New York City, N.Y., May 22, 2018 / 08:30 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Archbishop of New York said Tuesday that while some recent comments about homosexuality attributed to Pope Francis are “orthodox teaching,” the pope’s reported remarks could require clarification.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan affirmed the pope’s recent affirmation of God’s love for a gay man with whom the pontiff visited in Rome, saying: “Jesus would have said that, and so would I. That’s conservative, traditional, Catholic, orthodox teaching. The ‘Catechism’ insists on that.”
“While any sexual expression outside of a man and woman in marriage is contrary to God’s purpose, so is not treating anyone, including a gay person, with anything less than dignity and respect,” Dolan added, speaking May 22 during his weekly radio show on Sirius XM’s The Catholic Channel.
“What he says is beautiful, don’t you think?” Dolan asked.
The remarks were a response to questions about Juan Carlos Cruz, a Chilean victim of sexual abuser Fr. Fernando Karadima, who told the Spanish newspaper El Pais on Friday that Pope Francis told him that it did not matter that he was gay.
“He told me ‘Juan Carlos, that you are gay does not matter. God made you like that and he loves you like that and I do not care. The Pope loves you as you are, you have to be happy with who you are,’” Cruz recalled.
Asked about the most controversial aspect of the Holy Father’s remarks, regarding whether God wills that someone experience same sex attraction, Dolan was circumspect, citing “ongoing debate” among “professional circles.”
“Is one born that way, or is it – is it nature or nurture?… I don’t think the Holy Father would feel competent to speak on that.”
Dolan noted that while he had no reason to doubt Cruz’s account, the pope’s reported remarks were “third hand: what the pope said to him, he said to the press, so one would want to get a clarification.”
He said his remarks were qualified by “a little bit of ‘wait and see’” adding “let’s find out exactly what the Holy Father said.”
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Pope Francis smiles during the general audience in the Vatican’s San Damaso Courtyard on June 30, 2021. / Credit: Pablo Esparza/CNA.
Vatican City, Jun 30, 2021 / 05:05 am (CNA).
Pope Francis said on Wednesday that the dramatic conversion of St. Paul should remind us that God has a plan for our lives.
Speaking at the general audience June 30, the pope noted that Paul experienced a “radical transformation” from a persecutor to an Apostle.
“How often, in the face of the Lord’s great works, does the question arise: how is it possible that God uses a sinner, a frail and weak person, to do His will?” the pope asked.
“And yet, none of this happens by chance, because everything has been prepared in God’s plan. He weaves our history, the history of each of us: He weaves our history and, if we correspond with trust to His plan of salvation, we realize it.”
The pope’s livestreamed address, dedicated to “Paul, the true Apostle,” was the second in a new cycle of catechesis on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians.
/ Pablo Esparza/CNA.
He observed that Paul began the letter by reminding the Christians in Galatia, present-day Turkey, of his deep love for them.
But Paul also recognized that the community was divided. He responded, the pope said, by underlining the novelty of the Gospel.
“We immediately discover that Paul has a profound knowledge of the mystery of Christ. From the beginning of his Letter he does not follow the low arguments used by his detractors,” the pope said.
“The Apostle ‘flies high’ and shows us, too, how to behave when conflicts arise within the community. Only towards the end of the Letter, in fact, is it made explicit that at the heart of the diatribe is the question of circumcision, hence of the main Jewish tradition.”
/ Pablo Esparza/CNA.
The pope praised Paul for identifying the issue that lay beneath the dispute, rather than seeking a quick fix.
“Paul chooses to go deeper, because what is at stake is the truth of the Gospel and the freedom of Christians, which is an integral part of it,” he said.
“He does not stop at the surface of the problems, as we are often tempted to do in order to find an immediate solution that deludes us into thinking that we can all agree with a compromise.”
“This is not how the Gospel works, and the Apostle chose to take the more challenging route.”
Paul reminded the Galatians that he was a true Apostle, the pope said, by telling the story of how he was called by God on the road to Damascus.
“On the one hand, he insists in underlining that he had fiercely persecuted the Church and that he had been a ‘blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence’ (1 Timothy 1: 13); on the other, he highlights God’s mercy towards him, which led him to experience a radical transformation, well known to all,” he observed.
Commenting on Paul’s journey from “a blameless observer of the Mosaic Law” to “a herald among the pagans,” the pope said: “We must never forget the time and the way in which God entered our lives: keep fixed in your heart and mind that encounter with grace, when God changed our existence.”
/ Pablo Esparza/CNA.
Concluding his catechesis, the pope said that when we are called by God, we also receive a mission that He wishes us to undertake.
“That is why we are asked to prepare ourselves seriously, knowing that it is God Himself who sends us, God himself who supports us with His grace,” he said.
“Let us allow ourselves to be led by this awareness: the primacy of grace transforms existence and makes it worthy of being placed at the service of the Gospel.”
/ Pablo Esparza/CNA.
A precis of the pope’s catechesis was then read out in seven languages. After each summary, he greeted members of each language group.
One of the greetings was to pilgrims from Slovakia, a country that the Vatican is considering for a possible papal visit in September.
He said: “I greet with affection the Slovakian faithful, especially the participants in the Pilgrimage of Thanksgiving of the Eparchy of Košice, which celebrates the 350th anniversary of the miraculous weeping of the icon of Our Lady of Klokočov, led by their ordinary Archbishop Cyril Vasiľ.”
/ Pablo Esparza/CNA.
“Brothers and sisters, may this celebration of the Mother of God renew in your people the faith and the lively sense of her intercession on your journey.”
Addressing Italian speakers, the pope thanked his senior driver Renzo Cestiè, who he noted was retiring that day.
