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PatrickSebast
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Uh…what?
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Elizabeth502
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The teachings are not a matter of “opinion.” The moral teachings are absolute. Having a (different) lay “opinion” about them does not change their validity or their character/permanence. Sometimes the understanding of that teaching (especially in the way the teaching is explained or expanded upon) evolves, but the essential moral precept does not change.
Lay people can have a private opinion about a teaching, even a disagreement, but two things are important here:
(1) they are not permitted to represent as official teaching, or allowable belief, what their private opinion is, no matter how passionately they believe the latter.
(2) they may struggle with these permanent teachings, discuss these struggles among each other and with clergy even, but the important thing is that such struggles do not in themselves give them permission to violate the teachings. There is a conscience provision in the Catechism, but it is not lightly enjoined. Opinion is not necessarily conscience. Nor is discomfort, in itself, conscience. This, by the way, is a highly misunderstood, not to mention abused, aspect of the relationship of Catholics to the Magisterium (teaching authority). Far too many Catholics translate conscience as license. An internal conflict has to rise to a pretty high level to qualify as conscience – which would mean that for practical purposes, it is rarely an issue.
Why would you think that “I” (“you would”) consider “devout” those who favor gay “marriage” or gay “unions”? The bishops’ documents are quite clear about the teachings to which Catholics are to adhere. I can link them here if you would like, but they were also recently linked on another thread. Devotion includes not only prayer but community identity/fideility. It is not a church just of individuals, but of a Body (The Mystical Body of Christ). Identifying practically and intentionally with that Body is an important aspect of devotion, as the Church is the extension of Christ, her founder.
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PatrickSebast
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It isn’t like this is the first survey ever done on this subject or it represents some wild swing in the data.
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kimmielittle
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nhylan
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You’ve never answered questions posed like that? really? That’s a common way to do it. it doesn’t matter weather the statements are positive or negative unless of course you infer that the people answering the questions were distracted and chose the positive answers dispite the fact that they knew the “truth” because they liked the positive language better. in regards to the order in which they are asked this is totally a misnomer as you said yourself, we don’t know exactly how this was presented to people. Perhaps the order was random every time? who knows! the validity of the survey as news does not change the results of the survey. Perhaps it is propaganda but that doesn’t matter if its results are true.
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nhylan
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- I don’t believe anyone who took the survey was in a position to proclaim their opinion as official church teaching.
- Your right, opinion is not necessarily conscience. But that doesn’t mean that is isn’t. Also I would say that neither you nor I nor the magesterium are capable of judging what an internal conflict.
- You and I both are not in a position to judge who is a devout Catholic. So for now lets say that 25% of Catholics who attend church at least once a week favor either gay marriage or civil unions. How does that sound?
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kimmielittle
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Sailor_Kenshin
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Even if 98% of ALL Catholics supported homosexual ‘marriage,’ they would still be WRONG.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
A lie is a lie no matter how many people support it, just as the truth is still the truth even if the majority stand against it.
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PatrickSebast
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It sounds wrong looking at the numbers. That 25% figure (which is actually 26%) applies just to those that support marriage. If you say marriage OR civil unions it jumps up to 64%.
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JaredM
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Catholics I just have one question for you. If you don’t recognize gay marriage exists why do you oppose it for other people what want to get gay married? I don’t see any of lobbing against divorce. Why so hypocritical? See this is why people should keep religion out of politics. I just slows progress down.
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LDNCatholic
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It doesn’t exist, it cannot exist, and so I greatly resent being forced to recognise it as something that exists.
Perversion is not a basic human right.
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PatrickSebast
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Well sure, truth isn’t objective. However plugging our ears, lashing out against the survery, or claiming that the people who believe this aren’t TRUE Catholics are all completely ridiculous actions. Certainly discussing whether or not the exact numbers are valid or not is something of interest for statisticians, but pretending that the numbers don’t matter at all because they came from a questionable source, especially given that similar surveys have shown similar numbers in the past, is just silly. The rejection of certain ideas by Catholic laity in such large numbers is certainly worth acknowledging and discussing, nothing good will come of attempting to cover up or ignore the issue.
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Elizabeth502
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I absolutely never said that. You have mischaracterized my statements.
You are the one who stated in your previous post that you would know and I should know who a “devout Catholic” is. You, not I.
And apparently you (previously) made that assessment based on Church attendance. Unfortunately that is not the comprehensive definition of how the Roman Catholic Church, not a member of the Anglican Church, understands “devout.” It is one and only one aspect of devotion.
There are overlaps between Anglican and Roman Catholic spirituality, but they are not identical. That is why the two traditions remain divided.
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nhylan
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i know and i and thats why i admitted I’m wrong. To imply that attendance means devotion is inaccurate and wrong. Though also to imply that ardor of the devotion of a Catholic and that of an Anglican are somehow not equal is also wrong. i am capable of understanding Catholic devotion. Just because we disagree doesn’t mean I don’t understand what your saying.
