Meg2:
But several are arguing that because they are openly displaying their relationship, the situaiton needs to be dealt with. Seems this all boils down to having to instate a rule that homosexual parents cannot enroll their children in this school. What other solution is there, apart from a change in both their hearts and abandoning their current and any future homosexual relationship?
Meg2, for starters, what obligation does the Church have to the parents of the 500 children already attending the school? Any? If the government moves a pedophile into your neighborhood after being released from prison, are you, a parent of small children, going to say that is OK, he or she has a right to live wherever they want and the neighborhood has nothing to say about it?
Let’s assume the two “fathers” are sleeping in separate rooms, does that change the attituted of anybody on this board? It does me because it indicates that their same sex attraction is not so compelling that it jeopardizes their spiritual, Catholic faith. It could be that they may be living celibate lives together like a couple priests. In this case, the School’s enrollment of the two adopted boys makes sense and the Church can benefit by their enrollment, especially if the men allow themselves to speak to the parents and parish on how their faith enables them to live celibate lives together. In this case, their story can be helpful and encouraging to others in avoiding committing sex sins, or other kinds of sins, in their lives.
But what if they are sleeping in separate rooms because one snores so loudly that the other can’t get sleep? Then it doesn’t matter that they are sleeping in separate rooms, their attraction for each other may cause them to still engage in sinful behavior as defined by the Church. Their mere presence among the heterosexual parish community causes disharmony because they are in disharmony with the Church and its teachings, and it is visible and they do not care. That would be like a car driver always runnig red lights and the police just sit there on the corner and do nothing. But the real disturbing thing is that the pastor and the bishop have opted to create the disharmoney among the heterosexual parish, just as the government does when they release a pediphile to live in a particular neighborhood community and insist on keeping them there regardless of the concerns of the parents whose neighborhood has become a threat to their peace and safety. In the case of St. John the Baptist School, the threat is to the spiritual safety of the children,
and to their innocence. Once that is lost, all Hell can break lose in the lives of the parents of those children, and in the lives of the children, themselves. And that is irresponsibe of Pastor Benzoni, and more importantly, Bishop Brown in their pastoral obligations to the Church and the people.
But lets look at one other possibility the pastor and bishop could have utilized. They could have let the “fathers” enroll the young boys in a CCD classes on condition that the “fathers” receive counseling on their sinful life style in effort to work towards a behavior that would enable them to live fully within the embrace of the Church. Why should the pastor and the bishop, representing the Church, be the ones closing their eyes to the situation of sin in their midst?
The pastor and bishop have shirked their responsibilities as pastor and shepherd in this situation for reasons that are not justifiable on their surface. This means that there is another reason that this has been allowed to happen which can only be worldliness and confusion within the minds of the pastor and bishop, but primarily the bishop, who has endorsed this, as those who know this bishop had warned years ago when he was assigned here.
This also raises the question as to why Rome would move such a man to consevative Orange County, let alone, why they would even keep him a bishop. Is this evidence that the Church leadership hasn’t learned anything from their shuffling sex abusing priest and bishops around rather than addressing the issue? Is this evidence that there is a homosexual cabal at the highest levels in the Vatican?
