To all the Catholics on my f-list - Non-Catholics, stay the Hell away or you WILL be offended

[fpb]

There is a priest in Boulder, Colorado, who is under vicious, systematic, directed attack because he is keeping the teachings of the Church and the orders of his Bishop. I have some experience of how it feels like to be at the wrong (or is it?) end of the kind of vile hatred that is being directed at this man. So I tell the Catholics and Christians on my f-list: follow this link and do what it says - http://wdtprs.com/blog/2010/03/to-arms-denver-priest-attacked-for-being-obedient-poll-alert/ - and then go to the priest's own blog and register a personal message of support. While a good man has enough in himself to stand up for the Church even to martyrdom - and to be fair, that does not yet seem to be the case here - anyone who is subjected to hundreds of direct sexually explicit threats can do with kind words from a distant country.

Comments

[expectare.livejournal.com]

Okay, here is what I do not understand. All people are sinners. Homosexuality is a sin. Sins, including homosexuality, are against the teachings of the Catholic Church. So, homosexuality disqualifies you from sending your children to this schools. Granted, yes?

So why do they accept any students? All parents are human, so by definition they are living in discord with Catholic teaching.

[expectare.livejournal.com]

also, what do they do with kids of divorced parents? Especially in Boulder!

[fpb.livejournal.com]

The assault on the Christian doctrine of sexuality is something more and more serious than the assault on the sacrament of marriage. It is on an intellectual plane, not on a plane of mere lust, that it is Satanic: it is a denial that our being born of flesh and blood has anything to do with our nature. If shagging anything in sight does not affect our nature, then sexual division is not significant to our nature, and this contradicts the Bible and the Church: Let us make Man in our resemblance - Male and Female He created them - That which God has put together let no man take asunder. And if our body has no ultimate significance for our nature, why were we promised resurrection of the flesh?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

The priest himself explained the situation at length in his blog. I have nothing to add to what he said, but since you are unwilling to make the effort to read, and instead come to me as though obedience to Church law were my own private problem, here are a few considerations.

1) If children are being brought up in a way that itself contradicts the teachings of the Church on the nature of man and of the sexes, to send them to a Catholic school is worse than useless.
2) Furthermore, you are not so stupid as not to imagine what would happen the moment the child came home after a lesson on the nature of marriage: every liberal lawyer and journalist in Colorado would be sicced on church and school.
3) That the adopted children of gay couples are not admissible to Catholic schools is not news: it is an established rule, and I blogged about it five years ago (http://fpb.livejournal.com/138154.html); this Boulder bullying is another instance of the classic "progressive" tactic of "discovering" something that had been the rule, and rousing the ire of an ignorant public.
4) Finally, as an army officer to be, I would remind you of the importance of abiding by standing orders and obeying your CO. Archbishop Chaput is this priest's CO, the Pope his C-in-C, and the Church his army, and he is doing his duty.

P.S.: uh-oh...

[fpb.livejournal.com]

The link in this comment is wrong. For the correct version, scroll up to my response to stigandnasty919

[expectare.livejournal.com]

I was asking a question. You gave me an assholish lecture. You know, you should REALLY just tone down the self-righteousness.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

You asked that I should answer for the Church. When I did so, you were not happy. I remind you that the Church is not a discussion society.

[expectare.livejournal.com]

Oh, for the love of God.

1. Do you think I'd really just waltz up and demand you to justify doctrine that I know better than you do?
2. Am I the type of person that "is unwilling to read"?
3. Do you think I am unfamiliar with the concept of the Church militant?
4. Do you think I need "reminding" of any part of my profession?

Part of you knows the answer to these questions. The dominant part just wants a flame war. You know where you can shove that.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

If you start asking "questions" about church doctrine and church discipline, I cannot assume that you intend to be faithful to them.

And I am not the one who is using vituperative language and threats of flamewars.

[expectare.livejournal.com]

Answer all my questions, yes or no.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

You are both aggressive and rude, and I cannot imagine why. And no, why should I? I have supplied you with plenty of links - to the original story, which in turn leads to the priest's own blog, to my own post on a similar situation five years ago, to a post on the same matter by a learned canonist who certainly knows more than both of us - if you want to argue, you have plenty to argue against. And this is not a suitable place for you to try and impose your authority.

