Part 1 - Ghosts in the - Synod of Bishops on Family - October 2014 - Repress Unacknowledged Need for Empathy?
Fr. Marty Kurylowicz - September 16, 2014
Related links:
Update: Pope Francis - Homosexuals have gifts and qualities to offer to the Christian community... Synod of Bishops on Family - Midterm report: October 14, 2014 | Burke to Malta - October 24, 2014
Fr Marty Kurylowicz’s - Appeal Letter Sent to Pope Francis - “Coming Out” March 1997 - Gay Catholic Priest - For Protection of Children - January 16, 2014
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Part 2 - “Cold-blooded Murderers” - Ghosts in the - Synod of Bishops on Family - October 2014 - Repress Unacknowledged Need for Empathy
This entire posting was sent out as a US group mailing prior to posting here on the Thalamus Center.
Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children,
you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this
child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
And whoever welcomes one such child in
my name welcomes me.
Matthew 18: 3-5
The Vatican’s midterm report from the Synod of Bishops on Family on October 14, 2014, was an extraordinary and unprecedented expression of human empathy and validation that there are gay children growing up.
This was a uniquely courageous stance to come out of the Vatican. As much human empathy that it brings to the lives of gay children - its healing presence shines back onto those who, few that they may be, risked their lives to welcome these children. The glow is forever penetrating - changing lives for the better around the world, most especially in reforming the Vatican.
Welcoming homosexual persons
Homosexuals have gifts and qualities to offer to the Christian community...
...homosexual unions it has to be noted that there are cases in which mutual aid to the point of sacrifice constitutes a precious support in the life of the partners. Furthermore, the Church pays special attention to the children who live with couples of the same sex, emphasizing that the needs and rights of the little ones must always be given priority...
…whoever causes one of these
little ones
who believe in Me to stumble,
it would be better for him
to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck,
and to be drowned in the
depth of the sea.
Matthew 18:6
Ending Violence - to 90% of the Human Population
of the World & For Generations to Come
This statement is the first globally visual act of expressing human empathy understanding and the need to support the pastoral care to parents raising a gay child. It is the Vatican’s overall affirmation of the humanity and the existence of gay children, including by extension all gay people. In regards to the sexual continuum - the homosexual sexual orientation varies in degree over about 90% of the world’s population.
Sexual Orientation exists along a continuum that ranges from exclusive homosexuality to exclusive heterosexuality and includes various forms of bisexuality. Bisexual persons can experience sexual, emotional and affectional attraction to both their own sex and the opposite sex. Persons with a homosexual orientation are sometimes referred to as gay (both men and women) or as lesbian (women only).
American Psychological Association (2005) Photo
The Vatican’s statement from the Synod on Family 2014 “welcoming homosexual persons” is a beginning to end the self-perpetuating cycle of violence in the world. However, at the same time - it is the promulgation of the Vatican’s unsubstantiated antigay teachings that are a direct cause that is fueling the self-perpetuating cycle of violence.
Major changes to help humanity never happen in a herd - it seems they always begin with numbers as few as one, to just a few. However, it happened that someone in the Synod 2014 stood up - welcoming gay children into the midst of Church, including whoever supported this effort welcomed Christ back into the Vatican - making it holy ground, once again. It is a real sign that all those who have been and still are spiritually and intellectually involved with Pope Francis in the major reform of the Vatican - are making serious headway. It is a forward movement not based on dictatorial or authoritarian rule - is phenomenal - a slice of heaven. And though Christ was being swept out by Cardinal Burke attempting to maintain the deadly authoritarian rule, along with his supporters,- the fact is that this presence of Christ is unforgettable. Encouraging the fact - that it is likely to be repeated again.
However, Burke’s hostile outbursts against this midterm report Synod 2014 supporting gay children was aimed at attacking Pope Francis’s reputation, his leadership claiming - “the church is like a ship without a rudder (http://www.religionnews.com/2014/10/31/cardinal-catholic-church-pope-francis-ship-without-rudder/)” - it cast a light as far backwards highlighting this same familiar hostility that I experienced directed against me in June 1997, when I came out for the very same reason for the protection of gay children growing up.
And for the past nearly 18 years, I suffered the severity of such hostile attacks that not even Pope Francis was able to escape from Burke - for supporting gay children (http://fathermartykurylowicz.blogspot.com/2014/11/fr-marty-kurylowiczs-appeal-letter-sent.html ---- & ---- http://fathermartykurylowicz.blogspot.com/2013/04/gay-catholic-priest-fr-marty-kurylowicz.html).
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1997 - Protecting Gay Children - Fr. Kurylowicz
In March 1997, I came out for the (1) protection of gay children growing up from the (2) lifetime harmful effects caused by antigay social and religious norms based on science and since (3) suffered the consequences of severe covert life-threatening retaliation tactics from Vatican’s curia.
2014 Synod - Supporting Gay Children - Pope Francis
Curia & Hierarchy - Publicly Proving
Lifetime Harmful Effects - Antigay Norms
Gay Children
These harsh retaliation tactics in 1997 and in 2014 are identical that are coming from within the Curia. They are the proof of the lifetime harmful effects that is caused by antigay social and religious norms to gay children - being played out in adulthood by members of the curia and the hierarchy - who are instigating these harsh retaliation tactics - against anyone protecting or supporting gay children.
Victims of Roman Curia
“Cold-blooded Murderers”
Attacking those Protecting Gay Children 1997 - 2014
In March 1997, based on the science on homosexuality - I came out for the protection of the lives of gay children and though it was successful and maybe because I was successful at a parish level - I have suffered the hostile retaliation by members of the curia of the Vatican and outside accomplices - for the past soon to be 18 years. It is as Pope Francis described it in his December 22, 2014 address to the curia - I became - a victim of the curia’s cold blooded murders. It is not about me personally - it is the message of science of homosexuality related to gay children growing up that I made public. (It is important to note here that - the science regarding any harmful disruption during the early childhood developmental years of a child's sexual orientation whether homosexual or heterosexual - will caused severe lifetime harm effects.)
Being Homosexual: Gay Men and Their Development
by Richard A. Isay M.D.
Psychoanalytic Therapy and the Gay Man
Jack Drescher, M.D. in his book Psychoanalytic Therapy & The Gay Man describes the complexities related to growing up gay; from his research of developmental narratives of gay adults retrospectively recalling their feelings being gay began in early childhood. These gay feelings had remained constant, and were resistant to being altered. Dr. Drescher explains the contrast of how social norms impact the psychology of the early childhood developmental years of a heterosexual boy and a homosexual boy.
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Narcissistic Rage - Need for Revenge
By Whatever Means
It was the science I dared to make public in 1997 and I was unaware that it ignited the narcissistic rage of someone in the curia to covertly - viciously begin to attack me. The midterm report from the Synod 2014 - came out supporting gay children and surprisingly it ignited the same hostile narcissistic rage only this time - it overtly began attacking Pope Francis. This “narcissistic rage is related to narcissists' need for total control of their environment, including "the need for revenge, for righting a wrong, for undoing a hurt by whatever means". (Heinz Kohut’s self psychology model, of narcissistic psychopathology -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_rage_and_narcissistic_injury).
March 29, 1997 - Parishioners Supportive of Gay Priest - “coming out” for the protection of children.
(check The Grand Rapids Press for accuracy)
June 28, 1997 - Kurylowicz Comes Out
“...U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference states Kurylowicz” coming out to his congregation, first in a newsletter then from the pulpit on Holy Thursday, is “unprecedented.”
(check The Grand Rapids Press for accuracy)
The Synod 2014 midterm report - “protecting gay children” had evoked such overt contempt and negative reactions by some of the hierarchy and in particular by Cardinal Burke - even to attack Pope Francis, the leader of the Catholic Church. If they can attack Pope Francis for “protecting gay children” - what chances does a gay Catholic parish priest, like me, who came out in 1997 for the “protection of gay children” have to withstand consequences of the severity of covert life-threatening retaliation tactics consistent for the past 18 years. For me - presently, after 18 years of these deadly tactics by the Curia, it has now reach the point that I am in need of immediate assistance crucial to my life from the Vatican. I do not and will not accept charity or assistance from anyone that would defeat the purpose that - this is a Roman Curia’s hostile and - cold-blooded murder. Again, it is important to remember that - I am only one of many, many, many over the past 30 years.
The sickness of “chatter, grumbling and gossip: this is a serious illness that begins simply, often just in the form of having a chat, and takes people over, turning them into sowers of discord, like Satan, and in many cases cold-blooded murderers of the reputations of their colleagues and brethren. It is the sickness of the cowardly who, not having the courage to speak directly to the people involved, instead speak behind their backs”.
Read more:
Cardinal says church under Pope Francis is a ‘rudderless ship’
October 31, 2014
VATICAN CITY (RNS) American Cardinal Raymond Burke, the feisty former archbishop of St. Louis who has emerged as the face of the opposition to Pope Francis’ reformist agenda, likened the Roman Catholic Church to “a ship without a rudder” in a fresh attack on the pope’s leadership...
Read more:
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Roman Catholic Hierarchy - Past 30 years
Do Not Protect Children!
Child Sexual Abuse Cover-ups & Gay Children Growing Up
This midterm report expressing sincere concern for gay children - is phenomenal. It is interesting that the importance of protecting children never seems to concern the hierarchy whether to protect children from being sexually abused or gay children growing up being abused by the lifetime harmful effects of antigay social and religious norms. Why? What might the reasons be?
The transparency that followed in the wake of Pope Francis, especially after the Synod of Bishops on Family 2014 - revealed far more than people like Cardinal Burke intended. It brings more clarity to better answer the question, Why children have been left unprotected by the Hierarchy for the past 30 years?
Homogeneous group - Repressed Homosexuals
Roman Curia - & - Hierarchy
For the past 32 years, Benedict XVI exuded a great deal of influence in choosing members for the curia and hierarchy based on their strict obedience to doctrine including homosexuality. Resulting in, Benedict XVI, creating over the past 3 decades, likely the largest solid homogeneous group, a select population based on the unsubstantiated antigay teachings having the highest probability of containing the largest number of homophobic sexual repressed homosexuals than anywhere else in the world...
Fr Marty Kurylowicz’s - Appeal Letter Sent to Pope Francis - “Coming Out” March 1997 - Gay Catholic Priest - For Protection of Children - January 16, 2014
Roman Curia - & - Hierarchy
Unprotected
Gay Children - & - High School Seminarians
Considering how the members of the Roman Curia and Hierarchy were selected for the past 30 years - the simple answer why they left children unprotected is because when these men were children no one heard their cries for help. Therefore, as adults they are unable to here the cries of children who are suffering in the same way as they did as children.
The Roman Curia and Hierarchy - as gay children growing up (1) no one heard their cries for protection from the lifetime harmful effects caused by antigay social and religious norms. This also includes - no one hearing (2) their cries for help as very young adolescents, while boarding at high school seminaries - where known sexual abuse of the students, by adult faculty members was going on and no one did anything to stop it. And though a student may never been assaulted sexually, but was aware of the sexual abuse was going on and no one stopped it - would be a severe form of the abuse of neglect.
Now, as adult celibate men, well over the age of 60 years old, they are perpetuating the same kind of violence that they had experienced as children and as young teenage seminarians - when no one care enough to protect them. And due to the group's tremendous lack of academic diversity only having knowledge limited to canon law or liturgy makes the possibly of any new academic perspectives to help broaden their understanding would likely be perceived more as a threat than an aid. This is disastrous for these men to hold positions in the Church that perpetuates such life-threatening harm to children worldwide. They, though not on the part of all, demonstrated their alarming inaptitude to continue holding the positions in the Church that they do, by the remarks they made against the Synod 2014 midterm report supporting gay children growing up. It is criminally negligent. However, those who were supportive of protecting gay children in the Synod 2014 was most reassuring.
Ghost In The Nursery
Selma Fraiberg 1975
...These words strike a familiar note, There are many parents who have themselves lived tormented childhoods who do not inflict their pain upon their children. These are the parents who say explicitly. or in effect. "I remember what it was like....I remember how afraid I was when my father exploded I remember how I cried when they took me and my sister away to live in that home....I would never let my child go through what I went through."
For these parents, the pain and suffering have not undergone total repression. In remembering, they are saved from the blind repetition of that morbid past. Through remembering they identify with an injured child (the childhood self), while the parent who does not remember may find himself in an unconscious alliance and identification with the fearsome figures of that past. In this way. the parental past is inflicted upon the child.
The key to our ghost story appears to lie in the fate of affects in childhood. Our hypothesis is that access to childhood pain becomes a powerful deterrent while repression and isolation of painful affect provide the psychological requirements for identification with the betrayers and aggressors. The unsolved mystery is why under conditions of extremity, in early childhood, some children who later become parents keep pain alive; they do not make the fateful alliance with the aggressor which defends the child's ego against intolerable danger and obliterates the conscious experience of anxiety. We hope to explore these problems in further study...
Selma Fraiberg - Professor of Child Psychoanalysis and director of the Child Development Project,
Department of Psychiatry, University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48108
Read more:
Alice Miller
In For Your Own Good (1980), she introduced the concept of "poisonous pedagogy" to describe the child-rearing practices that were so prevalent in Europe, especially before the second world war. She believed that the pain inflicted on children – "for their own good" – was unconsciously the parent re-enacting the trauma that had been inflicted on them when they were children. Thus the cycle of trauma continued down the generations.
She analysed the childhoods of several famous figures in order to prove her point, the best known being Adolf Hitler. In her view, all Hitler's atrocities could be explained by the brutal persecution and abuse he experienced as a child. It is here that Miller was at her most powerful. She brought the reality of child abuse to the foreground in a way that many found compelling. She described how children protect their parents in order to salvage some hope of having their needs fulfilled and in the process have to repress their true needs.
Long-term suffering could be avoided only, in her opinion, if the child had an adult in his or her life who could acknowledge the reality of their experience. She called these adults "empathic witnesses" and this acknowledgment, she said, not interpretation, should be the role of psychotherapists with their clients...
Read more:
FOR YOUR OWN GOOD
Hidden cruelty in child-rearing and the roots of violence (1980)
By Alice Miller
...In the earliest stage of life, it is possible for a child to forget about the extreme acts of cruelty he or she has endured and to idealize their perpetrator. But the nature of the subsequent enactment reveals that the whole history of early persecution was stored up somewhere; the drama now unfolds in front of the spectators with an amazing resemblance to the original situation but under another guise: in the reenactment, the child who was once persecuted now becomes the persecutor...
Read more:
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March 1997 - & - October 2014 - Hierarchy
Proof Lifetime Harm
In March 1997, I came out for the protection of gay children from the lifetime harmful effects caused by antigay social and religious norms. The Synod of Bishops 2014 reiterated the same need for the protection of gay children growing up, however, they did not include the part about the lifetime harmful effects caused to gay children by antigay social and religious norms, as I did in March 1997.
But the strong opposition expressed against the midterm report of even the idea of welcoming of gay children, especially led by Burke, was living proof of how the lifetime harmful effects are played out in adulthood, among the majority of the members of the hierarchy.
But the strong opposition expressed against the midterm report of even the idea of welcoming of gay children, especially led by Burke, was living proof of how the lifetime harmful effects are played out in adulthood, among the majority of the members of the hierarchy.
Homosexuality: coming out of the confusion
Sidney H Phillips
Int J Psychoanal 84:1431-50. 2003
In this paper, Dr. Phillips describes the complications of how the historical context of social norms can significantly influence the classification of the components of homosexuality by clinicians causing them to be blind to their own biases. Mindful of our susceptibility to this kind of phenomenon, Dr. Phillips calls to task these biases that pathologize homosexuality simply because it is not consistent with heterosexuality and therefore to be classified as a mental disorder. He offers an alternative description of homosexuality from his clinical research that is consistent with other researchers of early childhood psychological development of children who grow up to be gay.
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No Explanation or Reason
Emotional Outburst
What is key here is that there is no story or explanation - to match the intense emotional reaction regarding topic of gay children. Such intense reactions without a clear explanation why - tends to point to something happening in early childhood that has been repressed. As opposed to an event that happens in adulthood - like someone refusing to ride in the front seat of a car, because that person was in a severe car accident and got thrown through the windshield ( Henry Krystal - PDF http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCIQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ibrarian.net%2Fnavon%2Fpaper%2FChapter_8__Psychoanalytic_Approaches_to_Trauma__A.pdf%3Fpaperid%3D16436404&ei=GF21VNXKA9SqyASwnoDYBA&usg=AFQjCNHw0P8nuU0GEYdZs0ItaQKDfe2GLA&bvm=bv.83339334,d.aWw).
The overstimulation of everyday life:
I. New aspects of male homosexuality
Sidney H. Phillips
Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis, USA
J Am Psychoanal Assoc 49:1235-67. 2001
Western heterosexual culture surrounds the homosexually inclined boy in a climate of erotic overstimulation that powerfully affects his development and adult sexual adaptation. This assertion is illustrated through a case presentation of a homosexual man who shared a bed with his brother from childhood into adolescence. Analysis of the patient's transference enactment—repeatedly falling asleep on the couch—gradually revealed the psychic impact of this everyday overstimulation: the creation of a tantalized inner world of longing. The regular occurrence and developmental understanding of adolescent homosexual boys' unrequited love affairs with adolescent heterosexual boys are described and explored. Finally, the overstimulation of everyday life is proposed as a new model for understanding certain behavioral aspects of male homosexuality, such as the avoidance of rough-and-tumble play in childhood and homosexual cruising.
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Science on Homosexuality
Rejected
Rainforest - Climate Control Accepted
????????????????
Why? The intense emotional and adamant refusal to enter into any open discussion on the topic of gay children growing up, regarding the need to support them and their parents is alarming. What is their fear? It is alarming because they give no valid reasoning from science or the bible for so fiercely refusing to enter into any open dialogue. This is especially alarming, because they deliberately and completely excluded the science on homosexual sexual orientation. What profession in the world is allowed to exclude the science they do not agree with or does not fit their perspective? However, this is exactly what Hitler and the Nazi Party did - though not only excluding the science, but also removing the scientists themselves who did not fit in with their ideology.
As long as the hierarchy is allowed to exclude the science, so vital to the lives of gay children, makes it hypocritical to call out global corporations for not accepting the science on climate control in order to protect the poor.
RATZINGER/BENEDICT XVI
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
preventing evolution in church teaching toward acceptance of homosexual conduct.
Ignoring Science - Sanctions Ignorance & Silence
Promoting discrimination of Homosexuality
A Timeline
Benedict XVI - spent 30 years suppressing the evolving science on homosexual sexual orientation that fines that homosexual orientation is a normal and natural part of human sexual development. He and along with people like Cardinal Burke have aggressively attacked anyone in the Church who openly discussed the emerging science on homosexuality. This includes - someone like me - for coming out in 1997 for the protection of gay children that was based on the science of homosexuality. I am still, as a diocesan gay priest, waiting for, though not limited to - justice, financial compensation for being denied salary for the past 18 years, including to lethal harm to my reputation, health and the lost of productively of 18 years. I am only one of many, many, many - people in the Church who have been attacked for speaking for the protection of gay people - based authoritative science that has been emerging for the past 6 decades.
"The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual" in which she administered several psychological tests to groups of self-identified male homosexuals and heterosexuals and asked experts to identify the homosexuals and rate their mental health. The experiment, which other researchers subsequently repeated, argues that homosexuality is not a mental disorder, as there was no detectable difference between homosexual and heterosexual men in terms of mental adjustment...
Read more:
Being Gay Is Just as Healthy as Being Straight
Evelyn Hooker's pioneering research debunked the popular myth that homosexuals are inherently less mentally healthy than heterosexuals, leading to significant changes in how psychology views and treats people who are gay...
Hooker's work was the first to empirically test the assumption that gay men were mentally unhealthy and maladjusted. The fact that no differences were found between gay and straight participants sparked more research in this area and began to dismantle the myth that homosexual men and women are inherently unhealthy.
In conjunction with other empirical results, this work led the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from the DSM in 1973 (it had been listed as a sociopathic personality disorder). In 1975, the American Psychological Association publicly supported this move, stating that "homosexuality per se implies no impairment in judgment, reliability or general social and vocational capabilities…(and mental health professionals should) take the lead in removing the stigma of mental illness long associated with homosexual orientation." Although prejudice and stigma still exist in society, this research has helped millions of gay men and women gain acceptance in the mental health community.
Read more:
Evelyn Hooker, 89, Is Dead; Recast the View of Gay Men - November 22, 1996
...Her most significant work was a paper delivered in 1956 to the American Psychological Association in Chicago and published the next year as ''The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual'' in The Journal of Projective Techniques.
Dr. Hooker administered three standard personality tests, including the Rorschach ink-blot test, to two groups of 30 men, one heterosexual, one homosexual, who had been matched in I.Q.'s, age and education levels.
She then asked a panel of expert clinicians to assess the results without knowing the subjects' sexual orientation. To their surprise, the judges were unable to discern between the two groups on the basis of the test.
''The most striking finding of the three judges,'' Dr. Hooker wrote, ''was that many of the homosexuals were very well adjusted. In fact, the three judges agreed on two-thirds of the group as being average to superior in adjustment. Not only do all homosexuals not have strong feminine identification, nor are they all 'somewhat paranoid,' but, according to the judges, some may not be characterized by any demonstrable pathology.''...
Read more:
Evelyn Hooker, Ph.D.
September 2, 1907 - November 18, 1996
Read more:
Regardless, of the compelling authoritative science on homosexuality compiling for the past 6 decades - Benedict came out on December 22, 2008 making headlines -
“Saving the world from homosexuality is like saving rainforests (http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/saving-the-world-from-homosexuality-is-like-saving-rainforests-pope/402060/).”
“Homosexuality is as great a threat as rainforest destruction, says Pope (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1100422/Homosexuality-great-threat-rainforest-destruction-says-Pope.html).”
“Pope wants humanity 'saved' from homosexuality (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2008-12-23/pope-wants-humanity-saved-from-homosexuality/248428).”
“Pope says humanity needs 'saving' from homosexuality (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/3916804/Pope-says-humanity-needs-saving-from-homosexuality.html?mobile=basic).” Photo
Galileo
Objectivity is lost when the curia arbitrarily assumes to be the sole source to interpret the bible. This is what caused the curia’s error in judgment in Galileo’s case, because their interpretations the bible were biased to fit the unchallenged sacred traditional constructs. This ironclad bias of the curia - is what prevents the free search for truth.
...Without the freedom of expression of ideas, the Vatican then becomes tightly insulated from any new knowledge that challenges their interpretations, which leads the Vatican to - rejecting the scientific findings of its time.
(Jerome J. Langford, O.P., “Galileo, Science and the Church” The University of Michigan Press, Michigan, 1992)
http://www.press.umich.edu/7315/galileo_science_and_the_church
Children Growing-up Gay & Vatican's Impact Harmful - GROUPTHINK
Fr. Marty Kurylowicz - 2008
Pope Francis Christmas - Roman Curia - 2014
Narcissistic Psychopathology
Lack of Parental Empathic Caring
Pope Francis’s Christmas message to the Roman Curia on December 22, 2014 regarding making “a real examination of conscience” he describes many aspects that appear close, to the symptoms of Heinz Kohut’s self psychology model, of narcissistic psychopathology. This is the result of the lack of parental empathic caring during early childhood psychological development.
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Sexual Orientation is an enduring emotional, romantic, sexual or affectional attraction to another person. It is easily distinguished from other components of sexuality including biological sex, gender identity (the psychological sense of being male or female) and the social gender role (adherence to cultural norms for feminine and masculine behavior).
Sexual Orientation is different from sexual behavior because it refers to feelings and self-concept. Persons may or may not express their sexual orientation in their behaviors.
American Psychological Association (2005)
April 2009 - SEXUAL ORIENTATION is less about sex and more about LOVE, being one with another human being. Attachment Theory - - LOVE & RELIGION --- Fr. Marty Kurylowicz
Nothing in life is more precious than the intimate relationships we have with love ones. Healthy love relationships delight us give us confidence to take on challenges and support us in difficult times.
The Psychology of the Closeted Individual and Coming Out
by Jack Drescher, M.D - 2007
Many LGB individuals report developmental histories with difficulty acknowledging their homosexuality, either to themselves or to others. This is because, starting in childhood, LGB individuals are often subjected to antihomosexual attitudes, not only from strangers, but also from their own families and communities (Drescher, Stein and Byne, (2005). The childhood need to hide may persist into adulthood, leading many LGB individuals to conceal important aspects of themselves…Closeted individuals cannot acknowledge homoerotic feelings, attractions and fantasies to themselves. They cannot or will not integrate homosexuality into their public personae and these feelings must be dissociated out of conscious awareness…
Some gay men, before coming out, were either gay-baiters or gay-bashers. To maintain a psychological distance from their own homoerotic feelings, they also exhibit dissociative tendencies. Attacking those perceived to be gay can serve several functions. One penile plethysmography study indicated that men with strong antihomosexual beliefs actually had significant homosexual arousal patterns (Adams, 1996). Interpersonally, strong antihomosexual feelings may represent
an effort to control perceptions of a gay-basher’s own sexual identity. If they attack gay people, others will not think of them as gay...
