Defending the decision to hold the 2005 conference, Santa Clara University told Catholic News Agency that hosting a two-day long conference “on how to promote opportunities for gays and lesbians at Catholic colleges is the Catholic way to act.” The 2005 conference chose not to highlight Catholic teaching on the intrinsic immorality or medical dangers of homosexual activity or offer assistance to homosexuals to leave their lifestyle.Why is this "the Catholic way to act"? Particularly since "not ... highlight[ing] Catholic teaching on the intrinsic immorality ... of homosexual activity" has been specifically denounced at the highest levels of the Church as "neither caring nor pastoral." I'm of half-a-mind to submit or rework/update a grad school paper I did on homosexuality just to see if I could get it in.
I noted below the Russian reaction to a gay pride parade. My thoughts are not unalloyed about such tactics obviously. But the Russian Orthodox Church would really know how to handle DePavel Universitetskiya. It was recently faced with a priest performing a homosexual "marriage." First the priest who took a bribe to perform the ceremony was defrocked. Then the church where the ceremony took place, having been defiled, was demolished. Maybe I should join Rod Dreher and swim the Bosporus.
2 comments:
It's funny that you mention Rod Dreher in this post. About 10 minutes ago I was reading excerpts from Papa Benedict's general audience remarks, and they also brought Mr. Dreher to mind. The Pope was speaking on Tertullian, but (if you read it) I think you will see why I thought of him.
http://catholicanalysis.blogspot.com/2007/05/pope-on-tertullian-vatican-info-service.html
Even though that parish is crazy, don't you go swimming anywhere! T'would be a terrible loss to us all.
I sincerely hope and pray that societies such as Russia learn don't repeat the same mistakes churches in the West have made with regard to learning to deal with homosexuality.
Fundamentally, what has hurt the Church in the West is it's inability and reluctance to cathechise properly in general, and in the particular area of sexuality. Homosexual activity was regarding as 'worse' than rest, other violations of the sexual ethic were often winked at, no effort was made to positively explain the Church's teachings - it was mostly a bunch of 'don'ts'. And so on. While the Church was floundering, the sexual devolution just came right through the middle.
The Russian Orthodox Church ought to learn from this and being a concerted campaign to cathechise, giving this priority over the fruitless defensive actions against the encroachment of the sexual devolution.
In Russia, there are huge problems with abortion, contraception, and divorce. In other words, prime territory for further sexual devolution. If the Church can help deliver people - at least its flock - from these problems, then it will have made significant progress.
It should take it's cues from works such as:
http://www.cityofgod.net/speech/georgetown.htm
and Thomas Hopko's new book on homosexuality and the Orthodox.
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