Interact: Archive for May, 2010

Cardinal George denied Communion to women and men on Pentecost Sunday who wore a Rainbow Sash.  Read more about it here.

Pardon me, but I thought Communion could be denied to individuals in grave mortal sin, not people who are homosexual per se… I guess presenting yourself for Communion as a homosexual qualifies as a “grave mortal sin.” At least, to Cardinal George.

The US Rainbow Sash Movement was founded in England. The US branch was founded by a man named Joe Murray. The mission of the Rainbow Sash is to begin a dialogue within the Church about human sexuality, and the dignity of LGBT people. Members of the Rainbow Sash are encouraged to be active in their local parishes. “The best way to correct false impressions is to let your spiritual neighbor know you.”

Members of the movement wear rainbow sashes on Pentecost Sunday every year because Pentecost is a celebration of the whole Church. “The Bishops response to our form of self-identication has been to refuse us the Holy Eucharist. They claim by self-identifying we are protesting, so if we remain hidden we can receive the body and blood of Christ. In light of what the Catechism says that homosexual people ‘must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard must be avoided’ (CCC2358). There is something morally incoherent about that position.”

Matt C. Abbott, a blogger at the anti-Democrat, ultra-doxy Catholic blog, Renew America had this to say: “The sad thing is, gay activists hate the Church because she teaches homosexual activity is sinful. Period. And it really doesn’t matter how thoughtfully that teaching is presented; they still reject it. Now, I do have compassion for those who are striving to live a chaste life. Let’s face it: it’s an extremely difficult task in this sex-saturated society. (Those who suffer from same-sex attraction may find the group Courage to be of help.) But I don’t have compassion for those who champion the so-called right to kill a child in the womb, or for those who champion a filthy, disease-ridden lifestyle that is contrary to the natural and divine law. “  He ends with an immature:  “So there.”

“So there” means what? It’s OK for you to make grossly general and misleading statements and feel you are a good and holy Catholic?

“In the gay (Catholic) community, it would seem, the maxim is: love the sin and love the sinner, but hate anyone who calls it a sin or sinner.”

What do you feel about Fr. Neuhaus’ statement? Do we “hate” people who think we are “sinnners;” especially those who say so from public pulpits?

Bishop Geoffrey Robinson, Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Sydney, Emeritus blames the absence of women from church life as a catalyst for the sexual abuse crisis.

In an April 2010 interview with The Australian Women’s Weekly, Bishop Robinson, 73, says boys suffered more than girls at the hands of pedophile priests partly because they were more available to them, with nuns tending to play a greater role in the religious education of young girls.

There was also a view among some offenders with whom he had worked that a priest’s celibacy vows weren’t broken if a boy was involved. We’ve met it often enough to see if as a factor,” he told the magazine. “That’s what the vow of celibacy refers to, being married. If it’s not an adult woman, then somehow they’re not breaking their vow.”

Bishop Robinson said getting women more involved in church life is a crucial step forward. “If the feminine had been given greater importance and a much larger voice, the church would not have seen anything like the same level of abuse and would most certainly have responded to it better.”

He believes the sexual abuse issue will not be properly dealt with until the church holds a council, or a conference of all the bishops in the church, to revise the centuries-old doctrine on celibacy, women and sexuality.In his book, Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church, Bishop Robinson said the response of the church, especially the Vatican, to the sexual abuse crisis did not go deep enough. “The most profound factor about sex is that the church has had a morality for 2000 years based on offences against God and I find that quite inadequate. I ask if we should move to a morality based on relationships, on good and harm to people.”

He suggests there is “a crying need” in the Catholic Church to reconsider such issues as sex outside marriage, contraception and homosexuality. “The responsibility appropriate to adults must not be reduced to the obedience appropriate to children, and too often that happens in the church. I don’t think God does that.”

 ”I’m aware of how radical the call I’m making is. I’m looking for a very different church.”

His website is here.

Cynthia Nixon told Advocate magazine she loves her girlfriend, Christine Marinoni, because “she’s like a short man with boobs. A lot of what I love about her is her butchness.”

The “Sex and the City” star, who fell in love and came out as a lesbian in 2004, also said her kids had accepted their relationship, which is the opposite of what it appears. “My daughter said…(it looks like) she would be butch and I would be femme…but really once you get to know us, it’s really quite the opposite.”

Nixon has two children with her previous partner, photographer Danny Mozes, with whom she lived for 16 years. She says the children call her “Mommy” and call Christine, who stays home with them all day, “Ma.”

The two women met in 2001, when both were working on a school-issue campaign, and became friends before they started dating. Nixon admits that at first she tried to keep the relationship under wraps.

“If anybody, prior to my meeting and falling in love with Christine, had asked me about what I think about sexuality, I would have said I think we’re all bisexual. But I had that point of view without ever having felt attracted to a woman. I had never met a woman I was attracted to (before Christine). And maybe if I’d met her when I was 20, I would have fallen in love and only dated women. But maybe if I’d met her at 20, I wouldn’t have responded at all.  Who knows?”

The head of the Austrian Church has launched an attack of one of the most senior cardinals in the Vatican, saying that Cardinal Angelo Sodano, dean of the College of Cardinals, “deeply wronged” the victims of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy when he dismissed media reports of the scandal.

 In a meeting with editors of the main Austrian daily newspapers last week, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, the Archbishop of Vienna, also said the Roman Curia was “urgently in need of reform”, and that lasting gay relationships deserved respect. He reiterated his view that the Church needs to reconsider its position on re-married divorcees.

On Easter Day, Cardinal Sodano called the mounting reports of clerical sex abuse “petty gossip”. This had “deeply wronged the victims”, Cardinal Schönborn said, and he recalled that it was Cardinal Sodano who had prevented Joseph Ratzinger, then a cardinal, from investigating allegations of abuse made against Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer, the previous Archbishop of Vienna, who resigned in disgrace in 1995.

Questioned on the Church’s attitude to homosexuals, the cardinal said: “We should give more consideration to the quality of homosexual relationships,” adding: “A stable relationship is certainly better than if someone chooses to be promiscuous.”

The cardinal also said the Church needed to reconsider its view of re-married divorcees “as many people don’t even marry at all any longer”.

The primary thing to consider should not be the sin, but people’s striving to live according to the commandments, he said. Instead of a morality based on duty, we should work towards a morality based on happiness, he continued.

The Vatican press spokesman, Fr Federico Lombardi, praised the Austrian Church for its openness in dealing with the clerical abuse crisis and told the Austrian daily Kurier on Monday that Cardinal Sodano’s words at Easter were “certainly not the wisest”.