Tag Archives: Roman Catholicism

Fr. Raymond Gravel, the suing priest

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Every time I sink into a slough of despond produced by the certain knowledge that the Anglican Church has a monopoly on batty priests, something turns up to give me a helping hand out of the mire. This time it’s in the form of Roman Catholic priest, Raymond Gravel, a man who is not only just as daft as the dottiest Anglican prelate but exceeds most in native deviousness.

Gravel was forced by the Vatican to relinquish his seat in parliament as a member of the Bloc Québécois; the Vatican does not allow priests to serve in public office – a restriction that can hardly have been news to Gravel when he first stood for the Bloc Québécois, even though he received a dispensation from his bishop to do so.

While an MP, he distinguished himself as a politician-priest chimera by opposing Bill C-484, which would have recognized injury of a foetus during a crime as a separate offence from an injury to the mother, and by supporting  abortionist Henry Morgentaler’s receiving the Order of Canada – all of this while claiming to be pro-life. He also supports same-sex marriage and homosexual priests; he used to be a homosexual prostitute but all that is now behind him – as it were.

Lifesite News has done its best to expose the duplicitous Gavel and, since he has now been booted out of his position as a catechist in the Quebec Diocese of Joliette, he has decided to sue someone. After astutely assessing his options, he decided that Lifesite News is an easier target than the Vatican, so he is suing them for $500,000 in damages.

If he wins, Lifesite News will be shut down: a loss for Christianity, the pro-life movement, free speech and the Catholic Church.

Read more here.

 

 

The important thing is unity

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Some interesting observations on ARCIC, the ecumenical gabfest between Anglicans and Catholics from the Catholic side here (my bold):

The trouble with ARCIC always was (as a former Catholic member of it once explained to me) that on the Catholic side of the table you have a body of men (mostly bishops) who represent a more or less coherent view, being members of a Church which has established means of knowing and declaring what it believes. On the Anglican side of the table you have a body of men (and it was only men, on both sides, in those days) the divisions between whom are just fundamental as, and sometimes a lot more fundamental than, those between any one of them and the Catholic representatives they faced: they all represented only themselves.

And they all, Catholics and Anglicans, quite simply belonged to very different kinds of institution. It isn’t just that Catholics and Anglicans believe different doctrines: it’s that there is between them a fundamental difference over their attitude to the entire doctrinal enterprise. I remember very vividly, in my days as an (Anglican) clergy member of the Chelmsford Diocesan Synod, a debate on one of the ARCIC documents followed by a vote on whether to recommend to the General Synod in London that it should be accepted. The document was accepted overwhelmingly. At lunchtime, standing at the bar with a number of clergy, I asked how they had voted; they had all voted affirmatively. I then asked them if they had read the document. None of them had; and most of them, it became clear, had little idea of what it contained. “Well”, I asked, puzzled, “why did you vote for it, then?”  “The point is,” one of them replied, “the important thing is unity. The RCs are frightfully keen on doctrine. You have to encourage them: so I voted for their document”. There you have it: what the late Mgr Graham Leonard, when he was still an Anglican bishop, once called “the doctrinal levity of the Church of England”.

And there you do have it: the important thing is the illusion of unity. The same affliction assails orthodox Anglicans who remain in the Anglican Church of Canada or TEC for the sake of supposed unity – the ACA, the ACI, the Wycliffe College bunch et al.: they are actually sacrificing their principles to an illusion.

How not to sell ice-cream to Catholics

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From here:Add an Image

Two ice cream adverts, one showing a pregnant nun and the other two male priests about to kiss, are facing a ban by the advertising watchdog after offending Roman Catholics.

The provocative slogan ‘immaculately conceived’ appears on the image of the nun eating from a pot of Antonio Federici Gelato Italiano.

Meanwhile, the picture of two men in cassocks and clerical collars, embracing with their lips inches apart, bears the words ‘we believe in salivation’.

The Advertising Standards Authority received complaints that the adverts, which have appeared in Grazia, Look and The Lady, are offensive to religious believers.

It has indicated the image of the nun is likely to be banned and is still investigating the advert featuring the priests.

British firm Antonio Federici said the adverts celebrated the ‘implied forbidden Italian temptations’ of the ice cream.

Creative director Matt O’Connor said the company would lose a substantial sum if it had to pull the campaign and was considering a legal challenge.

He said: ‘Only a tiny proportion of those who have seen the ads have made complaints. They seem to be upholding the views of a bigoted minority over the majority.’