Read complete paper:
Raised & Disciplined & Forced - Not To Ever - Fall In Love
Early Childhood
In brief, one likely possibility could be caused by early childhood traumatic experiences growing up gay - when a gay child is being subjected, in varying degrees of severity, to antigay social and religious norms. This would cause the destruction of the psychological development of the self. The gay child - instead of growing up to be a separate individual - sacrifices his individuality - to become what appears to be acceptable to the his parents for fear of abandonment. For a child - the fear of being abandoned can be traumatic and the child will do anything in order to stop this overwhelming feeling of being abandoned. Photo
Is Some Homophobia Self-Phobia? – April 6, 2012
ScienceDaily
Homophobia is more pronounced in individuals with an unacknowledged attraction to the same sex and who grew up with authoritarian parents who forbade such desires, a series of psychology studies demonstrates.
The study is the first to document the role that both parenting and sexual orientation play in the formation of intense and visceral fear of homosexuals, including self-reported homophobic attitudes, discriminatory bias, implicit hostility towards gays, and endorsement of anti-gay policies…
Read more:
Pope Blasts U.K. Anti-Discrimination Laws - February 2, 2010
In Speech, Benedict Raises Fears that Vatican Could Be Prosecuted for Stances Against Gays
Majority of Catholics - but not the bishops - support passing ENDA today - November 7, 2013
Need for Revenge by Whatever Means
Narcissistic Rage
Narcissistic Rage
Kohut and Self Psychology
...For Kohut, narcissistic rage is related to narcissists' need for total control of their environment, including "the need for revenge, for righting a wrong, for undoing a hurt by whatever means". It is an attempt by the narcissist to turn from a passive sense of victimization to an active role in giving pain to others, while at the same time attempting to rebuild their own (actually false) sense of self-worth. It may also involve self-protection and preservation, with rage serving to restore a sense of safety and power by destroying that which had threatened the narcissist...
Read more:
Cold-blooded Murderers
...Cold-blooded Murderers of the reputations of their colleagues and brethren. It is the sickness of the cowardly who, not having the courage to speak directly to the people involved, instead speak behind their backs”.
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Sexual Orientation & Empathy
This kind of severe disruptions to the natural and normal development of a child’s sexual orientation - whether heterosexual or homosexual - has proven to cause lifelong lasting harmful effects - disrupting the child’s ability to form life long lasting relationships. Sexual orientation is directly related to a child’s development of human empathy - the ability to love and to be loved - to feel one with another.
When parents are disapproving of a gay child’s expression of love for someone of the same sex - it will also be destroying a child’s ability to empathize with others. Parents make the devastating mistake to assume that a gay child has any understanding of an adult distorted understanding what it means to be gay. Parents will often look to the Catholic Church for guidance in order to give the very best instructions to their gay child.
And instead of the parents of a gay child getting - what they believe is the best guidance - they are in fact getting the most life-threatening advice possible. Because if the parents follow the Vatican’s unsubstantiated antigay teachings their gay children are more than likely to turn out, in extreme cases to turn out like Cardinal Burke or like the members of the Roman Curia.
Parents of Roman Curia
The members of the Roman Curia are more than likely - prime examples of this kind of lifetime harm caused by their parents’ faithfulness in enforcing these Vatican’s unsubstantiated antigay teachings children. And we can also see how it has becomes a self-perpetuation of violence. The Synod 2014 midterm report welcoming gay children is a real sign of hope to reverse this human atrocity.
Pope Francis’s descriptions
Roman Curia
Pope Francis’s descriptions of the Roman Curia "spiritual Alzheimer's," "excessively busy,” "rivalry and vainglory,” “indifference,” “accumulation,” “worldly profit and exhibitionism,” are the only things left to a gay child when a child has been raised not to fall in love or somehow the child’s idea of love was wrong (http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2014/12/22/pope_francis_christmas_greetings_to_curia/1115668). Photo
Below revised: 1/31/15
Yes, we are looking at lives lived without being allowed to fall in love. I do not know what more evidence is needed to prove - how extremely harmful for life the Vatican's unsubstantiated antigay teachings are to gay children growing up. The fact is no one heard their cries for help of the Roman Curia or the Hierarchy - as gay children growing up and therefore they will not hear the cries of gay children today.
Extreme Sense of Emptiness
Roman Curia
Catholic Catechism - “Intrinsically Disordered”
Antigay Child Abuse
Cardinal Burke is tone deaf when it comes to 'intrinsically disordered' language
October 10, 2014
Anyone with ears to hear knows that the "intrinsically disordered" language regarding homosexual relations has failed to achieve anything except make the Church look foolish and mean-spirited. The synod fathers apparently have discussed the need to find better language with which to convey the Church's teachings in this area. But Cardinal Burke still thinks he is being pastoral when he deploys this language. His latest interview with LifeSite News is appallingly tone deaf, as was his interview with Raymond Arroyo on EWTN last night...
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The biggest unreported synod influence: human experience
Oct. 30, 2014
...Burke provides a sad example of a churchman who doesn't get or simply overrides the theological wisdom of human experience. By insisting that homosexuality is "intrinsically disordered," he aligns himself with other church leaders who have no clinical or theological basis for making such a judgment. Indeed, he employs a philosophical category that does not fit the human dignity of homosexual men and women...
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Archbishop Asks Rome To Ease Up
September 28, 1986
MILWAUKEE — Rembert George Weakland long has been regarded by his peers as the brightest member of the hierarchy in the American Roman Catholic Church...has politely but forthrightly told the Vatican to, in effect, soften its drive to coerce doctrinal uniformity by punishing dissenters...
He contended that previous efforts to monitor and safeguard Catholic doctrine have been undertaken in an atmosphere where “amateurs-turned-theologians easily became headhunters and leaders were picked (on the basis of) the rigidity of their doctrine, so that often second-rate and repressive minds, riding on the waves of fear, took over.
“Religion under such circumstances then can become an ideology that tolerates no obstacle and that values ideas more than people,” he wrote...
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Benedict XVI - 1933
Early Childhood Trauma
Six Years Old
It is the extraordinary insight that the wake of Pope Francis
transparency efforts to reform the Vatican, especially with the midterm report of the Synod of Bishops on Family 2014 concerns for supporting gay children that is altering previously conceived ideas. However, all the needed reforms are linked back to early childhood traumatizing events. It gives a deeper understanding though more severe - to how Pope Benedict XVI grew up in Nazi Germany, at the age of six years old, in 1933 and how that harsh mistreatment played itself out in his years at the Vatican.
From mere historical observations of where and when Benedict XVI was born - it would not be a unreasonable to consider the fact that he was a child victim of multiple forms of child abuse, as countless other children due to Hitler’s and the Nazi Party’s ideologies.
Education in the Third Reich served to indoctrinate students with the National Socialist world view. Nazi scholars and educators glorified Nordic and other “Aryan” races, while denigrating Jews and other so-called inferior peoples as parasitic “bastard races” incapable of creating culture or civilization. After 1933, the Nazi regime purged the public school system of teachers deemed to be Jews or to be “politically unreliable.” Most educators, however, remained in their posts and joined the National Socialist Teachers League. 97% of all public school teachers, some 300,000 persons, had joined the League by 1936. In fact, teachers joined the Nazi Party in greater numbers than any other profession.
In the classroom and in the Hitler Youth, instruction aimed to produce race-conscious, obedient, self-sacrificing Germans who would be willing to die for Führer and Fatherland. Devotion to Adolf Hitler was a key component of Hitler Youth training. German young people celebrated his birthday (April 20)-a national holiday-for membership inductions. German adolescents swore allegiance to Hitler and pledged to serve the nation and its leader as future soldiers.
Schools played an important role in spreading Nazi ideas to German youth. While censors removed some books from the classroom, German educators introduced new textbooks that taught students love for Hitler, obedience to state authority, militarism, racism, and antisemitism. Photo
From their first days in school, German children were imbued with the cult of Adolf Hitler. His portrait was a standard fixture in classrooms. Textbooks frequently described the thrill of a child seeing the German leader for the first time.
Board games and toys for children served as another way to spread racial and political propaganda to German youth. Toys were also used as propaganda vehicles to indoctrinate children into militarism...
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1930s and 1950s
Racial Purity & Play Fair
While other children like myself born in the 1950s were being taught in school - how we must respect and play fair with all children - Benedict XVI, as a school child - was taught that some children are dangerous like rats and must be avoided (even exterminated for the safety of society). Hitler and the Nazi Party exploited Germany’s children. Hitler immediately had school children, starting as young 5 and 6 years of age - constantly drilled on the idea of racial purity. Germany school children who did not meet the ideal of the Arian race - were by some sources - simply removed from school never to be seen again.
Hitler and the Nazi Party increased the already established anti-Semitism and inhumanly manipulated the evolving racial hygiene movement. “It took a powerful state to concentrate and unleash the destructive forces within German medicine, and without that state, science would have remained impotent in this sphere. In the midst of a war engineered by an aggressive, expansionist state, Nazi ideologues were able to turn to doctors to carry out acts that have come to be regarded as the embodiment of evil. (Increasing Anti-Semitism and Evolving Biological Determinism, https://ke.army.mil/bordeninstitute/published_volumes/ethicsVol2/Ethics-ch-14.pdf).” Hitler was a “fanatical ideologue who was obsessed with social Darwinism, völkisch antisemitism (in which the Jewish people were viewed as a "race" biologically different from the rest of humanity rather than a religion)...(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Kershaw).”
It was a social environment that evolved into an arbitrary form of racial hygiene encased in secrecy and disguised euphemisms that embodied the Nazi destruction of “lives not worth living.” It (1) terrorized the German people by exterminating all those including children and infants who did not fit the ideal prototype of the Arian race. “The total infiltration of educational and social institutions [by Nazi policies] made total social control possible. No child or family was safe from intrusion. Leadership of educational institutions was placed in the hands of ambitious fanatics, Nazi bureaucrats, chosen for their faithfulness to the party line, rather than their competence as educators (Hitler's Unwanted Children http://www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/186/116/ & http://www.holocaust-trc.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/unwanted.pdf & http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007820).”
It was a social environment that also included (2) the "cumulative radicalization" of the genocide of those races perceived as a threat of contamination to the Germany, being less than human that primarily targeted the Jewish people (NAZI MEDICAL ETHICS: ORDINARY DOCTORS? https://ke.army.mil/bordeninstitute/published_volumes/ethicsVol2/Ethics-ch-14.pdf). Although, it was the power of Hitler’s persona voicing the central focus of his fanatical anti-Semitic racial policies, in the end it was his subordinates, vying for his favor, particularly Himmler and Heydrich, who implemented the design and details in carrying them out that ultimately led to the “Final Solution” (http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?cc=mqr;c=mqr;c=mqrarchive;idno=act2080.004). “People second-guessed or anticipated what he wanted (Ian Kershaw, http://www.historynet.com/worldwar2).”
Hitler and the Nazi Party increased the already established anti-Semitism and inhumanly manipulated the evolving racial hygiene movement. “It took a powerful state to concentrate and unleash the destructive forces within German medicine, and without that state, science would have remained impotent in this sphere. In the midst of a war engineered by an aggressive, expansionist state, Nazi ideologues were able to turn to doctors to carry out acts that have come to be regarded as the embodiment of evil. (Increasing Anti-Semitism and Evolving Biological Determinism, https://ke.army.mil/bordeninstitute/published_volumes/ethicsVol2/Ethics-ch-14.pdf).” Hitler was a “fanatical ideologue who was obsessed with social Darwinism, völkisch antisemitism (in which the Jewish people were viewed as a "race" biologically different from the rest of humanity rather than a religion)...(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Kershaw).”
Nazi Euthanasia - German Children
Ratzinger & Hunthausen 1986
...to monitor and safeguard Catholic doctrine have been undertaken in an atmosphere where “amateurs-turned-theologians easily became headhunters and leaders were picked (on the basis of) the rigidity of their doctrine, so that often second-rate and repressive minds, riding on the waves of fear, took over... Read more:
“Final Solution”
Genocide
The 'Dynamic Hatred' against Minorities
By Ian Kershaw - 1/30/08
...The apparently unending run of successes that Hitler could claim during the "peacetime" years of the Third Reich had a further reinforcing by-product. After 1933, affiliations of the NSDAP could spread their tentacles to almost all sectors of society. Millions of Germans were "organized" by the Nazi Movement in some fashion or another, and in each affiliation it was difficult fully to escape the clammy embrace of the Führer cult. Armies of petty apparatchiks and careerists owed position and advancement to the "system" that Hitler led. The emphasis upon "leadership" and "achievement" invited ruthless competition, played upon everyday ambition and opened up unheard of possibilities, unleashing a vast outpouring of energy in the broad endeavor to promote the vision of national renewal embodied in Hitler himself... Read more:
Background Information:
Pope Benedict XVI
Background and childhood (1927–1943)
Joseph Alois Ratzinger was born on 16 April (Holy Saturday) 1927 at 11 Schulstrasse, his parents' home in Marktl am Inn, Bavaria and baptised on the same day. He was the third and youngest child of Joseph Ratzinger, Sr., a police officer, and his wife, Maria...His father served in both the Bavarian State Police (Landespolizei) and the German national Regular Police (Ordnungspolizei) before retiring in 1937 to the town of Traunstein. The Sunday Times described the older Ratzinger as "an anti-Nazi whose attempts to rein in Hitler's Brown Shirts forced the family to move several times." According to the International Herald Tribune, these relocations were directly related to Joseph Ratzinger, Sr.'s continued resistance to Nazism, which resulted in demotions and transfers. The pope's brother Georg said: "Our father was a bitter enemy of Nazism because he believed it was in conflict with our faith". The family encountered the Nazi regime's euthanasia program for the handicapped. John Allen, a Ratzinger biographer, reports a revelation made by Cardinal Ratzinger at a conference in the Vatican on 28 November 1996: "Ratzinger had a cousin with Down's Syndrome who in 1941 was 14 years old. This cousin was just a few months younger than Ratzinger and was taken away by the Nazi authorities for "therapy". Not long afterwards, the family received word that he was dead, presumably one of the 'undesirables' eliminated during that time."...
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1933
Himmler - Reorganized the Police of Bavaria
Joseph Ratzinger, Sr - Bavarian State Police
Gestapo (Nazi political police) -- Encyclopedia Britannica
.....When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Hermann Göring, then Prussian minister of the interior, detached the political and espionage units from the regular Prussian police, filled their ranks with thousands of Nazis, and, on April 26, 1933, reorganized them under his personal command as the Gestapo. Simultaneously, Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, the Nazi paramilitary corps, together with his aide Reinhard Heydrich, similarly reorganized the police of Bavaria and the remaining German states...
...The Gestapo operated without civil restraints. It had the authority of “preventative arrest,” and its actions were not subject to judicial appeal. Thousands of leftists, intellectuals, Jews, trade unionists, political clergy, and homosexuals simply disappeared into concentration camps after being arrested by the Gestapo...
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Pope Benedict XVI
...Ratzinger's family, especially his father, bitterly resented the Nazis, and his father's opposition to Nazism resulted in demotions and harassment of the family. Following his 14th birthday in 1941, Ratzinger was conscripted into the Hitler Youth—as membership was required by law for all 14-year-old German boys after March 1939—but was an unenthusiastic member who refused to attend meetings, according to his brother. In 1941, one of Ratzinger's cousins, a 14-year-old boy with Down syndrome, was taken away by the Nazi regime and murdered during the Action T4 campaign of Nazi eugenics.[15] In 1943, while still in seminary, he was drafted into the German anti-aircraft corps as Luftwaffenhelfer. Ratzinger then trained in the German infantry.[16] As the Allied front drew closer to his post in 1945, he deserted back to his family's home in Traunstein after his unit had ceased to exist, just as American troops established a headquarters in the Ratzinger household. As a German soldier, he was interned in a prisoner of war camp, but released a few months later at the end of the war in May 1945...
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FINAL SOLUTIONS: MURDEROUS RACIAL HYGIENE, 1939–1945
...The first victims were German infants and children. The Reich Ministry of the Interior instructed midwives and physicians to register all children born with severe birth defects. Three expert physicians evaluated each case and, usually without seeing the potential victims, selected those to be killed. Officials deceived the children’s families by providing falsified causes of death. From 1939 to 1945, more than 5,000 boys and girls were killed in some 30 special children’s wards established at state hospitals and clinics...
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Benedict XVI - 10 years old - Himmler - 1937
Homosexuals, Abortion & Birth Control
“Destruction of Mankind”
An unchecked expansion of the
phenomenon of homosexuality would lead
quite literally to the “destruction of mankind”
(Untergang der Menschheit).
Herwig Hartner
Heinrich Himmler 1927 read Hartner
Benedict XVI at the age of 10, would likely have heard rumblings from - Heinrich Himmler’s speeches that homosexuals, abortion and people who practice birth control were also a serious threat to the nation. These three issues were Benedict XVI obsessions that he relentlessly had the hierarchy preach against (http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/pwh/naziviews.asp).
Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis
Robert N. Proctor
Harvard University Press 1988 - Review
...After 1910, the field of racial hygiene starts to explode in Germany. With its primary concern being fears centered on the degeneration of the race, numerous organizations and journals were started and articles were written espousing the need to do something about the current trends in births and birth control. At this time, the need for increasing desirable births and the necessity to limit births of the undesirable was being given great attention in addition to the fears associated with the overall declining birthrate in Germany...
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Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis
By Robert Proctor, 1988
THE BATTLE FOR BIRTHS
In 1936 the Reich Central Office for Combating Homosexuality and Abortion was established to step up efforts to prevent acts that obstructed reproduction. In a 1937 speech linking homosexuality to a falling birthrate, German police chief Heinrich Himmler stated: “A people of good race which has too few children has a one-way ticket to the grave.”
Heinrich Himmler - a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Nazi Germany... Photo
Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945) was the Reich Leader (Reichsführer) of the dreaded SS of the Nazi party from 1929 until 1945. Himmler presided over a vast ideological and bureaucratic empire that defined him for many—both inside and outside the Third Reich—as the second most powerful man in Germany during World War II. Given overall responsibility for the security of the Nazi empire, Himmler was the key and senior Nazi official responsible for conceiving and overseeing implementation of the so-called Final Solution, the Nazi plan to murder the Jews of Europe...
Read more:
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007407
Homosexuals & the Holocaust:
Himmler Speech on the “Question of Homosexuality”
Himmler Speech on the “Question of Homosexuality”
(February 18, 1937)
Homosexuals, Genocide of in the Holocaust
...The Nazi purge of homosexuals from their own ranks was only the beginning. On June 23, 1935, the first anniversary of the Roehm killings, the Nazis began a legal campaign against homosexuals by adding to paragraph 175 another law, 175a, which created ten new criminal offenses including kisses between men, embraces, even homosexual fantasies.
The Gestapo and the SS, under the notoriously antihomosexual leadership of Heinrich Himmler, became involved in a stepped up campaign to work gays to death in the camps. Himmler is quoted as follows: "Just as we today have gone back to the ancient Germanic view of the question of marriage mixing different races, so too in our judgment of homosexuality a symptom of degeneracy that could destroy our race we must return to the guiding Nordic principle: extermination." Reich Legal Director, Hans Frank, commented on the new penal code: "Particular attention should be addressed to homosexuality, which is clearly expressive of a disposition opposed to the normal national community ... Homosexual behavior, in particular, merits no mercy."
Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies
University of Minnesota
University of Minnesota
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Benedict XVI - born April 16, 1927
1933 - 6 years old
1934 - 7 years old
1935 - 8 years old
1936 - 9 years old
1936 - 9 years old
1937 - 10 years old
1939 - 12 years old
HOMOSEXUALS: VICTIMS OF THE NAZI ERA
...On May 6, 1933, Nazis ransacked the “Institute for Sexual Science” in Berlin; four days later as part of large public burnings of books viewed as “un-German,” thousands
of books plundered from the Institute’s library were thrown into a huge bonfire...
of books plundered from the Institute’s library were thrown into a huge bonfire...
In 1934, a special Gestapo (Secret State Police) division on homosexuals was set up. One of its first acts was to order the police “pink lists” from all over Germany.
The police had been compiling these lists of suspected homosexual men since 1900. On September 1, 1935, a harsher, amended version of Paragraph 175 of the Criminal Code, originally framed in 1871, went into effect, punishing a broad range of “lewd and lascivious” behavior between men. In 1936 Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler created a Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion: Special Office (II S), a subdepartment of Executive Department II of the Gestapo. The linking of homosexuality and abortion reflected the Nazi regime’s population policies to promote a higher birthrate of its “Aryan” population. On this subject, Himmler spoke in Bad Tölz on February 18, 1937, before a group of high-ranking SS officers on the dangers both homosexuality and abortion posed to the German birthrate.
Under the revised Paragraph 175 and the creation of Special Office II S, the number of prosecutions increased sharply, peaking in the years 1937–1939. Half of all convictions for homosexual activity under the Nazi regime occurred during these years. The police stepped up raids on homosexual meeting places, seized address books of arrested men to find addi- tional suspects, and created networks of informers to compile lists of names and make arrests...
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Washington D.C.
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The Denial of Homosexuality: Same-Sex Incidents in Himmler's SS and Police
Geoffrey J. Giles
...As the leader of the SS and the police, Himmler himself deserves special attention. His speeches and writings dealt more obsessively with homosexuality than did those of any other Nazi leader, and his comments were broadly consistent in their sharp condemnation of homosexuality. On several documented occasions between 1934 and 1943, Himmler spoke or wrote of the acceptability, even the desirability, of killing homosexuals...
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Geoffrey J. Giles 2001 - PDF
...During September and October 1927 Himmler read Herwig Hartner’s book Erotik und Rasse (Eroticism and Race)...
...Hartner’s book contained a section specifically on homosexuality, centering not on literature, but on the scientific and political work of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld. Hartner’s thesis was that an unchecked expansion of the phenomenon of homosexuality would lead quite literally to the “destruction of mankind” (Untergang der Menschheit). He lost himself in speculation about a giant conspiracy, inspired of course by Jews, among whom there was “contrary to Hirschfeld’s assertion, a greater [proportion of homosexuals] by far than in the German population” as a whole. What was the aim of these Jewish homosexuals? They were trying to push Germany down the slippery slope of “increasing infertility” that the French had been sliding down for ages. You may well wonder whether, if more homosexuals meant fewer babies, that would not have an equally or even more damaging effect on the “heavily homosexual” Jewish people...Hartner declared in a closing flourish to his chapter that this spread of homosexuality would “surely dig our graves.” One can almost sense young Himmler (still only twenty-seven years old) shuddering in agreement with these sentiments.
Hartner denied that homosexuality was brought about either as a result of boredom following too much sex with women, or by any other moral decadence, but rather he ascribed organic roots to the phenomenon. The idea that this was a natural drive over which the individual had no control in fact followed the thinking of that staunch defender of homosexuals, Magnus Hirschfeld himself. Yet Hartner was not about to defend homosexuals, even if they could not help themselves. What was to be done? The first thing, insisted Hartner, was not to allow people to act out their (homo)sexual impulses. This was a suggestion with which Himmler, already believably disturbed by the thought that Blüher’s comments on homoeroticism hit a little too close to home, would have fully agreed. Since the very “destruction of mankind” threatened to occur if homosexuals were to have their way, firm measures were called for. After all, “criminal tendencies, too, can be innate (angeboren), but it is still a duty for the self-preservation of human communities to take forcible precautionary measures against these equally natural urges.”
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Saving the world from homosexuality is like saving rainforests Pope - 12/24/08
In a clear reference to homosexuality, the 82-year-old Pope told top priests that the failure to respect the union between a man and a woman amounted to the "auto destruction of mankind", Mail online reported on Tuesday.
Homosexuality is as great a threat as rainforest destruction, says Pope - 23 December 2008
'The tropical forests deserve our protection, but man as a creature deserves it no less.'
In a clear reference to homosexuality, he said the failure to respect the union between a man and a woman amounted to the 'auto destruction of mankind'.
Pope wants humanity 'saved' from homosexuality - December 23, 2008
Pope Benedict XVI says saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behaviour is just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction...
Pope says humanity needs 'saving' from homosexuality - December 23, 2008
Pope Benedict XVI sparked a furious reaction from other Christian groups as he also suggested that a blurring of the distinction between male and female could lead to the "self-destruction" of the human race...
AUSCHWITZ - CHRISTMAS 2008
A flashback far more severe than in BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN
December 26, 2008
by - Fr. Marty Kurylowicz
...And when I heard what Pope Benedict XVI said about homosexuals and transgendered human beings at Christmas 2008, I felt that same trauma all over again. Because in some way, somehow, he was conveying in a non-verbal manner the horror of the Holocaust, in what appears to be a traumatized, trance-like, accepted social norm from that period of time dictating that some people just don’t count, aren’t important, and can be easily disposed of. And if you rock the boat, you could be next to be disposed of...
...It seemed like the same kind of horror, a tacit assumption that some people don't count and can be disposed of without remorse. Could it be that Benedict XVI is unconsciously repeating Hitler's crime against humanity by taking on a long-accepted social attitude from that period of time?
The question I asked myself was: what would it have been like for someone growing up gay during the Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals 1933 -1945?
