The first point I want to make is that when a Catholic cardinal compares gay marriage to slavery and abortion, other Catholics can’t disown that as an example of “an extremist view.” It’s a cardinal, for crying out loud! He’s mainstream!
Anyway, as the Independent reports,
Britain’s most senior Catholic has condemned gay marriage as an “aberration”, likening it to slavery and abortion.
Cardinal Keith O’Brien said countries which legalise gay marriage are “shaming themselves” by going against the “natural law,” and should not consider their actions “progress”.
He claimed same sex unions were the “thin end of the wedge” and would lead to the “further degeneration of society into immorality.”
In a series of controversial comments, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that if same sex marriage were legalised, “further aberrations would take place and society would be degenerating even further than it already has into immorality.”
Yeah, right. Can you really imagine a society that allows gay people to marry would be substantially different from what we have now? And as for the slavery thing:
He wrote: “Imagine for a moment that the Government had decided to legalise slavery but assured us that ‘no one will be forced to keep a slave’.
“Would such worthless assurances calm our fury? Would they justify dismantling a fundamental human right? Or would they simply amount to weasel words masking a great wrong?”
He has now defended his comments, saying: “I think it’s a very, very good example of what might happen on our own country in the present time.”
Does somebody really need to point out the substantive difference between slavery and gay marriage: that both partners in a gay marriage are in it of their own volition? And what is the “fundamental human right” here? The right not to be offended by same-sex marriages? Apparently so, for O’Brien also said:
“We’re taking standards which are not just our own but standards from the Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations where marriage is defined as a relationship between man and woman and turning that on its head. . .
“I think that it is time now to call a halt to what you might call progress. I do not call what is happening nowadays progress.
“I would say that countries where this is legal are indeed violating human rights.”
Well, Cardinal O’Brien, I’ve read the United Nation’s Declaration of Human Rights, and it says nothing about defining marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman. What it says is this:
Article 16.
- (1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
- (2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
- (3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
Does that define marriage as a heterosexual couple? I don’t think so. You might interpret “men and women. . have the right to marry” that way, but one could interpret that as saying simply that both sexes have a right to marry.
It is an ineluctable fact that same-sex couples fall in love and want to marry. The Catholic church finds that immoral because of words in a fictional book. Increasingly, society is recognizing that there is nothing immoral in same-sex marriage, and the trend toward accepting that is simply going to continue. If Catholics hold the hard line, trying to buck that trend, they’re only going to lose adherents. Stupid words, such as those of Cardinal O’Brien, just accelerate that loss.
Let’s see what Catholics say about this and how many of them decry it. Were I a gay Catholic like Andrew Sullivan, I’d simply leave the Church and, if I needed God, worship somewhere else. So long as the Church officially considers homosexuality an abomination, and its practice a sin, there is no excuse for any gay person to remain Catholic.
It might even lead to the unthinkable abomination of religious leaders raping children!
He actually kept saying, “thin EDGE of the wedge”. If you have ever used a wedge you will realize how that will never work!
What do you mean?
Because a wedge is thin at one END & fat at the other end & the edge is therefore the side! 🙂
I wondered if that statement was another “If you allow teh gheyz to marry, people will start marrying their dogs!!111!”
How about:”no matter how thin you slice it, it’s still baloney”!
You can hear him here – if you can take it!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9702000/9702354.stm
This would be funny if it weren’t so sad.
Here in Washington State, where (Catholic) Governor Christine Gregoire has just signed a gay marriage bill into law, opposition groups are framing their campaign to overturn it in terms of “religious freedom”, which they apparently think means the freedom to enforce their narrow values on everyone else.
Exactly.
Interesting that they haven’t ex-communicated her. I would have thought that they’d consider that appropriate.
Well, top marks for the Governor, is all I can say!
Religious freedom seems to include the right to block other churches from offering a Religious Marriage to their same-sex congregants.
It’s actually short for religious Mad Max freedom.
Here’s a bit commentary from Sullivan:
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/03/the-politicization-of-catholicism.html
Try to imagine how little I care about what he thinks.
Haha. Agree.
Because for most of its 1700 year history the Catholic Church was a mostly apolitical organization.
~sarcasm
Yes. Committed personal relationships between consenting adults is EXACTLY like keeping someone else in a relationship of owner and property!
That would be the biblical definition of marriage wouldn’t it? At least for women.
