Another?. . .

(from https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/vatican-office-calls-gender-theory-confused-concept-guide-catholic-schools-n1015846)

". . . The Vatican office that lays down the official line for Roman Catholic educational institutions released a new document Monday that dismisses the scientifically accepted idea that gender identity is fluid as “nothing more than a confused concept of freedom in the realm of feelings and wants.”. . . 

Bearing the title “Male and female he created them” and signed by the Congregation’s leaders, Cardinal Giuseppe Versaldi and Archbishop Angelo Zani, the 31-page document was released as LGBTQ people around the world are celebrating pride month. . ."

(from https://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/31/world/after-350-years-vatican-says-galileo-was-right-it-moves.html)

". . . More than 350 years after the Roman Catholic Church condemned Galileo, Pope John Paul II is poised to rectify one of the Church's most infamous wrongs -- the persecution of the Italian astronomer and physicist for proving the Earth moves around the Sun. . . )

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Catholic . . .

". . . comprehensive, universal; especially :  broad in sympathies, tastes, or interests <a catholic taste in music. . ."

". . . was first used to describe the Christian Church in the early 2nd century to emphasize its universal scope. . ."

". . .including a wide variety of things; all-embracing . . ."

". . . universal or of general interest. . . "

". . . liberal, having broad interests, or wide sympathies . . ."


. . . so what happened? . . .
(thanks to www.wikipedia.com and www.merriam-webster.com)

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Birth . . .

 (from Born of a Woman by John Shelby Spong)
". . . These are the issues that are argued among the scholars. No one in scholarly circles that I know of, however, is willing to defend the historicity or the literalness of the virgin birth story! Continued belief in a literal, biological virgin birth for Jesus of Nazareth is based only on a faith or a dogmatic commitment. It cannot rest on the evidence. Such a belief is no longer defended on the basis of Scripture, not even by Roman Catholic scholars, who have much more invested theologically in this possibility than Protestant Christians do.

The fact that these ideas are commonplace among the biblical scholars of our world and yet are all but unknown among the average worshipers in either church or synagogue is, in my opinion, scandalous. It cannot help but be a reflection of the ecclesiastical hierarchy's fear that such knowledge, if broadly shared, would render the faithful faithless.  Conservative bishops and priests content themselves by asserting that biblical scholarship is an ever-changing, inexact science that cannot be counted on for final answers. They argue that we must, therefore, trust the church's historic teaching authority. It is a weak and almost pathetic argument. . . "

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Accept . . .

The Vatican is finally admitting that a group they formerly chose to strongly repress now has "gifts and qualities to offer". A newly released document asked if Catholicism could accept gays and recognize positive aspects of same-sex couples. Church conservatives called it a betrayal of traditional family values, you know, those VALUES that require repression of SOME group of individuals that they barely know and absolutely do NOT understand.

John Smeaton, co-founder of the conservative group Voice of the Family, said: "Those who are controlling the synod have betrayed Catholic parents worldwide." He failed to explain precisely how they accomplished that or how any of this relates to parents or children. He called it "one of the worst official documents drafted in Church history".

He conveniently forgot about the documents that denounced contraceptives, premarital sex, masturbation, abortion, artificial insemination, voluntary sterilization, lifelong celibacy for priests, nuns, and monks – and all others who never marry. Occasionally, the Church even shows signs of its old opposition to “bad thoughts” about sex (i.e., thoughts associating sex with pleasure), and to marital acts of sexual intercourse engaged in for pleasure rather than procreation. As recently as Pope John Paul II, husbands were urged “not to commit adultery with their wives by desiring sex for its mere pleasure and the satisfaction of instinct”

Hopefully the Catholic church will continue this evolution toward the proper direction and stop marginalizing those who are DIFFERENT from them, or formerly marginalized in an age of ignorance or pre-scientific knowledge.

(sources: http://humanismbyjoe.co/catholic-sex/ and http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/vatican-document-gays-have-gifts-qualities-offer-church-n224691)

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Fall Like. . .

. . . a house of cards

(thanks to http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/09/19/20580271-pope-francis-says-church-cannot-focus-only-on-abortion-and-gay-marriage?lite)
I'm no holdout rooting for the preservation of the Catholic Church, but it can only be good news that the organization now has a man in charge who appears to be logical, reasonable and totally human.  His latest comments about the church's preoccupation with abortion, contraception and gay marriage being revisited further drives home this point.

The Pope spoke of finding a 'new balance' adding that "Otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards. . . " He also said, quite eloquently I might add, “A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: ‘Tell me: When God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?’ We must always consider the person.”


TUMBLING DOWN
©1994 Raymond M. Jozwiak





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Apology. . .

. . . really?. . .

Like the Catholic church in 1992, an overdue, yet impotent apology. . .

