Pope Francis meets with members of the French-based academic organization Research and Anthropology of Vocations Institute on March 1, 2024, at the Vatican. (Credit: Vatican Media)
Rome Newsroom, Mar 1, 2024 / 10:00 am (CNA).
Pope Francis on Friday morning gave an address on the importance of building a culture that protects human and Christians vocations, things he suggested were at risk due to contemporary cultural challenges including gender ideology.
“It is very important that there is this meeting, this meeting between men and women, because today the ugliest danger is gender ideology, which cancels out differences,” the pope said during an audience with members of the French-based academic organization Research and Anthropology of Vocations Institute (CRAV).
Gender ideology, which seeks to blur differences between men and women through movements such as transgenderism, “makes everything the same,” Francis said.
“Erasing differences is erasing humanity. Man and woman, however, are in a fruitful ‘tension,’” Francis told the assembly, which is gathered in Rome for a two-day international conference titled “Man, Woman, Image of God: For an Anthropology of Vocations.”
The pope did not read the full address, instead delegating the task to Monsignor Filippo Ciampanelli. “I still have a cold and it’s tiring to read for a while,” the pope said to the participants assembled at the Vatican.
Pope Francis meets with members of the French-based academic organization Research and Anthropology of Vocations Institute on March 1, 2024, at the Vatican. Credit: Vatican Media
Focusing the Friday morning address on the “anthropological crisis and the necessary promotion of human and Christian vocations,” Pope Francis said this task is challenged by myriad social challenges arising from the cultural zeitgeist, including gender ideology.
Highlighting the anthropological angle of the conference, the pope pointed to “an elementary and fundamental truth, which today we need to rediscover in all its beauty: The life of the human being is a vocation.”
The pope emphasized that this is a foundational element “which underlies every call within the community” and “has to do with an essential characteristic of the human being as such.”
“This discovery,” the pope added, “brings us out of the isolation of a self-referential ego and makes us look at ourselves as an identity in relation.”
The Holy Father emphasized that it is imperative to understand this “anthropological truth,” as it “fully responds to the desire for human fulfillment and happiness that lives in our hearts.”
“We sometimes tend to forget or obscure this reality,” the pope said, which carries the risk of “reducing the human being to his sole material needs or primary needs, as if he were an object without conscience and without will, simply dragged by life as part of a mechanical gear.”
To counteract this trend, the pope stressed that there needs to be a broad recondition that “the life of the human being is a vocation” and that “man and woman are created by God and are the image of the Creator.”
The pope buttressed this remark by highlighting that human beings must cultivate a relationship with “he who generated me, to the reality that transcends me, to others and to the world around me,” as a way to express the universal call we each face “to embrace a specific and personal mission with joy and responsibility.”
The conference includes 15 different sessions and will run from March 1–2. It features a line of speakers, including Cardinal Marc Ouellet, who will evaluate the subjects of the conference through a pastoral lens as well through a study of philosophical and theological anthropology.
Participants will attend Mass on Friday and Saturday, celebrated by Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost and Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, respectively.
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At the end of the Mass of consecration on Nov. 1, 2023, María Ruiz Rodríguez shows the ring symbolizing her membership in the Ordo Virginum. That’s the only outward sign of her consecration. / Credit: Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem
Jerusalem, Nov 12, 2023 / 07:00 am (CNA).
On the 25th day of the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, the Church in Jerusalem welcomed a new consecrated member into its fold. María Ruiz Rodríguez made her consecration in the Ordo Virginum on Nov. 1, permanently rooting herself in the local ecclesiastical community.
“A thought crossed my mind, a temptation: ‘What purpose does this step serve in the midst of current events? Doesn’t the Church have more urgent matters to attend to than to stop and celebrate the consecration of a humble woman like me?’” Ruiz shared with CNA a few days later. But she said she was immediately aware of something else.
“I told myself: I cannot delay this commitment… In fact, uniting my life with the Church in a time of suffering is even more meaningful,” she said.
Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, presided over the consecration of María Ruiz Rodríguez in the Ordo Virginum on Nov. 1, 2023, in the Church of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. With this consecration, Ruiz permanently rooted herself in the local Church. Credit: Marinella Bandini
Ruiz, now 42, is originally from Spain and arrived in Jerusalem in 2018 for a period of discernment. At that time, she was a member of the “Monastic Family of Bethlehem, the Assumption of the Virgin Mary and St. Bruno,” an institute of consecrated life established in France in 1950.
It was Ruiz’s first time in the Holy Land, even though the desire to visit the sacred places in the Holy Land had long been a dream in her heart.
Iconographer María Ruiz Rodríguez with the new Roman Missal in Arabic. The book is open on the page where she depicted the Crucifixion of Jesus. Credit: Marinella Bandini
“For two years, I set aside my savings to make a pilgrimage in 2000, the year of the Great Jubilee. However, in that very year, I entered the convent, so I gave up. I felt that Jesus was saying to me: ‘I am your Holy Land.’ In a way, I had already arrived in Jerusalem,” Ruiz said.
It was in the Holy Land that Ruiz first came into contact with some consecrated women of the Ordo Virginum.
“I was looking for my place and I felt called,” she said.
The Ordo Virginum, Ruiz continued, “is the oldest form of consecration in the Church”. Abandoned over the centuries in favor of the religious life, it was rediscovered with the Second Vatican Council as a form of life that, “in a radically transformed historical context” possesses “a surprising force of attraction” and is “capable of responding not only to the desires of many women to dedicate themselves totally to the Lord and to their neighbors, but also to the concurrent rediscovery by the particular Church of its own identity in communion with the one Body of Christ” (cf. Instruction “Ecclesiae Sponsae Imago” on the “Ordo Virginum”).
Iconographer María Ruiz Rodríguez at work in her studio. The image depicts Jesus walking on water and taking St. Peter’s sinking hand (Mt 14:22-33). Credit: Marinella Bandini
Consecrated women in the Ordo Virginum choose to live a life of virginity “for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” in a lay form of life. They do not wear religious habits, do not live in communities, have no common statutes or rules, or even superiors. Instead, they maintain a personal reference to the local bishop — in this case, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa — who acts as guarantor of their journey of discernment and presides over their consecration.
The sole commitment these consecrated women make is the “resolution of chastity,” which they express during the Rite of Consecration. The only symbol they wear is a ring, emphasizing the spousal character of this vocation, which reflects the mystery of the Church as “Bride of Christ.” Engraved in Ruiz’s ring is an inscription in Hebrew meaning “O my life,” referring to Christ, and the date of her consecration.
Iconographer María Ruiz Rodríguez on her terrace looking at the horizon. In the background are the walls of Jerusalem and the outline of the Basilica of the Dormition, November 2023. Credit: Marinella Bandini
Women who consecrate themselves in the Ordo Virginum support themselves through their jobs. Ruiz is an iconographer and has been working for the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem for about four years. She was drawn into a project aimed at renewing liturgical books — the Missal and the Evangeliary — with her artwork.
“I first approached iconographic art when I was a nun. It was first of all a spiritual journey, a path of prayer. More than an artistic expression, an icon is a profession of faith. Before beginning the work, I invoke the Holy Spirit and ask for forgiveness for my own sins and for those who will venerate these images. I was interested in this dimension of relationship,” Ruiz shared. She spent a year researching the style and colors.
“The patriarch asked me to create something that would speak to local Christians, who are Latin by tradition but Eastern by culture. A style that was uniquely mine yet rich in the entire iconographic tradition of the Church of Jerusalem. The art of Armenian manuscripts certainly had a significant influence on me.”
Iconographer María Ruiz Rodríguez at work in her studio. Currently, Ruíz is in the process of creating the images for the Gospels of Matthew and Mark. Credit: Marinella Bandini
The patriarch takes a personal interest in overseeing Ruiz’s work. “We read the Gospel together and choose which scenes to represent, taking into account the particularity of each evangelist. He particularly enjoys highlighting passages that are less frequently represented in the artistic tradition. This is a project close to his heart,” she told CNA.