You do have a point there, Justin.
Precisely.
I think you’ve hit on an important point: not all religions oppose gay marriage. For the upteenth time, we see that the bible can be interpreted to support any view one chooses, liberal or conservative, reactionary or progressive. What is it that keeps people from seeing that the bible itself, therefore, can’t possibly be the actual source of their morals?
It is long past time for decent Catholics to leave that hideous institution. FFRF is taking contributions for a full-page ad in the NY Times to this effect. Consider a contribution… http://ffrf.org/news/releases/making-a-splash-in-the-new-york-times/
I was just going to post that myself! 😀
I was listening to this blithering idiot as I was driving in this morning. I actually found myself shouting at the radio.
A few minutes after this clown had been interviewed, Eabbi Lionel Blue was on Thought For the Day (one of the few TFTD presenters I have time for) – and who is gay. He had a real poke at the Cardinal (in his subtle way)
That should be Rabbi of course. Sorry Lionel.
Yeah, I heard it as well driving in to work. After a minute of slack-jawed astonishment, I found it very amusing, as obviously did the (atheist) presenter Humphries, who abjured his usual hectoring interviewing style to let the Cardinal rant and condemn himself. It was hilarious in the end. I kept expecting the man to say, “And I’ll tell you another thing..” and then to launch, Jeremy Clarkson-style, into some sub-Daily Mail paranoid rap. Give it a listen! This is one of the RCC’s top men; if this is the best of all possible priests, what are the others like?
Some have a lot of common sense and think these idiots are the type that sucks up for a position or positions themselves for a suck up (joke intended). Some are gay. Some are atheists.
Why is this drivel newsworthy. Is the Pope a catholic? Do bears s**t in the woods?
Marriage exists for the purpose of procreation of children. Homosexuals cannot procreate. Ergo, same sex marriage is per se wrong. They never seem to apply the same logic to marriages of spouses who for whatever reason are incapable of bearing or “begetting” children!!
Or don’t want them.
That’s a different issue: different sin! I purposefully excluded that.
Actually, it is sex that exists for the procreation of the succeeding generation: to propagate the species. Marriage was a human construct for the transfer of property, the division of labor, in modern times, to “insure domestic Tranquility.”
Well, the “for the good of the species” bit really isn’t really right (“for the good of the genes would work better”). But you are correct in that the distinction between sex and marriage is important.
Duly noted!
Is the Pope Catholic? Yes
Does a bear sh!t in the woods? Yes
Does the Pope sh!t in the woods?
Not since the last Hitler Youth camp.
As half a gay couple, I thank you all for your support.
At first I thought it was a half-gay couple, and I wondered how that would work.
A very effeminate man or a very masculine woman.
A very effeminate man or a very masculine woman.
I guess this was intended as a joke, but it’s worth pointing out that a person’s gender identity is not necessarily linked to their sexuality* – I know numerous heterosexual women that many would consider to be “masculine” in various ways, and also trans men who are homosexual. (Of course this sort of thing *really* freaks out the RCs.)
* Sex: What’s between your legs;
Gender: What’s between your ears;
Sexuality: Who’s between your legs
“Can you really imagine a society that allows gay people to marry would be substantially different from what we have now?”
Yes, I imagine it would be a little more loving and inclusive.
🙂
The C4M website (against) says:
The C4EM website (for) says:
/@
+1
“If marriage is redefined once, what is to stop it being redefined to allow polygamy?”
This argument always cracks me up. So what if gay marriage eventually leads to the legalization of polyamorous marriages? Some laws might need to be written for regarding divorce, next-of-kin, etc., but even then, I doubt the world will end. As long as all parties are legally consenting adults, what business is it of others?
Ideally, yes, but I see an opportunity for legitimization of certain religious polygamous traditions in which it only appears that women are ‘legally consenting.’
Should be treated as religious monogamous traditions in which it only appears that women are legally consenting.
True dat!
Well, I do have to agree with the cardinal that there are, in fact, many similarities between the issue of same-sex marriage and the issue of slavery. The institution of slavery is based on the idea that some people are not entitled to basic civil rights and freedoms. Forbidding same-sex marriage is based on a subset of that idea, that homosexual people are to be denied the right to love and marry. So having the Roman Catholic church oppose same-sex marriage is entirely consistent with its historic stance on civil rights, whether for non-Catholics, women, people of colour, etc.