(from http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/14/showbiz/lance-armstrong-interview/index.html)
". . . For more than a decade, Armstrong has denied he used performance-enhancing drugs, but he was linked to a doping scandal by nearly a dozen other former cyclists who have admitted to doping. What Armstrong said or did not say to Winfrey could have ramifications. Some media outlets have reported that Armstrong has been strongly considering the possibility of a confession, possibly as a way to stem the tide of fleeing sponsors and as part of a long-term redemptive comeback plan. But such a confession might lend weight to the lawsuits that could await him. . . "


(from http://4thefirsttime.blogspot.com/2007/09/1992-catholic-church-apologizes-to.html
". . . 1992: Catholic Church apologizes to Galileo, who died in 1642
In 1610, Century Italian astronomer/mathematician/inventor Galileo Galilei used a a telescope he built to observe the solar system, and deduced that the planets orbit the sun, not the earth. This contradicted Church teachings, and some of the clergy accused Galileo of heresy. One friar went to the Inquisition, the Church court that investigated charges of heresy, and formally accused Galileo. . . Soon, Galileo wrote up a similar dialogue called "Dialogue on the Two Great Systems of the World." This book talked about the Copernican system. "Dialogue" was an immediate hit with the public, but not, of course, with the Church. The pope suspected that he was the model for Simplicio. He ordered the book banned, and also ordered Galileo to appear before the Inquisition in Rome for the crime of teaching the Copernican theory after being ordered not to do so. Galileo was 68 years old and sick. Threatened with torture, he publicly confessed that he had been wrong to have said that the Earth moves around the Sun. Legend then has it that after his confession, Galileo quietly whispered "And yet, it moves." Unlike many less famous prisoners, Galileo was allowed to live under house arrest. Until his death in 1642, he continued to investigate science, and even published a book on force and motion after he had become blind. . ."

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Harsh? . . .

. . . yes.  But I feel better.

 To William Lori (archbishop of the archdiocese of Baltimore),

First, you must understand that there are people who are devout, practicing Catholics and there are people who are NOT.  Accept them all as human beings possessed of the dignity and deserving of every right and privilege that entails. And that means equally and without discrimination.

While you say and think that your right to practice your religion freely is being obstructed, I say that you are deceitful.  In pretending that your hospitals or other healthcare facilities offer 'healthcare' services to everyone without discrimination and then refusing to provide your very own employees (who carry out the tasks that make those services possible) healthcare that any and all 21st century rational people would expect to receive, makes you little more than a hypocrite.

You blatantly claim that your 'dogma' prohibits you from offering birth control or abortion services to your very own staff, yet you will happily accept federal funds and claim that your ineligibility to receive those funds is the government prohibiting your RELIGIOUS FREEDOM???!!!  This stance reveals that you are pre-scientific, tribal and irrational. 

Please wake up, read, think, digest and bring yourself up to date.  The year is 2012, not 1600.

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Control . . .

. . . in the name of WHAT? . . .

 Susan Reimer, columnist of the Baltimore Sun wrote the other day about the Catholic church. She wrote about birth control pills being forbidden, opposition to any legal standing for gay people, even opposition to their own nuns' spending too much time on social justice issues and not enough time pounding home the message about birth control and abortion.

And now, the case of Amanda Dougherty.  Anna, a student at a Catholic high school outside Philadelphia, had the dress, the shoes, the ticket and the guy for her junior prom. Until the guy backed out. She was determined to pin a smile on her face and go anyway, to have fun with her friends. Healthy attitude right?  Wrong!  The school and the archdiocese told her that she couldn't go without a date. "For them to say that we're not good enough to go unless we have a guy standing next to us, it's just kind of sickening," Amanda told a CBS reporter. In a statement, Catholic school officials said there were plenty of high school events a student could attend without a date, "but we view the prom as a special social event where a date is required to attend."

And an Indiana teacher at a Catholic school found that her contract had not been renewed after she asked for some time off to pursue a second in vitro fertilization. When Emily Herx of Fort Wayne pointed out that her supervisor not only knew of her first attempt but was praying for its success, and that no embryos were destroyed or frozen, the monsignor in the parish told her she was a "grave, immoral sinner" anyway.

Why is the Catholic Church increasing their stress of doctrine in a world already full of religious extremists of all stripes? Why would it stifle it's own inner circle which serves the weak and defends their rights? Why would it wound the faithful at their most vulnerable moments? Why does it exclude, when it could embrace?

According to their own scripture, Jesus said,  "I have come that you might have life and have it abundantly."  He also said: "By this shall men know that you are my disciples; not that you pass the test of traditional orthodoxy, but that you love; and in loving bear witness that you can give of the life that you have received."  Personally, I like that.

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Growth, maturity, evolution. . .

(From "Reflections on the Art of Living", A Joseph Campbell Companion, Selected and Edited by Diane K. Osbon, © 1991 The Joseph Campbell Foundation)

". . . When I was about sixteen years old, in prep school, and knew I was losing my childhood faith, I resolved that I would not quite the Catholic Church until I knew why I was quitting, that is to say, until I had dissolved the symbols and knew what they referred to and meant.  The whole thing wasn't over until I was twenty-five years old and in Germany.  I spent nine years working everything out, and then it just dropped off like a worn-out shirt.  That's the knowing thing.  If you don't know what the hell that symbol is saying to you, then it's just there as a command, and there is going to be more and more of this hanging on.  If you can't use your mind in this rather complex field, I don't know how you are going to work it out.

You become mature
when you become the authority for your own life.

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