From the
Irish Times: “Mary McAleese says Maynooth should be ‘gay-friendly: Former president says church’s attitude to homosexuality is damaging to young gay men”
irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/religion-and-beliefs/mary-mcaleese-says-maynooth-should-be-gay-friendly-1.2769827
And what Mary has not come to terms with is the sexual abuse over decades, within the United States, by homosexual priests, of young men.
Granted that the abuse cases I refer to were in the United States, I kinda doubt that human nature is all that different in Ireland, brogue or no brogue.
Yes, there might be a problem in the Church about that old fashioned term - sin. Sin, however, is not isolated to gay men - or gay women; St Paul tells us it is fairly universal. Meaning, of course, that heterosexual men and women have a problem with sin also.
Mary has a problem not with the Church, but with admitting that people sin; I suspect that butter would not melt in her mouth, and she has a lurking fear that using that old fashioned word might not only melt butter, but cause it to curdle in her mouth.
But then, she is not all that much different from other cultural Catholics who want to deny what the Bible says, what the Church has had to say for the last +/- 2,000 years, and what any person who is self honest will admit - we all sin.
It would appear that she equates sexual behavior amongst and between homosexuals either as a mistake, or a God-given right (or maybe it is only a constitutional right - she doesn’t seem to elucidate on the matter). And certainly the same applies to heterosexuals, as apparently marriage is simply a piece of paper and an antique cultural and social party.
Last time I checked, wearing a polka dot tie with a striped shirt was a good definition of a mistake. And sex outside of marriage was a sin; and not to make too fine a point of it, marriage was a covenant relationship between a man and a woman.
How totally outre to suggest, as Pope Benedict did, that homosexual men should not be admitted to the priesthood.
Liberals run on emotion; when the facts contradict the emotion, hike up the emotional content; never mind the facts.