Gay marriage and slavery have something else in common. They are both moral issues in which the RCC chose the wrong side. Most Churches were against abolition at the time. The RCC was in total charge in most of Europe for more than a thousand years without ever getting around to it. Presumably, if we give them a couple of hundred years or so, they will catch upwith the secular world on the gay issue too.
No, they won’t ‘catch up.’ They will instead explain how Catholic thought was always the foundation for the growing recognition of human freedom — and that atheists have no basis for justifying gay marriage or explaining why homosexuals should have the right to marry. But Catholics (with a few negligible exceptions, of course) have always championed such things. Then the secularists come along and try to steal the credit. As usual.
I’m not sure even then. In 1990, Benny the Rat (then Joe the Rat) defended the concept of geocentrism and argues that Galileo’s trial was “reasonable and just.”
http://ncronline.org/node/11541
I don’t understand why teh Card would call gay marriage an “aberration”, likening it to slavery, when his own inerrant bible considers slavery to be totally acceptable.
Exactly! God is 100% pro-slavery. Nothing says that Africans are the ones that everyone else can enslave, but slavery itself is OK. Under God’s law, we should be able to buy or kidnap, say, a Canadian and use him or her as a slave.
Or, our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan should, following the many examples laid out in the Old Testament, be able to use people they capture as their personal slaves. Over and over God commanded the Israelites to enslave the people they captured. I’m not sure why, given God’s word, that the cardinal doesn’t believe that slavery is holy–could it be his mind is infected by humanistic enlightenment values?
My Canadian slave comes in very handy.
We’re bigger than you and we’re on top (and a lot whiter) so you’re OUR bitch.
Point of order – Catholics don’t believe that the Bible is inerrant. In fact, the only teachings in the Bible that Catholics believe are inerrant are:
1) Anything that appears both in the Bible and in one of the various Creeds that the Church has espoused (Believe in One God, Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth…)
2) The bit where Jesus calls Peter “the rock on Which I will build my church” – making him the first Pope. The action by which the Roman Catholic Church claims authority.
Outside of those two bits, the rest is optional (and, in fact, “dangerous” for the laity to read by themselves without a priest to act as a “proper” interpreter of “what it really says”).
At one time you could be burned at the stake if you tried to translate any of it into another language.
But, interestingly, Bernard, Ulphilas, as early as the 4th century, translated it into the Germanic or Teutonic tongue for the Goths, during the drawn-out break-up of the Roman Empire. So it wasn’t always the case that early Christianity refused to put the Bible into the vernacular. Unfortunately, for him and the Goths, Ulphilas was an Arian so the Anathasians, who evolved into the Catholics, suppressed that interpretation of Chritianity over the next century or so.
doh…’Athanasians’. The miseries of middle age memory loss.
True but for about 1000 years the Roman Church did not allow translations from the Latin and even then it took some time before they allowed anyone to consult earlier Greek texts.
Except that in the ninth century, the Pope Adrian II approved the use of the Slavonic language liturgy, after Constantine and his brother Methodius (from the Byzantine, and hence Greek-influenced, Church) had created the Slavonic language alphabet for that purpose.
However, within a generation the RCC adopted the Latin-only policy which lasted up to the renaissance (basically) after much toing and froing in heresy charges for the bewildered Methodius.
It isn’t a story of absolutely no translation into the vernacular, even in the Dark Ages; it was still, however anathematised, occasionally open to question.
If the UN DoHR said, “a man and a woman have the right…” then it would imply heterosexual marriage only. Instead it uses plurals, “men and women…” which could imply polygamy. 🙂
And it also mentions ‘dissolution’. I wonder how fine the good cardinal is with that.
So long as serial marriers, like Elizabeth Taylor and Jennifer Lopez continue to marry men, the sanctity of marriage is preserved. I’m sure the Cardinal will be fine with it.
Well, I’m pretty sure tha Ms. Taylor won’t be marrying anyone further.
I don’t know, are the Mormons doing any post-mortem marriages?
Polygamy or polyandry.
Especially when it also says, “to found a family.” [my emphasis]
/@
Actually, polygamy includes polyandry and polygyny. Joseph Smith and Brigham Young were into both.
You’re quite right. I made a mistake. I’m so ashamed… :-/
/@
Although the French version of the text (equally authentic) says “L’homme et La femme”. The man and the woman.
