Tuesday, November 29, 2005

The gay and liberal obsession with the Roman Catholic Church

I have stated before that God and religion are not PC, The Church should be free to preach anything short of criminal acts or exhortations of violence. Thus let any Imam preach that as a Jew I am hell bound, However when the religious nuts start preaching about cutting off heads you have exceeded the First Amendment.

The rules and regulations of the Catholic Church belong to its followers and clergy. If Gays and liberals feel excluded there are plenty of Churches that don't agree with
the current policy.

The larger problem with the Catholic Church has nothing to do with Gays. The clergy forgot that they serve a public trust. The sanctity and spiritual needs of the congregants is the primary duty of any Church. Arogantly, the Church needed a wake up call. No man of the cloth should ever use his powers for sexual gratification. This is not about Gays but a clear example of abuse of authority.

The abuse of the pulpit does obscure the excellent work that a variety of Churches do each and every day. There are no headline in Father Murphy teaches yokel how to read or Rev Diaz tends the sick and dying. It is a terrible thing that we forget these institutions also touch and help people each and every day.

Yet each and every day the sanctimonious liberals and far left gay activists attack the Roman Catholic Church every day. Take the words of a Jew from NYC the Roman Catholic Church helps more people each and every day then far left groups ever did in their entire history.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

kyle is right on the money. The same could be said of the Republican party. The Party is struggling because it is off message and acting like Democrats.

You are so right Beak, we Americans have been so conditioned to be offended even when discussing private institutions.

Anonymous said...

Catholics to Earth...

Repeat

Catholics to Earth...

Our religion is based upon certain principles. If you disagree with those principles....

become a Methodist.

-FJ

Anonymous said...

Some History of the CWM and its' founders by Michael L. Westmoreland-White @ http://www.ecapc.org/newspage_detail.asp?print=Yes&control=574

Day won a scholarship to study journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana, but she only attended those classes that interested her. She soon dropped out to mingle more and more into a crowd of intellectual radicals. She joined the Socialist Party, moved to New York and began a career as a journalist for radical newspapers (The Call, the Masses, The Liberator). She covered strikes, the plight of political prisoners, lack of legal protection for unions, the tensions between Communists, Anarchists, Socialists and the International Workers of the World (IWW or “Wobblies,”). She became more of a Potempkin-type social anarchist in philosophy, but never attended meetings of any political party except in her role as reporter. But, if asked, she would accept the title “Communist” as a compliment rather than a slur.

During this period of her life, she marched with suffragists (although she never bothered to vote after women got the franchise) and identified herself with secular feminism (though this was before that term was common), including widespread birth control availability for single women. She hung out with many female radicals who espoused “free love,” but though Dorothy was theoretically open to sex outside marriage, promiscuity never interested her. She wanted high romance and commitment or nothing. Eventually, Day did fall--and for an abusive relationship. When she got pregnant, her lover threatened to leave her if she didn’t have an abortion. She did, just to please him, and he left her anyway. (As an adult convert to Catholicism, Day was so ashamed of her abortion that it is the one event she skips over in her autobiography. She relates it only in her pre-conversion autobiographical novel, The Eleventh Virgin. At one point, she was so embarrassed by the novel’s depiction of the woman she was then, she tried to find and destroy every copy in print. There are hints that Day disapproved of abortion--at least as a form of birth control--even prior to her conversion. She definitely disapproved of women violating their consciences to please men, yet this is just what she did. Her later shame over this event was very great.)

By a long, complicated series of events, Day found herself in a long-term relationship with a fellow anarchist named Forster Batterham, a former biologist who was anti-industrial and anti-institutional. Their love was so mutual that Day always referred to their relationship as a “common law marriage,” although New York state had long since ceased to recognize such. She described this period of her life as “natural happiness” (in contrast to supernatural faith). Batterham was a confirmed atheist, but Day was finding her way back to faith, sneaking into Catholic churches and sitting in the back. Why Catholicism? She always claimed that both the liturgy and the fact that this was “the Church of the poor and the immigrant” attracted her. This scandalized her radical friends: Religion was the opiate of the masses, as Marx had said. Further, if one had to be part of a Church, it should be any Church other than ROME, which was (by her friends’ lights) the most socially and politically conservative institution in the world, arrayed against the cause of the poor and the worker. (What these New York and Chicago radicals would have thought of Southern Baptist or Pentecostal life, had they even known of them, beggars the imagination of this son of the South!)