Currently, Ruíz is in the process of creating images for the Gospels of Matthew and Mark.
“The process is very laborious and involves multiple stages for each page: the pencil lettering, the crafting of the icons, then the ink lettering and finally the gilding.” The plan is for a volume of about 200 pages with 250 images.
“Making this work in Jerusalem has a special value: I can visit the places where that Gospel was lived” but also “immerse myself in Jewish culture,” she said. “This has opened my eyes to the richness that Judaism brings to Christianity. There is a perfect continuity and at the same time an unprecedented newness in the person of Christ.”
The Church of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem full of people on Nov. 1, 2023, for the Mass of consecration of María Ruiz Rodríguez in the Ordo Virginum. Credit: Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem
Ruiz learned the local languages — Arabic and Hebrew. The Mass of her consecration brought together within one place all the diverse “souls” of the Jerusalem Church: priests, friars, religious, and laity, Arab Christians and Hebrew-speaking Christians, each hearing the word of God in their own language. There were migrants, foreigners, Jews, and Christians of various denominations.
The culminating moment of María Ruiz Rodríguez’s consecration in the Ordo Virginum. The celebration took place on Nov. 1, 2023, in the Church of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. Credit: Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem
“I believe my being a foreigner is a blessing for this Church,” Ruiz said. “Why were there such different people in the church that day? Because I am neither Arab nor Jewish, and this allows me to bring both of these peoples into my heart together. In the praise of God we were one people, transcending the divisions that usually separate us. The Church in Jerusalem also needs this, to remember its universal vocation.”
Group photo at the end of the Mass of consecration of María Ruiz Rodríguez in the Ordo Virginum. With her (in the middle, with red shirt) there are other members of the Ordo Virginum, and the bishops of the Latin patriarchate of Jerusalem (from left to right: Giacinto-Boulos Marcuzzo, bishop emeritus; Monsignor William Shomali, general vicar and patriarchal vicar for Jerusalem and Palestine; Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Latin patriarch of Jerusalem; Monsignor Rafic Nahra, patriarcal vicar for Israel). Credit: Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem
With her consecration, Ruiz embarks on her new journey as a “living stone” of the Jerusalem Church: “I am certain that I am finally in the right place. It is not an act of heroism. I am simply where God wants me to be.”
Pope Francis speaking next to Indonesian President Joko Widodo at the meeting with the authorities, civil society and the diplomatic corps in Jakarta on Sep 4, 2024. / Vatican Accredited Media Personnel (VAMP)
The Knights of Columbus film "In Solidarity with Ukraine" will have a six-week run on ABC-affiliated stations starting Feb. 26. / YouTube/Knights of Columbus Supreme Council
Boston, Mass., Feb 25, 2023 / 05:00 am (CNA).
Husbands have … […]
27 Comments
Is this the same Pope who gave the green light for transgender Godparents and who seems to indicate that the disorder is just one amongst many? He needs to get his story straight, in the real world, ordinary Catholics and others are desperate for moral guidance and support, but the main Christian churches seem obsessed with falling in line with secular government.
Yes, in the real world. ordinary Catholics and others are desperate for support. For guidance, though — on this issue? There are indeed some thorny moral issues, but there are others for which “I didn’t know” is simply not a plausible excuse. I think it is genuinely possible for someone not to recognize that a child at the embryonic stage of development really is a human person, but I cannot accept that excuse for partial-birth abortion, let alone allowing children who survive abortion to die due to intentional neglect. Sometimes the problem is not that evil is not recognized, but that evil is desired; in such case support might be needed for those who oppose evil, but guidance is pointless.
This guy talks a good game. And every time he turns right around and undoes it all with his decisions, his actions, his off-the-cuff remarks. He has lost all credibility. Don’t even bother reporting his speeches anymore; it’s all a sick game.
