I follow the Catholic Church, thank you very much. In this article, if we can get past this particular agenda, we find that it is not the number of lay people giving communion that Bishop Murphy addressed, but that this particular man was performing this task and was living an active and public homosexual lifestyle. Therefore, your solution is not relevant, as the bishop in question did not object to the practice that you do not like. This thread is not about the topic you raised.
Well, I thought the point was: if lay people were not allowed and encouraged to be EM, the pastor and bishop would not be put in the difficult position of having to publicly “fire” someone… which would help in terms of the negative press coverage of these events.
When I read these articles in the mainstream press, I just get so upset because neither the journalists nor the majority of readers has any context for the events. They don’t know what the Church REALLY teaches…they just simplify it down to soundbites. And it DOES make us look like intolerant and “mean” old-fashioned fuddy-duddies.
I had a conversation with some non-Catholic friends and the subject came up…so I told them about WHY the Church teaches that homosexual sex is sinful, and that we don’t believe it is sinful to BE gay - but that the rules are the same for anyone - that sex is supposed to be unitive and procreative which gay sex can NEVER be, and that “marriage” has to be between a man and a woman for the same reason, and that unmarried straight people who engage in sex are sinning in the same way.
In other words: the rules are the same for everyone…but that doesn’t mean that it’s “fair” on an individual basis. Rather, people have different crosses to bear.
I gave the example of a person whose spouse leaves them, divorces them, who is not eligible for annulment…that person, blameless as they may be, can never have a sacramental marriage again. So that’s not fair…but it is what it is.
Our society is all about fairness, but the Church isn’t…it can’t be really. And therein lies the problem.
Also, in this particular diocese, the Bishop is widely dislike for the part he played in the pedophile priest cover-ups in Massachusetts. And that’s a problem, because people love to point out the “hypocrisy” of it. Not that it makes it OK - 2 wrongs don’t make a right, but still, it gives people a finger to point. It saddens me that this Bishop doesn’t see that he has ceded his moral authority, and has not stepped down. But that’s just my opinion, YMMV.
Tempter tantrum, methinks?
