The conflict between the two predominantly Orthodox Christian nations has tested relations between the Vatican and the Russian Orthodox Church, as well as within Eastern Orthodoxy.
In his speech, Pope Francis said that Christian communities needed to recognize they were on a journey of faith together with the members of other confessions.
When a community tried to go it alone, he said, it ran the risk of “self-sufficiency and self-referentiality, which are grave obstacles to ecumenism.”
“And we see it,” he commented. “In some countries, there are certain egocentric revivals — so to speak — of some Christian communities that are a turning back and unable to advance. Today, either we all walk together or we cannot walk. This awareness is a truth and a grace of God.”
The pope noted that he had often described 21st-century conflicts as “a piecemeal World War III.”
“However, this war, as cruel and senseless as any war, has a greater dimension and threatens the entire world, and cannot fail to challenge the conscience of every Christian and every Church,” he said.
Quoting from his 2020 encyclicalFratelli tutti, the pontiff went on: “We must ask ourselves: what have the Churches done and what can they do to contribute to the ‘development of a global community of fraternity based on the practice of social friendship on the part of peoples and nations’? It’s a question we need to think about together.”
The pope suggested that efforts to improve relations between Christians in the 20th century were motivated partly by the horror of two world wars.
“Today, in the face of the barbarity of war, this longing for unity must be nourished anew,” he commented.
“To ignore divisions among Christians, whether out of habit or out of resignation, is to tolerate that pollution of hearts which makes fertile ground for conflicts.”
“The proclamation of the gospel of peace, that gospel which disarms hearts even before armies, will be more credible only if proclaimed by Christians finally reconciled in Jesus, Prince of Peace.”
Members of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity were in Rome to attend a May 3-6 plenary meeting on the theme “Towards an Ecumenical Celebration of the 1,700th Anniversary of Nicaea I (325-2025).”
Among the speakers was Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, who addressed plenary participants remotely about the ecumenical situation in Ukraine amid the war.
In his speech, the pope said that members of the pontifical council were making a “valuable contribution” by reflecting on how to celebrate the anniversary of the First Council of Nicaea “in an ecumenical manner” in 2025.
The council, held in 325 A.D., was called by the emperor Constantine to confront the Arian heresy, which denied Christ’s divinity. The council promulgated the Nicene Creed, which is still accepted by Orthodox, Anglican, and other Protestant denominations.
“Despite the troubled events of its preparation and especially of the subsequent long period of reception, the first ecumenical council was an event of reconciliation for the Church, which in a synodal way reaffirmed its unity around the profession of its faith,” the pope said.
“The style and decisions of the Council of Nicaea must enlighten the present ecumenical journey and lead to new concrete steps towards the goal of fully restoring Christian unity.”
“Since the 1,700th anniversary of the First Council of Nicea coincides with the Jubilee year, I hope that the celebration of the next Jubilee will have a significant ecumenical dimension.”
The Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, led by the Swiss Cardinal Kurt Koch, traces its roots back to 1960, when Pope John XXIII established the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity. It was given its current title by Pope John Paul II in 1988.
The pontifical council — located on the Via della Conciliazione, the road leading from St. Peter’s Square to the Castel Sant’Angelo — will be renamed the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity when the new Vatican constitution comes into force on June 5.
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New Cardinal Ruben Salazar Gomez, archbishop of Bogotá, Colombia, receives the biretta cap from Pope Benedict XVI in St. Peter’s Basilica on Nov. 24, 2012, in Vatican City, Vatican. / Photo by Franco Origlia/Getty Images
Vatican City, Jan 3, 2023 / 08:00 am (CNA).
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger demonstrated faithfulness, said Pope Paul VI in his address during the consistory of June 27, 1977, in which Ratzinger, then archbishop metropolitan of Munich and Freising, was created a cardinal of the Holy Roman Church.
Paul VI pointed to Ratzinger’s “theological teaching in prestigious university seats in his Germany and in numerous and worthy publications.”
Ratzinger, Paul VI continued, “has made apparent how theological research — in the main way of the ‘fides quaerens intellectum’ — cannot and should not be ever disconnected from the profound, free, creative adherence to the Magisterium, which authentically interprets and proclaims the Word of God; and that now, from the archiepiscopal seat of Munich and Freising he, with so much of our confidence, leads an elect flock on the paths of truth and peace.”