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Michael_Leon
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Doesn’t it bother you that the Arcus Foundation is spending millions of dollars to create dissension among Catholics with regards to gay issues? They do it by funding groups of dissenting Catholics. It is something like waging a guerilla war against the Catholic Church with the Arcus Foundation playing the role of the ex-Soviet Union.
Arcus gave PRRI $201,334 in 2010. (This is documented on their website.) And that is just one example. Here are some more from Thomas Peter’s article, “Who is funding the coordinated attempt to subvert the Church’s teaching on homosexuality and marriage?”:
(2010) Dignity USA – $200,000 to increase the impact of Catholic pro-LGBT advocacy in the US through the work of Equally Blessed, a coalition of pro-LGBT Catholic advocacy organizations.
(2010) Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual – $70,000 to create a cadre of Catholic lesbian, bisexual and transgender women and their allies that would assume a leadership role within the Catholic community on issues related to gender, sexuality, reproductive health, and other justice issues.
(2010) Fairfield University – $100,000 to hold and disseminate information from a series of forums at four academic institutions in order to expand the current discussion on homosexuality within Roman Catholicism to include the diverse opinions of progressive Catholic thought leaders and theologians.
(2009) National Gay and Lesbian Task Force – $152,625 for support of a collaborative strategic planning process focused on building a pro-LGBT movement within the Roman Catholic Church in the U.S.
(2009) New Ways Ministry – $93,345 to educate Maryland’s Catholic laity and lawmakers about marriage equality.
Yes this is a propaganda campaign, as you seem to acknowledge. This “survey” is an integral part of that public relations campaign. The goal is to make it appear that there is a division between the laity and the doctrine of the Church on issues of homosexuality. Ultimately, their goal is to destroy the faith of Catholics. “Gay marriage” is just a wedge issue to divide the Church. First divide, then conquer.
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kozlosap
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:thumbsup:It’s easy to blindly stuff your head down the huge hole in the drifting sand and not have to think with either your brain or your HEART. Being a lemming is easy - you never have to struggle with issues that might make the Church look bigoted in her social teachings.I realize, of course, that to most of this particular group of forums, most members look at the 90% of American/Western European Catholics to be heretics because they do not consider ABC to be a sin or that the NO is a valid liturgy.
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nhylan
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It doesn’t bother me in the least actually, and I don’t even believe in Gay marriage. What you describe as dissension we Anglican’s would call discussion. Its what we do, we are good as it, we do it loudly and in public. We air our laundry.
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Hecares
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Wasn’t the original post just telling us that these polls and news articles are out there, so we should be careful of accepting these things without understanding the sources and how their biases can affect the way they report the information? Perhaps we should also do something to counter these ads, always remembering that Catholics are called to love all their neighbors, including homosexuals. “Love the sinner. Hate the sin.” I also feel the need to mention that having homosexual tendencies is not sinful in the eyes of the Church. It is only when they have sexual relations that it becomes a sin.(This is true of all sexual relations outside of marriage, homosexual or heterosexual.)
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Michael_Leon
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I agree with what you say. There is a new article out today that suggests that this report is highly misleading:
“Catholic Support for Traditional Marriage May be Higher than Analysis Claims”
*]The article says that there was no new poll. It was actually a study done of existing polls by Pew Research.
*]The data came from multiple polls which did not ask the same questions. This certainly increases the danger of manipulating data.
*]In some of the polls there was no option to select some sort of civil union instead of “gay marriage” which further skews the results reported.
*]The article points out that this study was funded by the pro-gay marriage Arcus Foundation.
You can bet that this “poll” (or study) will be pulled out and thrown into the faces of Catholics over and over again in the future. The Catholic Church needs to be more aggressive in refuting this type of aggressive propaganda funded by pro-gay foundations. This “poll” will be introduced in court cases as evidence in support of “gay marriage”. If it isn’t refuted now, then it will gain legitimacy.
This “poll” will be used as cover by those within the Catholic Church who oppose Church teachings on “gay marriage”. This will put those of us who defend the Church on the defensive. The intention is to make those of us who are simply following the 2000 year old teachings of Christianity look like bigots and hypocrites. Gay activists openly talk about a “tipping point” in the battle for “gay marriage”. Once that occurs, there will be no turning back – like on the issue of abortion.
And I would caution Catholics about compromising on “civil unions”. The gay activists have already rejected this position by calling it “separate but equal”. “Civil unions” are just a tactic used by the gay activists to reach their goal of “gay marriage”. They are deliberately attempting to deceive Catholics who have traditionally shown compassion for victims of social abuse. But once they have gained a position of power, they will not show that same compassion towards Catholics. Then the Church will be directly attacked and vilified and we won’t have a leg to stand on because we will have given up our legal rights which have protected us from such attacks in the past.
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