What would be the severity of the psychological effects on a boy who grew up to be gay in Germany during the time of Hitler’s NAZI PERSECUTION OF HOMOSEXUALS 1933 -1945? During the Nazi regime, homosexuals were publicly defamed and falsely accused for the major social problems of that time, which was done to incite massive public hatred and hostility directed against homosexuals. Homosexuals were used for medical experiments, physically mutilated, brutally tortured and exterminated.
Would this child, as an adult, in a severe dissociated state of mind from his own homosexual feelings (Harry Stack Sullivan MD, Dissociative Processes, Clinical Studies on Psychiatry (1956)), unconsciously perpetuate the terrifying horror of the insensitivity he had experienced growing up? If he found himself in a position of authority would he recreate the same social and political environment of violence and terror for homosexuals that he experienced, as a child who grew up to be gay, during the NAZI PERSECUTION OF HOMOSEXUALS?...
Fr. Marty Kurylowicz
While school children like myself were taught to respect all knowledge - learn everything that - we could. Benedict XVI, as a student was taught that some science subjects that did not agree Nazi ideology were simply not considered as important and could be dismissed.
Protect Children and the
Rest of the World will be Safe
Childhood Trauma, Neurobiology... Development of the Brain:
Infant Mental Health Journal, Vol. 16, No. 4, Winter 1995
Adults interpret the actions, words, and expressions of children through the distorting fitter of their own beliefs. In the lives of most infants and children, these common adult misinterpretations are relatively benign. In many cases, however, these misinterpretations can be destructive. The most dramatic example occurs when the impact of traumatic events on infants and young children is minimized. It is an ultimate irony that at the time when the human is most vulnerable to the effects of trauma— during infancy and childhood— adults generally presume the most resilience...
...Deprivation of critical experiences during development may be the most destructive yet least understood area of child maltreatment. Unlike broken bones, irreversible maldevelopment of brain areas mediating empathy resulting from emotional neglect in infancy and childhood is not readily observable...
...Some of the most powerful clinical examples of this phenomenon are related to lack of attachment experiences early in life. The child who has been emotionally neglected early in life will exhibit profound attachment problems which are extremely insensitive to any replacement experiences later, including therapy. Examples of this include feral children, children in orphanages observed by Spitz and Wolf (1945) and, often, the remorseless, violent child...
...Profound sociocultural and public policy implications arise from understanding the critical role of early experience in determining the functional capacity of the mature adult — and therefore our society. Persistence of the destructive myth that "children are resilient" will prevent millions of children, and our society, from meeting their true potential. Persistence of the pervasive maltreatment of children in the face of decreasing global and national resources will lead, inevitably, to sociocultural devolution.
It need not be so.
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New Transparency - Synod 2014 - Benedict XVI
Reassessing
Benedict XVI spent is first 18 years of life under Hitler’s and the Nazi Party’s regime - what chances did he have of learning anything else ( - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_life_of_Pope_Benedict_XVI -- & --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Benedict_XVI -) The new transparency of the Vatican, especially at the Synod 2014 regarding supporting gay children and Burke’s emotional outbursts gives a deeper insight into the organizational structure of the Vatican and Benedict XVI involvement. It reveals a much greater complexity on many different levels regarding the whole situation - making any judgments quite useless at this time. This is especially true for Benedict XVI. What seems most important, now, is to try to understand just what has happened for the past three decades. It all still appears to be quite elusive for even those in the curia and hierarchy to fully understand.
Escalation of Curia’s Violence Against Gays 1981 - 2014
“Cumulative Radicalization"
In considering the above, it would be expected to find some similarities and - in one area there is the “cumulative radicalization." Professor Ian Kershaw, is a leading expert in the study of Hitler and the Nazi Party. Kershaw describes the meaning of the term “cumulative radicalization," as related to Nazi Germany under the leadership of Hitler. It was because of Hitler’s lack of involvement in the daily bureaucratic operations of governing that allowed the goals of the Nazi Party to become increasingly irrational and Kershaw found this to be characteristic of Nazi Germany.
Vatileaks & Watergate = Not Very Bright Men
“Follow the Money”
“Follow the Money”
The Vatileaks indicated the same lack of involvement of Benedict XVI in the daily bureaucratic operations of the curia (http://www.npr.org/2012/06/02/154093529/conspiracies-swirl-as-vatican-scandal-engulfs-rome%20---%20&%20---%20http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/pope-benedict-focuses-). His absence, like Nazi Germany, also allowed Cardinal Bertone and Cardinal Burke to set goals that were increasingly irrational causing many human atrocities. They are reminiscent of the men of Watergate - not very bright and got drunk on power and of course there is the money. Who is on whose - payroll or payrolls?
In a 1993 essay "Working Towards the Führer", Kershaw argued that the German and Soviet dictatorships had more differences than similarities. Kershaw argued that Hitler was a very unbureaucratic leader who was highly averse to paper work in marked contrast to Stalin. Likewise, Kershaw argued that Stalin was highly involved in the running of the Soviet Union in contrast to Hitler whose involvement in day-to-day decision making was limited, infrequent and capricious. Kershaw argued that the Soviet regime, despite all of its extreme brutality and utter ruthlessness, was basically rational in its goal of seeking to modernise a backward country and had no equivalent of the "cumulative radicalization" towards increasingly irrational goals that Kershaw sees as characteristic of Nazi Germany...
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Home Depot & Dolan
...Some Catholic business leaders have complained about Francis’ emphasis on income inequality and the defects of capitalism. Kenneth G. Langone, the billionaire co-founder of the Home Depot and a major Republican donor, warned Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York that if the pope kept up the drumbeat, some wealthy Catholics might stop giving to church causes...
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Vatileaks - Background links:
Vatican Confidential: Why Are So Many Rumors Coming out of the Holy See? - 2/22/12
...In the past few weeks, the Holy See has sprung a series of leaks. Their contents range from allegations of corruption and cronyism in Rome, to internal criticism of a Vatican effort to tackle money laundering...
Each leak would be embarrassing enough on its own. Together, they add up to a picture of disarray at the top tiers of the Catholic Church...
...A likely target is Pope Benedict XVI's second-in-command, Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone. Appointed in 2006 to run the day-to-day affairs of the Vatican while the pope focused on affairs of the spirit...
...In this view, the leaks are in part attacks on Bertone's administration, but also the manifestation of behind-the-scenes maneuvering, driven by internal rivalries and the beginnings of the inevitable battle for succession. "You've got lots of groups, clans, small and medium, that in the confusion are fighting with each other,"...
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Exhausted in the Vatican: The Final Battles of Pope Benedict XVI - 6/15/12
The mood at the Vatican is apocalyptic. Pope Benedict XVI seems tired, and both unable and unwilling to seize the reins amid fierce infighting and scandal. While Vatican insiders jockey for power and speculate on his successor, Joseph Ratzinger has withdrawn to focus on his still-ambiguous legacy.
...A House in Disarray
Fear is running rampant in the Curia...No one trusts anyone anymore...
...complaints about poor leadership and internal divisions are being aired outside the Vatican's walls...
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Vatican shuffle cloaked in controversy - 6/26/12
Pondering the 'what,' not the 'who,' of Vatileaks - 6/01/12
The Boffo case - a style of character assassination...
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People Loved Darkness
Cardinal Burke
There has been an escalation over the past 30 years - in the intensity of attacking gay people, suppressing all the evolving science on homosexuality, silencing anyone in the Church who spoke openly on the topic, and that involved accomplices. Benedict XVI started his antigay crusade in 1981 and enlisting clerics into the curia who would follow his orders. Cardinal Burke was placed in power since 1989.
This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but
people loved darkness instead of light because
their deeds were evil. Everyone who does
evil hates the light, and will not come
into the light for fear that their
deeds will be exposed.
John 3:19-20
Cruel & Demeaning Public Tactic
Intimidation
Hunthausen
Hunthausen
Benedict XVI, as Cardinal Ratzinger started cracking down on those helping gay people - beginning with Archbishop Hunthausen. Whether or not it was intentional - it was the first Apostolic Visitation - to gain US national news media attention. It was stated at the time, that Ratzinger’s investigation of Hunthausen was a cruel and demeaning public tactic used against Hunthausen to intimidate his fellow prelates. However, this intimidation tacit has remained constant until possibly, now? I was informed this harsh retaliation tacit existed after I came out in 1997.
Conflict in the Catholic Hierarchy :
a study of coping strategies in the Hunthausen affair,
with preferential attention to discursive strategies
by Timothy Peter Schilling - 2003
Conflicts within the Roman Catholic hierarchy poses risks to the organizational effectiveness of the Church, but the hierarchy’s approach to conflict handling has rarely been subjected to systematic, empirically grounded study...
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Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger's Report Issued on Seattle Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen - September 30, 1985
Archbishop Asks Rome To Ease Up - September 28, 1986 Photo
MILWAUKEE — Rembert George Weakland long has been regarded by his peers as the brightest member of the hierarchy in the American Roman Catholic Church...has politely but forthrightly told the Vatican to, in effect, soften its drive to coerce doctrinal uniformity by punishing dissenters.
He asserted that Draconian measures used throughout Christian history to silence those who challenge traditional church teaching have resulted in
“much cruelty, suppression of theological creativity and lack of growth.”
Archbishop Weakland, a Benedictine monk who has been Milwaukee`s archbishop since 1977, is the first American Catholic leader of wide repute and influence to publicly raise alarm over the perceived crackdown by Rome on prominent and liberal U.S. Catholic thinkers who question Vatican stands on sexual morality and other issues...
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'God's Rottweiler' silenced many as head of doctrinal congregation - 2/27/13
...In 1983, Hunthausen, a well-known progressive bishop, allowed a Mass for Dignity, a group for gay and lesbian Catholics, in his cathedral, which resulted in complaints to the doctrinal congregation...
Homosexuals. A Separate Category of Prisoners
Nazism’s Pink Hell
...Himmler had an obsession about der Volk. In a speech to SS lieutenants in 1937, he warned that the spread of homosexuality endangered the reproduction of the nation...
...Unfortunately, things are not so easy as they were for our forefathers. For them, such an individual was simply something immoral. Homosexuals, known as Urnings, were drowned in the swamps...
People were not drowned in swamps in 20th century Germany. The SS came up with something far more refined for homosexuals. “These people will certainly be publicly stripped of their positions, dismissed and brought before courts. Following the court verdicts, they will be taken to concentration camps, and shot there should they attempt to escape.”...
Read more:
Rigidity to Doctrine
Groupthink
There was considerable criticism made about the people Cardinal Ratzinger picked to work for him, the only qualification required was their rigidity to doctrine. Over the past 30 years, this has greatly decreased the intellectual level of the curia and hierarchy which is quite evident today, their inability to view situations from multiple academic perspectives. It was the formation of a most deadly form of the process known as groupthink (http://web.stanford.edu/group/scie/Career/Wisdom/groupthink1.htm). Pope Francis has improved this deficit by bringing in a diversity of colleagues, consultants and experts to assist him in reforming the Vatican Bank and curia, including strongly encouraging and promoting open dialogue on every subject.
Secrecy
Crackdown - Hunthausen - 1980s
“Amateurs-turned-theologians”
During Apostolic Visitation of Archbishop Hunthausen of the 1980s, Archbishop Weakland in 1986 - made the statement that the only qualification for choosing clerics to work curia was their rigidity to doctrine that they were:
He contended that previous efforts to monitor and safeguard Catholic doctrine have been undertaken in an atmosphere where “amateurs-turned-theologians easily became headhunters and leaders were picked (on the basis of) the rigidity of their doctrine, so that often second-rate and repressive minds, riding on the waves of fear, took over.
``Religion under such circumstances then can become an ideology that tolerates no obstacle and that values ideas more than people,”...
Read more:
Conformity = Obedience & Enthusiasm
Commentary
After shock? Towards a social identity explanation of the Milgram ‘obedience’ studies
Stephen Reicher and S. Alexander Haslam
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British Journal of Social Psychology (2011), 50, 163–169
2011 The British Psychological Society
...This is something Russell (2011) alerts us to in detailing Milgram’s sensitivity to both (1) the authenticity and quality of his accomplices [e.g., the importance of having a learner who ‘is mild and submissive; not at all academic’; 2011, p. 20], and (2) the ‘binding factors’ [such as the experimenter’s status] that help put the participant under the experimenter’s influence...
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Human obedience: The myth of blind conformity
November 20, 2012
In the 1960s and 1970s, classic social psychological studies were conducted that provided evidence that even normal, decent people can engage in acts of extreme cruelty when instructed to do so by others. However, in an essay published November 20 in the open access journal PLOS Biology, Professors Alex Haslam and Stephen Reicher revisit these studies' conclusions and explain how awful acts involve not just obedience, but enthusiasm too -- challenging the long-held belief that human beings are 'programmed' for conformity...
...Professor Haslam, from the University of Queensland, argues that tyranny does not result from blind conformity to rules and roles. Rather, it is a creative act of followership, resulting from identifying with authorities who represent vicious acts as virtuous.
"Decent people participate in horrific acts not because they become passive, mindless functionaries who do not know what they are doing, but rather because they come to believe -- typically under the influence of those in authority -- that what they are doing is right," Professor Haslam explained.
Professor Reicher, of the University of St Andrews, added that it is not that they were blind to the evil they were perpetrating, but rather that they knew what they were doing, and believed it to be right...
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&
Stanley Milgram’s (1974) study of obedience
BEHAVIORAL STUDY OF OBEDIENCE
STANLEY MILCRAM
Yak University
This article describes a procedure for the study of destructive obedience in the laboratory...
Read more:
Obeying and Resisting Malevolent Orders
Stanley Milgram's famous experiment highlights the powerful human tendency to obey authority.
Practical Application
Milgram's discovery about the unexpectedly powerful human tendency to obey authorities can be applied to real life in several different ways. First, it provides a reference point for certain phenomena that, on the face of it, strain our understanding-thereby, making them more plausible. Clearly, the implications of Milgram's research have been greatest for understanding of the Holocaust. For example, a historian, describing the behavior of a Nazi mobile unit roaming the Polish countryside that killed 38,000 Jews in cold blood at the bidding of their commander, concluded that "many of Milgram's insights find graphic confirmation in the behavior and testimony of the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101."...
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Following Hunthausen there was a steady increase of violence towards gay people in the Church, though not always in the news media, much of it was hidden from the public view, as it was done to me in June 1997. It seemed that as Benedict XVI brought clerics into the curia and the hierarchy their efforts took on a life of its own, ever increasing the violence against gays. In truth, for the most part, reenacting the same violence that was done to them as children.
Out Do - Antigay Remarks
Hierarchy
In the USA it seemed like one bishop or archbishop, after another were trying to out do each other as to who could be the meanest against gays or make the most outlandish statement against gay people in the news media. This information is all and forever documented in the news media. It was beyond shameful. Over the years, It promoted ignorance and increased prejudices and hatred of millions of innocent people - worldwide.
This was quite apparent from around 2010 until 2013 when Pope Francis was elected. The goals like Nazi Germany became increasingly irrational. Burke demonstrated just how irrational it was getting by his public display against the Synod of Bishops on Family 2014 for supporting gay children.
Without the secrecy and bureaucratic anonymity for Burke and others like him - to hide behind and the increase transparency - Burke’s emotional outbursts, especially regarding the Synod 2014 welcoming gay children makes it clear - that Benedict XVI was not the sole orchestrator of this massive antigay crusade. Benedict XVI started it - but Burke was quite involved, even more involved than Benedict XVI for possibly the past 25 years - in what appears to have created a “cumulative radicalization."
Ian Kershaw
Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany
“Cumulative Radicalization"
Professor Ian Kershaw - “...is regarded by many as one of the world's leading experts on Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, and is particularly noted for his monumental biography of Hitler...
In Kershaw's view, what happened in Germany after 1933 was the imposition of Hitler's charismatic authority on top of the "legal-rational" authority system that had existed prior to 1933, leading to a gradual breakdown of any system of ordered authority in Germany. Kershaw argues that by 1938 the German state had been reduced to a hopeless, polycratic shambles of rival agencies all competing with each other to win Hitler's favour, which by that time had become the only source of political legitimacy. Kershaw sees this rivalry as causing the "cumulative radicalization" of Germany, and argues that though Hitler always favoured the most radical solution to any problem, it was German officials themselves who for the most part, in attempting to win the Führer's approval, carried out on their own initiative increasingly "radical" solutions to perceived problems like the "Jewish Question", as opposed to being ordered to do so by Hitler...
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“So the ‘cumulative radicalization’ so central to nazism is left needing an explanation.
Linked to this is the capacity for destruction — again extraordinary even for dictatorships. This destructive capacity, though present from the outset, developed over time and in phases; against internal political, then increasingly, ‘racial’ enemies in spring 1933, across the spring and summer of 1935, and during the summer and autumn of 1938; following this, the qualitative leap in its extension to the Poles from autumn 1939 onwards; and the unleashing of its full might in the wake of the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. The unceasing radicalization of the regime, and the different stages in the unfolding of its destructive capacity cannot, however, as has come to be generally recognized, be explained by Hitler’s commands and actions alone. Rather, they followed countless initiatives from below, at many different levels of the regime. Invariably, these occurred within a broad ideological framework associated with Hitler’s wishes and intentions. But those initiating the actions were seldom — except in the realms of foreign policy and war strategy — following direct orders from Hitler and were by no means always ideologically motivated. A whole panoply of motives was involved. What motivated the individual — ideological conviction, career advancement, power-lust, sadism and other factors — is, in fact, of secondary importance. Of primary significance is that, whatever the motivation, the actions had the function of working towards the accomplishment of the visionary goals of the regime, embodied in the person of the Führer...
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This is in no way meant to degrade Benedict XVI or members of the curia and hierarchy, but to understand how the actions of world leaders can effect the lives of children that is then repeated in the future.
Gay Marriage Threatens Whom?
Homophobia of Hierarchy?
He contended that previous efforts to monitor and safeguard Catholic doctrine have been undertaken in an atmosphere where “amateurs-turned-theologians easily became headhunters and leaders were picked (on the basis of) the rigidity of their doctrine, so that often second-rate and repressive minds, riding on the waves of fear, took over.
``Religion under such circumstances then can become an ideology that tolerates no obstacle and that values ideas more than people,”...
Read more:
Without Open Dialogue - 30 years
Validity - Interpretations
Canon Law?
So it is a valid major question to ask - Who does canon law serve? Does it serve to protect the hierarchy's homophobic biases?
Muller & Chaput - Families
Enabling Homophobia?
Atomic Bomb
Families
Parents of Gay Children
Fortunate Families
Mission Statement
Fortunate Families serves as a resource and networking ministry with Catholic parents of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender children.
We promote and facilitate personal, meaningful, and respectful conversation, especially within our parishes and with our pastors and bishops. We stress the significance of our personal stories as a source of grace within our families and as a witness for justice in our civic and faith communities.
We hold fast to the truth that our children are, in the words of the United States bishops, “child[ren] of God, gifted and called for a purpose in God’s design.” (Always our Children 1997-1998)
Read more:
PFLAG
Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays
Our Vision. PFLAG envisions a world where diversity is celebrated and all people are respected, valued, and affirmed inclusive of their sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression.
Our Mission. By meeting people where they are and collaborating with others, PFLAG realizes its vision through:
Support for families, allies and people who are LGBTQ
Education for ourselves and others about the unique issues and challenges facing people who are LGBTQ
Advocacy in our communities to change attitudes and create policies and laws that achieve full equality for people who are LGBTQ
Read more:
INSTRUMENTUM LABORIS
Ending Homophobia
SYNOD OF BISHOPS
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III EXTRAORDINARY GENERAL ASSEMBLY
THE PASTORAL CHALLENGES
OF THE FAMILY
IN THE CONTEXT OF EVANGELIZATION
OF THE FAMILY
IN THE CONTEXT OF EVANGELIZATION
INSTRUMENTUM LABORIS
VATICAN CITY
2014
CHAPTER III
DIFFICULT PASTORAL SITUATIONS
b) Concerning Unions of Persons of the Same Sex
Some Pastoral Guidelines
117. Many responses and observations call for theological study in dialogue with the human sciences to develop a multi-faceted look at the phenomenon of homosexuality. Others recommend collaborating with specific entities, e.g., the Pontifical Academy of the Social Sciences and the Pontifical Academy for Life, in thoroughly examining the anthropological and theological aspects of human sexuality and the sexual difference between man and woman in order to address the issue of gender ideology.
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Transparency
A tremendous amount of transparency immediately and automatically followed in the wake of Pope Francis’s state-of-the-art reform process to end the corruption in the Curia. Seemly it was more stunning for some members in the Curia like Cardinal Burke to cognitively comprehend. Photo
Bureaucratic Anonymity - Down
Burke appeared to be unaware that the shield of bureaucratic anonymity no longer existed and failed to realize that his standard managerial style of emotional outbursts effective behind the scenes - would publicly be disastrous for him. He ended up exposing far more information about himself, his accomplices and the corruption inside the Curia - than he may have realized or intended. This is stated - considering Burke’s endless and explosive verbal outrage - attacking the midterm report from the Synod of Bishops on Family 2014 on protecting gay children and then the leadership of Pope Francis.
Burke - Intimidating & Autocratic Power - Gone
Burke’s excessive and continual ranting and raving, all began escalating starting at high level of intensity for the better part of 2014. It appeared that Burke was caught off guard and disoriented by the swift effectiveness of the reform of the Vatican Bank. According to news media reports - he then seemed to arrogantly presumed that he held the same degree of autocratic power that he had before Pope Francis arrived on the scene with his diverse reform entourage of colleagues, consultants and experts.
Burke Demands End - “Open Dialogue”
Regardless that the curia’s power structure had been significantly altered and that all discretionary funding had been ended - Burke continued in his same domineering modus operandi. This was evident by his unrestrained and irrational demands that Pope Francis be forced to end any “open dialogue” on the issue of divorce and remarried couples receiving communion cease immediately. Within a few months before the Synod 2014 - Burke went so far as having a book written, published and released on the topic of marriage - just before the Bishops began meeting for the Synod 2014 (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/18/catholic-bishops-divorce_n_5837916.html).
This public overexposure of Burke’s irrational and audacious not so veiled omnipotent modus operandi - directly opposing Pope Francis’s insistence on “open dialogue,” in a relatively short period of time - readily exposed familiar and identifiable traits of a distinctive arrogant style that operated flagrantly unimpeded, for several years behind bureaucratic anonymity.
Burke - Fierce Emotional Outbursts
Burke’s most identifiable trait is his fierce emotional outbursts under the disguised of his misunderstanding of the omnipotence of canon law pervades every curial department, as it did with demanding Pope Francis end any open discussion of topic of divorce and remarriage. From news media accounts, especially the numerous private interviews that Burke arranged to voice his canonical objections to the open discussion of the protection of gay children - he publicly misrepresented this topic as referring to gay marriage.
Burke’s Criminal Negligence - Synod 2014
Gay Children
This type of public misrepresentation, by a senior member of the Roman Catholic Church, of the facts regarding the protection of gay children is criminally negligent - a global crime against humanity that Burke will never face any form of civil prosecution. And therefore Burke and his supporters in the curia and in the hierarchy - having absolutely no legal oversight - has allowed this kind of criminal negligence of children to become a standard practice used endlessly by Burke.
Burke has always used this flagrant disregard of the lives of gay people and now of the lives of gay children - it appears to be a form of hysteria that helps to throw the public focus off the actual - facts of the subject being presented. The topic of protecting gay children growing up is not found anywhere in canon law. Why Cardinal Burke felt the overwhelming apparent need to publicly confused the topic of protecting gay children growing up with the more publicly contentious issue of gay marriage for some - mostly his supporters - was tragic blow to the lives of all children.
On December 7, 2014 - Pope Francis rightly made a pubic clarification that the topic was about the need to support gay children growing up, and that the idea of gay marriage was not even discussed at the Synod 2014:
...Nobody mentioned homosexual marriage at the synod; it did not cross our minds. What we did talk about was of how a family with a homosexual child, whether a son or a daughter, goes about educating that child, how the family bears up, how to help that family to deal with that somewhat unusual situation.
That is to say, the synod addressed the family and the homosexual persons in relation to their families, because we come across this reality all the time in the confessional: a father and a mother whose son or daughter is in that situation. This happened to me several times in Buenos Aires.
We have to find a way to help that father or that mother to stand by their son or daughter...
Read more:
http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/francis-talks-synod-demotion-cardinal-burke-latest-interview
To be continued:
Fr Marty Kurylowicz
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Background information - 1997 - 2013:
Fr Marty Kurylowicz’s “Coming Out” 1997
News Reports:
March 29, 1997 - Parishioners Supportive of Gay Priest - “coming out” for the protection of children.
(check The Grand Rapids Press for accuracy)
June 28, 1997 - Kurylowicz Comes Out
“...U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference said Kurylowicz” coming out to his congregation, first in a newsletter then from the pulpit on Holy Thursday, is “unprecedented.”
(check The Grand Rapids Press for accuracy)
October 8, 2005 - Impending rules on gay priests creates Catholic divide
…Rev. Martin Kurylowicz...said...the struggle would be made harder for many others if the Vatican issues new rules that reportedly would ban gays from becoming priests… “Kids as young as 4 or 5 know they're different," said Kurylowicz... "They grow up with this pervasive guilt, which sabotages their growth and motivation." The result is thousands of dollars in therapy to accept their natural orientation, he said, adding, "Does the Vatican want to take that on, like the tobacco industry had to take on for the damage it caused consumers?”...