The future Pope Benedict XVI wore the red cassock for almost 28 years and always carried out, with the utmost dedication, the functions of a cardinal called for by canons 349 and 353 of the Code of Canon Law: “The cardinals of the Holy Roman Church constitute a special college which provides for the election of the Roman Pontiff according to the norm of special law. The cardinals assist the Roman Pontiff either collegially when they are convoked to deal with questions of major importance, or individually when they help the Roman Pontiff through the various offices they perform, especially in the daily care of the universal Church,” and “The cardinals especially assist the supreme pastor of the Church through collegial action in consistories in which they are gathered by order of the Roman Pontiff who presides. Consistories are either ordinary or extraordinary.”
Paul VI assigned Ratzinger the titular church of Santa Maria Consolatrice in Casal Bertone. In 1993, Pope John Paul II established his promotion to the order of bishops with the assignment of the title of the Diocese of Velletri-Segni, a suffragan diocese of Rome. In 1998, Ratzinger became vice deacon of the Sacred College, and after the resignation of Cardinal Deacon Bernardin Gantin in 2002, he was elected deacon of the College of Cardinals and assigned the titular Diocese of Ostia, also a suffragan diocese of Rome.
As cardinal deacon, in April 2005 Ratzinger presided over the funeral of John Paul II, the general congregations, and the conclave that then saw his election to the pontificate.
But what did being a cardinal mean to Ratzinger? Pope Benedict XVI himself responded several times to the question.
The red cap, the pope said during his first consistory in March 2006, was above all a responsibility. To the new cardinals he said: “More closely linked to the Successor of Peter, you will be called to work together with him in accomplishing his particular ecclesial service, and this will mean for you a more intense participation in the mystery of the cross as you share in the sufferings of Christ. All of us are truly witnesses of his sufferings today, in the world and also in the Church, and hence we also have a share in his glory. And so you will be able to draw more abundantly upon the sources of grace and to disseminate their life-giving fruits more effectively to those around you.”
At the November 2010 consistory, Benedict added that “the special communion and affection that bonds these new cardinals to the pope makes them his unique and precious cooperators in the lofty mandate to tend his sheep, which Christ entrusted to Peter in order to unite peoples with the solicitude of Christ’s love. From this same love the Church was born, called to live and to journey on in accordance with the Lord’s commandment, which sums up the whole of the law and the prophets. Being united with Christ in faith and in communion with him means being ‘rooted and grounded in love,’ the fabric that unites all the members of Christ’s Body.”
At his last consistory to create cardinals, in November 2012, Benedict repeated that “situated within the context and the perspective of the Church’s unity and universality is the College of Cardinals: it presents a variety of faces, because it expresses the face of the universal Church. In this consistory, I want to highlight in particular the fact that the Church is the Church of all peoples, and so she speaks in the various cultures of the different continents. She is the Church of Pentecost: amid the polyphony of the various voices, she raises a single harmonious song to the living God.”
He reminded the new cardinals that, “from now on, you will be even more closely and intimately linked to the See of Peter: the titles and deaconries of the churches of Rome will remind you of the bond that joins you, as members by a very special title, to this Church of Rome, which presides in universal charity. Particularly through the work you do for the Dicasteries of the Roman Curia, you will be my valued co-workers, first and foremost in my apostolic ministry for the fullness of catholicity, as pastor of the whole flock of Christ and prime guarantor of its doctrine, discipline, and morals.”
In the course of his pontificate, Benedict presided over five consistories in which he created 90 cardinals originating from 37 countries.
This article was originally published in ACI Stampa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
Anna Lulis from Moneta, Virginia, (left) who works for the pro-life group Students for Life of America, stands beside an abortion rights demonstrator outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on June 24, 2022, after the court’s decision in the Dobbs abortion case was announced. / Katie Yoder/CNA
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Oct 5, 2022 / 13:31 pm (CNA).
U.S. Catholic voters are split on the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, but a majority agrees that abortion should be restricted and that there should be at least some protections for the unborn child in the womb, according to a new EWTN News/RealClear Opinion Research poll.
The court’s June 24 ruling in the Mississippi abortion case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization upended 49 years of nationwide legalized abortion and freed states to regulate abortion as they see fit.
When asked whether they agreed or disagreed with Roe being overturned, 46.2% agreed, 47.8% disagreed, and 6% said they weren’t sure.
Catholic voters were similarly split on whether they are more or less likely to support a candidate who agrees with Roe’s dismantling: 42% said they were more likely, 41.9% said they were less likely, and 16.1% were unsure.