Pure cant and utter hypocrisy from a figure known universally as a man who says one thing in his words while he does the opposite in his actions. He receives transsexual prostitutes regularly in monthly luncheons, supports them financially, and never even remotely attempts their repentance and conversion. For almost 11 years he has surrounded himself with a cabal of grotesque homosexuals in the Vatican and has gone to extraordinary lengths to protect extreme homosexual predators like his favorites Rupnick and Zancetta from canonical and even secular criminal penalties.
The manifestation of God’s love in paradise is going to be Male-Female love, and anyone living in this world fails to conclude so is unlikely to gain everlasting life! There is no marriage (as there is no need of raising children) nor sexless lives, but both males and females are like angels and effectively (material)bodies of invisible and essenceless God, true Advaitha.
It’s the very gender ideology that even suggests that the sexual relationship of two men can be blessed. This Vatican creates confusion at every turn. The value of the Petrine ministry as a visible sign that the Church is One (i.e. a unifying sign) is lost on this pontiff. Even using the term “pontiff” to describe Francis is risable since the word pontiff comes from the root word meaning bridge. If anything, this Pope has been blowing up bridges since the day he was elected.
We read: “…the ugliest danger is gender ideology, which cancels out differences.”
The papal message throughout the article is sound and worthy of respect. And, yet, might the second-ugliest danger be the elevation of differences–as in some aspects of a tensely “polyhedral” and synodal Church?
Instead, how, both, to affirm things concrete (like personal “vocations”), but without appearing to discount the meaning of the “concrete universal” in the historical and incarnate Jesus Christ, as reflected in moral absolutes (Veritatis Splendor)?
How to affirm the existential “conscience” and “will,” but without seeming to omit the more traditional and informative “intellect” (Augustine: Man as memory, intellect and will)?
How to leaven an unfolding future at risk of ideological forwardism, but without demeaning or evading, and never formally contradicting the “backwarist’s” memory and Magisterium?
How to not only maintain the “tension” between man and woman, but affirm the larger and whole unity of “complementarity”? Analogous to the “hermeneutics of continuity” versus discontinuity?
___________________________________________
So, about the dangerous ideology of fluid “gender theory,” and the seeming carve-out of concrete “couples” (Fiducia Supplicans?)….And with Hamlet: “To truly bless the complementary, or to facsimile-bless the irregularly coupled, that is the question.”
No. Trafficking baby immigrants from their mother’s wombs to demonic, barbaric deaths, [before, during or after birth] or in and from the cryogenic wombs, or then, keeping them as cryogenic abandoned orphans for so much time and then killing unjustly…and others….and for money and power!!! These are worse, in kind and in degree.
Who was worse, Hitler, Himmler, or Mengele? Personally, I’m inclined to say Mengele, but (a) it’s really hard to say, and (b) it doesn’t matter at all. Beyond a certain level of nastiness, it’s best not to think about too much. And so it is with the two types of behavior you’re comparing.
They can be isolated and disparaged, but how do we draw them to Christ and his message? One failed Methodology…
Michelle Bachmann and her husband Marcus ran a “clinic” in Minnesota entitled “Pray the Gay away”. It was closed for engaging in a discredited therapy designed to convert gays to straights through prayer and self-reflection and not keeping “patient” records. It appears that lack of documentation includes successes.
Are our prayers unanswered since they continue the “out of the closet in your face” attitude? Am a fortunate father for not having a Gay child? I see no mention of parental guidance
From the very beginning of his papacy the overwhelming focus of Pope Francis has been on seeking Our Lord’s Mercy. This was the reason for declaring the year of mercy. (You protestants out there have you ever kicked off a truly global revival for an entire year? LOL) Everything is spelled out in the book “The Name Of God Is Mercy” in which Italian journalist Andrea Tornielli has long conversations with Pope Francis who explains it all. He NEVER endorses any kind of sin but teaches that there is deliverance even for those so buried in it that they have despaired of ever escaping. There is no confusion here except for those have some confusion originating in some of the storm of conflicting worldly outlooks which the pope has loosely termed ideology.
