D.C. Archdiocese shoots down rumor Cardinal Ok’d event with ‘Catholic’ gay group

In The News Catholic News
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Life Site News:

D.C. Archdiocese shoots down rumor Cardinal Ok’d event with ‘Catholic’ gay group

WASHINGTON, D.C., December 8, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington has reaffirmed the illegitimate status of Catholics for Equality, a budding homosexualist “Catholic” group that is scheduled to be hosted at a student event at Georgetown University on Wednesday evening.
The archdiocesan statement followed a statement from the Rainbow Sash Movement (RSM), another “Catholic” homosexualist group, which had claimed in a press release that D.C. Cardinal Donald Wuerl had explicitly allowed Catholics for Equality to appear at Georgetown.

“The Rainbow Sash Movement wishes to congratulate Cardinal Wuerl of the Archidocese of Washington for siding with common sense and reason” by condoning the event, stated the Rainbow Sash press release, entitled “Gay Catholics welcome Cardinal’s (sic) Wuerl’s Change of Heart on Gay Rights.”
Susan Gibbs, communications director for the Archdiocese of Washington, called the Rainbow Sash press release a “nice piece of fiction” and asserted that Catholics for Equality was not a legitimate Catholic organization.

“Putting the label ‘Catholic’ on a group doesn’t make it Catholic,” Gibbs told LifeSiteNews.com. “It’s not a Catholic organization. It was formed in opposition to Catholic teaching.”
The Rainbow Sash release had favorably contrasted Wuerl with New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, who recently signed a message with other major religious leaders supporting true marriage. The homosexualist group called the statement, which declared marriage to be “the natural basis of the family” and “an institution fundamental to the well-being of all of society,” a promotion of “bigotry.”

I hope people won’t just hear about the rainbow crowd’s “praise” for Abp. Wuerl w/o hearing the real story.

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I found the Comments under the article pretty interesting:

Your readers need to know that Catholics for Equality is not sponsoring this event. In fact I as a faculty member of Georgetown assisted the student organizations—the Georgetown College Democrats and the College Republicans—in getting the speakers and helping them with logistics. I have done this kind of thing for numerous student groups during my time at Georgetown. All of the speakers, including Maggie Gallagher, know of this relationship. In no way does Georgetown University endorse the opinions of any of the participants in the event. Georgetown University allows their students to engage in free speech and to be exposed to the widest range of public debate. I should hope your readers value academic freedom and the ability of young adults to form their own opinions on public issues, including LGBT issues in American public life. Every effort was made to provide a broad range of Catholic perspectives.

There will not be a live webcast.

Regards,
Joseph Palacios

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Posted by dankintz on Dec 8, 2010

Joseph, there is no broad range of Catholic perspectives. There is only one Catholic perspective

On the Palacios comment, I am also a strong believer in academic freedom, but “LGBT issues” encompass much more than academic freedom, concentrating often on the eradication of moral boundaries altogether. It would be a worthwhile exercise if G’town were hosting a debate to discuss differences between civil rights and moral issues with respect to LGBT agendas, and how the Catholic Church sees the distinctions. Perhaps that is what is intended, but neither the article nor Palacios’ comment makes that clear.
:shrug:

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