SYDNEY’S CATHOLICS APOLOGISE TO LGBTI PEOPLE
Newtown's church becomes one of the first in the
world to apologise to LGBTI people - August 15, 2016
NEWTOWN’S Catholic Church has become one of the world’s first churches to apologise to LGBTI people for the hurt caused by the action and inaction of Catholic and Christian people and churches.
In June, Pope Francis called for an apology to gay and lesbian people and St Joseph’s Catholic Church in Newtown become one of the first to respond holding a Liturgy of Apology organised by the Rainbow Catholic Interagency for Ministry on Friday
“It was difficult to choose which personal stories to share during the liturgy; each individual’s story is so powerful, unique and precious,” Francis Voon, a Catholic organiser said.
“As organisers we wanted to make sure the event was ethical, respectful and safe for all. There are so many heartbreaking stories of our LGBTIQ siblings.
“Some have been badly hurt by us as a church community. Others we have failed completely, to the point of suicide, because of prejudice, ignorance and fear, and worse still, in God’s name.
“Tonight, with Pope Francis’ encouragement, in the name of God, we apologise for religious LGBTIQ-phobia, and we pledge to work towards healing and reconciliation in this Year of Mercy.”
One of the stories shared at the liturgy of apology was of a gay man who attempted suicided after he was forced to undergo gay conversion programs promoted by the church…
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Who is advising - Whom on gender theory? And Why? Check credentials, background and political biases. Is there a connection between Pope Benedict XVI (Dec. 2008) and Pope Francis being advised by the same?
Separating the ongoing dialogue between - Science and Religion does not equal truth and without truth there is no love! “Any breach in this dialogue comes only at an enormous price to human development…”
Pope Benedict XVI - wrote 2007 - curia published 2009 http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate.html
Pediatricians back Pope Francis on ‘gender theory’ - August 9, 2016
…A paper released this past week by the American College of Pediatricians on gender dysphoria (GD) in children-a psychological condition in which children experience a marked incongruence between their experienced gender and their biological sex-suggests that Pope Francis was fundamentally correct in his criticism of gender theory...
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Pedia-trick-cians - May 20, 2016
It was an official-sounding but fringe group of politically motivated pediatricians who issued a statement on gender, NOT the respected American Academy of Pediatrics.
On 16 May 2016, talk show host Glenn Beck published the tweet reproduced above, reporting that a pediatricians' group had said that promoting or tolerating gender dysphoria (i.e., the condition of feeling one's emotional and psychological identity as male or female to be opposite of one's biological sex) in children constitutes "child abuse." Beck's tweet led many viewers to believe that the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) had taken that stance on childhood gender dysphoria, but the tweet linked to an article containing quotes from the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) NOT the AAP:..
The APA's position is that gender dysphoria is "not in itself a mental disorder," and that children are a demographic group at risk for compromised clinical care. A part of ACPeds' citation that bordered on deceptive was the fact that the American Psychiatric Association's fact sheet discussed changes to diagnostic criteria implemented around 2013, but ACPeds went on to cite studies that were typically more than a decade old and in direct conflict with medical science directives issued several years (and several studies) later.
A September 2015 presentation from the American Academy of Pediatrics notes that treatment recommendations are based on the best available evidence. Their guidance defined three approaches to gender dysphoria in children: "corrective," "supporting," and "affirming," with the AAP advising the "affirming" approach to gender dysphoria in children:
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Meet the Anti-LGBT Hate Group that Filed an Amicus Brief with the Alabama Supreme Court - November 13, 2015
The American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) is an anti-LGBT h a t e group founded in 2002. It bills itself as “a national organization of pediatricians and other healthcare professionals dedicated to the health and well-being of children.”
Like other organizations, ACPeds involves itself in judicial matters, and files amicus briefs with various courts in support of or in opposition to various cases.
What its website will not tell you is that this fringe organization, under the veneer of its professional-sounding name and claims, works to defame and discredit LGBT people, often by distorting legitimate research. It consists of around 200 members and started because a small group of anti-LGBT physicians and other healthcare professionals broke away from the 60,000 member American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), composed of leaders in the professional field, to form its own group after the AAP issued a new policy statement in 2002 in support of adoption and foster parenting by same-sex couples.
ACPeds has a history of propagating damaging falsehoods about LGBT people, including linking homosexuality to pedophilia, and claiming that LGBT people are more promiscuous than heterosexuals, and that LGBT people are a danger to children.
