Pope John Paul II has been speaking out for months against legislative proposals to legalize same-sex marriages. But instructions to be released this week go a step further by outlining a course of action for politicians and other lay people to oppose extending the rights accorded to traditional couples, Vatican officials said.
The document � "Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons" � was prepared by the church's guardian of orthodoxy, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and is to be released Thursday.
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At its national convention, which begins tomorrow in Minneapolis, the Episcopal Church in the U.S. will decide whether to permit blessing ceremonies for same-sex unions and approve the first election of an openly gay bishop, issues sharply dividing that church.
Catholic teaching says homosexuals should not be subjected to "unjust discrimination," but also says gays should be chaste.
In January, the Pope approved guidelines on church teachings for Catholic politicians, saying church opposition to abortion, euthanasia and same-sex marriage is not up for negotiation.
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After Germany's supreme court upheld the law this month, a top German cardinal condemned it as a blow to the family. "Now the associations of homosexuals have a potent arm to obtain further concessions on the road toward full equality with married couples, including the right to adoption," said Cardinal Karl Lehman.
Toronto Star Jul. 29, 2003{everybody's knee jerks up. the idea seems to be that the only instances of sexual violation by Catholic priests were the legalyl prosecuted cases that went public. and maybe one or two that got paid off behind the scenes. and maybe one or two that got hushed up so completely even the participants don't remember them. and maybe one or two others. in America. in the 20th century.
my knee doesn't jerk anymore. well a little. but that's too obvious. all that 'who are they to talk about marriage anyway...?' fish in a barrel that is. how about the actual institution of marriage? how about the idea that the only sanctity available to a man and woman needs institutional permission? how about that is as bogus as anything gets. how about what's really at work here, what's always at work here, is biology. always. look for the biological payoff. it's there somewhere. breeding control, it's always control, who gets to breed, who gets to live in the village, who gets to partake in the feast, in the stored grain when it's famine time, the filter of genetic continuity. this is not trivial. and it has nothing to do with sexual perversion. or it's all perversion. it's about the shape of the face of the human thing, years, centuries, millenia down the line. what we will be. and by controlling who breeds and who has the best shot at successfully raising the little outcomes, the institution has a big say in what that face will look like.
the institutions become organisms as they grow and mature, concerned primarily with their own survival even as their individual members and especially their leaders, seem to give all for the greater good.
these groups are clustered around totems of their own existence, the gods or 'God' they purport to worship are not allowed to do anything but serve, the way a parent serves the family. the Catholic Church doesn't care about homosexual partnerships, it has more homosexual partnerships in its past than San Francisco ever will. it tolerates and protects homosexual relationships, consummated or not, until those partnerships threaten its legitimacy.
like Galileo. they didn't care whether the sun went around the earth, or vice versa, for its astronomical significance. they cared because they were stuck with the picture in the book, and because the idea of a universe in which humanity was marginal and seemingly insignificant took away the earthly glory of God's chosen representatives.}