At the same time, the poll results point to apparent inconsistencies in Catholic voters’ positions on abortion.
While nearly half of Catholic voters in the poll said they disagreed with Roe being overturned, a large majority (86.5%) said they support some kind of limit on abortion, even though Roe and related abortion cases allowed only narrow regulation at the state level. The breakdown is as follows:
26.8% said abortion should be allowed only in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother;
19.8% said abortion should be allowed until 15 weeks when the baby can feel pain;
13.1% said that abortion should be allowed only during the first six months of pregnancy;
9.9% said that abortion should be allowed only until a heartbeat can be detected, and
9.1% said that abortion should be allowed only to save the life of the mother.
Of special note for Catholic pro-life leaders, only a small minority of Catholic voters — 7.8% — were aligned with the clear and consistent teaching of the Catholic Church that abortion should never be allowed.
On the other end of the spectrum of abortion views, 13.4% of Catholic voters said that abortion should be available to a woman at any time during her pregnancy.
The poll, conducted by the Trafalgar Group from Sept. 12–19, surveyed 1,581 Catholic voters and has a margin of error of 2.5%. The questionnaire was administered using a mix of six different methods, including phone calls, text messages, and email.
The poll’s results echo surveys of the general U.S. population on abortion. A Pew Research Center survey from March found that 19% of U.S. adults say abortion should be legal in all cases, while 8% said it should be illegal in all cases. More recent Gallup data from May found that 35% of U.S. adults say abortion should be legal under any circumstances while 13% said it should be illegal in all circumstances.
The Pew Research Center data also looked at Catholic adults. Thirteen percent said abortion should be legal in all cases, while 10% said it should be illegal in all cases.
A previous EWTN News/RealClear Opinion Research poll released in July found that 9% of Catholic likely voters said abortion should never be permitted and 18% said that abortion should be available at any time. The poll similarly showed that a majority of Catholic voters (82%) support some kind of restriction on abortion.
Confused about what Roe said?
The poll’s results came as little surprise to Catholic pro-life public policy experts such as Elizabeth R. Kirk.
“This study confirms a phenomenon we have known for some time, i.e., that there is an enormous disconnect between the scope of abortion practices permitted by the Roe regime and what abortion practices Americans actually support,” Kirk, director of the Center for Law and the Human Person at The Catholic University of America, told CNA.
Kirk, who also serves as a faculty fellow for the Institute for Human Ecology and research associate and lecturer at the Columbus School of Law, noted the finding that nearly 42% of Catholic voters said they are less likely to support a candidate who agrees with Roe being overturned.
“At first glance that suggests that many Catholic voters wanted to keep Roe in place,” she said. “Yet, the study also reveals that 86.5% of Catholic voters want some type of restriction on abortion access.”
Why the inconsistency? “Most people do not realize that Roe allowed states to permit unlimited abortion access throughout the entire pregnancy and made it difficult, or even impossible, to enact commonsense restrictions supported by the majority of Americans,” Kirk observed.
“Many people who ‘support Roe’ actually disagree, unknowingly, with what it permitted,” she added. “All Dobbs has done is return abortion policy to the legislative process so that the people may enact laws which reflect the public consensus.”
Mass-goers more strongly pro-life
The new poll, the second of three surveys of Catholic voters tied to the midterm elections on Nov. 8, shows that the opinions of Catholic voters on abortion and other issues vary depending on how often respondents attend Mass.
Only a small portion of those who attend Mass at least once a week said that abortion should be allowed at any time: 0% of those who attend Mass daily, 1% who attend more than once a week, and 8% of those who attend weekly support abortion without restrictions. In contrast, 57.5% of Catholic voters who attend Mass daily, 21.5% of those who attend more than once a week, and 15.6% of those who attend weekly say abortion should never be permitted.
In addition to respondents’ apparent confusion about what Roe stipulated, the poll suggests that many Catholic voters don’t fully understand what their Church teaches about abortion.
Less than one-third of Catholic voters who said they accept all Church teachings (31.1%) said that abortion should never be permitted, and 5% who profess to fully accept the Church’s teachings said abortion should be permitted at any time.
Overall, 32.8% of respondents reported attending Mass at least once a week, with another 30.7% attending once a year or less. Only 15% agreed that they accept all of the Church’s teachings and live their lives accordingly, with another 34.5% saying they generally accept most of the Church’s teachings and try to live accordingly.