(check The Grand Rapids Press for accuracy)
May 27, 2006 - Gay priest removed from ministry
(check The Grand Rapids Press for accuracy)
Note: Bishop Hurley unethically manipulates canon law misrepresenting my situation: by excluding the factual details of the Vatican’s equally unethical punitive sanctions and threats imposed on me for “coming out” for the protection of children in March 1997, e.g. lost of the possibility of future assignments, regular priest salary and educational benefits, to coerce my compliance to be reeducated - to assure my silence in protecting children or to force me to leave the priesthood. Hurley’s dishonest response to the press was meant to destroy my credibility and reputation. Hurley also disclosed the cost of my psychotherapy sessions, a breach of employer employee confidentially. There are No USA civil laws to protect gay priests from such a fatal destructive public attack on my reputation. The same tactic was used, again in 2012, against Vatican Bank, ex-president Tedeschi, who was attempting to increase the transparency of the scandal-ridden Vatican institution. There is “…the publication of a letter from a psychotherapist detailing the mental health of the Vatican's recently ousted bank chief…and appeared aimed at further discrediting and humiliating the Vatican bank's ex-president, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, once a top papal adviser…”(http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-06/D9VBK7581.htm)
Hurley’s deliberate distortion of the facts of my situation was meant to humiliate me publicly, a character assassination against me. This was not just one single isolated character assassination attack made against me. The exact pattern of this character assassination attack, since 2004 to 2014 has been over used by the Vatican under Benedict XVI - against anyone - deemed as a threat to their specific ideology, especially related to gay sexual orientation. On, April 30, 2014, Cardinal Muller of the CDF, issued a forceful public statement against the LCWR leaders that is confusing and irrationally based on a misrepresentation of unsubstantiated facts. Cardinal Burke during and after the Synod on the Family, October 2014 - fiercely demonstrated by his unwillingness to even discuss issues related marriage and gay sexual orientation, the pervasive hostile attitude against homosexuality.
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March 4, 2008 - Children Growing-up Gay & Vatican's Impact Harmful -GROUPTHINK
Fr. Marty Kurylowicz
December 26, 2008 - AUSCHWITZ -- CHRISTMAS 2008 -- A flashback far more severe than in --- BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN – Fr. Marty Kurylowicz
Reposting
April 2009 - SEXUAL ORIENTATION is less about sex and more about LOVE, being one with another human being. Attachment Theory - - LOVE & RELIGION --- Fr. Marty Kurylowicz
Nothing in life is more precious than the intimate relationships we have with love ones. Healthy love relationships delight us give us confidence to take on challenges and support us in difficult times.
December 17, 2009 - Roman Catholic hierarchy child sexual abuse “cover-ups” ordered by Benedict XVI to avoid public outrage & criminal charges falsely accused gay priests, WATERGATE? - Fr. Marty Kurylowicz
...A major problem with the hierarchical structure of the Roman Catholic Church is that there are no “checks and balances.” When the necessary “checks and balances” are not in place to protect any organization, it leaves "not making waves" the rule that governs the hierarchy and opens the way to many devastating mistakes harmful to everyone and allows corruption to grow...
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July 2010 - The letter sent out by Fr. Marty Kurylowicz to USA government officials and others – a victim of structural violence - for protecting children - seeking legal assistance as a citizen of the USA
(a copy found on the link below)
February 10, 2013 - Fr. Kurylowicz’s letter sent to US government officials and others.
I made an appeal to counteract Bishop Hurley’s manipulation of canon law in order to be able to charge me on a technicality “not returning home” by separating it from the situation that caused it after I came out1997. Letter gives an extensive accounting of my “coming out” situation of 1997 - not separated from Hurley’s charges against me.
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Additional background links:
Engendering Transgenerational Lines
of
Violence
Ghosts in the nursery - Selma Fraiberg, 1975
Brief description:
Ghosts in the nursery is apt descriptor for the "emotional baggage" vulnerabilities parents (and other caregivers) may carry from their own experiences of being parented including conflicted feelings about their parents, a sense of being unsupported in childhood, and traumatizing memories. These ghosts often negatively impact feeding, sleep, toilet training, discipline, and other areas of current parenting abilities by influencing the way parents interpret their infants behavior. Parents with histories of child abuse may find certain aspects of appropriate early childhood development as purposeful acts of threat and aggression...
Ghosts from the Nursery: Tracing the Roots of Violence - by Robin Karr-Morse and Meredith S Wiley - 2013
Reviewed by Anna Luise Kirkengen, MD, PhD
Excerpt:
...Karr-Morse delineated the undeniable yet unappreciated connection between ghosts in the nursery and ghosts from the nursery when choosing to paraphrase psychoanalyst Selma Fraiberg who... “used the phrase ghosts in the nursery to refer to the tendency of parents to bring to the rearing of their children the unresolved issues of their own childhood.” These ghosts in parents’ pasts cast shadows, informing many parental relationships to their children whereby, certainly unintended, threatening experiences in the parents’ pasts transform into threats to their children’s present. This implies that they are engendering transgenerational lines of suffering and pain, rage and defeat, hatred and aggression, violation and violence.
On the ever more expanding background of social and societal drama resulting from increasing numbers of events of school shootings in the US—and increasingly worldwide—Karr-Morse delineates a complex pattern of lived logic. This pattern is woven of threads we members of affluent societies wish to ignore because they are basically incompatible with our illusion of civilization...
Ghosts from the Nursery:
Tracing the Roots of Violence
by Robin Karr-Morse and Meredith S Wiley,
New York, NY: Atlantic Monthly Press; 2013
Read more:
US National Library of Medicine
National Institutes of Health
Reflections on the Work of Professor Selma Fraiberg
A Pioneer in the Field of Social Work and Infant Mental Health - Vivian Shapiro - 2007
Excerpt:
...In summary, Selma formulated and investigated hypotheses designed to explain the factors that caused some parents to repeat their own traumatic history with their child, and to raise questions about why some parents, who also had been traumatized did not repeat their history of early trauma. It was more likely, she suggested, that parents who remembered the painful feelings of their childhood, could empathize with their infants, and choose to create a different more positive path of relationships with them. But, those parents who had repressed their feelings of pain and loss had shut off their capacity to feel. They could not empathize with their child. Indeed they had responded to their pain with primitive defense mechanisms of repression and identification with the aggressor and had internalized their parents pathological attachment patterns. They had shut down their feelings of the need for love, but the birth of their dependent infant had reawakened some subliminal feelings within them. However they continued to repress their unacknowledged need for parental empathy and love, and could not respond to their own child’s needs. It was as though the ghosts from the past had risen, and unconsciously these parents built an emotional wall between themselves and their infants...
Read more:
Clin Soc Work J (2009) 37:45–55
Vivian Shapiro,
Social Work, Private Practice,
10 Campbelton Circle,
Princeton, NJ 08540, USA
Homosexuals. A Separate Category of Prisoners
Nazism’s Pink Hell
...Communist propaganda exploited Roehm’s homosexuality as an example of the “true nature” of the Third Reich. In the 1930s and 1940s, both governments, Hitler’s and Stalin’s, presented homosexuality as the enemy’s aberration and deviance. Numerous films produced for propaganda purposes presented this view of homosexuality. The destruction of Roehm and his SA enabled Heinrich Himmler, the commander of the SS, to become the second most important person in Germany, after Hitler. Like other nationalists of the day, Himmler had an obsession about der Volk. In a speech to SS lieutenants in 1937, he warned that the spread of homosexuality endangered the reproduction of the nation... “This epidemic is destroying our Volk, said Himmler. “A nation of numerous children is qualified to be a global power and master of the world. A racially pure Volk with few children is on the sure road to destruction.” He went on: “We must be sure as to whether we want to go on carrying this burden [homosexuality – ed.] in Germany without being able to combat it. This could risk the end of Germany, the end of the Teutonic world. Unfortunately, things are not so easy as they were for our forefathers. For them, such an individual was simply something immoral. Homosexuals, known as Urnings, were drowned in the swamps. The respected professors who discover these corpses in the peat bogs are surely unaware that, in ninety cases out of a hundred, they are looking at homosexuals who were drowned there in their clothing and all the rest. This was not a punishment—it was simply getting rid of something immoral.”
People were not drowned in swamps in 20th century Germany. The SS came up with something far more refined for homosexuals. “These people will certainly be publicly stripped of their positions, dismissed and brought before courts. Following the court verdicts, they will be taken to concentration camps, and shot there should they attempt to escape.”...
Read more:
http://en.auschwitz.org/h/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=3
“Don’t Make Waves”
Roman Catholic hierarchy child sexual abuse “cover-ups” ordered by Benedict XVI to avoid public outrage & criminal charges falsely accused gay priests, Watergate? - 12/17/09
No "Checks and Balances"
A major problem with the hierarchical structure of the Roman Catholic Church is that there are no “checks and balances.” When the necessary “checks and balances” are not in place to protect any organization, it leaves "not making waves" the rule that governs the hierarchy and opens the way to many devastating mistakes harmful to everyone and allows corruption to grow.
The following statements are harsh statement, but unfortunately they are heavily documented.
(1) Benedict XVI and his hierarchy failed to protect children from child sexual abuse for decades.
(2) They mistreated and intimidated the victims and their families who came to report the child sexual abuse, in order to cover up publicity of any child sexual abuse.
(3) They failed to protect children by repeatedly reassigning the child sexual abusers to assignments where children would be present.
(4) When the hierarchy’s criminal negligence failing to protect children became public, globally, in 2002 they shifted the blame wrongfully onto gay priests.
(5) By falsely, against known research to the contrary, blaming gay priests they implicated the entire LGBT community and how they are fighting against Marriage Equality. When the scientific facts known for decades about human sexuality have been discounted with no substantiated facts given to explain why, it causes many questions whether Benedict XVI and his hierarchy’s fight against Marriage Equality is more a fight to maintained the cover-up of the hierarchy’s criminal negligence failing to protect children? Benedict XVI and his hierarchy need to clearly offer substantiated reasons why they are against Marriage Equality. This statement needs to be spelled out in great detail and follow Pope John Paul II’s test of truth of not separating science and religion.
(6) Benedict XVI and his hierarchy’s continuous public propaganda against homosexuality encourages public intolerance towards LGBTQI adults and children. They continue to do this even though this summer 2 major Christian denominations approved LGBT singled and partnered people for all forms of ordained ministries.
(7) Benedict XVI and his hierarchy’s continuous promulgation of the Vatican’s unsubstantiated antigay teachings that are harmful to children in their early childhood psychological developmental years, harm that is crippling throughout their lives.
They continue this even after the beginning of 2009, theFamily Acceptance Project http://familyproject.sfsu.edu/home research studies had shown the negative effects caused to youths, when their sexual orientation is not accepted, having health problems, suicidal ideation, etc. They ignore all the major medical, psychiatric, psychological and social workers national and international professional associations regarding their findings regarding human sexuality and sexual orientation. WHEN DO WE START PROTECTING CHILDREN?!?!
Written by Fr. Marty Kurylowicz
Read more:
The Psychology of the Closeted Individual and Coming Out
by Jack Drescher, M.D - 2007
Many LGB individuals report developmental histories with difficulty acknowledging their homosexuality, either to themselves or to others. This is because, starting in childhood, LGB individuals are often subjected to antihomosexual attitudes, not only from strangers, but also from their own families and communities (Drescher, Stein and Byne, (2005). The childhood need to hide may persist into adulthood, leading many LGB individuals to conceal important aspects of themselves…Closeted individuals cannot acknowledge homoerotic feelings, attractions and fantasies to themselves. They cannot or will not integrate homosexuality into their public personae and these feelings must be dissociated out of conscious awareness…
Some gay men, before coming out, were either gay-baiters or gay-bashers. To maintain a psychological distance from their own homoerotic feelings, they also exhibit dissociative tendencies. Attacking those perceived to be gay can serve several functions. One penile plethysmography study indicated that men with strong antihomosexual beliefs actually had significant homosexual arousal patterns (Adams, 1996). Interpersonally, strong antihomosexual feelings may represent
an effort to control perceptions of a gay-basher’s own sexual identity. If they attack gay people, others will not think of them as gay...
Read complete paper:
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Fr Marty Kurylowicz’s - Appeal Letter Sent to Pope Francis - “Coming Out” March 1997 - Gay Catholic Priest - For Protection of Children - January 16, 2014
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Background information - 1997 - 2013:
Fr Marty Kurylowicz’s “Coming Out” 1997
News Reports:
March 29, 1997 - Parishioners Supportive of Gay Priest - “coming out” for the protection of children.
(check The Grand Rapids Press for accuracy)
June 28, 1997 - Kurylowicz Comes Out
“...U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference said Kurylowicz” coming out to his congregation, first in a newsletter then from the pulpit on Holy Thursday, is “unprecedented.”
(check The Grand Rapids Press for accuracy)
October 8, 2005 - Impending rules on gay priests creates Catholic divide
…Rev. Martin Kurylowicz...said...the struggle would be made harder for many others if the Vatican issues new rules that reportedly would ban gays from becoming priests… “Kids as young as 4 or 5 know they're different," said Kurylowicz... "They grow up with this pervasive guilt, which sabotages their growth and motivation." The result is thousands of dollars in therapy to accept their natural orientation, he said, adding, "Does the Vatican want to take that on, like the tobacco industry had to take on for the damage it caused consumers?”...
(check The Grand Rapids Press for accuracy)
May 27, 2006 - Gay priest removed from ministry
(check The Grand Rapids Press for accuracy)
Note: Bishop Hurley unethically manipulates canon law misrepresenting my situation: by excluding the factual details of the Vatican’s equally unethical punitive sanctions and threats imposed on me for “coming out” for the protection of children in March 1997, e.g. lost of the possibility of future assignments, regular priest salary and educational benefits, to coerce my compliance to be reeducated - to assure my silence in protecting children or to force me to leave the priesthood. Hurley’s dishonest response to the press was meant to destroy my credibility and reputation. Hurley also disclosed the cost of my psychotherapy sessions, a breach of employer employee confidentially. There are No USA civil laws to protect gay priests from such a fatal destructive public attack on my reputation. The same tactic was used, again in 2012, against Vatican Bank, ex-president Tedeschi, who was attempting to increase the transparency of the scandal-ridden Vatican institution. There is “…the publication of a letter from a psychotherapist detailing the mental health of the Vatican's recently ousted bank chief…and appeared aimed at further discrediting and humiliating the Vatican bank's ex-president, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, once a top papal adviser…”(http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-06/D9VBK7581.htm)
Hurley’s deliberate distortion of the facts of my situation was meant to humiliate me publicly, a character assassination against me. This was not just one single isolated character assassination attack made against me. The exact pattern of this character assassination attack, since 2004 to 2014 has been over used by the Vatican under Benedict XVI - against anyone - deemed as a threat to their specific ideology, especially related to gay sexual orientation. On, April 30, 2014, Cardinal Muller of the CDF, issued a forceful public statement against the LCWR leaders that is confusing and irrationally based on a misrepresentation of unsubstantiated facts. Cardinal Burke during and after the Synod on the Family, October 2014 - fiercely demonstrated by his unwillingness to even discuss issues related marriage and gay sexual orientation, the pervasive hostile attitude against homosexuality.
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March 4, 2008 - Children Growing-up Gay & Vatican's Impact Harmful -GROUPTHINK
Fr. Marty Kurylowicz
December 26, 2008 - AUSCHWITZ -- CHRISTMAS 2008 -- A flashback far more severe than in --- BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN – Fr. Marty Kurylowicz
Reposting
April 2009 - SEXUAL ORIENTATION is less about sex and more about LOVE, being one with another human being. Attachment Theory - - LOVE & RELIGION --- Fr. Marty Kurylowicz
Nothing in life is more precious than the intimate relationships we have with love ones. Healthy love relationships delight us give us confidence to take on challenges and support us in difficult times.
December 17, 2009 - Roman Catholic hierarchy child sexual abuse “cover-ups” ordered by Benedict XVI to avoid public outrage & criminal charges falsely accused gay priests, WATERGATE? - Fr. Marty Kurylowicz
...A major problem with the hierarchical structure of the Roman Catholic Church is that there are no “checks and balances.” When the necessary “checks and balances” are not in place to protect any organization, it leaves "not making waves" the rule that governs the hierarchy and opens the way to many devastating mistakes harmful to everyone and allows corruption to grow...
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July 2010 - The letter sent out by Fr. Marty Kurylowicz to USA government officials and others – a victim of structural violence - for protecting children - seeking legal assistance as a citizen of the USA
(a copy found on the link below)
February 10, 2013 - Fr. Kurylowicz’s letter sent to US government officials and others.
I made an appeal to counteract Bishop Hurley’s manipulation of canon law in order to be able to charge me on a technicality “not returning home” by separating it from the situation that caused it after I came out1997. Letter gives an extensive accounting of my “coming out” situation of 1997 - not separated from Hurley’s charges against me.
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Original post: January 16, 2014
This entire posting was sent out as a US group mailing prior to posting here on the Thalamus Center.
November 26, 2013 - Letter from Bishop Walkowiak - regarding Bishop Hurley’s canonical proceedings to remove Fr. Kurylowicz from the priesthood - ultimatum
December 30, 2013 - Fr. Kurylowicz’s letter of response to Bishop Walkowiak - and has appealed his case to Pope Francis
FedEx -- Sent to:
Pope Francis
Casa Santa Marta
Piazza Santa Marta
00120 Citta del Vaticano
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December 30, 2013
Appealing Canonical Proceedings against
Fr. Martin S. Kurylowicz by Bishop Walter Hurley
Diocese of Grand Rapids, Michigan USA
Dear Pope Francis,
My name is Fr. Marty Kurylowicz, ordained for the Diocese of Grand Rapids, Michigan USA on June 16, 1979. I have always remained an honest and faithful Catholic priest.
I. Introduction
Immediate Need - “Protection of Children” 1997
In March 1997, in good conscience, I felt morally obligated I come out, as a gay Catholic priest, specifically for the immediate need for the protection of children from the lifetime harm caused by antigay social and religious norms based on objective facts. My coming out was well planned out to be educational and informative process that lasted for 8 weeks. It was acclaimed, as being successful by parishioners, the news media and there was no mass exodus from the parish. There was no drop in the parish’s weekly or monthly building debt collections. I made a “wave” risking my life for the protection of children and regrettably the only harsh reactions I received came directly from the Vatican, two months after I came out. I was to be sent way to be re-educated on sexual orientation, lost status for future assignments in the diocese, among a number of other “adverse actions” taken against me - all making it clear to me that my safety and well being was in question remaining in the diocese. Since then for the past 16 years I had endured the severe consequences inflicted on me by the curia of the Vatican. An important note: Bishop Walter Hurley was ordained as a titular bishop of the curia and remains a part of the identified corruption of the curia. In the1980s Hurley also work for Cardinal Ratzinger on the investigation of the co-founders of the New Ways Ministry, a gay Catholic professional educational organization. In October 1997, Ratzinger condemned the work of the co-founders of the New Ways Ministry.
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The Consequences for Making “Waves”
Hurley - Manufactures Canon Law Technicality
To Falsely Remove a Priest & Leaves Children Unprotected
I am writing to you personally to appeal Bishop Walter Hurley’s canonical proceedings to remove me from the priesthood. The reason for this appeal is because Hurley completely eliminates from his canonical proceedings the “adverse actions” taken against me after I came out 1997 by the Vatican as having no bearing on removing me from the priesthood. This is Hurley’s arbitrary decision to eliminate the relevance the harsh treatment I received by the Vatican 1997 that completely threatened the future of my safety and well-being remaining in the diocese. This is Hurley’s dishonest manipulation of canon law to eliminate pertinent information in my case in order to then focus on a legal technicality to prosecute me on to remove me from the priesthood. This dishonest manipulation of the law is used endlessly in the secular corporate world to convict people on legal technicalities. However, that does not make it right and it is definitely anything harmless. It hurts everyone. Look at the world today - profits are valued more than people. It may be a legal strategic use of the law, but it is immoral. It is unconscionable immoral when it leaves millions of children globally unprotected from the lifetime harm and violence. It is far worst when it is the Catholic Church that does it and allows it to happen, it only teaches the world that it is okay to do it.
2008 Hurley - Informed - I had No Chance of Appealing to the Curia
I am a nobody, of little consequence to anyone, I am just one of the many little ones in the world. Hurley is arrogant in his use of canon law against me, because he knows with his connections in the curia he can get away with it. Hurley had previously thought it necessary to assure me in 2008 that any appeal I made to the curia concerning him would be delayed, likely indefinitely for years and if I ever did received a ruling it would be his favor. I believe Hurley wanted to impress the fact on me that he was a titular bishop officially representing the curia and his ruling was absolute - meaning I had no other recourse. However, this was before your confirmation 2013 that there is a stream of corruption running through the curia. Here is the outreach of the corruption of the curia and it is lethal not just to me - but to millions. Hurley believes he has complete immunity in the USA. I have done my part to try to expose Hurley’s corruption. He is a problem that needs to be corrected.
It is as important to publicly make known Hurley’s deceptive manufacturing of legal technicalities, as it was for me to come out for the protection of children. We, the Catholic Church, cannot expect the secular world to clean up their act - to start respecting human beings more than profits, if we do nothing to clear up our act, like Hurley and his inside curia accomplices.
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Hurley’s US Immunity Discriminating Against Gays & Gay Priests
Hurley believes he has complete immunity in the USA from discriminating against gays including gay priests. However, with the majority of US Catholics supporting the US Senates passing the bill to include sexual orientation as part of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) on November 7, 2013, despite the US Catholic Bishops strong opposition against it - the US Bishops, especially Hurley may felt a shock wave of the imminent threat of losing their immunity for discriminating gays. The US Catholic Bishops would instead be prosecuted for their malicious discrimination against gays, including gay priests. Hurley may have the most to fear, because he began his discrimination against gay people starting in the 1980s working for Cardinal Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) investigating the New Ways Ministry, co-founders. On February 2, 2010, in a speech Benedict XVI, expressed the same shock wave about the imminent threat of the proposed U.K. Anti-Discrimination Laws, he specifically raised his fears that Vatican could be prosecuted for its stances against gay people.
The US Catholic Bishops were unsuccessful to politically intimidate the US Senate from passing the ENDA bill to included sexual orientation, November 7, 2013. It was again another indication that the powerful political clout that US Catholic Bishops once had has significantly dwindled. They no longer have the backing of the majority of US Catholics supporting their unsubstantiated antigay discrimination tactics. It would seem likely that the US Catholic Bishops are guilty of malicious discrimination against gay people, priests and supporters of gays might be in a panic over the possibility as Benedict XVI indicated in 2010 of being prosecuted for the harm they caused gay people. After this lost to the US Senate on November 7, four days later, from November 11-14, 2013, the US Catholic Bishops met for their fall Conference in Baltimore, which they discussed their fears.
It is likely, not a coincidence that I was sent the intensely forceful threatening and humiliating letter dated November 26, 2013, which I received on December 10, 2013, was a directly related to the fear of the US Catholic Bishops’ failed attempt to successfully intimidate US Senate regarding ENDA. This letter informing me of Hurley’s ultimate attempt to discredit me based on his deceptive use of a canon law technicality to convict me of some wrong doing to remove me from the priesthood seems was sent to me as attempt to regain some political clout back.
The letter dated November 26, 2013 is a no win situation for me and for the protection of children, globally. Returning to the diocese and allowing the formal public humiliation to take place, as if I did something wrong, deserving of removal it would be forcing me to personally denounce the objective facts of sexual orientation for which I came out in 1997 for the protection of children.
Refusing to return would be Hurley’s ultimate attempt to discredit me by removing from the priesthood and thereby discredit the objective facts why I came out - for the protection of children. This would be Hurley’s deceptive actions for which he bears the moral responsibility. However, unlike returning - morally I would not be personally denouncing the objective facts that initiated the immediacy for my coming out 1997 for the protection of children.
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The Immediacy of My Appeal - Protection of Children Globally
The reason for the immediacy of my appeal to you - it is directly related to the global protection of children growing up gay. In March 1997 I made a “wave” which the US Conference of Catholic Bishops labeled as “unprecedented.” Based on authoritative data I put my life at risk by ”coming out” as a gay Catholic priest solely to focus on drawing the public attention to the immediate need to protect children growing up gay from the lifetime harm caused by antigay social and religious norms.
Pope Francis Gets The Immediacy - For the Protection of Children
The global public respect you have fearlessly shown, as the leader of the Catholic Church, to all gay people, including gay youth has been “unprecedented.” It has been and continues to be so powerfully healing to all gay people, most especially to children, including their parents, siblings, relatives and friends. You accomplish this by globally reminded everyone how much God loves us all and the degree of love and respect we are to have for every human being. If you were Pope Francis in 1997, I would have had no immediate need to come out as a gay Catholic priest. Every human being beginning from conception needs to feel that they are loved - to grow and love others. We know this as a scientific fact to be true, from retrospective studies of infants orphaned during World War II. Infants having all their physical needs meet, but were otherwise left alone, the death rate was extremely high, a third of the infants died within the first year. The appreciation for your outward expression of love for gay people was shown by the oldest gay publication “The Advocate” in the US listing you as their person for the year 2013. Astounding! Love like water to a dry plant flourishes.
