean Peter Elliot from taking the Pope’s statement and using it to imply that he suddenly supports gay marriage.
So goes the tortured logic of liberal Anglicanism.
Dean Peter Elliot’s talk is aptly named, The Spirit of the Time.
From here:
Obviously the furthest thing from the Pope’s mind when he held his impromptu press conference last Sunday evening was that his remarks about gay people would be received, in Vancouver BC, at the beginning of Gay Pride Week. This annual festival culminates on August 4 with Vancouver’s largest parade with well over 100,000 people downtown.
It wasn’t always so. For generations homosexual people were relegated to the sidelines of society, forced to hide relationships and encouraged to lie. The first pride parades attracted but a few participants and often incurred the ridicule of homophobic onlookers. But over the years a transformation – you might even say transfiguration-of consciousness in Canadian society occurred. Many things contributed to this change of mind including the decriminalization of homosexuality, the increasing numbers of LGBT people ‘coming out’ to families and friends, the public face of the gay men’s health crisis of HIV-AIDS, and an exploration of sexuality by scientists leading to the conclusion that homosexuality is simply a normative variation in human nature, in and of itself, morally neutral.
The Anglican Church of Canada and its sister church in the US, the Episcopal Church have been deeply involved in this discussion: for well over a decade, church councils and conventions were dominated by heated debates about the place of LGBT people within the church and the status of our committed relationships. This diocese of New Westminster became a primary location for this: through the leadership of our Bishop Michael Ingham and the passionate voices of laity and clergy this became the first diocese in the Anglican Communion where, in 2002, a rite for the blessing of committed same sex relationships was authorized. In 2003 Canadian courts followed, opening the institution of marriage to same-sex couples, a position that was later endorsed by federal Parliament and the provincial legislatures. Within the last year the President of the US has advocated for same sex marriage, and then last Sunday the Pope made his comments.
[…..]
Pope Francis, in his statement If a person is gay and seeks the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge that person opens the possibility that the good news of Jesus includes all of God’s beloved children. It is in Christ that all of us seek transformation so that we too can take our part in bringing liberation and dignity to all people-taking our part in the bending arc of the universe toward justice.
The worthy Dean has been so busy exerting himself in the bending arc of the universe, he missed the Freudian slip.
Once upon a time, the church owned slaves. Now, slavery is no more. Any man-made laws can be changed. Will a future Canadian government outlaw the current same-sex marriages? If same-sex marriages remains the law of the land in Canada, what will be the tactic of those who oppose such a law?
All part of the “Elect Elliott Bishop of New Westminster” campaign.
Pick up your “Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater” pin from elections HQ [Christ Church Cathedral]
I am a sinner–
Always have been, always will be.
I lie. I steal. I envy. I have committed adultery. I have worshiped other gods.
I have taken His name in vain. I have dishonored the Sabbath.
I have even killed, (others hopes, dreams and dignity).
I am so glad to now learn that all of these things are only a;
“Normative variation ” of my human nature.
I am set free! I can carry on! No need for salvation and transformation!
It is a veritable “Transfiguration of my consciousness.”
I shall now transcend on a bending arc into the universe of all inclusive normative variations in a state of eternal prostration.
The Anglican Church is the nearest nothing anymore.
But, here’s a Catholic perspective on the not-very-bright Pope Francis. Ann Barnhardt writes,
“Last week the priest Francis appointed to head the Vatican Bank was exposed as a sodomite. Well, not that it was any big secret. You would have to have less-than-zero gaydar to not realize that this guy, a Monsignor Ricca, was a homosexual. This Ricca guy was an acquaintance of Bergoglio’s from South America, and he was widely known to be shacking-up with an ex-Swiss Guard (the Swiss Guard had a huge problem with sodomite infiltration in the 70’s and 80’s just like the priesthood) in Montevideo, Uruguay. It was a very open secret. But because this Ricca person was “nice” to Bergoglio back in the day, he appointed him to the troubled Vatican Bank despite the fact that Ricca has ZERO qualification for such a post. What a joke.
Anyway, despite all of the neo-con Catholics crowing about how Bergoglio was totally going to clean-up the Vatican and drive out the “gay mafia”, he did exactly the opposite. Not only did he say that he was not going to fire Ricca after Ricca’s uncontested and never-denied nasty, pervy sodomite shenanigans were exposed, which gives the effective green light to the “gay mafia” and makes Ricca now untouchable, Francis then said on the plane with regards to homosexual priests, “Who am I to judge?”
“Who are you to judge? YOU ARE THE VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST ON EARTH. If you can’t judge whether or not one of the sins that cries out to God for vengeance is a disqualifier for high curial office, much less the priesthood, then what CAN you judge? Can you judge abortion? Can you judge the slaying of innocent children? Can you judge the stealing of pensions? Can you judge tyrants? Are you really so stupid that you think that when Our Blessed Lord said, “Judge not, lest ye be judged,” that He was calling for total societal anarchy, unrestricted license and total moral relativism, which is the abolition of the concept of sin itself? Really? Oh, except for the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate celebrating the Tridentine Mass. No, you can come down on THAT like a ton of bricks, but sodomy? Meh. Who are you to judge?”
A bit of follow-up as she addresses why the Pope was not simply addressing himself to celibate homosexuals who must not be permitted to serve as priests.
“Okay. Now let’s talk about why homosexuals, even chaste homosexually-oriented men and women, must be disqualified from the priesthood and religious orders. I will speak in the context of the priesthood, but the argument applies to both genders. Same-sex attraction is rooted in self-loathing, as we have previously discussed. The homosexual hates himself and is thus drawn to people of the same gender out of a sense of envy, which is twisted into a form of eroticism. The homosexual desires and/or seeks masturbatory physical congress with others NOT so that he may give himself as a gift to the other, because remember, he hates himself. The homosexual lusts after other men because he seeks to selfishly consume their attractive traits and thus transform himself into someone else. Homosexual “sex” can never be anything but totally self-absorbed and narcissistic. And so we see that even this ORIENTATION, even without any physical acting out including solitary self-abuse, because it is rooted in self-loathing and envy IS ITSELF MASSIVELY DISORDERED AND SINFUL. A man erotically pining after another man is a sin. What about a man who “erotically loves” another man? There is no such thing. If Man A really loved Man B, he would be incapable of desiring sexual congress because same-sex physical congress is itself a massively irrational, hateful, violent, self-absorbed act.
Priests give their celibacy and chastity to Our Blessed Lord as a GIFT. They give themselves to Our Lord and espouse themselves to His Church. Now tell me this: if a man HATES HIMSELF, how can he possibly give himself as a gift? How can he love others in true charity if he hates himself?”
I like what the Pope apparently said in the article, ‘If a person seeks the Lord, who am I to judge?’
We must Love
We must not judge
Seeking the Lord is a choice
Trusting in the Lord is a choice
Peter Elliot approves of what he does.
We all need something that gives us stability
For followers of Jesus is important to come close to plans God has for us.
Our culture is more casual and open than before is true I agree with Peter Elliot on this.
I was born in 1960 and I was not allowed to go downtown unless I had dress pants. On Sunday, I had to wear a suit in Church. An older person was always called sir or mam, Mr or Mrs. We had formal rules. Now is more casual.