Pew Research Center also looked at how Mass attendance factors into Catholics’ views on abortion. Among those who attend Mass at least once a week: 4% said abortion should be legal in all cases, and 24% said it should be illegal in all cases, Pew found.
Strong support for pregnancy centers
The poll asked Catholic voters about a variety of other topics including abortion limits, Holy Communion for pro-abortion politicians, conscience protections for health care workers, and pro-life pregnancy centers.
EWTN
Among the findings:
Catholic voters are prioritizing other issues above abortion. Only 10.1% of Catholic voters identified abortion as the most important issue facing the nation, falling behind inflation (34.2%) and the economy/jobs (19.7%) and tying with immigration. At the same time, a higher percentage of Catholic voters chose abortion than crime (8.7%), climate change (8.1% ), health care (6.8%), K–12 education (1.7%), or religious freedom (0.8%).
About half of Catholic voters (49.3%) disagreed that Catholic political leaders who support abortion publicly and promote policies that increase abortion access should refrain from taking Communion, while 36.7% said they should refrain.
A majority (67.4%) of Catholic voters said they support public funding for pro-life pregnancy centers that offer pregnant women life-affirming alternatives to abortion, while 18.3% said they did not favor using tax dollars for this purpose.
A comparable majority (61.8%) said that political and church leaders should be speaking out against the recent attacks and acts of vandalism on pregnancy resource centers.
When asked about conscience protections for health care workers that would allow them to opt out of providing “services” such as abortion, a majority of Catholic voters (60.7%) said that health care workers should not be obligated to engage in procedures that they object to based on moral or religious grounds. Conversely, 25.3% said that health care workers should be obligated to engage in procedures that they object to based on moral or religious grounds.
Work to be done
What is the takeaway from the latest poll, where abortion is concerned?
“This polling shows that Catholics, like the overwhelming majority of Americans, support commonsense protections for women and the unborn,” Ashley McGuire, a senior fellow with The Catholic Association, told CNA.
“It also affirms other recent polling that found Americans by strong numbers support the work of pregnancy resource centers in providing women facing crisis pregnancies with a real choice and the chance to thrive as mothers despite difficult circumstances,” she noted.
EWTN
At the same time, McGuire added, “This new polling is also a reminder that more work needs to be done in catechizing Catholics on foundational Church teaching in support of vulnerable life in all stages — an effort that is continually undermined by Catholic politicians in the highest echelons of power who use their platforms to advocate for extreme abortion policies in direct violation of Church teaching.”
Nearly all of those surveyed (99.2%) said they plan to vote in the midterm elections on Nov. 8.
Washington D.C., Aug 3, 2021 / 15:01 pm (CNA).
More than 75 amicus briefs have been filed at the Supreme Court supporting Mississippi’s ban on most elective abortions after 15 weeks, the state’s attor… […]
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We read: “Despite the troubled events of its preparation and especially of the subsequent long period of reception, the first ecumenical council was an event of reconciliation for the Church, which in a synodal way reaffirmed its unity around the profession of its faith.”
In WHAT KIND of “a synodal way”?
In truth, the Council of Nicaea (325 A.D.) actually questioned whether Arius’s innovations were consistent with what had been received and affirmed by the universal Church from the beginning (and as Providentially supplied by the deacon Athanasius in his “Incarnation” in 318 A.D., even shortly before Arius hit the stage).
This kind of “synodality” requires similar actions today repudiating the new novelties of the German synodal way. Nicaea retained the mysterious unity of three Persons in the Triune Oneness; the threat today is to the incarnational mystery of the unified human person–body and soul, faith and reason, Christian revelation and natural law (i.e., the Providentially supplied Veritatis Splendor, 1993); and of the Eucharistic Church itself as more than a likely federation of diverging “continental” factions and older and fragmentary Protestant sects.
To inclusively bundle the now openly proclaimed rainbow contradictions of Marx/Batzing/Hollerich within a package-deal celebration in A.D. 2025 may still be synodal in some crock-pot sense, but would fatally adulterate the fidelity, clarity, historical and anti-doublespeak fact of Nicaea.
So, if the celebration is to be real, best to clean house before the guests arrive.
I want to say: “You KNOW. THAT sodomitic way to synodal ‘unity’.”
Farce of farce. A Catholic who considers unity with sin is an oxymoronic use of the intellect God gave to his Homo sapiens. A pope who does not fraternally correct his brothers is weak, deluded, or worse.
