Few days after same sex marriage ruling, has your parish talked about it

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Nothing at the morning mass. I doubt that anything will be said about it at the eleven a.m. mass because it is the same priest. I will be attending a five p.m. mass with a friend at another parish, so I will see if they say anything. I don’t have a problem with the ruling, and I am not interested in the semantics of what they call it. Some churches approve of it, some other religions do, and so do most atheists and agnostics. In a perfect world we would all be Catholic and then we could make civil rules based upon our beliefs. As it is, I don’t plan on having a same sex marriage, nor if I become a priest will I ever sanctify a marriage contrary to church teaching. As to children, homosexuality is already seen as normal and in many states they could adopt kids without being married. Adoption is a separate issue. Fwiw, my parents were sinners in a big way and the Holy Spirit still lead me right. Never underestimate the Holy Spirit regardless of the traditions and sins of secular society.
 
I live in a very liberal city. As we drove to Mass last night, we passed many rainbow colored celebrations in the street. I was VERY SURPRISED to have our priest address both the same sex ruling and the shootings in Charleston in his homily! He spoke of the healing gospel that was read, then said that sometimes things seem without hope- the violence, moral depravity or even personal illness or situations. He said that this is when we need to get on our knees and look to God, praying for strength to be His Children of Light. And that this is when Jesus will say, as he did in the gospel, “Little One, Rise.” He reminded us that God was with us and that we needed to stay strong and loving. After Mass, they also handed out a statement from our bishop, in English and in Spanish. My husband and I left Mass feeling a lot of peace.
I will try to attach our bishop’s statement:
AUSTIN – Bishop Joe S. Vásquez, bishop of the Diocese of Austin, released the following statement, in English and Spanish, today:

I am deeply saddened by the Supreme Court’s decision to require States to recognize same-sex marriages, because the opinion is based on the court’s belief that the culture has changed its views of marriage. This causes confusion among those who are faithful to the Gospel and erodes rights of persons in each State.

Regardless of the court’s decision, the nature of the human person and marriage remains unchanged and unchangeable. We will remain true and faithful to the Gospel and we will continue to call people to look deeply into the beauty and understanding of our theology of marriage.

Jesus taught that from the beginning marriage is the lifelong union of one man and one woman. We follow our Lord and will continue to teach and to act according to this truth. I join my brother bishops in encouraging the faithful to move forward with faith, hope, and love: faith in the unchanging truth about marriage, rooted in the immutable nature of the human person and confirmed by divine revelation; hope that these truths will once again prevail in our society, not only by their logic, but by their great beauty and manifest service to the common good; and love for all our neighbors, even those who disagree with our faith and moral convictions. We intend to proclaim the goodness, truth, and beauty of marriage as rightly understood for millennia.
 
shockerfan said:
Actually, the issue is about CHILDREN and the rights of CHILDREN to a mother and father. The legal recognition of man+man or woman+woman means that in adoption or child custody cases that those unions are equal to man+woman. The denies the complementarity of a man and a woman, and is detrimental to children. I am certainly not being disingenuous.
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Absolutely. Pope Francis has certainly equated traditional marriage as a pro life issue.
 
At Mass last night, our pastor (who is not American) mentioned the ruling in passing, as one of the social adversities that are among the “little deaths” of our life.

ICXC NIKA
 
I will be attending Mass later in the day.

If a same sex couple has a civil marriage will they be able to join the Catholic Church and be in full communion I wonder? So many questions. It is very confusing and probably many priests don’t know what to expect.
 
I don’t think it was mentioned during the homily last night (note: My wife’s first language is Spanish, so we go to a Spanish-language Mass most of the time. While I understand it fairly well, there are some things that I don’t always catch). The deacon focused entirely on the Gospel reading.

However, my parish did have a wedding Mass and a 50th wedding anniversary Mass yesterday!
 
Yes my priest addressed the issue in his homily telling us to remain true to the Faith in words and actions. Reminded us that we still fight against abortion and we will do the same for marriage as God intended it. He said to not forget that the health mandate was also upheld this week and that that is also an attack on the teachings of Jesus.

But my parish priests have always addressed these issues even before and maybe that is the better question. Has your parish talked about these issues before?
 
7_Sorrows said:
I will be attending Mass later in the day.

If a same sex couple has a civil marriage will they be able to join the Catholic Church and be in full communion I wonder? So many questions. It is very confusing and probably many priests don’t know what to expect.
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The answer to this is the same as if a heterosexual couple is in an invalid marriage according to the Church - which is that the couple would have to fix their irregular relationship with respect to the Church first. Since the Church does not recognize same-sex “marriages” to even be possible, the couple would have to get divorced civilly (or have one of the two “spouses” die) in order for either person to be able to be baptized or received into the Church.
 