However, in 1997 gay people, especially children at an early age had been forced into a desert to live there for the rest of their lives, with hardly any water. In addition, for nearly the 3 previous decades before they were needlessly being kept in the desert by antigay social and religious norms that were being proven to be unsubstantiated by the emerging authoritative data on sexual orientation.
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II. “Coming Out” 1997 - Protecting Children
In March 1997, in good conscience I felt intensely morally obligated to “come out” as a gay Catholic priest to my parishioners at Holy Family Parish in Sparta, Michigan USA. There were two fundamental reasons why I felt so strongly about the decision to come out. First, I knew that my thoughts and reflections were not just passing whims or personal bias. They were based on objective facts. I learned from years of university study, academic research, attendance at national professional conferences, association with community organizations, individual psychotherapy, spiritual direction, and endless prayer, that homosexuality is a normal part of human development. I am aware that this statement is still upsetting to many people.
The second reason why I decided to come out is that I wanted to give people the information I had gained, so that there could be an honest discussion. Above all I wanted people to know that children suffer lifelong harm from being told that they are sinful, bad, defective, or intrinsically disordered. As a priest ordained to bring Christ to others, I knew this was a fundamental duty that I could not escape. I wanted to walk away from it, but I knew I could not sidestep it. To neglect my duty would be to renege on Christ, and how could I live with myself if I did so?
The following is a brief excerpt from an enclosed letter dated July 2010 that I sent to a large number of US public officials including President Obama, Vice President Biden and the Supreme Court Justices:
In March 1997, after attending a National Symposium of the New Ways Ministry that was held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, I learned that children as young as 4 and 5 years of age know that they are different. This feeling "different" is only identified in their adult years as being gay. However, the harmful influence of antigay social and religious norms -- in particular, for Catholics, the Vatican’s unsubstantiated antigay teachings -- are severe and last throughout a child’s lifetime. The harmful effects are not isolated only to these children who grow up to be gay, but also affect their families, siblings, friends and anyone whom they might consider special in their lives. They are a prescribed societal sentence of implicit isolation, which place at risk of suicide so many innocent adolescents and young adults. They stifle an enormous amount of human potential in the world that otherwise could be put to use for finding cures for diseases, offering better ways of maintaining peace among people and improving the quality of life for everyone in the world...
The thought about coming out had never occurred to me, until I learned how severely children are harmed for life by antigay social and religious norms. It was only then I fully realized the immediacy of my moral obligation to protect children that in good conscience I could not escape I decided to do my duty, as a priest. I professionally planned in great detail the process of my “coming out” to help protect children by educating people on the authoritative facts of early childhood psychological development regarding sexual orientation. I led the open discussions that followed the presentation of these facts, including answering an endless number of questions that seemed for some to relieve them of years of unnecessary stress caused by misinformation and confusion. The whole “coming out” process was surprisingly successful, with no mass exodus from the parish or public protest. I will explain more of the details in this letter.
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III. Curia’s “Adverse Actions” Taken - Against Me
After “Coming Out” 1997
It was what followed two months later, after I had come out, that became the only violent reaction to the “wave” I made to protect children globally. My coming out was entirely based on authoritative data, though the adverse reaction to it that I am about to describe has remained ongoing for the past 16 years.
The Force of the Curia’s
Threats, “Adverse Actions,” “Character Assassinations,” & Coverups
On May 19, 1997, I had a meeting with Bishop Robert Rose, because I had reached the end of my 12-year term as pastor at Holy Family Parish, Sparta, MI, and we needed to discuss my next parish assignment or whether I would take a sabbatical first. The meeting was cordial and began with the bishop asking me what I was considering for my next assignment. I explained that I was torn between taking a sabbatical to continue studying psychology or agreeing to be a pastor at a parish in Grand Rapids. Bishop Rose had sent a letter to diocesan clergy presenting a list of open parishes.
Status Plummeted
The bishop responded to me without a hesitation that the parish I was considering might be too complicated for me and that a small parish somewhere up north would be better for me. I was quite surprised by his statement, because previously he had asked me to consider being the rector of the cathedral. The cathedral parish is significantly more complex than the parish I was considering, because the cathedral is not only a parish but also the center for nearly all major diocesan celebrations and activities. I was also surprised by the fact that the bishop did not name any specific parish up north that was open for a pastor.
I was still inwardly reeling from the drastic drop in what had been until then his overall expressed assessment of my pastoral abilities and spiritual integrity; especially in handling extremely difficult and unique situations, as recent as my coming out for the protection of children. Including my demonstrated ability managing to lead an unprecedented parish wide educational process for several weeks on an incredibly controversial social taboo topic - gay sexual orientation in children, as young as 4 and 5 years of age, while at the same time maintaining the stability and spiritual focus of the parish.
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Re-education Sabbatical on Sexual Orientation
The bishop then replied about my wanting to taking a sabbatical. He casually informed me that I would be sent away on a sabbatical that would be put together to re-educated me on sexual orientation for a period of six months or more. I was stunned that he would say this to me, after having commenting me for my coming out process. He said as if I would not only notice the striking change in his attitude, but also the unethical and illegal implications of his making such a statement. Though outwardly I maintained the same projected causal manner, as one would do when unintentionally encountering a questionable situation while attempting to assess the degree of danger involved. I did not outright refuse to submit. I respectfully started asking questions, desperately looking for even a nanoscopic grain of sane rational thinking in such an absurd order.
Even though, I was well acquainted with some of best and the brightest people in the field, I never heard and could not even begin to imagine where such a place existed. This was a serious threat made against my personal safety and well being.
Realizing that I was not receiving from the bishop any rational explanation, I then felt a tinge of fright flash through me alerting me of the serious nature of what was happening to me. This process was a violation of my fundamental human rights, taking place behind close doors. I regrettably knew that the future of my safety remaining in the diocese had also plummeted. However, I had no intention of leaving the priesthood.
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No US Civil Law Protection - Vatican’s “Adverse Actions”
I then calmly requested to study psychology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan. This request caused an uncharacteristic outburst of frustrated anger from the bishop. He said: “I’m not sending you to that secular school.” He then forcefully conveyed to me that my life was in danger. I could be severely hurt by the Vatican, though I foolishly thought to myself at that time in 1997: what could happen to me? After all, I am a US citizen. However, after 16 years I have learned quite well, how a foreign entity, the Vatican’s Curia, has been able to pass through our national defense and severely attack US citizens and then have immunity from prosecution for their crimes because of the separation of church and state. And US citizens who are attacked, like myself, are then not protected by any US civil laws, even if a person has risked his life to protect the lives of defenseless children.
Shortly after the bishop’s outburst he tersely remarked to me, as if the last resort, I thought that you were going to join the monastery. I got the feeling that they just wanted me to quietly get lost, apparently I was too much of a bother for them, because they did know what to do with me. Then like it is now Catholics have much less a problem with gay people than the hierarchy and curia. However, the sexually repressed are dangerous and harmful to others, like the gay closeted sandals of the curia.
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Major Shift in My Future Status in the Diocese
It was at this point that I realized a major shift had taken place regarding my future status in the Grand Rapids Diocese and that I was going to be treated as if I had done some serious wrong. It was becoming quite clear to me that I was no longer safe in the diocese. My credibility was being threatened. The fact that the bishop, whom I had known and had been on friendly terms with for nearly 30 years until this meeting, was suddenly telling me such ponderous news in such a nonchalant tone was disturbing to me. It was easy to detect a disingenuous tone in what he was saying, even though his manner was cordial. Anyone who knows this bishop will attest that this kind of severity has never been his style. For this reason, I believe the bishop was not conveying his own personal directives; instead he received his orders from someone in the Vatican.
This shift was so drastic and so camouflaged in pleasantries that it was alarming. If I had done something wrong by “coming out” then the bishop should have said so. No accusation was ever made to me about me personally or about any aspect of my coming out process and yet I was being treated as if there had been. No one said directly: “We are throwing you out of the priesthood because you came out publicly as a gay Catholic priest.” It would have been impossible to make any accusation stick, because I had lived a faithful priestly life. If such a statement had been made, I still would have disagreed with it, but at least it would have been honest and there could have been an open discussion on the issue. However, to eliminate any open discussion is exactly what was and is intended by the curia, even if as a consequence of secrecy, children would left unprotected. But I had not done anything wrong by my “coming out,” unless telling the truth and educating people about protecting children is to be considered wrong. In any organization or business, I along with most people of course would expect such unethical behavior. But we are in the business of the Catholic Church: truth is our foundation and we are especially concerned about the safety and well-being of children.
I received a letter from Bishop Robert Rose commenting me on my pastoral leadership, as pastor of Holy Family Parish, dated May 20, 1997, stating:
I am grateful for the twelve years of pastoral leadership that you have provided to the people of Holy Family. You have given them a sense of stability and progress that they have much appreciated.
I then wrote a letter to Bishop Rose dated June 2, 1997 regarding our meeting on May 19, 1997. Because of his favorable comment in the above letter, I thought it might be an indication that the bishop may have realized his embarrassment for having made such a bizarre and unethical statement to send me away to be re-educated on sexual orientation at our meeting on May 19, 1997 and he just soon not refer to mentioning it again. I thought perhaps he meant be thinking I would be mentioning to the news media reporters that I still had to deal with. I felt embarrassed just being associated with such an absurdity even though it was not my idea. Therefore, I included in this letter I was sending to him, a listing of Catholic Universities that had psychology programs, as alternatives, since he objected to the University of Michigan being too secular. In answer to my letter to Bishop Rose I received his reply in his letter dated June 5, 1997, only to find out that being sent away to be re-educated on sexual orientation was to be enforced. He states,
...what you need, if you are to take a parish assignment in this diocese, is some kind of program that will give you credibility with our priests and people.
Even more starling to me in the same letter he states,
...I am trying to keep you in the priesthood and help you prepare for an assignment in the Diocese in due time.
There had never been any mention that there ever was a problem with my credibility, in my whole life, before or after I was ordained a priest, until Bishop Rose questioned it in his letter to me dated June 5, 1997.
In this letter, he is alluding to our meeting on, May 19, 1997,regarding the extremely intense frustration that was created by his announcement that I would be sent away to re-educated on sexual orientation. Because his re-education announcement was, once again, a complete about-face in his attitude regarding me and my “coming out” that only few days prior he commended me on my 12 years of pastoral leadership at Holy Family Parish, including how much it was appreciated by the parishioners, which was also expressed later in the Grand Rapids Press, June 28, 1997.
I immediately responded to Bishop Rose’s letter dated June 5, 1997, in my letter to him, dated June 9, 1997, stating
I was surprised that you raised the issue of my credibility. The feedback from priests and people has been wide spread support. I have not done anything wrong. I have been and plan on remaining a celibate priest. The issue of homosexuality is quite disturbing for many people. However, I believe we are seeing a much more tolerant view on the issue than ever before. I believe it is the difficulty of this issue itself and not my credibility that is the real challenge.
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“Character Assassinations” Threats
My credibility had never ever been in question before or after I came out among colleagues, related pastoral and business associates, medical and mental health professionals, university professors, researchers, and other people who knew me, including previous employers, co-workers and clientele. Raising the issue about my credibility may have likely been meant as a threat to me, to force me into being compliant with the Vatican's directives to be reeducated on sexual orientation. Because when I was first told the directives in the meeting referred to above, I was still enrolled in the same graduate course in psychology at the University of Michigan that I started in January 1997. Therefore, having given up all my free time as a pastor for the past several years to study at the U of M, and having come from that intense academic environment, I hope I can convey just how completely aghast I was at how unbelievably irrational and unethical the whole idea was: being ordered to be sent away to be re-educated on sexual orientation.
Vatican’s Distortion of Reality
What was clear from this point in time 1997 and it remained ongoing to the present, that the issue was not about the Vatican’s concerted effort of discerning truth and responsible leadership in the Catholic Church. Instead, it was about the Vatican’s Curia and the hierarchy's ironclad unanimous acceptance of the distortion of reality (1) of the documented facts of the past 47 years of my life, by questioning my credibility (2) of the authoritative facts on sexual orientation verified by every major medical and mental health associations worldwide and (3) the immediate need to protect children.
IV. My Returning to Diocese - a “Lose, Lose, Lose” Situation
In order for me to protect my life “financially”, however (1) give up my “credibility” the Vatican was forcing me to willingly submit to the unwarranted “adverse actions” of being sent away to be re-educated on sexual orientation, and then in due time to accept assignments in the diocese known to be given to priests with problems. The reason the Vatican was forcing me to submit their unwarranted “adverse actions” because it would be taken as (2) my public denouncement of the authoritative facts on the sexual orientation of early childhood years and the lifetime harm caused to children by antigay social and religious norms for reason why I came out. And if I do not submit to their demands they will destroy my credibility and thereby they hope it would then destroy the reason why I came out to protect children. In either way it is (3) a basic violation my and that of children fundamental human rights.
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Refused to be Complicit
Vatican’s Child Abuse Coverup & Criminal Activity
In good conscience, (1) I cannot return to my diocese because by doing so I would be turning my back on the innocent lives of children, for which I risked my life to protect. Returning to my diocese (2) I would also become complicit allowing the life threatening criminal activity of members of curia and their hierarchical accomplices in the USA to go free to continue harming and destroying the lives of other innocent people in the Church. By my refusing (3) to become complicit in the Vatican’s curia criminal activities and instead go public to expose them, it may help to others victims to come forth. It may help to (4) identify the aggressors involved from the curia and hierarchy and see that they are brought to justice, to prevent other innocent people from being so brutally attacked. Also, (5) my refusing to return to my diocese I would not become complicit in yet an even larger global of not only covering up this form of child abuse, but one that the Vatican's curia and hierarchy continually are committing by refusing to renounce the Vatican’s unsubstantiated antigay teachings.
“Twilight Zone” of Vatican
It was shocking for me to all of sudden find myself trapped in this incredulous violent situation that was a blatant violation of all that it means to be Catholic, a priest of Christ. It was like crossing over into the “Twilight Zone,” a place sinister and dangerous, because nothing is the same as it was once known to be making it a place of uncertainty, unpredictability, and fill with ambiguities. Regrettably, this describes the major complaint about the obscurity, the lack of transparency of the Vatican’s Roman Curia’s activities, including the Vatican Bank.
In 1997, the above was hard to believe, but not today 2013 with the Vatican’s child sexual abuse cover-ups exposed in 2002 ongoing thru 2010, the Vatileaks of 2012 and your confirmation that corruption exists in the Curia 2013.
In 1997 and 2006, as it is now 2013, I had no recourse to report the “adverse actions” that were taken against me by the Vatican for risking my life protecting children. There are no USA civil laws to protect the rights of a USA citizen, who is a gay Catholic priest, even if he is risking his life to protect children. On November 7, 2013, the US Senate passed the ENDA (Employment Non-Discrimination Act) to include sexual orientation, which was opposed by the US Catholic Bishops, even though there is an exemption made for religious groups.
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V. Appealing Bishop Walter Hurley’s Canonical Proceedings
Eliminates the 1997 - Curia’s Attacks against me
I am appealing to you because of the adverse action that was taken against me by the Vatican, beginning in 1997 when I came out. In 2013, at the end stage of the long sequence of actions against me are the current canonical proceedings, orchestrated by Bishop Walter Hurley, aimed at removing me from the active priesthood. However, Hurley omits from his canonical proceedings the adverse action taken against me by the Vatican in 1997, after I came out for the protection of children, as described above. This omission is the root cause that explains my reaction and the behavior that followed, which was self-protective, losing my regular priest salary, I needed to fine employment to support myself. Hurley was aware of this fact. He wanted me to give up my employment working in a mental health clinic to return to diocese - so I would be again dependent on the diocese for financial support. It would put me in the same position I was in 1997 when they threatened my safety and well-being, only now I would be in my mid fifties, which would make it harder to fine employment.
Hurley distorts the truth of my innocence - leaves children at risk
My returning to the diocese without any guarantee of protection from a repeat of the past adverse actions being taken against me would be foolish. And worst it would place children at the risk of life threatening harm, because I would be allowing Hurley to distort the truth of my innocence and thereby publicly discrediting the reason (based on facts) why I came out 1997 - for the protection of children from the unsubstantiated antigay teachings of the Vatican.
Hurley was then able to portray me to the public as obstinate and defiant, unwilling to be obedient to him as my bishop and return to the diocese, need of canonical discipline. This is a malicious tactic that is used over and over again by the curia in the Vatican as revealed in the Vatileaks of 2012. This the stream of corruption that exists in the curia and by extension includes Hurley, as a titular bishop of the curia.
Hurley - Manufactures Canon Law Technicality
Hurley omits the adverse actions taken against me by the Vatican in 1997, but he keeps one fact but separates it from the extenuating circumstances that explains it. He pulls this one fact out of context of the adverse actions taken by the curia against me 1997. This one fact, in context is a self-protective measure necessitated by the harsh reaction taken against me by the curia of the Vatican. Hurley has taken this one fact out of context and then misrepresents it as a willful act of defiance and disobedience on my part. First, in 1997, I am harshly attacked by the curia of the Vatican for “coming out” for the protection of children, then in 2006, and in 2013, I am blamed by the curia, represented by Hurley, for taking measures to protect myself from being attacked by the curia. It is disturbing how similar these attacks of the curia are to the brutality that took place in the Nazi concentration camps, where prisoners were made to work hard passed the point of exhaustion, and if they fell from exhaustion they were beaten or worst shot.
As I explain in this letter, this is the same pattern of repetitive of attacks I have had to endure from members of the curia, like Hurley that has continued ever since I came out for the protection of children. In 1997, I am attacked by the curia, having no recourse then, the same as it is now 2013 - to seek any legal protection, I was left to seek my own protection and when I took measures to protect myself - the curia then blames me for protecting myself from being the attacked by the curia. This is an example of what Hurley is doing by compiling his canonical proceedings to have me remove from the priesthood. This is a corrupted use of canon law that has been a part of the identified corruption of the curia. It is not only dishonest - it is lethal. Hurley’s corrupt use canon law is not just life-threatening to me personally, but he is using it to silence me from speaking out publicly - making “waves” for the protection of children from the life-threatening harm caused by antigay social and religious norms. Hurley’s corrupt use of canon law leaves children globally unprotected.
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Hurley’s - Dehumanizing Canon Law Technicalities - Profits Over People
The false account that Hurley gives to this one fact he takes out of context makes it into a severe double attack against me. This is a one-two punch, (1) in May 2006, Hurley uses it to falsely casts me as a disobedient priest, who is refusing to return to my dioceses, which is another severe attack to incriminate me publicly, destroying my credibility. Then (2) in 2012 Hurley uses it as a technical point of canon law as his reason to have me removed from the priesthood. However, the supporting authoritative facts regarding sexual orientation will never be eliminated and will expose Hurley’s strategic use of canon law technicalities to manipulate and obscure the truth. This same type of devious manipulations of legal technicalities to secure a desire outcome regardless of the truth of the situation is used flagrantly in the global secular corporate world - valuing profits over human beings. The global secular world rampantly gets a way using these dehumanizing legal technicalities to ensure their profit while discarding the importance of human life. However, it should absolutely never be used in the Catholic Church, especially when it discards the protection of children like the way Hurley is using it against me.
Dehumanizing Cost Making “Waves” For the
Protection of Children
I made a significant “wave” 1997 for the protection of children, all based on authoritative data, instead of being supported by the Vatican, besides having my regular priest salary taken away - my reputation was severely attacked to destroy my credibility. This has led to the ongoing ramifications that sabotaged my ability to support myself, causing me an unnecessary financial crisis of being debt, left homeless, and the constant related stress has seriously harmed my physical health, now at the age of 63 years old. It has caused me to need multiple hospitalizations in recent years. The details of these facts are all well documented and readily available. It is embarrassing for me to list the damage caused to me for making a “wave” to protect children from of all places - the Vatican. However, this is the only way I am able to afford to expose the effects of this kind of devastating corruption of the curia in the Vatican. Not to expose this devastating corruption of the curia would be immoral. By not doing my best in attempting to expose this lethal corruption of the curia to help stop it, I would then be responsible for all the harm they continue to cause.
I am seeking: (1) the appeal of Hurley’s canonical proceedings to remove me from the priesthood, (2) a plead for the protection for children globally from the unsubstantiated antigay pronouncements, (3) to expose this heinous corrupt use of canon law that has been ongoing, (4) the need for safeguards for sexual orientation to prevent this type victimization by the Vatican, (5) the need for a just reparation made to me to compensate me for the harm, damages caused, to help deter this type violence from happening again and to encourage the safety others who risk making “waves” for the protection and well being those least among us, the fringes of humanity.
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VI. Curia’s Covert Attacks Against - Sexual Orientation
US Bishops - Discrimination - Against Gay People
The curia of Vatican made attacks against me beginning in 1997 and for the past 16 years were solely all based on my sexual orientation. I had then, as it has remained for the past 16 years, no legal recourse anywhere to seek legal protection neither from the Vatican or as a US citizen from the United States government.
It has been an ongoing “hate crime” started by the Vatican in 1997 and followed through by Bishop Walter Hurley, all shrouded in the verbiage of deceptive canon law technicalities proceedings. All lasting over 16 years destroying my reputation, means to support myself, causing the foreclosure of my home, the repossession of my car, isolating me from family and friends, leaving penniless and homeless.
The US Catholic Bishops, as recent as November 7, 2013 opposed the US Senate passing a bill to include sexual orientation as part of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). This is continual evidence of the same type hostility directed against gay people by the US Catholic Bishops that is the same as Hurley’s manipulated canonical proceedings to remove me from the priesthood and that is same antigay hostility that has been continuously streaming out from the curia of the Vatican obsessively for the past 3 decades. The curia of the Vatican and US Catholic Bishops voluntarily chose to remain oblivious to lifetime harm caused to children by their obsessive hostility directed towards gay people.
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The Corruption & Devastating Harm to Children Caused by
“NOT MAKING WAVES”
I wrote an article, December 17, 2009, describing a major ongoing problem with the hierarchical structure of the Roman Catholic Church that there are no “checks and balances.” This means that there is no oversight monitoring the overall global administration activities of the curia and the hierarchy. When the necessary “checks and balances” are not in place to protect any organization, it leaves "not making waves" the rule that governs the hierarchy and opens the way to many devastating mistakes harmful to everyone and allows corruption to grow.
Key - Curia’s Power - Hiddenness - Groupthink
The corruption of the curia has been infamous for decades, as reported by past and present members of the hierarchy and it the news media. From research data, the key to the curial’s power is dependent upon their hiddenness exercising their organizational oversight, having direct access to the pope at the same time denying access to others. Curial officials stay in power by effectively carrying out orders presumingly from the pope discretely without alienating anyone as they make people fall in line. The curia’s lack of transparency has been verified endlessly regarding their pervasive identified corruption stemming from: the Vatican bank scandals, the global cover-ups of child sexual abuse cases, the character assassinations of their opposition, the gay closeted sex scandals. The curia’s dependency on secrecy in order maintain their power, isolates and insulates them from any needed and valuable outside input. It is a sure-fire recipe for them to become victims of the concept from social psychology known as “groupthink,” resulting in their making decisions that are unintentionally devastatingly violent. The curia, the bureaucracy of one of the world largest religion to fall victim to groupthink can and has had global lethal consequences.
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VII. Not Anti-Catholic Church
Exposing Curia Corruption - For Protection of Children
Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis
It is because of the possibility of such global lethal consequences that the curia is capable of causing, especially concerning children, I, therefore, do not believe that it is at all disrespectful or sacrilegious or blasphemous to vocalized to members of the curia - the lifetime harm that is caused to children by their antigay pronouncements. However, not to vocalize such validated life and death concerns to the curia would be a grave unconscionable immoral act of negligence. This would be especially true for me being a Roman Catholic priest, ever more so that I am a gay Roman Catholic priest. Because not only do I have personal experience of this kind of harm, but I also have acquired through the process of removing the plank from my own eye, first, a sizable amount knowledge on the topic of sexual orientation (I explain below). In vocalizing such lethal concerns I followed Christ’s words, of speaking directly to the person, if that fails, then involve 2 or 3 other people in the conversation and if that also fails I then was obligated to speak out publicly.
Many people might find it is much easier to keep silent and “not make waves,” but this is simply not true. Because when people keep silent about such grave issues, especially when children are involved; they are contributing to the dehumanization of all human beings. It is as you have stated, profits have become more valuable than human beings.
Pope Francis - Honesty - Making Waves
First Step to Recovery
It is well known in dealing with any type of addictive behavior, like substance abuse, sexual addiction, etc, and attending such groups as alcoholics anonymous, narcotics anonymous that the first step to breaking the cycle of addiction to allow recovery to begin is dependent on one’s ability of admit there is a problem. Whether it is an individual, or a group or an organization nothing can be begin to change for the better or improve until someone can step back and identify that there is a problem. Then working together to resolve the problem, so that new life can begin.
From research studies from organizational psychology there are ways to setup an organization to build in self-correcting mechanisms. For the past 32 years, regrettably there were no operative self-correcting mechanisms in the curia and we have witness the devastation that ensued.