More generally, I wouldn’t be too quick to say the Cardinal must be wrong because of a quick reading of one version of the text. This one is sufficiently ambiguous that you’d have to read the background material to see if it’s possible to be clear about what the Declaration is intended to mean.
And, of course, regardless of how the UNDHR defines marriage, the crux of his argument is still wrong. The UNDHR gives a right to be married. It is a violation of human rights to prevent people from marrying. It is not a violation of human rights to allow people to do something else (as the RC church sees it) and call that marriage, unless you also prevent people from marrying. I can’t really see even the most extreme gay rights proponents arguing that only gay marriage should be allowed.
ZOMG!! What’s next? Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria?
Eating the flesh and drinking the blood of a 2,000 year old dead man, surely humanity wouldn’t sink that far. Ho! Wait….
All three are already going on.
The Coalition for Equal Marriage has an online petition. Concerned UK readers should sign.
/@
PS. Not to be confused with the Coalition for Marriage, which favours the cardinal’s position. And whose petition has many more signatures, sadly.
The C4M had a big head start. Hope we can catch up.
It should be noted that the same book that justifies his claim that homosexuality is sinful also condones slavery. As Sam Harris said, “The creator of the universe clearly expected us to own slaves.”
And God also is very much pro-polygamy — the Biblical notion of marriage is not “one man, one woman”, but “one man, several wives, and a passel of concubines”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFkeKKszXTw
(Sorry if this embeds in the post.)
I’d never heard of Betty Bowers. That was hilarious! +1000!
No apologies necessary for embedding, since embedding does not crash my iPhone Safari like it used to.
And the content of your post is excellent, not just for marriage in particular, but for the method of Abrahamic morality in general.
A proponent of traditional marriage as it appears in the Bible and the Mormon Doctrine and Covenants Section 132 must accept Jesus’s command to practice polygamy. Jesus damns anyone who rejects this “new and an everlasting covenant” with God:
He claimed same sex unions… would lead to the “further degeneration of society into immorality.”
Same-sex marriages have been legal here in Canada for quite some time. I give assurances to this top-notch bigot (and those who agree with him) that THERE IS NO EVIDENCE that our society has degenerated in any way.
Of course Canadian society has degenerated (from the Catholic perspective): The number of people claiming to be unbelievers is up, Church attendance is down, contraception use is up, non-marital sex is becoming more acceptable etc – must be because gay marriage is legal.
Don’t forget also that there are no laws regarding abortion!
May I play the Devil’s Advocate?
Currently, homosexuals who have entered into a civil partnership have the same rights as married couples. What the Cardinal appears to object to is the usurpation of the word “marriage” to include the union of homosexual couples. Could not the Catholic Church simply downgrade the term “marriage” to mean all those unions which are not “blessed by God” and reserve the term “holy matrimony” for those unions which are so blessed. There would be no distinction as to civil rights and obligations, merely the recognition of a spiritual / religious dimension. It would then be a matter for those of a religious persuasion to convince their church that such same sex unions should be equally blessed and deserve the designation of “holy matrimony”. Surely then such a distinction would not be a matter for the State to interfere with?
The RC Church can define marriage in whatever way it damn well pleases, as long as RC marriages are not expected to have any legal significance outside the RC Church. But the RC Church believes that they are empowered and entitled to make moral proclamations on behalf of God to proscribe and/or sanction the behaviour of society at large. And unfortunately, far too many people who are not even RC (and sometimes not even believers) give the RC Church far too much moral authority.
The state already doesn’t interfere with how churches define marriage for themselves.
That’s a non-starter.
Trying to have a “separate-but-equal” terminology for one group versus another will not fly. With anyone.
Trust me on this. Seriously.
If the Cardinal is upset by the usurpation of the word ‘marriage’ then he should stop usurping it. The Catholic church does not own nor did it invent the word or the institution.
Nice idea, that a Catholic marriage be distinguished by a special term — Holy Matrimony (or even ‘Catholic marriage.’) I would no more object to this than I object to the Mormon’s insistence that my husband and I are not “sealed.”
Which is why the Catholics will never go for it. It would mean they give up power and status. They want what you’re calling ‘holy matrimony’ to be the default — the REAL way marriage should be defined for everyone, Catholic or not.
>Which is why the Catholics will never go for it.