Personally, I’m all in favour of free speech and would like to see an ad featuring a woman in a burka eating ice-cream – how is it done?

In the meantime, the Catholic Church could put out its own ice-cream ad. Something like this:

PQ leader outraged that Canadian Cardinal is too Catholic

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From the CBC:

Several female politicians and women’s rights activists have denounced anti-abortion remarks made by the Catholic Church’s top Canadian official over the weekend.

Cardinal Marc Ouellet, attending the Campagne Pro-Vie conference in Quebec City on Saturday, suggested that abortion can never be justified, even in cases where a woman has been raped.

He called abortion a “moral crime” as serious as murder.

Ouellet said he understands how a sexually assaulted woman has been traumatized and must be helped and that her attacker must be held accountable.

“But there is already a victim,” he said. “Must there be another one?”

Parti Québécois Leader Pauline Marois, Liberal cabinet minister Marguerite Blais and the president of the Quebec Women’s Federation have spoken out against Ouellet.

Marois, speaking to a weekend PQ policy conference, said she was “absolutely outraged” by the remarks, adding that the archbishop of Quebec was trying to undo rights that were won decades ago.

There’s nothing quite as enjoyable as the secular howl of indignation when a Christian is consistent.

The last temptation of Anglo-Catholics

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The Apostolic Constitution has been published to the delight of Anglo-Catholics. It allows married priests and, effectively, married bishops; it is clear that the Pope has, as Anglicans like to say, drawn the circle wide and thrown open the doors in his bid to attract Anglicans disgusted with their own denomination. Unlike Anglicans, though, he has managed to do this without the benefit of Conversation, Dialogue, the Listening Process or Indaba Groups: he just did it.

For the Anglicans who accept what the charitable view as a more than generous offer and the cynical as opportunistic poaching, I wonder how they will feel when the Pope acts – and he or his successor will – on something they don’t agree with. Presumably those who are tempted by the current offer were not sufficiently tempted by previous ones or they would already be Roman Catholic; which means they don’t believe that the Roman Catholic Church is the one true church. Or perhaps some of the RC specific dogma about Mary, the authority of the Pope or praying to the saints stuck in their craw. For the priests,  maybe it was the prospect of losing Anglo-Catholic paraphernalia – which now they can keep along with their wives; if that was the case, though, it seems like a shallow reason (well, apart from the wives) for resisting the call which has now become so compelling.

I have a friend who used to be an evangelical and converted to Roman Catholicism – mainly because he became convinced of the truth of transubstantiation. I asked him how he copes with some of the RC beliefs that are quite opposed to his previous views. His answer was that he ignores them – after all nothing is perfect. True enough, but I wonder how long Anglo-Catholic euphoria will last once the “Anglo” part fades under the weight of the Roman Magisterium.

Beware of the Anglo-Catholics

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In Brideshead Revisited, when Charles’s cousin Jasper advises him to “Beware of the Anglo-Catholics—they’re all sodomites with unpleasant accents. In fact, steer clear of all the religious groups; they do nothing but harm.”, I thought Evelyn Waugh was exercising poetic license, or at least exaggerating.

But perhaps not:

But property matters and theology are not the only stumbling blocks on the road to Rome. There is another elephant in the vestry. It is one that is not spoken about openly; it is suppressed by a potent mixture of political correctness and traditional church hypocrisy. But it’s high time it was aired. It is this: a very significant proportion, perhaps even a majority in some dioceses, of Anglo-Catholic clergy are homosexual men. Everyone with a ministry in the Church of England knows this.

Just what the Roman Catholic Church needs: more homosexual priests.

Nutty Roman Catholic Nuns

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Whenever I find myself mildly enticed by the Roman Catholic Church, I read something like this:

Dominican Sister Donna Quinn is serving as an escort at the ACU Health Center, a prominent abortion business in Hinsdale, Ill.

A recent photo in the Chicago Tribune pictured two older women, one of which was Sister Donna, wearing “Clinic Escort” vests outside the center, which proclaims on its website it “now offers the RU486 abortion pill.”

A check on Loyola University Chicago’s Women and Leadership Archives, Center for Women and Leadership and the National Coalition of American Nuns (NCAN) website, a group that opposes Church teachings on moral issues, finds Sister Donna helped to either co-found or organize different groups with feminist radical causes, actively advocating such causes as reproductive “choice,” specific rights for homosexual persons, and women’s ordination.

And I’m reassured that there is a flourishing barmy faction in the RC Church, much as Anglicanism – the difference in Anglicanism is that its Western expression is the barmy faction.