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Pope Francis Identified
Stream of Corruption Running Through the Curia
You had confirmed 2013 that there is a real stream of corruption runs through the curia. Speculating, I would think that your statement was a flashed of light through the darkness in the curia paralyzing much of their power. Your global public statement broke through the thick wall of the lack of transparency surrounding the curia, their hiddenness clearly acknowledging the corruption, though not by self-righteously demonizing anyone and respectfully recognizing the saints who are working in the curia. Your same statement, also, validated those who have been severely victimized, harmed (like myself) by the curia and that is crucial to help and allow healing to begin for victims, including for me. Thank you. You were able to instill hope, by acknowledging and identifying the reality of the problem. This is the first step needed to resolve any problem and to begin rebuilding. From the global exposure of your papal office, the rebuilding you have initiated will progress on many levels, simultaneously.
“Who Am I To Judge?” - Pope Francis
It has been proven over and over again that secrecy is a killer. Jesus had plenty to say on secrecy, hiddenness and roof tops. The Church is durable even though the people inside are flawed, at times severely flawed that is because the Church is built on Christ not on the people. A major confirmation of this that was instantly heard around the world - were implicit in your words, "If someone is gay and seeks the Lord with good will, who am I to judge?"
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Protecting the Image of the Church
Became more Important than - Protecting Children
For the past 32 years, there was an extreme over emphasis on maintaining a vigilance protecting the image of the Church - or - rather the image of the curia. But the secrecy in protecting the image was so important that it took precedence over protecting the lives of children. This should have alerted someone to step back and voice that something is seriously not working and is wrong, maybe someone did and that person was severely attacked as I have been. The secrecy started to grow possibly along with the fear of exposure and in the end the edifice collapsed, because it was all not built on truth. It can be overwhelmingly difficult to face the truth, especially about one’s self, but almost never is it as bad as living in the pain that secrecy causes and the regret of the wasted years of one’s life.
Honesty is so important in establishing any serious relationship that we want to grow. I think that this would be especially true if you happen to be the pope. Your willingness to admit the truth publicly about the corruption of the curia conveyed a sense of confidence that the Church would not crumble because of it. It seemed that you were more concern about telling the truth than worried about any image. Admitting the truth about the curia - did more to improve the image of the Church, including respect for the papal office than all the secrecy of the past 30 years.
Strength of the Catholic Faith - Pope John Paul II
I feel it necessary to clarify the fact that - I most definitely do not mean that there is any fault with the Catholic faith or the Catholic Church I believe that is solidly built on Christ and is lasting. It is the motivating spiritual force that keeps me moving forward to continue the protection of children, even in the face of Hurley’s deceptive technicalities, including that of his accomplices.
The protection of children is paramount throughout the Catholic faith because it comes right from Christ. It is only when we drift away, individually or as a group from the foundation of the Catholic faith that is Jesus Christ that we run into major problems, always devastatingly harmful to everyone. Because we are no longer building on truth. Pope John Paul II courageously reminded us all just how devastating dangerous this can be - in 2000 he publicly apologized to the world the for the centuries of grievous sins committed by the Vatican representing the leadership of the Catholic Church. The Church did not fall apart after John Paul II made his global apology.
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VIII. My “Coming out” was an Educational Opportunity - 1997
In the early stage, for the first two months after I came out in March 1997, there was no negative reaction or repercussions from the parishioners, the diocese, or the wider community. I taught classes on early childhood psychosexual development and led discussions on that subject with my parishioners. People eagerly came to the classes. They learned, they talked openly, they told personal stories about their lives and their concern for their children. It was cathartic. I took great pains to see that my parishioners were not upset. They had been carrying questions for years that no one would answer. There had been no safe place for them to learn or to ask questions. I helped ease their fears. I was able to show them that no one should ever have to hate himself or herself. The meetings and talk sessions were a great success. The parish did not fall apart.
My “coming out” was successful, as reported in the Grand Rapids press, because I based it all on objective, authoritative data on homosexuality and not on my own personal, subjective thoughts and ideas. In addition, it was a tediously thought-out event that followed the rules of effective communication to large organizations. It was fortified by extensive documentation on homosexuality from its origins in early childhood and also by educational classes on the same subject. Each class was offered 3 times a week for two hours in an 8-week course of study. From my background of course work in communication studies, I followed the procedures of how to organize the set-up of an effective “critical team” to maximize the communication of accurate information and minimize confusion, gossip, and inaccurate information. Once inaccurate information takes hold, it is very difficult to counteract it, so I did everything possible to convey accurate information without pressure or rancor and without frightening anyone. The facts are able to speak for themselves.
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US Bishops Calls - Unprecedented - My “Coming Out” 1997
My “coming out” was called “unprecedented” by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, also reported in the Grand Rapids press. There was no mass exodus of parishioners from the parish. The parish’s weekly general and building debt reduction collections did not drop but remained at the same level of income.
My principles also remained the same. Through everything that followed, I continued in the conviction that my duty as a priest was to meet the needs at the fringes of society, especially where children are concerned. It was my calling. It was innate in me to meet the needs of people. I was pledged to serve others. To do anything less would be unconscionable.
Why The Vatican Did Not Know???
From all the study, conferences, consultations, and community work I did, I became painfully aware of the devastating, lifelong harm caused to LGBT people, beginning in their early childhood years, by antigay social and religious norms. I had an ever-present question in my mind, wondering why the Vatican was not aware of the same harm, and why the necessary steps were not taken to insure the safety of children, because this information had been readily available for the past 3 decades, in the mainstream of academic, medical, and mental health awareness. Somehow in the process of re-education I was supposed to become complicit in the denial of the harm to children, and somehow I was supposed to forget the core reason for being a priest, which is to live for others, take care of the poor, protect children, and advocate for people who are defenseless. I was supposed to accept the condemnation of me as if I were doing something wrong. Then, forcing me to apologize for, to beg forgiveness for my attempt to save children, was equivalent to wanting me to sin against my being a priest, in effect to become complicit in another form of the global cover-up of child abuse. It was this complete disregard by the Vatican for the harm they were causing to children globally that became infuriating to me. They have continued their attempts to get me to acquiesce in their denial of the lifelong harm caused to children by the unsubstantiated antigay teachings.
Antigay - Self-Perpetuating Cycle of Violence
Antigay social and religious norms create a self-perpetuating cycle of violence, forever increasing the violence in the world, because they continually attack children at the most vulnerable time of life: the early childhood years. Children are traumatized if they are told that the love they have for others is wrong. They are hurt at the center of their being. In heart and soul, where they reach out to others, hoping for closeness and tenderness, they are crushed. And as in any form of child abuse, the victims of the abuse caused by antigay teachings perpetuate as adults the same devastating harm and violence onto others, including children.
For many years, in fact my entire life, I was trying to resolve this issue of denial and abuse in myself and was searching for various ways of understanding it, including psychoanalysis, spiritual direction during long yearly retreats at a Trappist monastery, conferences with professors and scholars, and constant prayer.
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IX. Re-educated Sexual Orientation ???
Traumatic Attack - Like Being Mugged - Shell Shock
For the sake of children, in 1997, I made waves in the life of the Church. I handled the interest of the press in what was going on in my parish, and I was always sensitive to the needs of my parishioners. However, because I made waves, I faced what I perceived as retaliation from the Vatican. It felt like I was being mugged. I was told that my earned sabbatical term was cancelled, and that I could not study psychology at the University of Michigan. I could not plan my own sabbatical: instead a sabbatical would be prepared for me. The purpose was to re-educate me on sexual orientation. I was stunned. I left the office after hearing this startling directive and said to myself: “Where is such a place? What are they going to do? What are they going to send me to? Are they going to treat me like a pedophile priest? But I haven’t done anything wrong. Who’s going to believe me?” To me it felt like shell shock, like trauma. I didn’t understand what was going on. I felt my life flash before me. It was now over. It felt like a surprise attack, taking place behind closed doors, with no one knowing. And that is what was traumatic: the secrecy and helplessness, with no one knowing, like a child being abused.
Cardinal Bertone Causes - Irreparable Damage 2010
At the time, 1997, I thought: who would believe that the Vatican was capable of such covert, harsh actions, because I could hardly believe it even though I was the target. Only a few years later, in 2002, and then in 2010, we heard about the decades of cover-ups of child sexual abuse, allegedly ordered by the Vatican. At this time, certain members of the Vatican, like Cardinal Bertone, against known research publicly attempted to shift the blame onto gay priests, and by extension onto the entire LGBT population. And even though the Vatican made public statements to refute Bertone’s remarks, irreparable damage was done. Then in 2012, through Vatileaks, we were we made aware of pervasive corruption that existed in the Vatican among the curia and which you confirmed in July 2013.
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X. Vatican’s Attempts - Deface the Reason Why I Came Out
I was still left wondering: what did re-education on sexual orientation mean? After I had learned so much and heard so much at major conventions, after I had discovered what was taught at major universities, I had a feeling that I was about to be shoved into a closet, with no specific knowledge of what was going to happen to me, how long it was going to take, or what form of training was used for re-education. I wondered why I had never heard of any textbooks or articles on re-education on sexual orientation. I concluded that the diocesan officials and the bishop simply wished I would go away and get lost. I felt I was being given the persona of a pedophile priest, in a form of guilt by association. I was afraid that I was going to be treated as though I had done something wrong, and that I would be perceived as a pedophile priest, simply because of the way I was being treated. This process was going to deface the reason why I came out, would obscure all the work I had done to protect children, would completely destroy my reputation, and would also reflect on my family.
It seems clear to me that because the work I did with my parishioners was successful, I became more of a target. For 16 years I was denied my salary, my sabbatical terms, and educational funding. After I refused to be sent away on the sabbatical to be re-educated on sexual orientation, instead I was verbally told that I would given an open-ended educational leave of absence without any funding or salary. I left my diocese with nothing. My character was questioned; I believe I was the victim of character assassination.
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At present, I am appealing to you. The legal matter of the appeal is Bishop Walter Hurley’s canonical proceedings to remove me from the priesthood.
I believe that I am a priest forever. I have always known only too well my moral obligation, as a priest, to do all in my power to protect the lives of children, even if it meant sacrificing my life. This obligation is the core foundation of what it means to be a priest, that we follow Christ’s example of love and willingly give our lives for others, especially children. The only way I knew to protect children from the self-perpetuating lifelong harm caused by unsubstantiated antigay norms was to make a professional plan to come out as a gay Catholic priest to my parish, in order to draw public attention and awareness to this form of child abuse and to begin to take steps to prevent it.
I was heartened and excited, Pope Francis, from the first day, by your words and the example you have given us from your years of caring for the poor, those most in need. You want us to make waves. You spoke about gossip that kills. You encourage us to go out to the fringes of society. You are showing us that everyone is welcome. You are reminding us that the Church is for the poorest and weakest among us. If we are for people, especially for those who suffer, we have to care for them and acknowledge them. If we are going to have a renewed Church representing Christ, should we not accept with love priests and laity who once were silenced?
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I am explaining the process of my “coming out” in 1997 so that you are aware that it was not a careless or reckless event, but was based on an extraordinarily thorough understanding of homosexuality. This understanding was acquired over nearly 30 years, from the perspectives of academia, spirituality, and my own personal psychotherapy sessions, the cost of which Bishop Hurley disclosed to the press in May 2006, in the amount of $126,000. This phenomenal cost for psychotherapy was directly related to the pervasive harm caused to me, as it was to so many others, by unsubstantiated antigay teachings. I hope you can see that I took seriously Christ’s command that we should first remove the plank from our own eye, before attempting to remove the speck from the eye of our brother or sister. This reflection helps to explain more clearly the level of care and understanding I had for my parishioners, when I planned the process of my “coming out” to protect children. At no time did I needlessly place the parishioners at risk of upset and confusion. In fact, as I observed their expressed interest in the subject of sexuality, my planned process of “coming out” appeared to help relieve a great deal of unnecessary stress from their lives.
I came out on a matter of “life and death” to protect children. It took everything I had inside me, and then some, and to my great surprise, the attempt was astonishingly successful. However, two months later in 1997, I was immersed in another “life and death” situation that also urgently needed to be publicly exposed. At the time I was not aware, as we are today, of just how pervasively certain members of the Vatican hierarchy relied on covert tactics to remove opposition. Behind closed doors, in 1997 the Vatican issued an official directive ordering me to sent away to be re-educated on the subject of sexual orientation, as noted above. I was a 47-year-old priest, and as a priest, I spent my life devoted to the service of others and not primarily concerned about my financial future. If I were not a priest, I would probably have been making 3 or 4 times the salary a priest makes, because I would need to be significantly more concerned about planning a secure financial future. At the age of 47, the better years for establishing a career and financial security are generally behind a person. I suspect the Vatican recognized my lack of financial independence, expecting me to feel compelled to agree to the process of re-education. Ultimately, it seemed that the Vatican’s action was meant to frighten me into being silent, because I had taken a risk and dared to make waves.
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Emerging Science of Homosexuality
Let me be more specific about what I am referring to when I speak of the Vatican and its attitude toward science. It has been heavily documented that Cardinal Ratzinger in the years before he became Pope, and then as Benedict XVI, had opposed the emerging science about sexual orientation related to homosexuality. In 1986, in the letter to U.S. bishops titled “On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons,” he gave a warning about “deceitful propaganda” from pro-homosexual groups. As noted by John L. Allen in the National Catholic Reporter (date of publication): “The letter refers to homosexual orientation as an ‘intrinsic moral evil.’” In 1997, in addition, he altered the explanation of homosexuality in the Catechism of the Catholic Church by eliminating the statement: “They do not choose their homosexual condition (find citation).”
I am trying to address the inaccuracies coming from Benedict XVI and the hierarchy regarding homosexuality. These inaccuracies create a toxic social environment for children who hear continually that they are morally corrupt or evil if their inclinations are not heterosexual. Members of the Church hierarchy tend to justify their actions by dismissing the relevance of the emerging science of homosexuality on the grounds that science has not determined the cause of homosexuality. As an analogy, science has yet to give us the “genesis” of cancer, but we have not dismissed the relevant research that has made significant advancements in improving the chances of preventing and treating many forms of cancer.
For the past 32 years, Benedict XVI has appeared dismissive of the evolving science on sexual orientation in regard to homosexuality. He has also seemed oblivious of the severity of the psychological harm caused by unsubstantiated antigay teachings to millions and millions of adults and children, globally.
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XI. Hurley’s Disavowal of 1997
In an enclosed letter addressed to me by Hurley in May 2006, he states that he is not responsible for the actions taken against me by a previous bishop in 1997. By this assertion, Hurley completely negates and tries to distance himself from the extraordinarily punitive treatment by the Vatican in 1997, which, as described above, occurred behind closed doors. Although I took the necessary steps to protect myself and still have remained an active and loyal priest, I was portrayed as a selfish, renegade, disobedient priest, a priest who remained obstinate to the requests of his bishop to return to his diocese.
This disavowal by Hurley of a previous bishop’s action against me can be construed as yet another major attack made against my reputation to destroy my credibility as a loyal and faithful priest who had taken extraordinary measures. I sometimes feared I was placing my life at risk by “coming out” to protect the lives of children, globally, and then by educating my parishioners on a major taboo topic of human sexuality, namely homosexuality, while at the same time the whole process was astonishingly successful.
The mistreatment in 1997 was traumatic on several levels, as explained above, and was the cause of rage similar to that which Jesus felt when he turned over the table of the money changers in the temple courtyard. He said: “It is written: my house will be called a house of prayer, but you are it a making it a den of thieves” (Matthew 21: 12-13). And the attempts that followed to compel me to return to the diocese, with no regard for punitive treatment that had befallen me, were and are unnerving. In a sense it is incapacitating to endure this strain, now and in years past. The accumulation of years of pressure is taking a toll on me and has had an impact on my health.
I think it is true that Hurley did not really want me back. He managed to blame me for the steps that I was forced to take to protect myself after being victimized by members of the Vatican, which by extension included him, as a titular bishop. My regular salary and educational sabbatical terms and funding were all taken away because I refused to submit to the Vatican’s unethical request that I be sent away to be re-educated on sexual orientation or be given assignments that implied I was a pedophile priest or a priest who had committed some sordid misconduct. Prior to my “coming out” I was asked to consider being the rector of St. Andrew’s Cathedral. The fact is I was well liked and was being considered for major assignments in the diocese.
The requests for me to return to my diocese have never offered reparation for the harm, loss of salary and benefits, and damages caused by the Vatican’s directives that were forced on me in 1997. Equally, there were no guarantees given to me that at any time similar unethical and criminal actions would not be taken against me, or other retaliatory measures would not be forthcoming for my “coming out” in 1997, meaning that I would lose my salary and living space and would be left at yet an older age to make a living and support myself. In addition, at no time was there any visible sign of sincerity from Hurley that he wanted me to return.
This is whole train of events is a clear issue of bishops being allowed to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation against people like me in the USA. As recently as November 7, 2013, the US Senate passed a bill to include sexual orientation in the ENDA (Employment Non-Discrimination Act) act, which the US bishops voted against. I am a US citizen and did not give up my citizenship at the time of my ordination and therefore should be protected from such willful attacks by the bishops against gay priests. I think that it is important that I send a copy of this letter to President Obama and other high elected officials, including the Supreme Court justices, alerting them of my circumstances and the 16 years of mistreatment. Religious institutions should not be allowed to be excluded from civil rights laws such as ENDA.
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XII. Persona non grata
Benedict XVI and Hurley and Maida and Mental Health - Banning Gay Priests 2005
In June 2005, Hurley was re-assigned by the newly-elected Benedict XVI to the Diocese of Grand Rapids from the Archdiocese of Detroit. He remained the titular bishop in charge of misconduct of priests in Grand Rapids as he was in Detroit. Shortly after he arrived in Grand Rapids, without warning me, he had the Michigan Catholic Conference discontinue the insurance coverage of my psychotherapy. Although I retained my primary coverage from Blue Cross/ Blue Shield, the reduced plan covered at best 50 per cent of the cost of psychotherapy.
Benedict XVI first major ruling - Banning Gay Priests
Benedict XVI first major ruling after being elected April 2005 was to ban homosexuals from the priesthood. So begins his openly public antigay obsession that would remain constant and brutal - because it was so deadly harmful to children. His antigay example was openly promoting the arbitrary dehumanization of a group human beings as acceptable behavior for Catholics. This visibly gives us an inside picture of obsessive antigay culture that exists in the curia and among the hierarchy, until he announced his retirement on February 11, 2013. Because Benedict XVI for 32 years exerted significant influence in choosing men for the hierarchy and to be members of the curia in the Vatican. An antigay attitude was a prerequisite to be considered for advancement in the ranks. There was definitely no making waves to challenge his extreme uneducated antigay bias, only unconditional obedience to it. The harm and devastation that he caused for 32 years to children globally by his obsessive antigay pronouncements is unconscionable and incalculable. No one said a word or maybe some did so, but were not able to endure the attacks and died prematurely. It will be no way to erase the 32 years evidence - not in this age of communication. Banning gay priests was his very first ruling. In good conscience, and out of a deep moral obligation for the sake of the protection of children that when I was asked by a news reporter my thought of his antigay ruling I had to speak out to protect children.
Benedict XVI - Vatican plan to block gay priests - 8/28/05
Jamie Doward - The Guardian - 8/28/2005
Brief excerpt:
The new Pope faces his first controversy over the direction of the Catholic church after it was revealed that the Vatican has drawn up a religious instruction preventing gay men from being priests.
The controversial document, produced by the Congregation for Catholic Education and Seminaries, the body overseeing the church's training of the priesthood, is being scrutinised by Benedict XVI...
Shortly afterwards I was asked by a news reporter, my thoughts on Benedict XVI’s document ban against gay priests. The interview was published on October 8, 2005, in the Grand Rapids Press.
When the Rev. Martin Kurylowicz came out to his Sparta parish eight years ago, he said he had struggled for years with his homosexuality.
The Catholic priest says the struggle would be made harder for many others if the Vatican issues new rules that reportedly would ban gays from becoming priests…
…"I sizzled when I read it," said Kurylowicz, 55. "It's very hurtful, is what it is. In this day and age, there's no reason for it. It sends a message that there's something wrong with gays."
Kurylowicz said he spoke out then to raise awareness of violence against gays and teach others homosexuality is not a choice but an inborn trait. Church leaders still don't understand that and contribute to gays' poor self-esteem, he said…
…"Kids as young as 4 or 5 know they're different," said Kurylowicz, a psychotherapist… "They grow up with this pervasive guilt, which sabotages their growth and motivation." The result is thousands of dollars in therapy to accept their natural orientation, he said, adding, "Does the Vatican want to take that on, like the tobacco industry had to take on for the damage it caused consumers? "…
Benedict XVI’s blatant public dehumanizing remarks against gay priests, once again vividly brought to mind for me the same trauma I experienced behind close doors in 1997 igniting the same rage and outrage in me - because it was a repeat of the same complete disregard for the lives of children. I experienced this same reaction when, as Cardinal Ratzinger in July 31, 2003 made unsubstantiated statements against gay marriage. I was outraged not only by his statements, but that he was allowed to make it and no one publicly corrected him.
Vatican drive to curb gay marriage – July 31, 2003
… Ratzinger, the Church brands homosexual unions as immoral, unnatural and harmful…
…It comes a day after US President George Bush - a Methodist Christian - spoke out against the idea of same-sex marriages…
The constant running theme during this time since Benedict XVI election April 2005 to May 2006 was focused on heavily on mental health - psychotherapy. Benedict XVI announced in the fall 2005 that he was dedicating the 2006 World Day Prayer for the Sick to mental health. Benedict XVI and Hurley and Maida all worked together investigating the New Ways Ministry’s co-founders.
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Mental Health and Maida - “Dialogue Show” and Me
Hurley’s Immediately Demanding my return
I was asked by a coordinator of the Archdiocese of Detroit, who received my name from a professional colleague in the mental health field, to discuss on the TV show “Dialogue” issues related to mental health. The show was scheduled to be aired in February 2006. It was meant to coincide with Benedict XVI dedicating in 2006 the World Day of Prayer to mental health. At the request of the coordinator, I accepted the invitation on January 5, 2006 and was given all the details involved. The following day, January 6, I received a notice of sincere regret from the same coordinator telling me that plans had changed and I would no longer be needed. On January 7, I received a certified letter from Hurley demanding my immediate return to the diocese. In attempts to set up a meeting with Hurley in Grand Rapids, I had to calculate time carefully because I was in Detroit, which was a round trip of approximately 260 miles. All together it would be an eight-hour trip, meaning that I would miss the whole work day.
Considering that I had not been paid by the diocese since 1997, and that I depended on my clinical work at an agency where I had a caseload of 100 SPMI (severely and persistently mentally ill) patients, it was not so much about losing a whole day’s pay as it was the harm and added distress caused to patients in critical need if their appointments were to be cancelled. Therefore, I asked if I could meet with Hurley early in the morning or later in the evening or any time on the weekend. I was told absolutely not. An excerpt from Bishop Walter Hurley’s letter to me dated February 8, 2006:
I understand that you may have experiences involving my predecessors, which you found painful or unjust. Those grievances cannot, however, be involved as a justification for your resisting my legitimate appeal for your obedience to me as your Ordinary.
Hurley was plainly not willing to accommodate my work schedule, which I needed to support myself once my salary was taken away in 1997. His invitations appeared more for public display and to frame me in a set-up of being a disobedient priest. Still, there was no evidence of any concern for the children who were being harmed, which meant that nothing had changed since 1997: I was treated in the same abusive manner, and children were being neglected with increased intensity. The pattern of Benedict’s attempts to remove gay priests also increased in intensity, because he had become Pope. Just as [you] Francis changed the whole tone of the Church in the direction of acceptance and respect for every human being, so Benedict fostered discrimination. By the end of May 2006, Hurley removed my priestly faculties on the grounds that I had refused to meet with him. With Benedict in charge, I had absolutely no recourse. I had even less chance of gaining safety, returning to my diocese, or escaping even worse treatment than I had already experienced in 1997. The crucial point is that the reason why I came out-- the safety of children-- was never even taken into account. The blame was then publicly shifted onto me, as a way to discredit me, by means of Hurley’s argument that I was a disobedient priest, which completely took the focus off the lifelong harm caused to children by unsubstantiated antigay teachings. Hurley as a titular bishop connected to the Curia was trying to retaliate for my public denouncement of Benedict’s rules against gay priests, because of the harm caused to children, as reported in the Grand Rapids press on October 8, 2005.
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XIII. Scope of Lifelong Harm to Children - Adult
According to established research on sexual orientation, the human population ranges along a continuum, with an estimated 10% heterosexual, 10% homosexual, and 80% bisexual. What this means is that about 90% of the human population have varying degrees of a homosexual orientation. Therefore, it is not just 10% of the human population who are harmed by unsubstantiated antigay teachings, but 90%. These conclusions are based on authoritative data. For us to talk about restoring the dignity of human beings above profit while maintaining the Vatican’s unsubstantiated antigay teachings, is counterproductive because it negates the reality of human nature. Maintaining these teachings in spite of established data on human sexuality also negates what John Paul II insisted on when he stated that science and religion cannot be separated.
Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish.
If we retain these antigay teachings, we are modeling to major world corporations and to the millions of people who work in them an inconsistency about how we value people.
