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Originally Posted by Voco proTatiano:
I think we can safely conclude that the red necks and the queer bashers have lost the cultural debate, and that is very proper.
Mother Church has not lost the debate.
Mother Church’s position is clear that those afflicted with SSA should be accepted as victims of chance, and accepted, and treated with sympathy.
However, certain carnal practices are spiritually disordered, and physically dangerous, hence, sinful. These, she warns against.
Her attitude to civil partnerships is mixed.
Where it is felt that these partnerships, in their resemblance to marriage, encourage these sinful acts, they are resisted.
However, if the partnership is purposed to control these acts, hopefully to eliminate them, then there is a more positive view taken, though as yet, this cannot be taken too openly, as it seems to contradict the former case.
Time is still needed.[/sign]
You seem to be embracing a cheerleader role to advocate a relaxation of church teaching.
Dear James,
If you read carefully what I wrote, and what you have written, you will find not enough space to fit a cigarette paper in the gap.
What difference there may be is entirely spin.
Objective truth is not a function of time. Only moral relativists use the time argument and hope for moral decay to lower the bar to the least common denominator.
I never asserted that an objective truth required to be changed, only that some over-judgemental attitudes, based on prejudice and ignorance needed to change.
Mother Church’s attitude to civil partnerships is decisively against civil partnerships when such partnerships attempt to emulate marriage and give legitimacy to an illicit union. Marriage is intended as a union of one man and one woman - not a same sex couple.
That is exactly what I said, in slightly different words.
And I agree.
Marriage is indeed for one man and for one woman, for the purpose of raising, either by procreation, or adoption, the next generation.
There are legal means (e.g. contracts) available to facilitate equity sharing among any private individual(s) who desire to formalize secular agreements.
Exactly. and that is what a civil partnership is.
The civil partnership though goes one step further, to cover the inevitable consequences of the death of one of the partners, to give rights of inheritance, equivalent to those commonly given to married couples.
Nothing more.
It is still a secular contract.
Mother Church has commonly blessed secular contracts in the historical past, and there should be no problem with a secular contract such as this, provided that the purpose of the contract is declared, and found not to be contrary to Church Law, but that is another matter.
I have raised before, the issue of the cohabiting partnership between Cardinal John Henry Newman and Father St. John, which Mother Church has NOT condemned, neither did she condemn the cohabiting partnership between St Justin and Tatian.
These were both seen, and rightly so, with the proper presumption of innocence, in the absence of proof of guilt, as Platonic.
So, in fact, I am not calling for a change of attitude from Mother Church, only a greater degree of openness, but that requires that attitudes of the congregation be more generous and merciful, and less judgemental.
As you see, Mother Church has never condemned civil partnerships whose purpose was not contrary to her law, how else could brotherhoods and sisterhoods have been formed?
Monasteries and Nunneries are older than the Church!
I think we can safely conclude that Mother Church does not water-down her standards of moral teaching as a function of time - irrespective of what the schoolboys, “gentlemen” and intellectual snobs and hopeless liberals want to imagine or hope for.
I do not understand the swipe against schoolboys and “gentlemen”, unless they are redneck euphemisms for “queers”.
I hope not.
Remember, “coloured gentleman” is just as offensive as “N*****” if used in the same context.
Such bowdlerisms are still obscene.
I re-opened the curtain to see if there existed any common ground between us, and so it seems.
I will leave it open for a while, and see if charity can prevail.