God help us to remember that our unity arises from one and only one source: Christ. He chastises those he loves. Those who don’t love Him won’t know the difference between sin and grace until God shows them their place on that scale.
Oh, come now, Meiron, in “walking together” (synodality) what could possibly go wrong?
Take, for example, the historical precedent of the inspired Children’s Crusade. Oh, wait, victimized in that “walking together” were tens of thousands of the young of nearly all ages, mostly French and some German, who either died en route or ended up in the prostitution rings of Christian Europe or as slaves in Muslim Baghdad and Alexandria. That went well….
Butt, the difference now, or course, is that today’s more inclusive (!) parade is too much in the eager hands of the self-announced slaveholders and witless enabler-pimps of the modern rainbow counterculture—the front-end Marx and Batzing of the German “synodal way,” and the back-end relator for the 2023 Synod-on-Synodality, Luxembourg’s Hollerich.
Hollerich, positioned midway between France and Germany of the earlier crusade, and today the media-signaled midwife for an inclusive/victimized European continental synod.
Witless pimps? Do the math. How is it that a non-genetic “sexual orientation” that by its nature is oriented against reproduction is still growing so fast in numbers?
You, Peter, ask very good questions. What could possibly go wrong with midwife cardinals (those who help to birth red birds?), slaveholders, and enabler-pimps walking backward toward the climactic Synod-on-Synodality while seeking to teach our children?
The exponential growth of anti-reproductive unity is cancerous. It is odiferous, slimy, and very stupid.
[In trying to find a word that rhymed with synod, I learned about cyprinid fish. Cyprinid fish are soft-finned fish typically having toothless jaws and cycloid scales. The Diplozoon paradoxum parasite is commonly found on the gills of European cyprinid fish. I presume you’ll catch the poetically just drift of such unseemly irrelevance].
Forgot to advise you to check Wikipedia’s entry on the Diplozoon paradoxum parasite. It exhibits heterosexually monogamous behavior for the duration of its life.
Hardly “unseemly irrelevance”!
In catching up on the cycloid (Wikipedia) we find the names of such scientists/inventors as Galileo, Descartes, Pascal, Huygens and Leibniz. With these names, and with the cycloid-associated parasite you mention, we must be getting close to the SCIENCE that Bats-sing and Hollerich invoke in their positioning (so to speak) to upend the morality of binary/ complementary, heterosexual and human sexuality!
Their inspiration for subverting Church morality and governance is the Diplozoon paradoxum PARASITE (on the gills of the European cyprinid fish which has cycloid scales)…
The heterosexual/monogamous sex life of this lowly parasite clearly indicates that other and more advanced stages of evolution must transition into a homosexual and self-terminating stage–the “third option” of Demographic Winter. It’s all so clear now, Bats-sing’s appeal to science…
Butt, the inequity of it all!
Quick, alert the media and enabler Fr. James Martin! The LGBTQ “community” is still too exclusive. What about the really Big Picture, adding the not-quite evolved FBPRB (Fornicators, Bigamists, Polygamists, Rapists and Beastialists)?
With G.K. Chesterton: “There are many ways to fall down, but there’s only one way to stand up straight.”
Latin ecclesiology remains the primary obstacle and no amount of positive publicity about some initiative in Rome will change this fact.
The sin of Sodom was that her citizens were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned for the poor. – the Bible (It sounds like the smug, self-righteous among us today are the real Sodomites)
We read: “Despite the troubled events of its preparation and especially of the subsequent long period of reception, the first ecumenical council was an event of reconciliation for the Church, which in a synodal way reaffirmed its unity around the profession of its faith.”
In WHAT KIND of “a synodal way”?
In truth, the Council of Nicaea (325 A.D.) actually questioned whether Arius’s innovations were consistent with what had been received and affirmed by the universal Church from the beginning (and as Providentially supplied by the deacon Athanasius in his “Incarnation” in 318 A.D., even shortly before Arius hit the stage).
This kind of “synodality” requires similar actions today repudiating the new novelties of the German synodal way. Nicaea retained the mysterious unity of three Persons in the Triune Oneness; the threat today is to the incarnational mystery of the unified human person–body and soul, faith and reason, Christian revelation and natural law (i.e., the Providentially supplied Veritatis Splendor, 1993); and of the Eucharistic Church itself as more than a likely federation of diverging “continental” factions and older and fragmentary Protestant sects.
