Nine Catholic Bishops Express Support to LGBTQ Kids

[progressive85]

I was raised Catholic and along with my family have left the church but this is heartwarming news:

A group of eight U.S. Catholic Bishops released a statement in support of LGBTQ+ people, saying that, “God created you, God loves you and God is on your side.” A ninth Bishop later signed on as well.

The group, which includes a cardinal and an archbishop, worked together with the Tyler Clementi Foundation, which fights against LGBTQ+ bullying in schools, work, and faith communities, to release the statement. The group includes Cardinal Joseph Tobin, archbishop of Newark, and Archbishop John Wester of Santa Fe.

https://www.advocate.com/religion/2021/1/25/us-catholic-bishops-people-goodwill-should-support-lgbt-youth

[progressive85]

What a day of positive steps forward... and trans soldiers can now serve their country proudly as who they are.  

[GALeftist]

Tradcath tears 😋

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Absolutely disgusting.

Excommunicate them.

What they said is what's written in the Bible though...

Absolutely nothing in this statement challenges or even addresses Catholic doctrine on same-sex sexual contact. The only reason why this is such a major step is that the American Church's default position on The Ell Gee Bee Tees for the past thirty or forty years has been boilerplate aw-shucks gay-bashing with a sacramentalized veneer.

[T'Chenka]

Absolutely disgusting.

Excommunicate them.

What they said is what's written in the Bible though...

Absolutely nothing in this statement challenges or even addresses Catholic doctrine on same-sex sexual contact. The only reason why this is such a major step is that the American Church's default position on The Ell Gee Bee Tees for the past thirty or forty years has been boilerplate aw-shucks gay-bashing with a sacramentalized veneer.

Agreed. Just wondering why Libtardo is so offended by "controversial" statements such as "God created you, God loves you".

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Absolutely disgusting.

Excommunicate them.

What they said is what's written in the Bible though...

Absolutely nothing in this statement challenges or even addresses Catholic doctrine on same-sex sexual contact. The only reason why this is such a major step is that the American Church's default position on The Ell Gee Bee Tees for the past thirty or forty years has been boilerplate aw-shucks gay-bashing with a sacramentalized veneer.

Agreed. Just wondering why Libtardo is so offended by such incredibly controversial statements as "God created you, God loves you".

I think we both know why.

[Badger]

Absolutely disgusting.

Excommunicate them.

Oh great. One of THESE newbies / socks

[Interlocutor is just not there yet]

Absolutely disgusting.

Excommunicate them.

Oh great. One of THESE newbies / socks

I give it a month before they either get bored or get banned

[Badger]

Absolutely disgusting.

Excommunicate them.

Oh great. One of THESE newbies / socks

I give it a month before they either get bored or get banned

LOL! I said almost exactly the same thing 2 minutes ago in another thread just before putting him on ignore.

Great minds think alike.

[PSOL]

This shouldn’t be congratulated as some sweeping change in 2021 here of all places

[Badger]

This shouldn’t be congratulated as some sweeping change in 2021 here of all places

It's the Catholic Church hierarchy. Baby steps.

[PSOL]

This shouldn’t be congratulated as some sweeping change in 2021 here of all places

It's the Catholic Church hierarchy. Baby steps.

Following public opinion now is like starting to crawl at 96. I’m not sure it means much to the masses, including Catholics, out there. Plus, the decentralized nature of the Church means that it means even less in socially conservative areas with high practicing Catholic populations.

[2952-0-0]

This shouldn’t be congratulated as some sweeping change in 2021 here of all places

It's the Catholic Church hierarchy. Baby steps.

Following public opinion now is like starting to crawl at 96. I’m not sure it means much to the masses, including Catholics, out there. Plus, the decentralized nature of the Church means that it means even less in socially conservative areas with high practicing Catholic populations.

Statements like these by members of the hierarchy do give license to those in the Church who want to stand up to the Rad Trad types, who have been sucking up all the oxygen in the Catholic ecosystem for years. Will the Rad Trads continue their tilting at the windmills? Of course. But it does give a green light to the silent majority in the pews.

