Sometimes two news stories collide in such a way as to tell you everything you wanted to know about an issue. That’s the case with two recent events involving the Catholic hierarchy. In a nutshell, the two stories illustrates all the misplaced priorities that drive the Church on gay issues.
Story one. A nonprofit group dedicated to helping immigrant workers has had its funding from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development cut off because the group is a member of a national organization that supports marriage equality. Voz Workers’ Rights Education, based in Portland, OR, is a member of the National Council of La Raza, a leading Latino civil rights organization that believes in marriage equality. That connection alone is enough for the bishops to pull funding from the Portland group, after demanding that the group resign from NCLR. (To its credit, Voz refused.)
“It’s certainly difficult and painful, because Voz has done some tremendous work,” Catholic Campaign director Ralph McCloud said. But the Church would rather punish immigrant workers because Voz has a one-off connection with a group that supports the LGBT community. Voz is just the latest group to take a financial hit because it had a remote connection to marriage equality. A Chicago group that helped poor kids get bicycles lost its funding for the same reason.
Story two. Meanwhile, if you’re a world-class hypocrite who also happens to be a bishop, you get to retire quite comfortable. Scottish Cardinal Keith O’Brien, one of the loudest homophobes in the Church, was forced to step down after he admitted to having sex with other men, including a long-time priest boyfriend. So is O’Brien suffering the same type of deprivation that immigrant workers in Oregon will? Of course not. The Scottish Church just bought him a nice little bungalow that cost the equivalent of more than $350,000 in U.S. dollars. Apparently a monastic cell wasn’t good enough for O’Brien (or perhaps the proximity of other clergymen was too tempting).
How about we take this to the next level?
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The archdiocese that includes Edinburgh said that the “price was within the cost range of other purchases for retired clergy housing.
To sum up: doing good deeds isn’t enough to guarantee that the Church will give you money. But doing bad deeds is.
Pope Francis has his work cut out for him.
curan
The same-sex voices within the churches cower in fear and betray themselves, their own, and their dogma.
They could fight for their people and their faith. After all, there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
Instead, like Judas, they take a few silver coins in exchange for tyranny.
What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, if he should lose his soul?
Tulare
Henk Heithuis died in 1958 in his early twenties, tormented for years by the sexual abuse of Catholic priests. After he tried to expose his abusers, he was castrated in a Catholic hospital by a Catholic doctor under the advice of a Catholic psychiatrist to”cure him of his perverse sexuality.” Der Spiegel,May 4th, 2012
http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/gesellschaft/missbrauch-katholische-kirche-in-niederlanden-liess-jungen-kastrieren-a-829437.html
In the Netherlands alone it is estimated that since 1945 between 10,000 and 20,000 children have been sexually abused by Catholic priests enabled by their prelates. Der Spiegel, Dec 17, 2011
http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/untersuchungsbericht-zehntausende-missbrauchsfaelle-in-hollands-katholischer-kirche-a-804379.html
Ogre Magi
WHat a pack of rotten vermin they are
Billy Budd
They are the enemy, and we are on the right side of the war. To begin with, god doesn’t exist. And even if he existed, I don’t see why we would need the existence of religion. Priests are forbidden to have a normal life and the profession therefore attracts all kinds of repressed maniacs.
.
Religion is poison.
jonjct
Goes without saying, gays are catholic haters. it’s a given.