To inclusively bundle the now openly proclaimed rainbow contradictions of Marx/Batzing/Hollerich within a package-deal celebration in A.D. 2025 may still be synodal in some crock-pot sense, but would fatally adulterate the fidelity, clarity, historical and anti-doublespeak fact of Nicaea.
So, if the celebration is to be real, best to clean house before the guests arrive.
You ask: WHAT KIND of “a synodal way”?
I want to say: “You KNOW. THAT sodomitic way to synodal ‘unity’.”
Farce of farce. A Catholic who considers unity with sin is an oxymoronic use of the intellect God gave to his Homo sapiens. A pope who does not fraternally correct his brothers is weak, deluded, or worse.
God help us to remember that our unity arises from one and only one source: Christ. He chastises those he loves. Those who don’t love Him won’t know the difference between sin and grace until God shows them their place on that scale.
Oh, come now, Meiron, in “walking together” (synodality) what could possibly go wrong?
Take, for example, the historical precedent of the inspired Children’s Crusade. Oh, wait, victimized in that “walking together” were tens of thousands of the young of nearly all ages, mostly French and some German, who either died en route or ended up in the prostitution rings of Christian Europe or as slaves in Muslim Baghdad and Alexandria. That went well….
Butt, the difference now, or course, is that today’s more inclusive (!) parade is too much in the eager hands of the self-announced slaveholders and witless enabler-pimps of the modern rainbow counterculture—the front-end Marx and Batzing of the German “synodal way,” and the back-end relator for the 2023 Synod-on-Synodality, Luxembourg’s Hollerich.
Hollerich, positioned midway between France and Germany of the earlier crusade, and today the media-signaled midwife for an inclusive/victimized European continental synod.
Witless pimps? Do the math. How is it that a non-genetic “sexual orientation” that by its nature is oriented against reproduction is still growing so fast in numbers?
You, Peter, ask very good questions. What could possibly go wrong with midwife cardinals (those who help to birth red birds?), slaveholders, and enabler-pimps walking backward toward the climactic Synod-on-Synodality while seeking to teach our children?
The exponential growth of anti-reproductive unity is cancerous. It is odiferous, slimy, and very stupid.
[In trying to find a word that rhymed with synod, I learned about cyprinid fish. Cyprinid fish are soft-finned fish typically having toothless jaws and cycloid scales. The Diplozoon paradoxum parasite is commonly found on the gills of European cyprinid fish. I presume you’ll catch the poetically just drift of such unseemly irrelevance].
Forgot to advise you to check Wikipedia’s entry on the Diplozoon paradoxum parasite. It exhibits heterosexually monogamous behavior for the duration of its life.
Hardly “unseemly irrelevance”!
In catching up on the cycloid (Wikipedia) we find the names of such scientists/inventors as Galileo, Descartes, Pascal, Huygens and Leibniz. With these names, and with the cycloid-associated parasite you mention, we must be getting close to the SCIENCE that Bats-sing and Hollerich invoke in their positioning (so to speak) to upend the morality of binary/ complementary, heterosexual and human sexuality!
Their inspiration for subverting Church morality and governance is the Diplozoon paradoxum PARASITE (on the gills of the European cyprinid fish which has cycloid scales)…
The heterosexual/monogamous sex life of this lowly parasite clearly indicates that other and more advanced stages of evolution must transition into a homosexual and self-terminating stage–the “third option” of Demographic Winter. It’s all so clear now, Bats-sing’s appeal to science…
Butt, the inequity of it all!
Quick, alert the media and enabler Fr. James Martin! The LGBTQ “community” is still too exclusive. What about the really Big Picture, adding the not-quite evolved FBPRB (Fornicators, Bigamists, Polygamists, Rapists and Beastialists)?
With G.K. Chesterton: “There are many ways to fall down, but there’s only one way to stand up straight.”
Latin ecclesiology remains the primary obstacle and no amount of positive publicity about some initiative in Rome will change this fact.
The sin of Sodom was that her citizens were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned for the poor. – the Bible (It sounds like the smug, self-righteous among us today are the real Sodomites)
No doubt about that. It began in the Garden of Eden. But what made it worse in Sodom was the corrupt, abnormal sexual behavior of the citizens.
Though fragile, life is sacred and a precious gift. Peace and harmony are vital for the precious gift to blossom and reach to its fullness.