Sastra gold. Sometimes I re-read a long thread from the bottom-to-top, and I find myself stopping to reflect on a short post that identifies the real “WHY” behind the dynamics. Then 9 times out of 10, I read your name above the post.
I know you’ve said you won’t write a book (because you don’t have the time, and I imagine because organizing a book would be a completely different mode of work than writing comments responding to topics). That makes me sad, but then I know I’m sad over something that’s not real. I need to accept the reality, like some bands are better live than recorded, and you just had to be there or you missed it. Play on.
“The Catholic church finds that immoral because of words in a fictional book.”
The book isn’t fictional, however the claims made for it are. To see what better minds than mine have concluded, search for (lyings of a woman) and also for (centurion pais).
Further, what this twit is ‘supporting’ isn’t “natural marriage” but Victorian marriage. Also, Biblical marriage was one man and as many wives, concubines and sex slaves (of either sex) as he could afford.
So, massive fundy FAIL.
Can’t resist noting that as far as just the slavery part and marriage in general, Ambrose Bierce was there >100yrs ago:
MARRIAGE, n.
The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two.
It should be noted that Article 16 of the UN Declaration of Right also doesn’t speak to “plural” marriage; neither polygamy nor polyandry, both of which are practiced in parts of the world.
If gay marriage is slavery, then it would follow that straight marriage is also slavery. The cardinal uses very poor logic in his argument.
Unfortunately I think it was the intent of the Universal Declaration to define marriage as between a man and a woman (it was a product of its time). In fact this was the conclusion when Strasbourg recently dealt with the question.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2010/jun/24/european-court-of-human-rights-civil-partnerships
However, it is a bizarre interpretation that takes it to mean that all other forms of marriage are banned.
Well when the religious don’t agree with some crazy thing one of their top officials said, they disown it by saying that it is that individual’s own misgivings and failures and as a human being and that the teachings of their religion in its essence is good and true. And when they agree with what their officials say (although in reality what has been said is ridiculous) then the fall back on claiming that it’s true because of divine inspiration. It’s a very strange thing. When it’s a good thing it’s attributed solely to the invisible guy in the sky and when it’s bad it’s attributed to the flaws of human beings.
But it is in keeping with the kind of cafeteria plan that is the hallmark of many an individual’s theology. Take what you you like and leave the rest alone.
…and switch it around when pragmatic needs change.
Can it possibly be repeated enough?
*The Catholic Church has no standing to speak on issues of morality.*
They remain a criminal enterprise aiding and abetting child rapists and abusers.
They deliberately distribute false information about condoms which is responsible for the deaths and human suffering of many thousands of people.
They have a thousand years of history of torturing and executing many thousands of people for so-called crimes of morality for offenses no longer deemed immoral.
Etc, etc, etc.
I would much rather hear people repeat the asterisked sentence, and repeat it endlessly, than to engage specific issues with Catholic trolls. But that’s just me. ;D
*Like*
Going to try to remember to use your line.
I often go to the Catholic Church for advice on moral issues. I also go to Lehman Brothers for financial advice. What’s the problem?
I think we have a long way to go, especially US before the hold religion has on the world is over. I am encouraged by going on youtube to find we are heading the way of atheism. Why not one religion where everyone respects, loves and teats others with love and respect.
No they need many religions. If we had one religion in place of all religions what would be the excuse for wars and killings,murders,slavery etc.
Ridiculous. Utterly stupid to bring in slavery, when the RC Church did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about slavery when it was going on.
Did this Cardinal also speak out strongly against priests raping children, or about bishops and cardinals protecting child rapists?
Shouldn’t the national and regional government get to have some say in who is promoted to Cardinal, if the Cardinals are going to be so involved in national politics?
Absolutely not. But government should revoke their church’s tax-exempt status.
Looks like Italy is already broaching that subject.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/cash-strapped-italy-looks-to-tax-church-owned-properties/2012/03/02/gIQAFtjAnR_story.html
I think if they’re going to become so involved in national politics then it’s not so ‘absolutely’ clear that they shouldn’t have to take the government’s council.
What if they want to make, say, an European Bishop, who’s been convicted of multiple acts of child rape into a US Cardinal? Why /shouldn’t/ the State and Fed have some say in this? Indeed they could clearly deny entry to that person, and that could be considered an interference.