It is not possible to be lukewarm in our treatment of others: everybody counts or nobody counts. The way that I found best to help change people’s attitudes is by providing a wealth of accurate authoritative data on sexual orientation as it relates to children in their earliest years.
Not only are people interested in knowing about whatever is helpful to their children, but also they identify [ personally ] with the information, recognizing its truth in their own lives. I also found that by providing valid information on the topic keeps discussion and questions focus on the data, not on me. All arguments, disagreements and frustrations are targeted on the data activating a keen interest to read and learn more on their own, raising the intellectual level future discussions. It also helped to eliminate many ignorant outlandish statements about homosexuality exposing their ridiculousness, such as homosexuality being contagious, homosexuals are able to recruit heterosexuals to become homosexuals.
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XIV. Homophobia - Antigay Authoritarian Parenting
Self-perpetuating Abuse & Violence
A series of research studies were conducted and published in 2012, indicating that homophobia to be more pronounced in individuals who have unacknowledged homosexual attractions grew up in authoritarian households with parents who strictly forbade the expression of any same sex desires. “The study is the first to document the role that both parenting and sexual orientation play in the formation of intense and visceral fear of homosexuals, including self-reported homophobic attitudes, discriminatory bias, implicit hostility towards gays, and endorsement of anti-gay policies By Richard M. Ryan and William S. Ryan. It is a form of dissociation that denies any conscious homosexual attractions, but acts out sexually with same sex partners. There has been numerous cases in the news media that have exposed politicians, ministers and even members of the curia in the Vatican who publicly are antigay, but have been found having sex with men in public restrooms, highway rest stops, hiring male prostitutes and traveling with male escorts.
Homogeneous group - Repressed Homosexuals
For the past 32 years, Benedict XVI exuded a great deal of influence in choosing members for the curia and hierarchy based on their strict obedience to doctrine including homosexuality. Resulting in, Benedict XVI, creating over the past 3 decades, likely the largest solid homogeneous group, a select population based on the unsubstantiated antigay teachings having the highest probability of containing the largest number of homophobic sexual repressed homosexuals than anywhere else in the world. This would help explain the unison, the lockstep obsessive antigay crusade, especially against gay marriage by Benedict XVI, the hierarchy and the Curia not only in the USA. But this global antigay obsession initiated by Benedict XVI is not based on substantiated authoritative data on homosexuality. No one in the hierarchy or curia voices a word to challenge this obsessive antigay campaign with the ever present abundance of emerging science data finding homosexuality as a normal and natural part of human development. This indicates an air tight set up for problems and tragedies that are caused by social phenomenon described as Groupthink.
The deliberate suppression of this emerging science on sexual orientation that would have release gay people, especially children from the extremely harmful existence in the desert was an all out dehumanizing concerted effort according to numerous documents with all due respect of Cardinal Ratzinger and his supporters, which Bishop Hurley has been since the 1980s. Since 1997, this dehumanizing concerted effort suppressing the emerging science on sexual orientation has continued to the present day. I have been constantly and severely attacked for “coming out” March 1997 an exposing the emerging science on sexual orientation for the protection of children globally from the lifetime harmful effects caused by the antigay unsubstantiated social and religious norms.
Page 31
XV. The Conclusion
I know I am innocent of all charges made by Bishop Hurley. You may wonder what redress I am seeking. The way my appeal is treated, which includes me directly will reflect on the crucial importance of protecting children, globally. It will also simultaneously, as I am sure you know, make waves for better or worst on many levels. I stood on truth to the best of my ability and I tried to protect children to the point of risking my life. My “coming out” 1997 wedded me to the protection of children, a marriage lasting for the pat 16 years. It was an arranged marriage that as a priest, and as priests, we are called set an example to love others as Christ has loved us. As priests, we do not pick and chose you we will or will not serve. We serve and care for all people, including children. The need to protect children is paramount, because they are defenseless. If you are walking down the street and see a child playing on the train tracks with oncoming train speeding toward the child, whatever you may be doing is dropped, in order, to run and save the child. That is in essence what I did.
Above all, I want to be recognized as a priest in good standing. Because I have had to be on my own, taking care of myself without pay or any assurance of sustenance for many years, I am hoping for fair compensation for years of hostility, uncertainty, and lost income. There was no assurance that I would be welcome if I returned to Grand Rapids. And if I do go back there now, what assurance do I have that the same thing will not happen again? What assurance do I have of safety? What assurance do I have that retaliation will not be forthcoming? I dread the prospect of being treated as if I were a pedophile priest. I have observed the discipline of the Church and of the clerical state. I have kept my vow of celibacy.
I want all charges against me dropped and my priestly faculties to be restored and to be considered a priest in good standing. In the full picture of my situation beginning March 1997, the issue of my returning to diocese his is not a matter of being disobedience, but one of continue protection for children and a matter of self-preservation.
Considering the fact that you have admitted that there is a stream of corruption running through the Vatican, made statements about not judging gay priests, urging bishops to end their antigay obsession, encouraged the making of “waves” and not worry about attacks, I am sending my appeal directly to you.
I am appealing Bishop Hurley’s canonical proceedings to remove me from the priesthood, because it is not based on truth. It is a distortion of the truth based on a deceptive canon law technicality, at the expense of the protection of children to cause a “smoke screen” to hide the real aim of Hurley’s hostile attack is solely on sexual orientation. It is Hurley’s severely malicious attack to silence me permanently by destroying my reputation, hence the “smoke screen” to remove me from the priesthood. All because I spoke the truth that sexual orientation is already present and operative in early childhood, based on objective facts. This small piece of truth makes it vividly clear that homosexuality: (1) is not a choice, it is established long before the “age of reason” in the lives of children, (2) it is intrinsically by nature, then and forever, about “loving and wanting to be loved” and (3) it is critically vulnerable to lifetime harm, during early childhood years caused by antigay social and religious norms.
Therefore, due to the corruption of the curia is dependent on secrecy to flourish. I have learned the hard way for the need to keep public all dealings with the members of the curia and hierarchy. Since, my appeal is more importantly wedded to the immediacy for the protection of children, globally, to avoid any possible mishandling of the curia, this letter will be sent to great number of people. And because I am also an USA citizen this letter is also pertinent to the protection US civil rights based on sexual orientation, which includes children, it is also necessary that I send copies of this letter to - President Obama, Supreme Court Justices, members of the US Congress and others. It will also be published, as a precautionary measure.
I leave all in the hands of God, who as we all know is the final judge.
Sincerely in Christ,
Father Martin S. Kurylowicz
All enclosures listed on separate page:
The Wise and Foolish Builders
Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts
them into practice is like a wise man who built his
house on the rock. The rain came down, the
streams rose, and the winds blew and
beat against that house; yet it
did not fall, because it
had its foundation
on the rock.
But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not
put them into practice is like a foolish man who
built his house on sand. The rain came
down, the streams rose, and the
winds blew and beat against
that house, and it fell
with a great crash. Matthew 7:24-27
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December 30, 2013
Appealing Canonical Processing against
Fr. Martin S. Kurylowicz by Bishop Walter Hurley
Diocese of Grand Rapids, Michigan USA
Enclosures: To the appeal letter sent to Pope Francis
February 10, 2013 - Fr. Kurylowicz’s letter sent US government officials
- Kurylowicz’s appeal counteracting Bishop Hurley’s
manipulation of canon law in order to be able to charge
me on a technicality “not returning home” by separating
it from the situation that caused it after I came out
1997. Letter gives an extensive accounting of my
“coming out” situation of 1997 - not separated from Hurley’s
charges against me. Giving a complete picture
of my whole situation.
August 28, 2012 - Letter from President Obama - response to Fr.
Kurylowicz’s letter
July 2010 - Fr. Kurylowicz’s letter sent to US government officials -
regarding that there are No USA civil law protection
from Bishop Hurley malicious attacks against Fr.
Kurylowicz
March 29, 1997 - The Grand Rapids Press - Parishioners Supportive of
Gay Priest news report on my “coming out” for the
protection of children. (check The Grand Rapids Press
for accuracy)
May 20, 1997 - Letter from Bishop Rose - commenting Fr Kurylowicz on
his 12 years of pastoral leadership, as pastor of Holy
Family Parish.
June 2, 1997 - Fr. Kurylowicz’s letter to Bishop Rose - regarding
Catholic Universities & psychology
June 5, 1997 - Letter from Bishop Rose - questioning Fr Kurylowicz’s
credibility in need of a program (referring to sending
me away to be re-educated on sexual orientation) - to
restore my credibility among the priests.
June 9, 1997 - Fr. Kurylowicz’s letter to Bishop Rose - counteracting his
statement that there has never been any question ever
about my credibility and that my “coming out” had
received wide support from priests and people.
June 28, 1997 - The Grand Rapids Press - Kurylowicz Comes Out news
report on the success of my “coming out” & the US
Conference of Catholic Bishops calling my “coming out”
“unprecedented.” (check The Grand Rapids Press for
accuracy)
October 8, 2005 - The Grand Rapids Press - Ban On Gay Priests Heats
Up news report on Fr. Kurylowicz’s comments on
Benedict XVI - document banning gay priests. Kurylowicz
calling attention of the lifetime harm such an
unsubstantiated antigay global public statement will
have on children. Remarking that - the Vatican is going
to be made to pay for the harm they cause children - for
their antigay pronouncements - the same way the
tobacco companies were made to for the harm they
cause their consumers. (check The Grand Rapids Press
for accuracy)
February 8, 2006 - Bishop Hurley’s letter sent to Fr. Kurylowicz -
informing Fr. Kurylowicz that whatever happened to him
in 1997 is not relevant to my situation about of returning
home.
May 27, 2006 - Bishop Hurley - The Grand Rapids Press - news report
Hurley’s slanderous statement against me - I refused
to return to the diocese -based on his manipulation of a
canon laws technicality by separating it from the
complete factual situation of 1997. Hurley also discloses
the cost of my psychotherapy sessions, a breach of
employer employee confidentially. No USA civil law
protects gay priest from such fatal destructive public
attack on my reputation. (check The Grand Rapids Press
for accuracy)
*** (The harm from both of these statements made by
Hurley have caused irreparable damage to my
reputation - destroying my credibility and means of
supporting myself - because my regular priest salary had
been discontinued since 1997 - because of my “coming
out” for the protection of children. Bishop Hurley was
well aware of that my priest’s salary was suspended since 1997.
This makes his slanderous of malicious intent
to caused lethal harm to me.)
*** (The outrageous sum for my psychotherapy sessions
$126.000 was completely caused by the Vatican’s
unsubstantiated antigay teachings. The cost was also
related to the fact that I was seeing Catholic
psychotherapists.)
August 6, 2012 - Bishop Hurley’s canonical proceedings to remove Fr.
Kurylowicz from the priesthood - documentation
(4 pages)
May 21, 2013 - Fr. Kurylowicz’z letter to Fr. Ron Richard - informing him
that I am appealing my case to Pope Francis.
http://fathermartykurylowicz.blogspot.com/2014/05/may-21-2013-fr-kurylowiczz-letter-to-fr.html
November 26, 2013 - Letter from Bishop Walkowiak - regarding Bishop
November 26, 2013 - Letter from Bishop Walkowiak - regarding Bishop
Hurley’s canonical proceedings to remove Fr. Kurylowicz
from the priesthood - ultimatum
December 30, 2013 - Fr. Kurylowicz’z letter to Bishop Walkowiak -
informing him I have appealed my case to Pope Francis
Fr. Kurylowicz related appeal information: found online - Thalamus Center
WHISTLEBLOWER - Gay Catholic Priest – Fr. Marty Kurylowicz - Charged by the Vatican for “Coming Out” March 1997 - For the Protection of Children – 15 years later – February 10, 2013
Gay Catholic Priest - Appealing his case – Fr. Marty Kurylowicz – to Pope Francis | Part 1 of 4
Gay Catholic Priest - Appealing his case – Fr. Marty Kurylowicz – to Pope Francis | Part 2 of 4
A Gay Catholic Priest (3a) - Appealing his case – Fr. Marty Kurylowicz – to Pope Francis | Part 3a of 4
Original post date - August 15, 2013
STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE and CHILDREN --- “Don’t Make Waves” --- Benedict XVI and Curia’s Child Sexual Abuse Cover-ups and Gay Obsession - 5/15/13
“THE ADVOCATE” - Person of the Year: Pope Francis - 2013 - Dec 23, 2013
**************************************************
The End of the Appeal Letter
**************************************************
Update - 2/16/14
Following related links:
Obama to visit Pope Francis in March - 1/21/14
(CNN) -- President Barack Obama will meet with Pope Francis for the first time on March 27 at the Vatican, the White House announced Tuesday...
"The President looks forward to discussing with Pope Francis their shared commitment to fighting poverty and growing inequality," a White House news release said...
...He declared his unambiguous support for the Web as a tool that brings humanity closer together in a papal statement Thursday.
"A culture of encounter demands that we be ready not only to give, but also to receive," Francis said. "Media can help us greatly in this, especially nowadays, when the networks of human communication have made unprecedented advances. The Internet, in particular, offers immense possibilities for encounter and solidarity. "This is something truly good," he added. "A gift from God."...
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(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis says we need to be small and humble to dialogue with God. At the same time He always chooses those who are small and who have least power. This was the core message of the Pope’s homily at Tuesday morning's Mass in the Santa Marta residence...
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis celebrated Mass on Monday morning in the chapel of the Vatican’s Casa Santa Marta residence. In remarks following the readings of the day, the Holy Father spoke of the Church as a divinely ordained institution in which some individuals – the men who answer the call to become priests and bishops – are specially anointed to serve the people of God. The Pope thanked the many holy priests who give their lives in the anonymity of their daily service...
(Vatican Radio) Speaking at Mass at the Casa Santa Marta on Thursday, Pope Francis reflected on the mystery of death, inviting us to ask God for the grace to die in hope, in the heart of the Church and in the knowledge that we have left a legacy of Christian witness behind us...
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Pope Francis
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
Put
Well-being of Children and Young People - First
Protect and Sustain
Their Human and Spiritual Growth
January 31, 2014
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Pope Francis: Doctrine is not abstract but must serve the people of God - 1/31/14
Pope Francis on Friday addressed participants at the Plenary meeting of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
...Quoting from his Apostolic Exhortation, Pope Francis said right from the earliest times of the Church there has been a temptation to consider thedoctrine in an ideological sense or to reduce it to a series of abstract andcrystallized theories.
...He urged them to think of the wellbeing of children and young people, saying they should always be protected and sustained in their human and spiritual growth. The Pope said in this regard they are studying a possible link between the work done by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the special Commission for safeguarding children which he has set up and which is intended to be an example for all those wishing to promote the wellbeing of the young.
Read more:
Francis calls for doctrine within the spirit of charity - 1/31/14
In an important address to staff of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Pope Francis today essentially said, “tone it down.”
He called for Vatican doctrinal officials to work with a new spirit of service and charity and to cooperate more with local churches. He reminded the CDF that doctrine "must be taught and judged within the context of the needs of the community." ...
He said, “right from the earliest times of the Church there has been a temptation to consider the doctrine in an ideological sense or to reduce it to a series of abstract and crystallized theories.” He went on to say that “doctrine’s sole role is to serve the life of God’s people and is meant to ensure a solid foundation to our faith,” according to Vatican radio.
...In recent years, our church’s doctrinal watchdogs, many church observers would say, have caused considerable pain. They have gone after Catholic theologians, picking their writings apart, even, at times, sentence by sentence, looking for error. The impact has been twofold: It has discouraged theological engagement and it has dispirited wide segments of the church, including some of its more faithful followers. Consider, for example, the Apostolic Visitation of US women religious communities and the doctrinal investigation of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.
...He urged CDF staff to put the well being of children and young people first. The pattern over decades, of course, and to this day in some dioceses, court documents show, has been to place the well being of bishops first, throwing the children to the proverbial wind...
Read more:
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Background links:
Archbishop Asks Rome To Ease Up - September 28, 1986
MILWAUKEE — Rembert George Weakland long has been regarded by his peers as the brightest member of the hierarchy in the American Roman Catholic Church...
...in two tautly reasoned columns published this month in his official church newspaper here, has politely but forthrightly told the Vatican to, in effect, soften its drive to coerce doctrinal uniformity by punishing dissenters.
He asserted that Draconian measures used throughout Christian history tosilence those who challenge traditional church teaching have resulted in
``much cruelty, suppression of theological creativity and lack of growth.``
Archbishop Weakland, a Benedictine monk who has been Milwaukee`s archbishop since 1977, is the first American Catholic leader of wide repute and influence to publicly raise alarm over the perceived crackdown by Rome on prominent and liberal U.S. Catholic thinkers who question Vatican stands on sexual morality and other issues...
...They involved a Catholic University of America theologian, Rev. Charles Curran, whose teaching credentials have been removed, and Seattle Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen, whose administrative authority in several areas of ministry were stripped and given to an auxiliary bishop...
Read more:
Conflict in the Catholic Hierarchy :
a study of coping strategies in the Hunthausen affair,
with preferential attention to discursive strategies
by Timothy Peter Schilling - 2003
Conflicts within the Roman Catholic hierarchy poses risks to the organizational effectiveness of the Church, but the hierarchy’s approach to conflict handling has rarely been subjected to systematic, empirically grounded study...
Read more:
RATZINGER/BENEDICT XVI
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
preventing evolution in church teaching toward acceptance of homosexual conduct.
Ignoring Science - Sanctions Ignorance & Silence
Promoting discrimination of Homosexuality
A Timeline
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For
Protection of Children
Criticism of Church Teachings on
Homosexuality
February 5, 2014
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We can't afford to have
two kinds of citizens,
We must have
equal citizenship for anybody in our country.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Ku Klux Klan put a bounty of $25,000 on
Eleanor Roosevelt’s head
because they didn't want her
teaching people how to protest discrimination. 1958
Convention on the Rights of the Child... Photo
UN / VATICAN RIGHTS OF THE CHILD - 2/5/14 - Full Script
U.N. panel blasts Vatican handling of clergy sex abuse, church teachings on gays, abortion - 2/5/14
BERLIN — A United Nations committee issued a scathing indictment Wednesday of the Vatican’s handling of child sexual abuse cases involving clerics, releasing a report that includedcriticism of church teachings on homosexuality, gender equality and abortion...
The report said the church in some places has “systemically” adopted policies that put children at risk. In some cases, confidentiality has been imposed on child victims and their families as a condition of financial compensation. The panel also said Catholic officials obstructed efforts in certain countries to extend the statute of limitations for criminal or civil cases...
Officials dismissed suggestions from the Vatican that the report is biased.
“Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is something that we have raised with many states,” Kirsten Sandberg, chair of the committee, said in a statement. “This is nothing special. We are not going outside the scope of the Convention.”...
Read more:
Vatican envoy rejects UN panel's critical verdict on clerical abuse scandal - 2/5/14
...The panel also found fault with some central church teachings and their impact on children's health, urging the Vatican to reconsider its stance on abortion and contraception, and encouraging it to tone down criticism of homosexuality in an attempt to reduce "social stigmatisation" and violence against gay youths and children raised by gay couples...
Pope Pressured to Act on Abuse After UN Rebuke - 2/5/14
Pope Francis came under new pressure Wednesday to punish bishops whocovered up for pedophile priests when a U.N. human rights panel accused the Vatican of systematically protecting its reputation instead of looking out for the safety of children...
And critically, the Vatican has yet to sanction any bishop for having covered up for an abusive priest, even though more than a decade has passed since the scandal exploded in the U.S. and countless law enforcement investigations around the world made it clear the role bishops played.
Vatican officials have suggested that under Francis, this might soon change.
The report was issued by the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child, an 18-member panel that includes academics, sociologists and child development specialists from around the globe...
Read more:
Scathing U.N. report demands Vatican act against child sex abuse - 2/5/14
...BISHOPS NOT ACCOUNTABLE
While several bishops have resigned after abuse scandals in their dioceses, victims' groups say the Vatican must make bishops legally accountable for alleged cover-ups.
"If the pope is serious about turning the page on this scandal, he should immediately dismiss any bishop who oversaw a diocese in which a priest who abused children was shielded from the civil authorities," said Jon O'Brien, president of the U.S. lobby group Catholics for Choice.
The report said Francis's commission should invite outside experts and victims to participate in an investigation of abusers "as well as the conduct of the Catholic hierarchy in dealing with them"...
Read more:
Can the UN Change the Church's Views on Abortion and Gay Rights? - 2/6/14
On Wednesday, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child issued a long report on the Vatican that has gotten attention for its sharp criticism of the Catholic Church’s response to clergy sex-abuse scandals...
...The committee also made broad criticisms of the Church’s posture toward LGBTQ families and children...
The committee and the Holy See seem to be approaching the issue of human rights in starkly different ways...
It also believes LGBTQ rights are part of this mission; the committee expressed concerns about “past statements and declarations on homosexuality which contribute to the social stigmatization of and violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender adolescents and children raised by same sex couples.” ...
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INTERNATIONAL HUMANIST AND ETHICAL UNION CRITICISM OF THE HOLY SEE OVER CHILD ABUSE
AT THE UNITED NATIONS HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL (UNHRC) GENEVA – 22 SEPTEMBER 2009 to 15 MARCH 2011
Lack of Love & Support of Children is ‘DAMAGE TO FAMILY’
BENEDICT XVI - 30 years of GLOBAL CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE COVER-UPS
January 31, 2013
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Supporting reference links:
REPARATIVE THERAPY - Changing Homosexual Orientation - Serious Threat to Health &Life (e.g. suicide) - World Health Organization 2012 – May 17, 2012
How Institutionalized Homophobia Harms Children’s Lives - April 15, 2013
Major - Medical and Mental Heath Associations
Policies & Position Statements - Regarding Sexual Orientation
American Psychiatric Association
Position Statement on Therapies Focused on Attempts to Change Sexual Orientation (Reparative or Conversion Therapies)
Statement on discrimination based on gender or sexual orientation
Position Statement on Homosexuality and Civil Rights
Homosexuality Is a Normal Expression of Human Sexuality
Sexual Orientation And Homosexuality
American Psychiatric Association, AGLP
APSAA, American Psychoanalytic Association
Attempts to Change Sexual Orientation, Gender
Identity, or Gender Expression
American Psychological Association
APA Policy Statements on LGBT Concerns
A Primer for Principals, Educators, and School Personnel
A Publication Endorsed by:
American Academy of Pediatrics
American Academy of Pediatrics
American Association of School Administrators American Counseling Association
American Federation of Teachers
American Psychological Association
American School Counselor Association
American School Health Association
Interfaith Alliance Foundation
National Association of School Psychologists National Association of Secondary School Principals National Association of Social Workers
National Education Association
School Social Work Association of America Photo
American Federation of Teachers
American Psychological Association
American School Counselor Association
American School Health Association
Interfaith Alliance Foundation
National Association of School Psychologists National Association of Secondary School Principals National Association of Social Workers
National Education Association
School Social Work Association of America Photo
American Counseling Association
American Medical Association
American Academy of Pediatrics
Gay & Lesbian Medical Association (GLMA)
Gender Identity Research and Education Society - UK
National Association of School Psychologists
National Association of Social Workers
Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States
The Family Acceptance Project™ Photo
isa research, intervention, education and policy initiative that works to decrease health and mental health risks for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) children and youth, including suicide, homelessness and HIV – in the context of their families. We use a research-based, culturally grounded approach to help ethnically, socially and religiously diverse families to support their LGBT children.
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Secret gay society in Vatican poses security threat for Pope Francis: Ex-Swiss Guard - 1/21/14
Curia archbishop hits back at Swiss Guard’s gay lobby claim - 1/21/14
Sexual Repression and Pornography - Vatican's Ongoing Gay Sex Scandals - April 17, 2013
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Know thyself
This above all:
to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
William Shakespeare
Why do you look at the speck of sawdust
in your brother's eye and pay
no attention to the plank
in your own eye?
How can you say to your brother,
'Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,'
when you yourself fail to see the
plank in your own eye?
You hypocrite,
first take the plank out of your eye,
and then you will see clearly
to remove the speck from
your brother's eye.
Luke 6:40-42
Three prominent Catholic prelates—Bishop Stephen Blaire of Stockton, CA, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco, and Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore—have made it known that they plan to “work with leaders and all people of good will to end all forms of unjust discrimination, including against those who experience same sex attraction.” This they said in a letter mailed to US senators.
What’s that now? Are US bishops taking Pope Francis’s message of focusing on poverty rather than homosexuality to heart? Are Catholic bishops going on-the-record in support of the marginalized and oppressed? Is this a sign of a new era in US Catholicism, the one heralded by lefty Catholics who have expressed unabashed hope in the new pope?
...Catholic bishops apparently feel that discriminating against LGBT people in the workplace is not only just, but in fact, not being able to do so threatens their religious liberty. So the USCCB is appealing to lawmakers to vote against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA)...
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Catholic bishops oppose discrimination in letter opposing anti-discrimination bill - 11/4/13
Majority of Catholics - but not the US bishops - support passing ENDA today - 11/7/13
Update: This afternoon, the Senate passed ENDA by a vote of 64-32. Though the vote suggests strong bipartisan support, ENDA is expected to face an uphill battle in the House, with Speaker John Boehner refusing to support the bill...