I beg your pardon, but has Pope Francis ever kicked off a truly global revival (LOL)? Oh, he can give a year a name, just the same as Congress can declare May 10 National Liver and Onions Day — but I would need evidence to believe that the pope’s declaration prompted an ACTUAL revival or to believe that the congressional declaration ACTUALLY increased the consumption of liver and onions.
Concerning the last comments by Ouris and Peter Beaulieu Their contradictions are obvious. If you were a catholic regularly attending mass during the year of mercy and following catholic media you would certainly have known what the focus of the Universal Church was. If you are not catholic and/or were not attending mass regularly then you would not have a clue and your demand for proof is so much liver and onions. Pope Francis preaches the Mercy of Christ. He preaches that people trapped in life of habitual mortal sin can be delivered and healed by seeking forgiveness of Jesus Who IS love and mercy. Teaching this is doing the will of God if anything ever is. To throw Mt.7:21 around as an insinuation is not doing God’s will. The point of mentioning the book “The Name Of God Is Mercy” is that we can no longer be couch potatoes where the facts are concerned these days. We have to the extent reasonably possible go to the trouble to learn the whole story. There are inexpensive books on Pope Francis teachings. They are inspiring as well as informative so check Amazon. At the beginning of this month I did a search for the popes prayer intention for March. I found six good online sources; these will serve to keep up with his teachings and observations without too much trouble. We as Catholics owe this to the man chosen by the Holy Spirit to be the Vicker of Christ.
This pope protects sexual predators, encourages and supports gay clergy, blesses gay couples, prioritizes a leftist climate agenda over more pressing spiritual concerns, and regularly attacks faithful traditional Catholics. Given his track record, there’s nothing this pope says that any discerning believer needs to take seriously.
Yes, of course, about “not all gays are predators.”
But the gayme-changer was when the predatory faction first sought civil unions by saying this was not a half-way house to full redefinition of “marriage;” immediately followed by the aggressive oxymoron of gay “marriage.” Even the ersatz United State Supreme Court got in the act, so to speak.
A tough ratchet to undo, if the compassionate thing is to “‘convert’ them”, not only them but everyone else for whatever temptations afflict the wider population. Instead, why not simply dilute the drop of cyanide in the punchbowl with spontaneous and informal semi-blessings poured on every kind of “irregular” coupling floating around?
Just move along folks, there’s nothing to see here.
Broadbrush! Athanasius did not claim or even imply that all “Gays are predators.”
Broadbrush! The wrongly alleged disparagement is not a blatant reason why “we are failing to ‘convert’ them.”
On the other hand, failing to properly counsel gays who actively engage in homosexual sex that such is mortally sinful, and that they should repent and do what’s necessary to avoid both the sinning and occasions of such sins demonstrates a lack of love for these people and the fate of their immortal souls.
We read: “[Pope Francis] preaches that people trapped in life of habitual mortal sin can be delivered and healed by seeking forgiveness of Jesus Who IS love and mercy.”
OF COURSE! ABSOLUTELY. But, the divisive ambiguity and (some say) capitulation is something else; it’s the inventive half-blessing of doubled “couples” as such, rather than the undivided and real blessing of “individual people” as such.
Might we finally consider the possibility that no longer being able to even SEE the difference (!) between homosexual/anti-binary actions and complementary/binary intercourse between a man and a woman IS an inflicted or acquired blindness at the very center of the parody (not parity)?
Is even the seeing flattened and displaced by the doing?
Homosexuals who successfully free themselves from the non-seeing (!) describe the “AHA MOMENT” that enabled their “conversion.” They report that this moment of freedom and insight is similar to playing cards, and then discovering that they’ve been playing with two cards stuck together, and have been betting on the wrong card.
They want to get back into the real world. The successful conversion therapist Dr. Nicolosi (RIP) explained this moment—as described NOT by him but by his clients!