Or what if an islamic group wanted to establish a Grande Mufti of the NY Metropolitan area, and the person they advanced was convicted of carrying out actual terrorist accounts outside the country? Couldn’t the US deport them, thus denying them status as Grande Mufti?
No, it really is quite clear — government has no business interfering with the internal workings of a religion, any more than it has with any other organization. The government should not punish people for what they believe or for their political opinions.
Sure, but the US could also do that to Roman Polanski. If a person has committed a crime, then they should be punished. But they are not being punished just for being religious. No state should ever do that, just as no state should punish someone just for being an atheist.
It’s a pretty simple principle, and one that atheists, as a group with a minority view of religion, should hold to quite strongly.
Now, as I said before, I do think that if religious groups get overtly involved in politics, they should lose their tax-exempt status, as that is also the law.
Right, if they’re involved in politics, then they can be taxed. And if their leaders are involved in crimes, or suspected of crimes, then they are subject to the law. And if they’re dependent on the state, and they’re also interfering in the state, then perhaps they should have to consult with the state over who’s the regional executive officer, just like a corporation might have to.
That’s not punishing them because they’re religious. They want to be part of the ‘pubic square’, so it’s hardly a ‘red line’ that perhaps that would require some negotiation.
Under what circumstances can the US determine who runs a company?
Of course, the real problem for the RCC is if homosexual marriage is legal, it will be difficult to keep a significant number of priests, bishops and cardinals as they will now be free to marry each other?
Should priests be allows to get married? Sure, why not?
If a priest marries, even if they marry a woman, they’re usually threatened with excommunication unless they leave the wife.
So kid raping: AOK. Marriage: excommunication. Gay Marriage would be excommunication too.
It is comparable to slavery. It is comparable to the advocation of slavery by southern churches in the Confederacy. Slavery is not something that the good book seemed to have problems with. Why should we care now what this treatise of prejudice and superstition has to say about anything in this modern age.
I cannot comment on any fallacious ‘argumentation’ based on religious ‘premises’ and I find it a total waste of time anyway. But isn’t always the case that the ‘representatives’ and/or faithful crowd of judeo-christo-muslim ‘tradition’ confuses social with sexual interactions?
A dissociative identity disorder, manifested individually or en masse, perhaps?
“Utterly stupid to bring in slavery, when the RC Church did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about slavery when it was going on”.
This is quite untrue – far from doing “absolutely nothing”, the Catholic Church actively encouraged slavery.
Take the papal bull “Dum diversas” issued by Pope Nicholas V in 1452. This authorised King Afonso V of Portugal to reduce “Saracens, pagans and other unbelievers” to perpetual slavery.
“We grant you [Afonso] by these present documents, with our Apostolic Authority, full and free permission to invade, search out, capture, and subjugate the Saracens and pagans and any other unbelievers and enemies of Christ wherever they may be, as well as their kingdoms, duchies, counties, principalities, and other property […] and to reduce their persons into perpetual slavery”, said this most holy vicar of Christ.
Three years later, in 1455, the same Pope, in the bull “Romanus Pontifex” boasted that he had granted Afonso V the faculty “to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed, and the kingdoms, dukedoms, principalities, dominions, possessions, and all movable and immovable goods whatsoever held and possessed by them and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery, and to apply and appropriate to himself and his successors the kingdoms, dukedoms, counties, principalities, dominions, possessions, and goods, and to convert them to his and their use and profit”.
This is the same bull which gave vast tracts of Africa and the Americas to the Portuguese monarchy. Anyone who disagreed was to be excommunicated.
The Catholic Church did not unequivocally condemn slavery until the Second Vatican Council in 1965.
The cardinal in his own words: Listen to the clip here…
http://westcumbriaskeptic.com/hysterical-virgin-compares-gay-marriage-equality-to-slavery/
To catholics, gay sex and marriage is sinful, deviant, perverted, and should not be legal, but priests/bishops/cardinals/popes engaging in raping young boys and other abhorrent behavior is just fine, and should not be a criminal offense. Yeah, makes perfect sense. NOT.
I always find it a bit strange that Xians (particularly ‘Catolics’), are very keen to enforce certain directives from the Old Testament but not others.
If I were cynical, I might suggest that they’re picking and choosing passages that reinforce their own personal prejudices.
But that can’t be right, surely?
If I were cynical, I might suggest that they’re picking and choosing passages that reinforce their own personal prejudices.
