Have Catholic Democrats heard Pope Francis’ denunciation of same-sex stuff?

From American Thinker:

Dogs and gays: Pope Francis and Catholic Democrats
By Robert Klein Engler

Has anyone besides a few pundits found it odd that many Catholic Democrats have spent more time worrying about dogs going to heaven than they have about whether or not they might go to heaven? They worry more about the destiny of dogs than they worry about the destiny of their souls if they support same-sex marriage.

Then, in another oddity, just a few days before we hear the news that the U.S. Supreme Court will take up the issue of same-sex marriage, the pope issues a scathing denunciation of same sex-marriage, saying it “disfigures God’s plan for creation.”

Have Catholic Democrats been listing to this denunciation?

[…]

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19 Comments

  1. MikeJDP says:

    This is a good callout for leftists. I’ve always struggled with he death penalty and explaining the difference to liberals, even when comparing to the Just War doctrine. What is your personal view, Father? I’m finding it harder to support as I grow in my faith.

  2. Toan says:

    Interesting (and refreshing) to read the news reports:

    MSNBC: “On his second day of his visit to the Philippines, Pope Francis made critical comments about same-sex marriage that appeared to walk back earlier, more inclusive, comments about the gay community.”

    The Independent: “The pontiff made the comments at a mass in Manila as part of his tour of Asia, despite apparently relaxing the church’s position towards the LGBT community in recent months.”

    The Daily Signal: “In Manila, capital of the Philippines and the country’s second largest city, the pope reaffirmed his commitment to traditional marriage, speaking to the crowd about his concern for the ‘ideological colonization of the family,’ which many took as a swipe at gay marriage. The Vatican later confirmed that marriage was on the pope’s mind…The pope also went on to defend the Catholic Church’s views on contraceptive use. ”

    Examiner: “Just 24 hours after Pope Francis called for restriction of free speech in regards to religious criticism, the once heralded leader of the Catholic Church is attacking same-sex marriage. Speaking in front of a large crowd in the Philippines, Francis appeared to revert back to the same rhetoric used by the church in the past.

    Francis arrived in the Philippines on Friday for a five day trip and spoke to thousands in the heart of Manila, the country’s capital city. While speaking on the issue of same sex marriage on Jan. 16, Francis went into attack mode…”

    Seems like the press isn’t even trying to spin this story in their customary direction this time!

  3. Iacobus M says:

    The Left and the mainstream media (but I repeat myself) are less interested in what the Pope actually says than in how they can use it to their advantage. When he speaks Catholic doctrine directly and clearly, they are at a a bit of a loss.

  4. anna 6 says:

    It is interesting that Pope Francis chose the Phillipines to make this unequivocal statement, where in contrast, his statement in more western influenced countries are less clear.
    Do you think that is intentional?

  5. Supertradmum says:

    MikeJDP, Just war is not merely a doctrine, but a long-held and good theory. We must not ever do pre-preemptive strikes but there are just reasons for war. Catholicism has never been pacifistic.

    If the Catholic world were strong, we would be fighting now against those who hate the Church and Western civilization, but men have chosen to be weak and not see the real need for physical as well as spiritual warfare. We are in a war now as Catholics and if you cannot see it read my blog.

  6. Sonshine135 says:

    Unfortunately, this is all too common. I recall commenting on a story not too long ago where a woman had placed in her will that she wanted her dog euthanized when she died. The uproar from the people over the imminent death of this dog was absolutely staggering. At that point, I commented that I wished there was this much uproar of the death of an unborn child, because abortion would be over tomorrow. The nicer of the responses I was received was along this line: “I would take my dog an day over another human being.”

    The moral of this story is that many people do think more highly of dogs than of other people and even themselves. This is why faith has to be superficial. Were it to have cost, people would be required to change and convert their lives.

  7. Traductora says:

    The Pope gave a very good homily at the Mass in Manila. He was speaking from a prepared text, and I think perhaps whoever advises him may realize that the Pope needs to express himself in a somewhat more orthodox fashion on some of these issues. I wouldn’t say it was a direct attack on “gay marriage,” though, despite the fact that the press obviously took it as such. In fact, he never mentioned the issue or homosexuality in general by name, but lumped this threat to the family in with other “ideological colonization” things such as “materialism.” Huh?

    Unless the newspaper articles are referring to some other statement of his, really what they are objecting to was simply his very positive words about the family, which were very good words.

    But this just shows you how hypersensitive “progressives” are to this issue. Perhaps the Pope is now realizing that his ambiguous statements of a few months ago are coming back to haunt him, and now the left wants more and more overt support for their agenda. So even a hint that he disagrees is now severely criticized as backsliding into the old, bad pre-Francis Church.