The final catalyst of Day’s conversion was her pregnancy with her daughter, Tamar Teresa, an event that Day considered a miracle. Her previous abortion had given Day the idea that she was barren, a fit punishment for her sin. (Interesting that she believed herself punished before she even believed in a God who could do the punishing.) Dorothy wanted Tamar baptized and this led to her own instruction in the faith, baptism, and confirmation. It also led to the end of her relationship with Forster Batterham. She would not be accepted into the Church unless they were legally married (preferably in the Church) and Batterham could not abide such hypocrisy. Day chose her new-found faith over the natural happiness of her relationship. Over fifty years later, however, she still referred to him as “her husband,” though they had not shared a roof or bed in all that time. He came to various milestones in Tamar’s life, including her wedding, and he wept bitterly at her death in 1980. Various folk have speculated that a post-Vatican II Church might have found a way for the two to remain together, both for their sakes and for Tamar’s. As a non-Catholic, I have no opinion about that, but I am not sure Dorothy would have approved any compromise. During the ‘60s, she was fairly unforgiving with several former priests and nuns who were “laicized” in order to marry. For her, vows were vows.

The new convert kept casting about for a way to connect her newfound faith to her passion for social justice. Eventually, she met an odd man named Peter Maurin. He was a French peasant and social philosopher who always wore an old suit with books bulging from the pockets. Together, they founded the Catholic Worker movement. They formed “houses of hospitality” that housed the homeless as free guests, distributed clothing to all who needed it, and fed the hungry. Live-in Workers and guests alike of each house of hospitality would perform “works of mercy,” found in Matt. 5-7 (the Sermon on the Mount), Matthew 18, and Matthew 25. Combined with these houses of hospitality were low-tech communal farms (although most Workers proved to be lousy farmers, by their own admission) that would become the catalyst for a nonviolent “green revolution” as an alternative to industrial capitalism. All this would be aided by “clarification of thought” disseminated by a radical Catholic newspaper that combined the teachings of the papal social encyclicals with Maurin’s own thoughts (and later, Day’s and others’). Day knew newspapers and knew she would take the lead in this part of the program. All this, plus a series of “round table discussions” between workers and scholars, would “build the seeds of a new society within the shell of the old” (a slogan Maurin stole for the Wobblies), a society in which Maurin hoped it “would be easier for [people] to be good.”

The Catholic Worker movement was born, complete with The Catholic Worker which has always sold for a penny a copy. Many Catholic bishops believed the movement was too “Communist-inspired.” This infuriated Maurin, but Day took the criticism in stride. After all, she was a convert from (a non-dogmatic form of) Communism and admitted that “the wine bottle will always smell of the vintage it once contained.” Still, they were tolerated and eventually admired for their help for the poor. More and more Catholic churches distributed The Catholic Worker and prominent Catholic theologians and bishops even contributed the occasional article. All that changed when WWII broke out. The uncompromising pacifism of Day and the Worker movement ran into the militaristic nationalism of pre-Vatican II Catholicism during the era of the most popular war the U.S. ever fought.

Warren said...

Ducky, you are a dim-witted moron with pretensions of intellectuality, and those are your good points.

Of course the CWM is leftist; in nature and ideology. To pretend otherwise, (on your behalf), is shear sophistry.

Do you actually believe that a few "good works" ameliorate revolutionary theology?

There was/is already a lay Catholic organization, (The Society of St Vincent dePaul) that does many more good works without the leftist brainwashing that comes hand and hand from organizations like the CWM.

Besides, the CWM is full of, Catholic in name only, leftist crackpots, like you!

You can't even receive the Eucharist in good faith, yet you persist, THIEF! You have no conscience or shame! By your own admission, you routinely violate the tenants of the faith, and then have the temerity to pretend you are a Catholic.

I will pray for your conversion.

Always On Watch said...

I'm not Roman Catholic, so a lot of this discussion is out of my realm.

But I have to agree with Beak on this: Yet each and every day the sanctimonious liberals and far left gay activists attack the Roman Catholic Church every day. Take the words of a Jew from NYC the Roman Catholic Church helps more people each and every day then far left groups ever did in their entire history.

I see no point in demonizing the Catholic Church for the acts of some corrupt people. Now, has the church properly dealt with these recent sexual scandals? Not completely. The sexual abuse of children is an egregious sin! And the Catholics whom I personally know are appalled and disgusted with some of the higher ups. Reform must be undertaken and a house-cleaning of the deepest sort undertaken.

What gets me is the gloating from the left. No gloating please at the expense of abused innocents!

Always On Watch said...

Storm,
You've made a good point about the double standard.

Kevin said...

the Roman Catholic Church helps more people each and every day then far left groups ever did in their entire history.

If your definition of "helps" is "molested" then sure, one million satisfied customers baby. I've touched my share of people, but the church probably has me beat.

I only kid, the fact of the matter is crazies on both sides attack each other, because its what crazies do.

(((Thought Criminal))) said...

The Catholic Church should be excommunicating pedophiles from bishop to parishioner as they're found guilty. Cleaning up starts at home.

Anonymous said...

good info