Of course not – just take a look at website of the Christian League Against the Maine Shellfish: godhatesshrimp.com
Ah yes. The beknighted shrimp. And then of course there’s Leviticus 19:28 and tattoos. I’m surprised the tattoo parlours aren’t out protesting.
And as for witches! (Exodus 22:178) Well, I just don’t know why they aren’t being slaughtered by the thousands as we speak.
In certain parts of Africa, they are. Well, children accused of being witches are being slaughtered.
It’s amazing what you can get away with when your god tells you to do it.
Actually, here in Salem, MA, where I live, the witches are doing pretty well. Some of them are pillars of the community. And I should mention that Salem is one of the most LGBT-friendly communities that I’ve ever seen. It’s a very live-and-let-live place — rather different from the way it was in 1692, and altogether a delightful place for an atheist like me and my non-atheist wife to live in.
What??? No roving bands of enraged Christians wielding pitchforks and holding flaming torches breaking down doors and dragging off suspected witches to be put to the trials?
These are poor Christians indeed.
There are a few raging Christians, but they are mostly viewed as a mildly amusing nuisance. One Methodist church down the street raises a ruckus now and then, but it’s pretty much a laughingstock, with its cutesy/idiotic sayings posted on its whatever-you-call-it (bulletin board? billboard?) in front of the church (“Use GPS — God’s plan of salvation”; “Jesus is an equal opportunity Savior”, and equally inane pearls of wisdom). The local U-U church often makes its building available for joint meetings with the Wiccans.
You sometimes see street evangelists hawking their wares during the month-long Hallowe’en celebration, for which Salem is famous, and for which as many as 100,000 pour into town on Hallowe’en itself for a sort of Mardi Gras-like bash, but generally most people who notice them just stand around and heckle them.
In a strange way I am more comfortable with “regular” religious folk who grew up in some church and just accepted it by default. I can imagine such folk waking up sometime and saying to themselves “Jeeze… this doesn’t really make any sense”. Wiccans(and “new age crystal, candle, and occult types) seem to be profoundly confused people who have somehow wandered into the land of Oz while on a “spiritual quest”.
I know… My mutterings oversimplify.
So is the Salem of witch hunt fame?
Yes, that’s the one.
So loving someone for who they are is bad but to abuse little children is just what is needed to make a country great. Get off your high horse Cardinal. ANyway I know many gay priests and gay rabbis. Why would you like to wear a dress and let your predjudices of others matter, after all it says in the bible that god makes us in his image. So thats life, get used to it.
Giving homosexuals basic humans rights is evidently the exact same thig as taking basic human rights away from Africans. Obviously.
taking basic human rights away from Africans
Huh?
I think he means because the cardinal sayeth that allowing gay marriage is the same as allowing slavery…
Few quick points:
A point was also made by the cardinal about the ‘right of a child to have a father and a mother’ (never mind how wrong this argument is). Now, within the UK of course there is the Church of England, founded with the explicit intent to… allow divorce. How’s that for a child’s right, then? Logically then the CofE and the RCC should be at each other.
Both on the Telegraph website (of all places) which is running a poll, and of course in “Richard Dawkins’ ” poll (actually Ipsos Mori) under christians, the pro-same-sex marriage responses come in at roughly 75%. Imagine what the stats would look like outside of the christian-biased territory.
Also, as reported, the RCC in the UK has only 5 million members – out of a population of roughly 60M.
They are an annoyingly loud minority, far overshouting their real importance, unwilling to accept their own irrelevancy. Pity the media give them all this coverage.
The cardinal confuses natural law with religious law. Homosexuality is natural and is found in hundreds of wild and domestic animals. Religious law is the only “law” that finds homosexuality to be sinful. May he live in peace and ignorance.
No he doesn’t confuse natural law with religious law; he doesn’t mean what you think he means by it. In RCC Theology “natural law” is a term coined by Aquinus who, following Aristotle, had a cosmology in which every thing in the world had a purpose. Anything which interferes with this purpose is considered contrary to natural law. Since they consider the purpose of sex to be reproduction they consider both homosexuality and contraception contrary to natural law whether it occurs in humans or other animals. In the case of humans, this makes same-sex marriage contrary to the natural law.
If that sounds potty, it is; Roman Catholic theology is potty. But people like Cardinal O’Brien are so used to talking like this that they have no idea that most people, including most Catholics, won’t have a clue what he is going on about.