But, OF COURSE, his finding and the testimony of his clients are often illegal and even punished by the establishment. Thomas More faced a similar persecution under the establishment of his day: “Some men think the Earth is round, others think it flat; it is a matter capable of question. But if it is flat, will the King’s [the establishment’s!] command make it round? And if it is round, will the King’s command flatten it? No, I will not sign” (Robert Bolt, “A Man for All Seasons,” 1962).
So, WHAT ABOUT the difference between the fully real blessing of struggling (and often victimized) persons as such, versus any pseudo-blessing of irregular “couples” as such?
This pope is the worst in my lifetime. He is political. He is singlehanded ly destroying the Catholic Church. I don’t need to hear him speak about climate change. He doesn’t need to tell America to have open borders. I was furious when he opened the door to gays. If they do not like the Catholic beliefs of a man and a woman, go to another church but leave mine alone. He needs to retire. We need a pope that speaks of helping the poor, respecting marriage between a man and a woman, the sanctity of life. I do not want to hear anything political. I go to church for a break from the real world. I need hope.
Is this the same Pope who gave the green light for transgender Godparents and who seems to indicate that the disorder is just one amongst many? He needs to get his story straight, in the real world, ordinary Catholics and others are desperate for moral guidance and support, but the main Christian churches seem obsessed with falling in line with secular government.
Yes, in the real world. ordinary Catholics and others are desperate for support. For guidance, though — on this issue? There are indeed some thorny moral issues, but there are others for which “I didn’t know” is simply not a plausible excuse. I think it is genuinely possible for someone not to recognize that a child at the embryonic stage of development really is a human person, but I cannot accept that excuse for partial-birth abortion, let alone allowing children who survive abortion to die due to intentional neglect. Sometimes the problem is not that evil is not recognized, but that evil is desired; in such case support might be needed for those who oppose evil, but guidance is pointless.
Yep. Same guy. Same one who introduced an Argentinian friend as “she who was he but now is she.”
This guy talks a good game. And every time he turns right around and undoes it all with his decisions, his actions, his off-the-cuff remarks. He has lost all credibility. Don’t even bother reporting his speeches anymore; it’s all a sick game.
Pure cant and utter hypocrisy from a figure known universally as a man who says one thing in his words while he does the opposite in his actions. He receives transsexual prostitutes regularly in monthly luncheons, supports them financially, and never even remotely attempts their repentance and conversion. For almost 11 years he has surrounded himself with a cabal of grotesque homosexuals in the Vatican and has gone to extraordinary lengths to protect extreme homosexual predators like his favorites Rupnick and Zancetta from canonical and even secular criminal penalties.
The manifestation of God’s love in paradise is going to be Male-Female love, and anyone living in this world fails to conclude so is unlikely to gain everlasting life! There is no marriage (as there is no need of raising children) nor sexless lives, but both males and females are like angels and effectively (material)bodies of invisible and essenceless God, true Advaitha.
The Holy Family of Nazareth is an inspiration for all times. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph – Pray for us.
It’s the very gender ideology that even suggests that the sexual relationship of two men can be blessed. This Vatican creates confusion at every turn. The value of the Petrine ministry as a visible sign that the Church is One (i.e. a unifying sign) is lost on this pontiff. Even using the term “pontiff” to describe Francis is risable since the word pontiff comes from the root word meaning bridge. If anything, this Pope has been blowing up bridges since the day he was elected.
I’m just glad he didn’t say that the ugliest danger is Tradionalist Catholics.
He might not say it, but that seems to be what he thinks.
Today the greatest danger is mealymouthed Modernism that whipsaws the faithful with a Peronist form of weaponized ambiguity.
We read: “…the ugliest danger is gender ideology, which cancels out differences.”
The papal message throughout the article is sound and worthy of respect. And, yet, might the second-ugliest danger be the elevation of differences–as in some aspects of a tensely “polyhedral” and synodal Church?
