Gay Marriage Deserves Respect - “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.”

Pope Benedict XVI's 30-year campaign to reassert conservative Catholicism

By Robert Marquand - The Christian Science Monitor

Munich and Tubingen, Germany

In the past 30 years, the Vatican has moved strongly to reassert the authority of a traditional, even orthodox Roman Catholicism – to bring the notion of a "one true church" to Europe and then the larger world. The intent was to reverse the "open" or liberalizing trend of the church represented by Vatican II.

In the past three decades, the Vatican has cracked down on liberation theology, affirmed traditional sexual morality, and is now quietly supporting ultradevout Catholic groups such as Opus Dei and the Legions of Christ – while curbing ecumenical outreach and describing Protestant churches as not authentic.

The most constant, diligent, and serious champion of these moves is a shy but brilliant German theologian, Josef Ratzinger – now Pope Benedict XVI…

Yet a grand effort to restore authority and make the church purer coincides with an epic impurity – abuse of children by thousands of priests and many bishops in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere…

His vision for reforming the Catholic Church was often so all-absorbing that pedophilia got swept under the Vatican carpet, sources say. At the same time, a crackdown on Vatican II – the controversial three-year papal council in the mid-1960s – amplified a culture of fear, secrecy, and hierarchy. "Many rules and codes came down, but efforts to talk 'up' were thwarted," … Read more –

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2010/0806/Pope-Benedict-XVI-s-30-year-campaign-to-reassert-conservative-Catholicism

Gay marriage

“Religious beliefs that gay and lesbian relationships are sinful or inferior to heterosexual relationships harm gays and lesbians.”

Judge Vaughn Walker

http://fathermartykurylowicz.blogspot.com/2010/08/gay-marriage-religious-beliefs-that-gay.html

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels,

but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.

1 Corinthians 13:1-3

Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, Vienna ->

The Quality Of Lasting Homosexual Relationships Deserve Respect

http://fathermartykurylowicz.blogspot.com/2010/06/cardinal-christoph-schonborn-op-quality.html