Ireland Gay Marriage Vote Is A 'Defeat For Humanity,' Vatican Official Says
Cardinal Pietro Parolin said he personally was saddened by the landslide decision, in which more than 62 percent of voters in the Roman Catholic country voted "yes," despite church teaching that marriage is only between a man and woman.
In comments to reporters Tuesday evening, Parolin referred to remarks by the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, that results showed the church needed to do a "reality check." Parolin said the church needs to acknowledge the reality "but in the sense of reinforcing its commitment to evangelization."
He said: "I don't think you can speak only about a defeat for Christian principles but a defeat for humanity."
19 comments:
When I saw the headline, I assumed it would be Card Burke or one of the other Cardinals that usually speak out for orthodoxy. My jaw dropped when I saw it was Parolin, good for him.
Actually, Fr. This is better. The Pope reserves his effort for the counter to the enemy's center of gravity. I hope he coordinates responses with several bishops in Asia, Africa, Central America and the U.S. The EU needs to be allowed to follow this trajectory to lead us out of this flawed idea, as they have reliably done in the past.
Father, have you seen the article about the secret meeting to sway the synod in the National Catholic Register Daily today? It is very interesting, though sadly not surprising.
I hope everyone is paying attention to those who are discussing whether the pope has actually formally drifted into formal heresy. See the Harvesting the Fruit Blog and Creative Minortiy Report.
Lefebvrian, I have been paying attention to that, he did not proclaim (but was very darned close) heresy (clear from context he was speaking about the devil and not God). He really needs to watch what he's saying....Though we as lay people have zero authority to depose him, we always need to remember that.
I don't see the idea that he was using the devil's understanding as ecclesiology as a real excuse for what he said. The devil is the father of lies, as you know, and not a source for dogmatic exactitude.
In light of the ongoing and probably unstoppable moral decay in the West---whether we speak of North America or Europe---it is no wonder Christians---certainly Catholics and Anglicans---are looking to Africa for future growth and to promote a culture where "anything does not go!" Even the Vatican is surrounded by a culturally hostile "anything goes" Italy." Should the Pope relocate to Africa? Maybe instead of "Roman" Catholics, we would be "African" Catholic or "Nigeria Catholic" Lest we forget, Christians were first called such in Antioch, not Rome.
When one looks at the video and of course this pope talks too much and way too much off the cuff and without precision, His Holiness states the obvious. Satan doesn't want anyone to give glory to God and Protestants are a part of the Catholic Church though not in full communion but there is unity on some things.
The devil causes disunity but God can bring good out of what the devil causes. I did not hear indifferentism here but a oneness with these Protestants on that in which we are one. Evangelicals, especially Pentecostals and charismatics have a very keen understanding of the devil and practice deliverance from the devil. People's lives have been changed through their conversion experiences, lives that were in league with the devil changed. That isn't evil that is good.
Fruit blog and creative minority are fear mongering blogs and appeal to the base instincts of insecure traditionalists a faux conservative catholics--really post-Catholics at the other end of the spectrum from the progressives.
Well, Fr, there are some theological issues here that are important. In many ways protestants and Catholics are not "one." Protestants are Catholics in prospect…pentecostals and charismatics lean heavily toward subjectivism and the Enthusiast heresy.
I have always been troubled theologically by so-called Catholic charismatics, almost a contradiction in terms. Again, the Pope uses careless language and imprecise theological constructs. So, what should we give up to bring protestants in, really, I am serious. I would like a concrete answer from some of you Priests and "ecumenical" whores as to just what doctrinal beliefs and aspects of the Catholic Church you are willing to give up to get protestants in. The vast majority of protestants do not accept the Real Presence, abhor the Papacy, believe we worship Mary, reject the concept of the Priesthood, strongly believe Total Depravity and Irresistable Grace, and many do not believe Baptism is absolutely necessary for salvation. So, where do we begin…seriously?
I have no illusions about corporate unity with Evangelicals. We may well receive converts from them if they take a closer look and study the Fathers. The way to corporate unity is happening though with the Anglican Ordinariate and the Eastern Rites. With high Lutherans there could be a Lutheran Ordinariate. As With the Anglicans and eastern rites, they have to accept all the Councils of the Church and papal infallible pronouncements.
"Genesenist" said: I would like a concrete answer from some of you Priests and "ecumenical" whores as to just what doctrinal beliefs and aspects of the Catholic Church you are willing to give up to get protestants in.
"Ecumenical Whores"
Two comments: First "Any comment that is vitriolic and disrespectful of the laity in general, and Pope Francis, bishops and priests in particular will not be posted!" The FARCE continues.
Second - Good ol' Gene goes from absent to adolescent vulgarity in record time.
If you think that Protestants are part of the Catholic Church but not in "full communion," then you have also fallen into this same heresy.