"Answer all my questions, yes or no."

[fpb.livejournal.com]

1) You did, and I cannot imagine why.
2) You did not go and read the priest's own blog, or if you did, you acted exactly as if you did not.
3) Until now, I did not.
4) That is why I brought it up. Because it was something you would understand immediately and without discussion.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

About Church teaching on this matter:
http://www.canonlaw.info/a_samesex.htm

[expectare.livejournal.com]

See, THIS was all you had to say, and this was actually what I was looking for. Instead, you were a jerk and insulted me and my motivations repeatedly. Apparently the past two years of knowing me are irrelevant when you are on an ego trip.

[johncwright.livejournal.com]

Well, except he answered your question in clear prose, and his answer was no more assholish than your question, in my opinion. It is not as if you meant that question to be taken seriously.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Kate is actually a devout Catholic as well as an army cadet. I don't know what she was trying to do with this question, but I honestly don't think she intended to undermine the Church or me.

[geeklady.livejournal.com]

You can't equate sin and "against the teaching of the Church". Sin is an action, Church teaching is an abstract truth. You can't just put one on each side of an equation. You can sin and still live in accordance with the teachings of the Church, this is what the Sacrament of Reconciliation is for, because we can't help sinning. But Reconciliation does require us to turn away from our sins.

Homosexuality is not the disqualifier here, but persistence in sin in defiance of the teachings of the Church.

And I believe the same metric can and should be applied to children whose parents are known to not married, or to have divorced and remarried after an otherwise sacramentally valid marriage, or who conceive their children through immoral fertility treatments, all of which disdain the teachings of the Church on the sacrament. However these things are not plainly observable in the fashion that a same sex couple parenting a child is. While they may violate the teachings of the Church, they may also be hidden from casual observation.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[geeklady.livejournal.com]

Any time.

[expectare.livejournal.com]

However these things are not plainly observable in the fashion that a same sex couple parenting a child is.

This makes sense. Although now that they've done this, they should also go and figure out whose parents are adamantly pro-choice, pro-embryonic stem cell research, and who have sacramentally invalid marriages, and kick their kids out, too. You can't implement a policy like that and go by halves.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

The invention of "gay marriage" is not a sin in the same level as even the worst sins of lust. In a sense, it goes beyond them, by denying that our corporeal being, our being of flesh, has anything to do with our essential self. We can be "married" to anything that thinks, because only the non-corporeal mind is really married - anything else is mindless flesh, to be indulged or neglected as the case may be, but at any rate having nothing to do with our essential selves. This is a direct denial of the Catholic doctrine of mankind, of which the sacrament of marriage is only a part; it denies just as thoroughly, for instance, the sacrament of Anointing the Sick, since it denies the hope offered to the dying of being reborn in the flesh. Thus, while homosexual lust as such is a lust like any other (as I argued a few weeks ago), nonetheless the invention of "homosexual marriage" has made the matter of cohabitation and "gay couples" with their own adopted children something that goes well beyond even the promotion of lust for its own sake.

[geeklady.livejournal.com]

It's a parish school, not the inquisition. Their mission is to provide a Catholic education, and the diocesan policies exist to protect and promote their ability to do so. They are limited by what is publicly known. They have neither the resources nor the right to ferret out every iota of defiance of Church teaching.

Furthermore, it should also be noted that in every situation we've listed so far, the possibility exists for reconciliation - except for a same sex relationship. Marriages may be regularized, opinions may be changed, but nothing can bring a same sex relationship into line with the teachings of the Church. It is as diametrically opposed as it is possible to be.

Finally, you need to understand how thoroughly fatiguing and frustrating it is to constantly have members of your faith harassed in the name of tolerance. I know it makes me want to hit something, and while I cannot speak for others I suspect I am not alone. To drop a comment like your first onto a post where the author gives ample warning signs that he is not in the mood to cope with impertinent and incorrect comments about parish school attendance requirements is unwise.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

To be fair, Kate is actually a Catholic herself. That is what stunned me.

[geeklady.livejournal.com]

I apologies, I'm not good at picking up this type of contextual information.

[geeklady.livejournal.com]

also I cannot compose sentences coherently anymore. That should read "my apologies"