The current ENDA proposal will still provide exemptions for institutions whose "purpose and character are primarily religious."
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US Catholic Bishops Continue Same - Opposed - ENDA -
Kids Are Being Hurt !!! - November 15, 2013 Photo
Receiving Numerous Reports of PROBLEMS - accessing the Thalamus Center Blog Website
GAY? - J. EDGAR HOOVER and BENEDICT XVI - Homophobic Men - Repressed Homosexual Feelings – Paranoia Projection - a "tragic story…HOW DANGEROUS SEXUAL REPRESSION IS."12/02/12
Benedict XVI’s
US Catholic Bishops &Curia
Still Obsessing on Gay Marriage & Gay Pornography Photo
Vatican’s Sexual Repression
Pornography & Gay Sex Scandals - 4/17/13
Editorial: Put concrete realities on US bishops' agenda - 11/8/13
Anyone looking at the published agenda of the meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (see story) would say that an efficient, business-like organization could deal with that in half a day. The published agenda is beyond prosaic: approval of some liturgical translations, an election of officers, some committee reports, and a "presentation for a proposal to develop a formal statement on pornography." (Spoiler alert: They are against porn.)...
Pope Francis has been clear about what he expects of bishops: He has condemned in no uncertain terms clericalism and careerism. One of his earliest statements was that priests -- and by extension bishops -- should "be shepherds with the smell of sheep" on them. In late October, ordaining two archbishops, Francis told them: "Keep in mind that you were selected to serve, not to dominate."...
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As Gov. Pat Quinn prepares to sign a marriage equality bill on Wednesday, Catholic prelates continue to offer unnecessarily stinging words to gays and lesbians...
The words of Pope Francis offer important lessons that could guideoutraged prelates such as Springfield Bishop Thomas Paprocki, who is expected to lead prayers of supplication and exorcism for “the evil wrought by same-sex relations” during the bill-signing ceremony, and Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George, who has declared the bill “a bad law.”... Photo
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Study examines the roots of homophobia - 4/6/12
Acceptance of gays and lesbians has never been higher, but anti-gay bias still exists. A new study suggestsintense hostility toward homosexuals may be linked to a repressed same-sex attraction, combined with an authoritarian upbringing.
Though such factors are not the only cause of homophobia, the findings suggest those "who have a discrepancy within themselves about their expressed vs. unconscious sexual attraction find gay and lesbian people more threatening and are more likely to express prejudice and discrimination toward them," says University of Rochester psychology professor Richard Ryan, co-author of the study, which is published in the April Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Also an author is Netta Weinstein of the University of Essex, England...
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Though such factors are not the only cause of homophobia, the findings suggest those "who have a discrepancy within themselves about their expressed vs. unconscious sexual attraction find gay and lesbian people more threatening and are more likely to express prejudice and discrimination toward them," says University of Rochester psychology professor Richard Ryan, co-author of the study, which is published in the April Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Also an author is Netta Weinstein of the University of Essex, England...
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Cardinal George Pens Anti–Marriage Equality Letter - 11/19/13(video)
Is Some Homophobia Self-Phobia?
Apr. 6, 2012 —Homophobia is more pronounced in individuals with an unacknowledged attraction to the same sex and who grew up with authoritarian parents who forbade such desires, a series of psychology studies demonstrates. Photo
The study is the first to document the role that both parenting and sexual orientation play in the formation of intense and visceral fear of homosexuals, including self-reported homophobic attitudes,discriminatory bias,implicit hostilitytowards gays, and endorsement of anti-gay policies. Conducted by a team from the University of Rochester, the University of Essex, England, and the University of California in Santa Barbara, the research will be published the April issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Photo
"Individuals who identify as straight but in psychological tests show a strong attraction to the same sex may be threatened by gays and lesbians because homosexuals remind them of similar tendencies within themselves," explains Netta Weinstein, a lecturer at the University of Essex and the study's lead author.
"In many cases these are people who are at war with themselves and they are turning this internal conflict outward," adds co-author Richard Ryan, professor of psychology at the University of Rochester who helped direct the research...
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Attention U.S. bishops: Abortion is nothing like gay marriage - 11/19/13
On Wednesday, the Catholic bishop of Illinois, ThomasPaprocki, will perform an exorcism for the state of Illinois. That’s right, an exorcism – for the entire state. According to the teachings of the Catholic Church, entire places can become possessed by the devil, not just individuals. Paprocki is convinced that Illinois is now one such place, as the state legislature has passed a bill legalizing same-sex marriage, and Governor Pat Quinn plans to sign it on Wednesday...
Outrageous –and perhaps even a bit comical –as many might find the use of the rite of exorcism to make a political statement in the culture wars, the entire body of U.S. Catholic bishops has, in fact, implemented a far less theatrical, yet ever more serious plan in their attempt to sully the love and commitment of same-sex couples, along with their civil marriage equality, in the minds and hearts of lay Catholics. This is no laughing matter...
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/wp/2013/11/19/attention-u-s-bishops-abortion-is-nothing-like-gay-marriage/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/wp/2013/11/19/attention-u-s-bishops-abortion-is-nothing-like-gay-marriage/
Archbishop Cordileone: DOMA ruling, ENDA passage put marriage at 'critical point'- 11/12/13
...The effects of ENDA, Cordileone said during a presentation Monday at the U.S. bishops' fall general meeting in Baltimore, "go much further" than preventing employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity to the point where "ENDA-like laws have contributed to the erosion and redefinition of marriage at the state level."
The bishops, though, voted 203-17, with five abstentions, to extend through 2016 a "Call to Prayer for Life, Marriage and Religious Freedom," originally intended to coincide with the now-ended Year of Faith and was itself scheduled to end with the Nov. 24 feast of Christ the King...
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Frightened by the
SILENCE
from the larger global community of human beings
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AUSCHWITZ - CHRISTMAS 2008 -
A flashback far more severe than in -
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN -
December 26, 2008
Fr. Marty Kurylowicz
Dear Fr. Geoff Farrow,
I have been so saddened by Pope Benedict XVI's cruel words to LGBTQpeople around the world, to their parents, families and friends, most ESPECIALLY TO CHILDREN. After reading the accounts of this human travesty, I did not know where to find comfort or hope. And then I thought about your blog. And just like receiving a wonderful Christmas present, sure enough I found the hope and comfort I needed to hear. Photo
I am a priest and a clinical psychologist (MS). And for one of my research projects I chose to do a qualitative research project of the recorded verbal accounts of survivors of the Holocaust, 50 years after the event. It was a difficult research project, because I could not make sense of one of the accounts of the survivors.
For example, one survivor was describing what it was like riding the train to AUSCHWITZ, but he was describing how he was trying to make conversation with a girl on the train. I listened and wrote out this one account almost 30 times but I just was not getting it. I could not understand how this man could be talking about wanting to make conversation with this girl on the same train toAUSCHWITZ!?! Photo
Because I had taught high school religion classes for nearly 20 years, it hit me hard, like a flash of lightning. Instantly, all the pieces came together, so fast. Though this survivor was in his late 60’s when he gave his account of his story on audiotape, he was remembering the events that took place, but naturally they were recounted through the mind of a teenager, the age he was on the train to AUSCHWITZ. That is why the dialogue wasn’t making any sense. I was thinking of him as an old man because the voice on the audiotape was the voice of a 68-year-old. As shocking as a bomb going off, all the different aspects of the psychological developmental stages of a teenager kicked in. I realized only too fully that he was just a young normal teenager on that train!!! And so was the girl he was trying to make conversation, and their moms and dads were there with them!!! There was no way to pretend I did not realize what I discovered. It kept hitting me: this is not some script from a movie or TV miniseries on the Holocaust. No; as much as I wished it were. The reality of this horror hit me all at once, on so many different levels of consciousness: what an unbelievable horror it was!!! How could we treat human beings like this! I remember when the realization of the magnitude of this horror first hit me, like an instant reflex. I threw down the transcript I was holding as if it were a blazing hot poker. It kept hitting me over and over again that this is not a movie script or some kind of play – this really happened! It really happened! Oh, my God, how could this have happened!?!!!
My supervisor told me at the time that I was traumatized by the oral content. Qualitative research is an attempt to understand the complexity of emotions, the kinds of emotions, and the degree of intensity involved. Our emotions are what allow us to connect with other human beings. We identify with the non-verbal quality of emotions more immediately and strongly than with the words used to express them. The non-verbal qualities include tone of voice, eye contact, facial expression, body posture, and gestures, all of which express emotions. Emotions are why we can connect with people through time, across cultures, and individually. It is the expression of human emotions in the arts that makes some works of art timeless, because they continually speak to all people through the ages.
And when I heard what Pope Benedict XVI said about homosexuals and transgendered human beings at Christmas 2008, I felt that same trauma all over again. Because in some way, somehow, he was conveying in a non-verbal manner the horror of the Holocaust, in what appears to be a traumatized, trance-like, accepted social norm from that period of time dictating that some people just don’t count, aren’t important, and can be easily disposed of. And if you rock the boat, you could be next to be disposed of.
I truly have to believe that a person in his position would not be doing this consciously or intentionally. The horror of the Holocaust is like an atomic bomb with fallout so extensive that it spreads over a radius of more than 150 miles. The horror of the Holocaust began in 1933 and ended in 1945. The psychological fallout would have been far more extensive and more deadly, especially when it is not identified as such.
It hit me the way it did when I realized that the research I was doing about a Holocaust survivor, a man 68 years old telling his story, who was remembering what it was like to be on the train to AUSCHWITZ, from the perspective of a young teenage boy who just wanted to talk to a girl. It seemed like the same kind of horror, a tacit assumption that some people don't count and can be disposed of without remorse. Could it be that Benedict XVI is unconsciously repeating Hitler's crime against humanity by taking on a long-accepted social attitude from that period of time?
The question I asked myself was: what would it have been like for someone growing up gay during the Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals 1933 -1945? Photo
What would be the severity of the psychological effects on a boy who grew up to be gay in Germany during the time of Hitler’s NAZI PERSECUTION OF HOMOSEXUALS 1933 -1945? During the Nazi regime, homosexuals were publicly defamed and falsely accused for the major social problems of that time, which was done to incite massive public hatred and hostility directed against homosexuals. Homosexuals were used for medical experiments, physically mutilated, brutally tortured and exterminated.
.svg/320px-Flag_of_the_NSDAP_(1920%E2%80%931945).svg.png)
Would this child, as an adult, in a severe dissociated state of mind from his own homosexual feelings (Harry Stack Sullivan MD, Dissociative Processes, Clinical Studies on Psychiatry (1956)), unconsciously perpetuate the terrifying horror of the insensitivity he had experienced growing up? If he found himself in a position of authority would he recreate the same social and political environment of violence and terror for homosexuals that he experienced, as a child who grew up to be gay, during the NAZI PERSECUTION OF HOMOSEXUALS? Photo
I think in truth on a much deeper level I was frightened, really frightened, to hear Pope Benedict XVI’s Christmas remarks against homosexuals and transgendered human beings and even more frightened by the silence from the larger global community of human beings. What is so frightening is, even if there is agreement that one person does not matter or is not important, in truth then no one matters. Therefore, when I thought about your blog and what you did on October 5, 2008, I felt more reassured, I felt hope, and I felt comforted. NOW, isn’t that the true meaning of Christmas?
God Bless you,
Fr. Marty Kurylowicz
AUSCHWITZ -- CHRISTMAS 2008 -- A flashback far more severe than in --- BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN – December 26, 2008 – Reposting
politicians for acquiring a
"gay"elephant called Ninio
who refuses to mate with
female companions. Photo
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FREEDOM of CONSCIENCE - Proposing a Renewed Catholic Understanding of the Sexual Person - August 2, 2012 -
By Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler,
authors of SEXUAL ETHICS
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For whoever wants to save their life will lose it,
but whoever loses their life
for me will find it.
Matthew 16:25
What good is it for someone to gain the whole world,
and yet lose or forfeit their very self?
Luke 9:25
Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me
is not worthy of me;… Whoever does not take up their cross
and follow me is not worthy of me.
Matthew 10:36-38
…whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me
to stumble, it would be better for him to have
a heavy millstone hung around his neck,
and to be drowned in the
depth of the sea.
Matthew 18:6
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Pope Francis
Updated links added - April 18,2014
Good Friday
"Detach the Commandments from the
Heart of God"
Closed Thinking - No Dialogue
Pope Francis at Mass: Be vigilant of dictatorship of thought
April 10, 2014
..."It is a closed way of thinking that is not open to dialogue, to the possibility that there is something else, the possibility that God speaks to us, tells us about His journey, as he did to the prophets. These people did not listen to the prophets and did not listen to Jesus. It is something greater than a mere stubbornness. No, it is more: it is the idolatry of their own way of thinking. 'I think this, it has to be this way, and nothing more'. These people had a narrow line of thought and wanted to impose this way of thinking on the people of God, Jesus rebukes them for this: ' You burden the people with many commandments and you do not touch them with your finger'"...
"There is no possibility of dialogue, there is no possibility to open up to new things which God brings with the prophets. They killed the prophets, these people; they close the door to the promise of God. When this phenomenon of narrow thinking enters human history, how many misfortunes. We all saw in the last century, the dictatorships of narrow thought , which ended up killing a lot of people, but when they believed they were the overlords, no other form of though was allowed. This is the way they think”...
...Even today there is a dictatorship of a narrow line of thought and this dictatorship is the same as these people: it takes up stones to stone the freedom of the people, the freedom of the people, their freedom of conscience, the relationship of the people with God.Today Jesus is Crucified once again”...
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Pope Francis
Sanctioning Bishops
Pope Francis' strongest statement yet on sex abuse
April 11, 2014
[Pope] Francis made the off-the-cuff remarks after coming under criticism from victims' advocacy groups for a perceived lack of attention to the sexual abuse scandal and ongoing demands that he sanction bishops who covered up for pedophiles...
"The church is aware of this damage," he continued. "We don't want to take a step back in dealing with this problem and the sanctions that must be imposed. On the contrary, I think we must be even stronger! You don't play around with the lives of children."
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Pope Francis
Updated links added - March 19, 2014
Slander, Gossip - Kills
Pope Francis - “Slander...Gossip can also kill, because it kills the reputation of the person”
February 16, 2014
Vatican City...Pope Francis’ Sunday Angelus message emphasized the importance of avoiding all forms of slander in living a Christian life...
Jesus offers the example of the fifth commandment, “do not kill,” and goes on to add, “but I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be guilty before the court.”
“With this, Jesus reminds us that even words can kill!” explained the Pope. “When it is said that someone has the ‘tongue of a serpent,’ what does it mean? That his words kill.”
“Therefore, not only must one not make an attempt on the life of others, but one must not even pour on him the poison of anger and hit him with slander, nor speak ill of him. And here we arrive at gossip. Gossip can also kill, because it kills the reputation of the person,” stressed the Pontiff...
Read move:
Slander - the action or crime of making a false spoken statement damaging to a person's reputation:
• a false and malicious spoken statement:
Pope Francis warns cardinals against gossip, court intrigue
February 23, 2014
VATICAN CITY (RNS) In a forceful message to more than 100 scarlet-clad cardinals arrayed before him, Pope Francis on Sunday (Feb. 23) warned them that they are “not a royal court” and told them to avoid “habits and ways of acting typical of a court: intrigue, gossip, cliques, favoritism and preferences.”
...Every cardinal, like every Christian, he said, is “God’s temple.”
“This temple of ours is defiled if we neglect our duties towards our neighbor,” Francis said. “Whenever the least of our brothers and sistersfinds a place in our hearts, it is God himself who finds a place there. When that brother or sister is shut out, it is God himself who is not being welcomed.”
“A heart without love is like a deconsecrated church, a building withdrawn from God’s service and given over to another use.”
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Pope Francis
Casuistry & Ideology
Pope Francis - “the signs” by which we can recognize “a person who knows what we are to believe but who does not have faith”...
February 21, 2014
...This “is casuistry,” the Pope said. And “casuistry is precisely the place to which all those people go who believe they have faith” but only have a knowledge of its content. Thus, “when we find a Christian” who only asks “if it is licit to do this and if the Church could do that,” it either means “that they do not have faith, or that it is too weak”.
The second sign is ideology. We cannot be “Christians who think of the faith as a system of ideas, as an ideology,” Pope Francis said. It is a risk that “also existed in Jesus' time” and was set forth by by the gnostics. “The Apostle James says that ideologues of the faith are the Antichrist”. Thus, the Pope explained, “those who fall into casuistry or ideology are Christians who know doctrine but who lack faith. Like the demons, with the difference that the demons tremble, whereas these do not: they live in peace”...
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Pope: Professing the faith without good works is just spouting hot air
February 21, 2014
...Christians can be this way, too, he said, seeing the faith "as a system of ideas." But in reality, such people are what James considered them to be, "the anti-Christ, ideologues of the faith," the pope said.
"Having faith isn't having knowledge," the pope said. Instead, it is "receiving God's message" as brought by Christ.
There can be people who know very little or nothing about doctrine, "but have lots of faith" because rather than embracing "abstract truths," they embrace the living Christ, the pope said.
"Faith and witness are indissoluble," he said. "Faith is an encounter with Jesus Christ, with God," and always leads to witnessing...
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casuistry - the use of clever but unsound reasoning, esp. in relation to moral questions; sophistry.
• the resolving of moral problems by the application of theoretical rules to particular instances.
Sophistry - the use of fallacious arguments, esp. with the intention of deceiving.
ideology - a system of ideas and ideals, esp. one that forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy: the ideology of republicanism.
• the ideas and manner of thinking characteristic of a group, social class, or individual: a critique of bourgeois ideology.
Pope Francis: Not Faith based on casuistry or ideology - fine no peace
February 21, 2014
...Pope Francis...authentic faith, “is not [merely] to possess knowledge.” Rather, “[to have faith means] receiving the message of God,” brought by Christ. The Holy Father went on to say that, in the Gospel, there are two telltale signs of those, who, “know what is to be believed, but do not have faith.” The first sign is a tendency to “casuistry”, represented by those who asked Jesus if it was lawful to pay taxes, or which of the seven brothers of the husband would have to marry the widowed woman. The second sign is a commitment to “ideology”:
“Christians who think of faith as a system of ideas, ideologically: there were such as these even in Jesus’ own day. The Apostle John says of them, that they were the antichrist, the ideologues of faith, of whatsoever [ideological] stamp they might have been. At that time there were the Gnostics, but there will [always] be many – and thus, those who fall intocasuistry or those who fall into ideology are Christians who know the doctrine, but without faith, like demons. The difference is that the demons tremble, these Christians, no: they live peacefully.”...
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Fight Any Discrimination
and
Exclusion
February 22, 2014
VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope Francis created his first batch of new cardinals on Saturday (Feb. 22) and used the ceremony to launch a new appeal for peace amid the violence racking so many countries.Read more:
February 21, 2014
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Pope Francis
Need better bishops
Pope Francis: The church needs better bishops; go find them
February 27, 2014
VATICAN CITY — In another strongly worded message to the Catholic hierarchy, Pope Francis on Thursday (Feb. 27) told the Vatican body that vets nominees for bishops that they need to find him better candidates to send to dioceses around the world.
“To choose such ministers we all need to raise our sights, to move to a higher level,” Francis told the Congregation for Bishops, the critical department of the Roman Curia that acts as a clearinghouse for bishop nominees. “We can’t do anything less, and we can’t be content with the bare minimum.”
...“The church doesn’t need apologists for their own agendas or crusaders for their own battles,” he added, “but humble and faithful sowers of the truth.”
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Need Bishops
with
The courage to die for people
Bishops need not be crusaders, but pastors, Francis says
February 27, 2014
...In a nearly 3,000-word text to the Vatican's Congregation for Bishops, Francis tells the office they should not look for bishops based on any "preferences, likes, or trends" and likewise should not seek prelates who are mainly concerned with doctrinal matters...
Francis' words Thursday, made during the congregation's weekly meeting, mostly reaffirm themes the pope has touched on over the past year when speaking of the role of bishops around the world.
But they are also quite direct in parts, seemingly at one point evenreprimanding the congregation for its choices so far with a remark that "perhaps it is we who do not turn enough the fields to look" for the right bishops...
"The bishop is first and foremost a martyr of the risen one," the pope states. "His life and his ministry must make credible the resurrection."
"The courage to die, the generosity of offering their own lives and to be consumed by the flock are inscribed in the "DNA" of the episcopate," he continues. "Renunciation and sacrifice are akin to the Episcopal mission."
..."Perhaps it is we who do not turn enough for the fields to look for them," the pope states. "Perhaps we need the warning of Samuel, "Do not sit down to eat before he comes here." "It is this holy restlessness that I would like this congregation to live."
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Pope Francis
Gay Civil Unions
Pope Francis Says Church Must Examine Civil Unions
March 5, 2014
Pope Francis called on the Catholic Church and its leaders to explore civil unions and how they provide for the economic security and well-being of same-sex couples, according to an interview with an Italian newspaper today.
Speaking to Corriere della Sera, the 77-year-old Argentine pontiff said that some governments legalize civil unions “to regularize different situations of living together,” citing the need to provide stronger economic conditions, including access to health care, for a variety of couples.
“We have to look at the different cases and evaluate them in their variety,” he said, according to a translation from Vatican Insider.
Contrary to published reports, the pope did not endorse the notion of civil unions, but instead admitted that new realities must be examined...
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Pope Francis: Church could support civil unions
March 5, 2014
«Benedetto XVI non è una statua Partecipa alla vita della Chiesa»
5 marzo 2014
On Gay Unions, a Pragmatist Before He Was a Pope
March 19, 2013
BUENOS AIRES — The very idea was anathema to many of the bishops in the room.
Argentina was on the verge of approving gay marriage, and the Roman Catholic Church was desperate to stop that from happening. It would lead tens of thousands of its followers in protest on the streets of Buenos Aires and publicly condemn the proposed law, a direct threat to church teaching, as the work of the devil.
But behind the scenes, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who led the public charge against the measure, spoke out in a heated meeting of bishops in 2010 and advocated a highly unorthodox solution: that the church in Argentina support the idea of civil unions for gay couples.
The concession inflamed the gathering — and offers a telling insight into the leadership style he may now bring to the papacy.
Few would suggest that Cardinal Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, is anything but a stalwart who fully embraces the church’s positions on core social issues. But as he faced one of the most acute tests of his tenure as head of Argentina’s church, he showed another side as well, supporters and critics say: that of a deal maker willing to compromise and court opposing sides in the debate, detractors included...
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Pope Francis
Weapons Industry - “War Profiteering”
Pope Francis blasts arms dealers, decries indifference to war
February 25, 2014
VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope Francis on Tuesday (Feb. 25) lashed out at public indifference to the many wars raging around the globe, with especially harsh words for arms makers who he said profit from the violence and suffering.
“Think of the starving children in the refugee camps. Just think of them: this is fruit of war!” Francis said at the daily Mass he celebrates in the chapel of the Vatican guesthouse where he lives.
“And if you want,” he continued, “think of the great dining halls, of the parties thrown by the bosses of the weapons industry that makes the arms that wind up (in those camps). A sick child, starving, in a refugee camp — and the great parties, the fine life for those who manufacture weapons.”...
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SEXUAL ORIENTATION is less about sex and more about LOVE, being one with another human being. Attachment Theory - - LOVE & RELIGION - Fr. Marty Kurylowicz
Nothing in life is more precious than the intimate relationships we have with love ones. Healthy love relationships delight us give us confidence to take on challenges and support us in difficult times.
Being a priest and a clinical psychotherapist one hears many very different sides of human sexuality, which are under the seal of confession or is professionally confidential. Besides my own extensive search and struggles for knowledge and understanding of human sexuality, in truth, one learns that clarity about human sexuality is not absolutely established or clearly defined there is much confusion, if people would be honest. This confusion seems to create a considerable amount of self-doubt and unrest. In addition, not discussing sex openly to learn more about the truth of human sexuality only generates more anxiety, tension and separates people. However, for the sake of our children it needs to be intelligently, exhaustively and openly studied and explained.
Sexual orientation is an enduring emotional, romantic, sexual, or affectional attraction toward others. It is easily distinguished from other components of sexuality including
biological sex, gender identity (the psychological sense of being male or female), and the social gender role (adherence to cultural norms for feminine and masculine behavior)...
Sexual orientation is different from sexual behavior because it refers to feelings and self-concept...
From science we learn not the precise moment that a person’s sexual orientation is set whether heterosexual or homosexual, except that it is set very early in life either just before birth or very soon after birth (Jack Drescher, MD)...
Attachment theory has been researched by John Bowlby M .D. and Mary Ainsworth Ph.D. observing infants beginning at about 10 months of age discovering the significance of the formation of early childhood attachments having lasting effects throughout a person's life.
Attachment is an emotional bond to another person. Psychiatrist, John Bowlby was the first attachment theorist, describing attachment as a "lasting psychological connectedness between human beings" (Bowlby, 1969, p.194).
Nothing in life is more precious than the intimate relationships we have with love ones. Healthy love relationships delight us give us confidence to take on challenges and support us in difficult times...
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Related links:
Pope Francis - Homosexuals have gifts and qualities to offer to the Christian community... Synod of Bishops on Family - Midterm report: October 14, 2014 | Burke to Malta - October 24, 2014