Our Deacon gave the homily. Because the readings were focused on having and holding onto our Faith, he basically said that we should continue to hold tight to God and our Faith in response to the same sex marriage ruling. It was really just a couple of sentences at the middle and end of his homily. It wasn’t much, but I’m very glad they at least acknowledged the ruling. Perhaps they will say more in the coming weeks.
 
Yes, our priest made a statement to the congregation at the end of Mass, telling us we must continue to pray for our church and country in light of the recent ruling.
 
PolarGuy said:
Not a word - which IMHO is not surprising, because my parish (and none I know of) ever says anything about the world. Just the usual stuff about that Sundays readings. Heaven forbid the priests mention something relevant to 2015.

Yet you know the Protestants will talk about this! No wonder people flee the church.
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Took the words out of my mouth, PolarGuy. Nothing, nada, zip. Of course, we had a visiting priest today, but I still would not have expected anything else from our usual pastor. Believe me, I was listening clooooosely.

A few of us spoke briefly at our food ministry on Saturday. One gentleman gave a big “thumbs up” (literally) to the ruling, calling it a great thing, about time, etc. [Ok, he’s a known “liberal Catholic”.] When I said, “But what about the Church? When the Church is forced to perform these marriages?” I got a big shrug, & “what’s the big deal?”

Heaven help us!
 
AnneElizabeth said:
This terrifies me. The more children are exposed to sin the more they feel and think its nothing wrong. The more children raised in sin, the more they expose and teach others that there is nothing wrong with it.

The church is going to have to become vocal, or become obsolete and of course everyone can read between the lines that if the church becomes vocal against something that is already majorly socially accepted as good and ok, then the church is going to be persecuted.

God help us to do this right.
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👍 what I getting worried about is that if you say one slight word agaisr SSM then you could get in trouble with the law.
 
At daily mass Thurs. & Fri (before the ruling) our priest talked about having courage and we prayed for the Church.

This morning Father opened his homily with an assurance that in spite of the ruling, the Church has not changed its stance on marriage, nor will it.

His homily then used the gospel reading about how touching the dead child, and being touched by the woman with the hemorrhage, made Jesus “unclean” according to the rules of the day. But Jesus was merciful and these outcasts were not chastised for approaching Jesus.

So too, we must welcome people who want to approach Jesus, be welcoming and compassionate. He shared examples of people with same-sex attraction whose biggest fears were being attacked or rejected and we must not do that.

I thought our priest did a good job of balancing the fact that many of us know and love people who are gay, and we WANT them to approach Jesus through the Church … but not “condoning” or saying it’s “ok.”
 
Nothing. But I imagine our Bishop will comment in next week’s Diocesan paper.

It isn’t necessary that the parish priest bring it up if the Bishop comments.

Linus2nd
 
At the start of the homily our priest made a statement acknowledging that some parishioners like the decision and that others dislike it. I found that somewhat surprising. Then he went on to say we need to work hard to proclaim our faith and make the teaching about marriage and other issues like abortion clearer to the people in our society. He clearly felt we (parents, schools, etc) had failed to teach our (Catholic) children properly, noting the baptized Catholics on the court.
 
I went to daily Mass on Friday. This was not my parish. The priest had a Pentitential Mass. His homily was obviously about the decision and its ramifications.

Today at the end of Mass the priest spoke about the issue. He said no court can redefine marriage. He said we must stay strong in the faith. He spoke about it for maybe a minute or so. After he said this several people clapped. I have a general policy to not clap, so I didn’t. But I really wanted to make an exception. There was less clapping than occurs for other things. I would say clapping is thankfully rare. But if the folks are going to thunderously clap for other things then they should have for this. I made sure to thank and encourage the priest for what he said as I left.
 
No, nothing was mentioned. Of course, this priest has mentioned such things in the past, and we had a special religious event going on this week so the focus was on that.
 
We had an excellent homily! Father said even though Jesus was so poor he was born in a manger he still had every thing he needed because He had a father and a mother. Then he explained why the ruling was wrong and asked every one to p ra y and fast! I h ave only ever h eard one otherhomilyonHomosexuality.

This priest has a beautiful way of delivering hard truths in away that is so loving and kind. I prayed throughthewholethinghopingpeople would be open to his words.
 
LittleFlower378 said:
The historic Supreme Courts decision to legalize same sex marriage was this past Friday, June 26th. What did your parish do about it if anything at this weeks upcoming masses? Did your parish priest talk about the problem of this ruling in the homily or elsewhere?
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Nope. Not at this morning’s Mass, anyway. The priest has sort of mentioned it in the past, but not altogether directly. It had been within the context of the overall social climate.

Today he didn’t mention it at all during the homily. During his concluding remarks just before the dismissal he made a single sentence comment about how he, as a leader of the local Roman Catholic community, might be portrayed in the near future, but did not mention the SCoTUS decision. We all knew what he meant without him saying it.

In a way, it all goes without saying. 🤷
 
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