“He started working when he was 14, he came by bicycle,” the pope said. “Today he is the pope’s driver: he did all of this. An applause for Renzo and his faithfulness.”
/ Pablo Esparza/CNA.
“He is one of those people who carries the Church forward with his work, with his benevolence and with his prayer. I thank him and also take the opportunity to thank the many lay people who work with us in the Vatican,” he said.
The general audience ended with the recitation of the Our Father and the Apostolic Blessing.
Pope Francis waves during his Angelus address at the Vatican, Aug. 2, 2021. / Vatican Media.
Vatican City, Aug 3, 2021 / 09:00 am (CNA).
Pope Francis is inviting Catholics around the world to pray this month that the Church receives the grace “t… […]
Vatican City, Apr 11, 2017 / 10:56 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The caresses born of love are the most important medicine, Pope Francis told a group of patients, families, and doctors from Rome’s Bambino Gesu Pediatric Hospital on Monday.
“There is the danger, the risk of forgetting the most important medicine that only a family can give: caresses! It is a form of medicine that is too costly, because to have it, to be able to do this, you must give everything, you must give all your heart, all your love,” Pope Francis said April 10. “And you give them this affection, the caresses of the doctors, the nurses, the director, everyone.”
The patients, ages 5-18, met with Pope Francis at the Vatican, where he told them that “Each of you is a story. Not only the sick children, but also the doctors, the nurses, those who visit, the families.”
He recalled his Dec. 15, 2016 meeting with the group, saying that on that occasion the physicians “introduced the people to me. They all knew everyone’s names: ‘This one is fighting this disease…’.”
“They also knew what was happening in their lives. And I perceived … that more than a hospital this is a family, that is one of the words you said. The most important thing was the name, the person, and only at the end was the disease mentioned, but almost incidentally, a secondary matter. It is a family, isn’t it?”
The Pope also recalled that “you were a bit ashamed of getting up and not looking good in front of the camera, and the director, who is a bit like a mother, came up to you and said, ‘Come’, and she encouraged you. This is the beauty of a family, this is beautiful.”
“Entering in a hospital always makes us afraid, and I see this when I come up to some children, not all, but some very little ones, and they see me in white, and they begin to cry; they think it is a doctor who has come to give them a vaccine, and they cry and are afraid. I stroke them a few times and they calm down. Because there is always the function of the hospital … one must do this …”
He said Bambino Jesu “has grown a lot lately, and has become a family. … The child, the patient finds a family there. Family and community, two words that you have said and repeated, and I wish to thank you for this, because Bambin Gesù offers witness, human witness. Human.”
“It is a Catholic hospital, and to be Catholic, first you must be human, and you give human witness today. Please, continue always on this path, grow in this way.”
Bambino Gesu (which translates to the child Jesus) is the largest pediatric hospital and research center in Europe. Owned by the Holy See and known as the Pope’s hospital, Bambino Gesu also serves children from all over the world.
The Holy Father is a popular figure at the hospital, where children write him letters and know many details of his life, including words from his homilies and facts about his home country and favorite soccer team.
Pope Francis has visited the facility several times, as did Blessed Paul VI, St. John Paul II, and Benedict XVI.
Archbishop Dolan of “good for him” fame needs to read Aquinas who distinguished between God willing all men to be saved, willing perfection of health, perfection of beauty….as God’s antecedent willing… while His damning some men, sickness, ugliness, gay orientation refers to his consequent willing post Adam’s or man’s sin. Romans one…God…asserts about active gays…” receiving in themselves the fit recompense of their perversity”….ie He does not love what it does to their characteristics.
– “let’s find out exactly what the Holy Father said.” –
That is hilarious. You never will because the Pope speaks from both sides of the mouth – one moment saying and another quite the contray. To expect to find out exactly what the master of doublespeak said is essentially to say : He said it’s black and white at the same time.
Why would he clarify? Would that not defeat the purpose of obfuscation?
And a few years back, after discovering that Obamacare did not include a functional conscience clause after all, Cardinal Dolan looked back on the reassurances he had been given(and believed!) before the bill was adopted: “They lied to me.”
Why are some clerics so innocent as not to notice? Perhaps they live in a lost world where some residual degree of common humanity and trust, in politicized matters, still existed. Time to wake up. In this world we are to be both “wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matt 10:16), both at the same time, always, never just one or the other.
Archbishop Dolan of “good for him” fame needs to read Aquinas who distinguished between God willing all men to be saved, willing perfection of health, perfection of beauty….as God’s antecedent willing… while His damning some men, sickness, ugliness, gay orientation refers to his consequent willing post Adam’s or man’s sin. Romans one…God…asserts about active gays…” receiving in themselves the fit recompense of their perversity”….ie He does not love what it does to their characteristics.
– “let’s find out exactly what the Holy Father said.” –
That is hilarious. You never will because the Pope speaks from both sides of the mouth – one moment saying and another quite the contray. To expect to find out exactly what the master of doublespeak said is essentially to say : He said it’s black and white at the same time.
Why would he clarify? Would that not defeat the purpose of obfuscation?
The lack of clarification is the clarification…
And a few years back, after discovering that Obamacare did not include a functional conscience clause after all, Cardinal Dolan looked back on the reassurances he had been given(and believed!) before the bill was adopted: “They lied to me.”
Why are some clerics so innocent as not to notice? Perhaps they live in a lost world where some residual degree of common humanity and trust, in politicized matters, still existed. Time to wake up. In this world we are to be both “wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matt 10:16), both at the same time, always, never just one or the other.
‘Dignity and respect.’ Like ‘dialog,’ all blather words now.