Instead, how, both, to affirm things concrete (like personal “vocations”), but without appearing to discount the meaning of the “concrete universal” in the historical and incarnate Jesus Christ, as reflected in moral absolutes (Veritatis Splendor)?
How to affirm the existential “conscience” and “will,” but without seeming to omit the more traditional and informative “intellect” (Augustine: Man as memory, intellect and will)?
How to leaven an unfolding future at risk of ideological forwardism, but without demeaning or evading, and never formally contradicting the “backwarist’s” memory and Magisterium?
How to not only maintain the “tension” between man and woman, but affirm the larger and whole unity of “complementarity”? Analogous to the “hermeneutics of continuity” versus discontinuity?
___________________________________________
So, about the dangerous ideology of fluid “gender theory,” and the seeming carve-out of concrete “couples” (Fiducia Supplicans?)….And with Hamlet: “To truly bless the complementary, or to facsimile-bless the irregularly coupled, that is the question.”
No. Trafficking baby immigrants from their mother’s wombs to demonic, barbaric deaths, [before, during or after birth] or in and from the cryogenic wombs, or then, keeping them as cryogenic abandoned orphans for so much time and then killing unjustly…and others….and for money and power!!! These are worse, in kind and in degree.
Who was worse, Hitler, Himmler, or Mengele? Personally, I’m inclined to say Mengele, but (a) it’s really hard to say, and (b) it doesn’t matter at all. Beyond a certain level of nastiness, it’s best not to think about too much. And so it is with the two types of behavior you’re comparing.
They can be isolated and disparaged, but how do we draw them to Christ and his message? One failed Methodology…
Michelle Bachmann and her husband Marcus ran a “clinic” in Minnesota entitled “Pray the Gay away”. It was closed for engaging in a discredited therapy designed to convert gays to straights through prayer and self-reflection and not keeping “patient” records. It appears that lack of documentation includes successes.
Are our prayers unanswered since they continue the “out of the closet in your face” attitude? Am a fortunate father for not having a Gay child? I see no mention of parental guidance
Pray for God’s help.
From the very beginning of his papacy the overwhelming focus of Pope Francis has been on seeking Our Lord’s Mercy. This was the reason for declaring the year of mercy. (You protestants out there have you ever kicked off a truly global revival for an entire year? LOL) Everything is spelled out in the book “The Name Of God Is Mercy” in which Italian journalist Andrea Tornielli has long conversations with Pope Francis who explains it all. He NEVER endorses any kind of sin but teaches that there is deliverance even for those so buried in it that they have despaired of ever escaping. There is no confusion here except for those have some confusion originating in some of the storm of conflicting worldly outlooks which the pope has loosely termed ideology.
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” (Mt 7:21).
“Everyone, everyone,” an ideology?
I beg your pardon, but has Pope Francis ever kicked off a truly global revival (LOL)? Oh, he can give a year a name, just the same as Congress can declare May 10 National Liver and Onions Day — but I would need evidence to believe that the pope’s declaration prompted an ACTUAL revival or to believe that the congressional declaration ACTUALLY increased the consumption of liver and onions.
Concerning the last comments by Ouris and Peter Beaulieu Their contradictions are obvious. If you were a catholic regularly attending mass during the year of mercy and following catholic media you would certainly have known what the focus of the Universal Church was. If you are not catholic and/or were not attending mass regularly then you would not have a clue and your demand for proof is so much liver and onions. Pope Francis preaches the Mercy of Christ. He preaches that people trapped in life of habitual mortal sin can be delivered and healed by seeking forgiveness of Jesus Who IS love and mercy. Teaching this is doing the will of God if anything ever is. To throw Mt.7:21 around as an insinuation is not doing God’s will. The point of mentioning the book “The Name Of God Is Mercy” is that we can no longer be couch potatoes where the facts are concerned these days. We have to the extent reasonably possible go to the trouble to learn the whole story. There are inexpensive books on Pope Francis teachings. They are inspiring as well as informative so check Amazon. At the beginning of this month I did a search for the popes prayer intention for March. I found six good online sources; these will serve to keep up with his teachings and observations without too much trouble. We as Catholics owe this to the man chosen by the Holy Spirit to be the Vicker of Christ.