Does not God want us to obey His Holy laws? He wants us to obey them out of love and respect for Him. It is for our own good to do so because disobedience to His ordinances can bring serious consequences, even spiritual death and Eternal damnation. We obey the physical laws of God's creation. We do so because not obeying them can bring immediate and possibly life-altering consequences. The laws that govern electricity are good because in properly respecting their nature and employing their power according to verified principles, we derive great benefit. If, however, we do not respect the laws governing electricity, it can result in seriously injury and even death. Fire has provided great benefit in the history of man but it has consumed and destroyed when it was not given proper respect.
There are immediate consequences that are experienced when God's PHYSICAL laws are not respected. This is often not the case when God's spiritual laws are disobeyed. If the consequences of disobeying God's spiritual laws were immediate, then man would obey - not out of respect for God- but rather for the law itself. It is because of God's Divine Mercy and His love for us that we do not suffer immediate judgement and repercussion, since the consequences of transgressing his Holy precepts can be very severe, and if serious enough, result in eternal punishment. God, because He is merciful and desires that man be saved, and to be with Him forever in the Eternal Heaven, gives man the opportunity to realize and acknowledge his offenses in the here and now, and to repent,confess, and do penance to atone for them before facing His Judgement.
I think Jansenist hit close to the answer when he ran the short litany of "objections" Protestants have. It is a common mistake to let your tactics destroy your strategy by responding to each point of resistance of your opponent. The opponent can win, even with inferior arms, if he only puts up enough that you become confused or exhausted and eventually run out of time or balance and stumble and wins at the buzzer. Stick to your basics and put them out for the opponent to match his information against. You have only to prepare deeper explanation of the same points and his arguments will crumble in his own mind and be replaced by the Truth, such that reason will make a place for revelation.
Whores is a Biblical word. Check it out.
Lefevrian, I agree with you, there's no real excuse for what was said. I tend to be of the opinion that the less he speaks, the better off we'll be.
In 1962, when I was 11 years old, we moved to a village just outside Grantham in Lincolnshire. The Anglican rector paid us a visit. On being informed by my mother that we were Catholic, he said 'We regard ourselves as Catholics too'. In those days the Established Church was still self-confident and many Anglicans had a condescending attitude to 'Roman Catholics', exacerbated by the fact that many 'RCs' were Irish and working-class. Catholics for their part kept aloof. We were strictly forbidden by the Bishops to attend non-Catholic services. At my school we did not attend the religious part of morning assembly, nor the school carol service in the medieval parish church, nor the Founder's Day service. Ironically the founder was a pre-Reformation Catholic bishop (Foxe of Winchester). On Holy Days of Obligation we were excused morning school and were marched to the Catholic church by the only Catholic master.
This changed abruptly in 1965. The bishop ruled that we no longer needed to exclude ourselves. Singing the same Christmas carols and hearing the same readings in the company of Protestants was no longer a mortal sin. Over the next four years I became familiar with the traditional Anglican hymns as set forth in the Public School Hymn Book. I learned the Stanford Te Deum which I can still sing from memory whereas I need the text and notation to sing the plainchant Latin version (we don't sing it that often). Some Catholics I knew at university (Durham, another ecclesiastical foundation) flirted with High Anglicanism; I did not do so but after my first year I gave up attending Mass, repelled by the banality of the liturgy. I remained intellectually convinced of the truth of the Catholic faith, but the gulf between the lex credendi and lex orandi was too great. It was not the TLM that got me practising again - in the early 1970s it was celebrated only rarely - but the Novus Ordo celebrated reverently with Latin, which I encountered in London and at the parish church in Mansfield, Notts. where I worked from 1973 to 1977 (the parish priest was notably traditional in outlook, which did not go down well with his more liberal parishioners).
Anglicans I knew were unhappy with the liberal drift of their own Church. Some were Anglo-Catholics but others were traditional 'Prayer Book' Protestants appalled at the modern replacements for Cranmer's sonorous English. Meanwhile Anglicanism lost much of its prestige and many of its congregants. The rising tide of secularism, and the Church of England's stance on many issues (women priests and bishops, homosexuality and so on) has inflicted grave wounds not just on the Anglican Communion itself, but on the prospects for Christian unity. The Catholic Church is not in a position to indulge in Schadenfreude or smug superiority. I welcomed the ecumenism of the 1960s and think that it is needed now more than ever. The prospects of formal unity have receded, but there is surely more to ecumenism than that. There is a lot of common ground. There are undoubtedly more heretics and de facto schismatics in visible communion with Rome than there are in the Church of England, so polemics and name-calling are not seemly.
Sorry about the length of this post and the biographical detail. I also realize that the situation in England and Wales, where an established and notionally Protestant Church occupies all the medieval Catholic churches and cathedrals, is not analogous to the situation in North America.
For a good, simplistic explanation of the problems with modern "ecumenism," here is a short video from the SSPX.
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