    Of course, shortly after that, he went back to the agenda, telling a meeting of young people that the problem was “climate change” and how badly man was treating “the Earth,” which I doubt was really the question that was foremost in their minds.

  8. ChrisRawlings says:

    Anna6,

    I’ve also noticed that the Holy Father’s ad limina visits with the African bishops conferences tend to be where he is clearest and most vigorous in his denouncement of attacks on the family. I do know that the attacks against basic Christian values with regards to the family are under constant attack in the Third World–and a lot of that pressure comes from the secularized First World.

  9. ejcmartin says:

    Given all that has been going on around marriage etc., I found today’s second reading from the “Office of Readings” interesting. A section of Ignatius of Antioch’s letter to the Ephesians: “Make no mistake, my brothers: those who corrupt families will not inherit the kingdom of God. If those who do these things in accordance with the flesh have died, how much worse will it be if one corrupts through evil doctrine the faith of God for which Jesus Christ was crucified?” Perhaps less has changed in the last 2,000 years than we think.

  10. The Egyptian says:

    Have Catholic Democrats been listing to this denunciation?

    snowball meet —well you know

  11. Latin Mass Type says:

    I haven’t looked I to it but a MSM news report says the Holy Father, on his latest airborne press conference said that Catholics shouldn’t take the ban on contraception to mean they should “breed like rabbits.”

    Not sure what the truth is on this. Not sure where to go to find out.

  12. kpoterack says:

    Latin Mass Type:

    True, but classic Pope Francis hyperbole. In restating the Church’s opposition to contraception, he says that, nonetheless, Catholics have to engage in “responsible parenthood” – simply restating language from Church documents.

    http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/pope-responsible-parenthood-doesnt-mean-birth-control-21274/

    Of course, he did praise large families less than a month ago:

    http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/large-families-are-schools-of-solidarity-and-sharing-francis-affirms-94084/

  13. Fr Francis says:

    Traductora – I think that what the Press are referring to is the speech Pope Francis made at the Meeting with Families in the Mall of Asia Arena, Manila on Friday, 16 January 2015.

    He said: “The family is also threatened by growing efforts on the part of some to REDEFINE the very institution of marriage.”

    http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2015/january/documents/papa-francesco_20150116_srilanka-filippine-incontro-famiglie.html

    I think it is pretty clear that Pope Francis was indeed referring to same sex “marriage”. So – at least on this occasion – the press got it spot on. (And perhaps the Pope deliberately chose not to dignifiy SSM by referring to it as “marriage”.)

    Many people will remember just over a year ago when pro-abortion feminists stripped and attacked the Cathedral of San Juan Bautista (John the Baptist) in Argentina and assaulted the young men who formed a human shield around the Cathedral in November 2013.

    At the same time the feminists burnt a life sized model of Pope Francis in front of the Cathedral. I do not think they did this because they thought that Pope Francis intends to change Catholic teaching on sexual morality! See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOCD_T9Qqpc

    In fact this sort of outrage had been going on for years in Argentina. For example pro-abortion feminists and lesbians mocked and spat at young male Catholics who were praying in Neuquen, Argentina, on Aug 17, 2008. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mp0oMKGFTyk

    I do not think they were attacking the Church because they thought that the-then Cardinal Bergoglio agreed with them. Quite the opposite.

    Pope Francis (who continues to confuse many of us) has said on a number of occasions “I am a loyal son of the Church.”

    But how can we understand this Pope of paradoxes?

    From 1978 to 2013 we were blessed with two very great scholars occupying the See of Peter. They engaged with scholars and I am sure that the greatness of both of them will be more and more recognised in the decades and in the centuries to come. Above all, St John Paul provided an authentic and authoritative hermeneutic for the correct interpretation of Vatican II – and had oversight for the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the new Code of Canon Law. What a true colossus he was!

    But while St John Paul and Pope Benedict had an obvious appeal to scholars, especially in the developed world, Pope Francis has quite a different constituency.

    He is seeking to touch the heart rather than the mind – and especially the hearts of the Church’s many Prodigal Sons, particularly in the developing world.

    But he does not always touch the hearts or even the heads (correction: ESPECIALLY the heads!) of the Elder Brothers – and notably those of us (I include myself) in the developed world who have studied Church Documents and Canon Law.

    But perhaps he is concentrating of bringing home the lost sheep. And he realises from his experiences in Argentina that just repeating Church Doctrines will not change minds and hearts.

    Perhaps that is why he uses symbolic gestures – in order that he like Heiniken “Refreshes the parts other beers cannot reach”.

    Is this illogical? See http://www.cdpcelebration.com/2010/07/how-mr-spock-was-born/

    Perhaps he might have chosen as his motto, the one chosen by Cardinal Newman. “Cor ad cor loquitur.”