[Badger]

The content of the statement amounts to little more than "gays are people made in the image of God, please don't bully them." It would only be controversial among the sort of Catholics who prefer that clergy stick to reminding teens that there is nothing gay about going to hell.

I never encountered the latter sentiment much in my own Catholic upbringing, even among people who accepted doctrine about the sinfulness of gay relations. There was a lot of homophobia in the air at the time, but almost all of it was secular, and those homophobic ideas were expressed in formulations adopted from partisan politics and pop culture. The homophobic taunts that my gay friends endured were lines from Adam Sandler comedies or Rush Limbaugh call-ins. No one knew or cared what Bishop Cunningham had to say on the subject.

True, but Bishop Cunningham coming out in favor of aggressively combating homophobia in Catholic Education gives father Simpson, the principle of Saint whoever license to aggressively Institute anti-gay bullying policies without having to simultaneously talk about pray away the gay and "love the sinner" BUT HATE THE SIN ( showing the traditional emphasis placed on each).

Again, while fully acknowledging is hardly place has the Catholic Church hierarchy in FF mode, baby steps. Not that I'm remotely about to leave the United Church of Christ for Catholicism in which I was raised, a large part of which being homophobia.

[Torie]

Does Catholic doctrine still assert that same sex attraction is "disordered?" I have used the right term there haven't I?  I appreciate their doctrine preaches love and compassion for the "disordered," but to be honest I find that rather condescending. That said, I don't really mind if others find me "disordered," as long as they do not advocate changing/using the law to punish me for it.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Does Catholic doctrine still assert that same sex attraction is "disordered?" I have used the right term there haven't I?  I appreciate their doctrine preaches love and compassion for the "disordered," but to be honest I find that rather condescending. That said, I don't really mind if others find me "disordered," as long as they do not advocate changing/using the law to punish me for it.

That's still the language in the catechism, yes. One of the various recent synods considered editing it but the most conservative bishops (for lack of a better way to put it) filibustered it.

The most conservative, anti-Francis, crypto-anti-Vatican-II wing of the Church, which is still a significant minority of the hierarchy and possibly a majority of the English-language Catholic press, is actually more intransigent and more openly bigoted on this subject than they were a decade or two ago, even though the center of gravity in the rest of the Church is incrementally shifting towards a more tolerant position.

[RI]

Does Catholic doctrine still assert that same sex attraction is "disordered?" I have used the right term there haven't I?  I appreciate their doctrine preaches love and compassion for the "disordered," but to be honest I find that rather condescending. That said, I don't really mind if others find me "disordered," as long as they do not advocate changing/using the law to punish me for it.

Catholicism doesn't use the word "disordered" in the sense it is casually or medically used, which implies some mental or psychological defect. The Catholic position is that SSA is objectively disordered because acting on it can only ever be sinful in any circumstance, unlike other sexual attractions which can, in proper context, not be sinful (other attractions may be "intrinsically disordered" such as a man's attraction to a married woman who isn't his wife, but this isn't "objectively disordered" as the sinfulness is context-dependent).

This position does not imply that the person experiencing SSA is "disordered" as that would be contrary to the Catholic definition of "disordered" which is expressly about the ends of an action. A person who experiences SSA is no more "disordered" than someone who experiences the temptation to commit any other sin.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Catholicism doesn't use the word "disordered" in the sense it is casually or medically used, which implies some mental or psychological defect. The Catholic position is that SSA is objectively disordered because acting on it can only ever be sinful in any circumstance, unlike other sexual attractions which can, in proper context, not be sinful (other attractions may be "intrinsically disordered" such as a man's attraction to a married woman who isn't his wife, but this isn't "objectively disordered" as the sinfulness is context-dependent).

But the catechism does use "intrinsically disordered" to describe homosexuality as well as "objectively disordered" and does not use either term to describe infidelity, which contributes to the inaccurate perception among both supporters and opponents of the doctrine that gay sex is taught to be "wronger" than adultery or straight fornication or whatever. This perception is why so many of the bishops at the family synod and the youth synod wanted the language amended.