This pope protects sexual predators, encourages and supports gay clergy, blesses gay couples, prioritizes a leftist climate agenda over more pressing spiritual concerns, and regularly attacks faithful traditional Catholics. Given his track record, there’s nothing this pope says that any discerning believer needs to take seriously.
Broadbrush! Not all Gays are predators. That very disparagement is a blatant reason why we are failing to “convert” them.
We don’t convert them or anyone else. Repentance and faith are the work of the Holy Spirit alone. Stop defending the indefensible.
Yes, of course, about “not all gays are predators.”
But the gayme-changer was when the predatory faction first sought civil unions by saying this was not a half-way house to full redefinition of “marriage;” immediately followed by the aggressive oxymoron of gay “marriage.” Even the ersatz United State Supreme Court got in the act, so to speak.
A tough ratchet to undo, if the compassionate thing is to “‘convert’ them”, not only them but everyone else for whatever temptations afflict the wider population. Instead, why not simply dilute the drop of cyanide in the punchbowl with spontaneous and informal semi-blessings poured on every kind of “irregular” coupling floating around?
Just move along folks, there’s nothing to see here.
Broadbrush! Athanasius did not claim or even imply that all “Gays are predators.”
Broadbrush! The wrongly alleged disparagement is not a blatant reason why “we are failing to ‘convert’ them.”
On the other hand, failing to properly counsel gays who actively engage in homosexual sex that such is mortally sinful, and that they should repent and do what’s necessary to avoid both the sinning and occasions of such sins demonstrates a lack of love for these people and the fate of their immortal souls.
We read: “[Pope Francis] preaches that people trapped in life of habitual mortal sin can be delivered and healed by seeking forgiveness of Jesus Who IS love and mercy.”
OF COURSE! ABSOLUTELY. But, the divisive ambiguity and (some say) capitulation is something else; it’s the inventive half-blessing of doubled “couples” as such, rather than the undivided and real blessing of “individual people” as such.
Might we finally consider the possibility that no longer being able to even SEE the difference (!) between homosexual/anti-binary actions and complementary/binary intercourse between a man and a woman IS an inflicted or acquired blindness at the very center of the parody (not parity)?
Is even the seeing flattened and displaced by the doing?
Homosexuals who successfully free themselves from the non-seeing (!) describe the “AHA MOMENT” that enabled their “conversion.” They report that this moment of freedom and insight is similar to playing cards, and then discovering that they’ve been playing with two cards stuck together, and have been betting on the wrong card.
They want to get back into the real world. The successful conversion therapist Dr. Nicolosi (RIP) explained this moment—as described NOT by him but by his clients!
But, OF COURSE, his finding and the testimony of his clients are often illegal and even punished by the establishment. Thomas More faced a similar persecution under the establishment of his day: “Some men think the Earth is round, others think it flat; it is a matter capable of question. But if it is flat, will the King’s [the establishment’s!] command make it round? And if it is round, will the King’s command flatten it? No, I will not sign” (Robert Bolt, “A Man for All Seasons,” 1962).
So, WHAT ABOUT the difference between the fully real blessing of struggling (and often victimized) persons as such, versus any pseudo-blessing of irregular “couples” as such?
This pope is the worst in my lifetime. He is political. He is singlehanded ly destroying the Catholic Church. I don’t need to hear him speak about climate change. He doesn’t need to tell America to have open borders. I was furious when he opened the door to gays. If they do not like the Catholic beliefs of a man and a woman, go to another church but leave mine alone. He needs to retire. We need a pope that speaks of helping the poor, respecting marriage between a man and a woman, the sanctity of life. I do not want to hear anything political. I go to church for a break from the real world. I need hope.