  14. Democrats look at everything through the lens of political jockeying. They think Pope Francis does the same. Democrats, the Nancy Pelosi type, think when Pope Francis talks about defending the family, Democrats think to themselves: “he’s only saying this because of those dirty rotten conservative dinosaurs that still exist in his Church . . . someday over the rainbow, there will be a Church with no conservatives and we can all do the chicken dance as the new pope allows ALL the gays to come out of the closet, because we know, we just know there are sooooo many of them everywhere just waiting to come out if it weren’t for those mean conservatives.”

  15. iamlucky13 says:

    Linked from another Catholic site, I found myself skimming this:
    http://www.cruxnow.com/faith/2015/01/17/feeling-devastated-by-this-pope/

    There’s nothing in her post I haven’t seen before. Mainly that she’s devastated that the current pope believes the same things as the pope before him, even though she had dared hope he would embrace the modernists’ false form of feminism.

    It was the first comment following her post that floored me.

    It’s by a poster (from a search, he seems to be quite prolific, but I wasn’t familiar with him), who identifies himself as a “traditional Catholic priest,” but also a sedevacantist.

    Except his form of rejecting the Apostolic mark of the Church is not simple to argue for the rest of the Church’s teachings, but to argue AGAINST them.

    So to this confused woman who hasn’t been taught or learned her professed faith well enough to understand why the use of contraception is gravely sinful, and who wants to believe that Pope Francis will change this teaching, he tells her Pope Francis IS CHANGING that teaching, but is being subtle because he doesn’t want to tip his hand to “the Burke-ites”.

    I can only guess his intent is to further undermine papal authority, but in so doing, he ironically and intentionally directs her further from the Truth. The devil is very cunning in who he tricks into doing his work.

  16. Johnno says:

    The Democrats should rest easy knowing that wherever it is that dogs end up going, it’ll be a far better place than where they themselves will end up if they keep on this path.

  17. Gabriel Syme says:

    Anna6,

    You are dead right that the Popes message and style changes, depending on who his audience is.

    He wants to be all things to all men and essentially just tells people what they want to hear. He doesn’t so much teach as he does flatter, pander to and cosset whoever is in front of him. Being well received and popular means more to him, than does clearly articulating the faith.

    This is called “running with the hares and hunting with the hounds” and its one of the reasons why he is an incomprehensible and ineffectual Pontiff.

  18. Gabriel Syme says:

    Fr Francis,

    I wonder if your praise of John Paul II is a little OTT. I think the gave inadequacies of his pontificate become clearer as time goes on.

    Remember, this is the guy – the Vicar of Christ – who allowed himself to be photographed whilst kissing the book (the koran) of a false religion (Islam) which denies the divinity of Our Lord. That’s a major error, a massive failing.

    This is the guy who gave us “girl altar boys” in the middle of a vocations crisis – pandering to secular sensibilities is not a wise move for a competent Supreme Pontiff.

    This is the guy who episcopal appointments were often extremely poor (some have haunted the Church for decades) and who failed to act on reports of abuse and wrong-doing (which later blew up in Benedict XVIs face).

    This is the guy who admitted on his death bed that he had not governed the Church as well as he should have.

    And while, yes, he worked to fix the damage caused by Vatican II and also produced a catechism – we can, now with hindsight, see how ineffectual his efforts (and those of others) were in both of these areas. There are still massive problems as a result of Vatican II and I don’t think Catholics have ever been more ignorant about the Catholic faith than they are in the modern day.

    So I cannot agree that he was a “colossus” – he was a failure, just as every Pope since John XXIII has been a failure. Benedict XVI was by far the best of the bunch, but the rise of Francis to succeed him is definitely an example of the pattern “1 step forward, 2 steps back”.

    I am no sedevacantist and condemn that error, but it doesnt take a genuis to see that the last man at the helm who knew what he was doing, and who governed anything remotely like a united Church, was Pius XII.

  19. chantgirl says:

    This quote from a Lifesite report should become our template for opposing same-sex “marriage”.

    “When we institutionalize same-sex marriage … we move from permitting citizens the freedom to live as they choose, to promoting same-sex headed households,” Faust wrote. “Now we are normalizing a family structure where a child will always be deprived daily of one gender influence and the relationship with at least one natural parent. Our cultural narrative becomes one that, in essence, tells children that they have no right to the natural family structure or their biological parents, but that children simply exist for the satisfaction of adult desires.”

    This quote is taken from testimony given to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals by individuals who were raised by homosexual couples.

    https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/quartet-of-truth-adult-children-of-gay-parents-testify-against-same-sex-mar

    We need to strenuously respond to the faux “right to homosexual marriage” with the right of children to be raised in a healthy environment. Thankfully, Pope Francis is beginning to speak more forcefully on this issue.

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