In 2010, for example, ACPeds mailed a letter to over 14,000 school district superintendents pushing so-called “ex-gay” therapy and making other false claims about LGBT people in its “Facts About Youth” campaign, which brought a scathing response from a researcher whose work the group had distorted. That wasn’t the first time ACPeds had been called out for distorting legitimate research, but clearly, if the brief they filed is any indication, the lesson didn’t take…
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POPE JOHN PAUL II
Letter to Father George V. Coyne, Director of the Vatican Observatory (June 1, 1988) | John Paul II
…By encouraging openness between the Church and the scientific communities, we are N O T envisioning a disciplinary unity between theology and science like that which exists within a given scientific field or within theology proper. As dialogue and common searching continue, there will be grow towards mutual understanding and a gradual uncovering of common concerns which will provide the basis for further research and discussion. Exactly what form that will take must be left to the future. What is important, as we have already stressed, is that the dialogue should continue and grow in depth and scope. In the process we must overcome every regressive tendency to a unilateral reductionism, to fear, and to self-imposed isolation. What is critically important is that each discipline should continue to enrich, nourish and challenge the other to be more fully what it can be and to contribute to our vision of who we are and who we are becoming…
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.
For the truth of the matter is that the Church and the scientific community will inevitably interact; their options do not include isolation.
BENEDICT XVI - 2009
3. Through this close link with truth, charity can be recognized as an authentic expression of humanity and as an element of fundamental importance in human relations, including those of a public nature. Only in truth does charity shine forth, only in truth can charity be authentically lived. Truth is the light that gives meaning and value to charity. That light is both the light of reason and the light of faith, through which the intellect attains to the natural and supernatural truth of charity: it grasps its meaning as gift, acceptance, and communion. Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality. Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way. In a culture without truth, this is the fatal risk facing love. It falls prey to contingent subjective emotions and opinions, the word “love” is abused and distorted, to the point where it comes to mean the opposite. Truth frees charity from the constraints of an emotionalism that deprives it of relational and social content, and of a fideism that deprives it of human and universal breathing-space. In the truth, charity reflects the personal yet public dimension of faith in the God of the Bible, who is both Agápe and Lógos: Charity and Truth, Love and Word.
4. Because it is filled with truth, charity can be understood in the abundance of its values, it can be shared and communicated. Truth, in fact, is lógos which creates diá-logos, and hence communication and communion. Truth, by enabling men and women to let go of their subjective opinions and impressions, allows them to move beyond cultural and historical limitations and to come together in the assessment of the value and substance of things. Truth opens and unites our minds in the lógos of love: this is the Christian proclamation and testimony of charity. In the present social and cultural context, where there is a widespread tendency to relativize truth, practising charity in truth helps people to understand that adhering to the values of Christianity is not merely useful but essential for building a good society and for true integral human development. A Christianity of charity without truth would be more or less interchangeable with a pool of good sentiments, helpful for social cohesion, but of little relevance. In other words, there would no longer be any real place for God in the world. Without truth, charity is confined to a narrow field devoid of relations. It is excluded from the plans and processes of promoting human development of universal range, in dialogue between knowledge and praxis…
Reason always stands in need of being purified by faith: this also holds true for political reason, which must not consider itself omnipotent. For its part, religion always needs to be purified by reason in order to show its authentically human face. Any breach in this dialogue comes only at an enormous price to human development…
American Academy of Pediatrics Opposes Legislation that Discriminates Against Transgender Children
North Carolina's HB2 and similar bills across the country harm transgender youth
Why the American Academy of Pediatrics opposes North Carolina’s transgender “bathroom law”
Claire McCarthy, MD, Faculty Editor, Harvard Health Publications - April 26, 2016
We’ve been hearing a lot about the North Carolina law that says that transgender people who haven’t taken surgical or legal steps to change the gender on their birth certificate can’t use the public restroom of the gender with which they identify. It has caused a firestorm — and has even led to companies like PayPal and Deutsche Bank cancelling plans for expansion in the state, and many entertainers cancelling appearances there.
One group that has come out squarely against the law is the American Academy of Pediatrics, a nonprofit organization representing 64,000 pediatricians across the United States. Their reason is very simple: discrimination against transgender youth can cause real harm.
No matter what anyone believes or feels about being transgender, the fact is that there are many adolescents who clearly identify as transgender — that is, they feel very strongly that the gender on their birth certificate is the wrong one. For these adolescents, and for their families, this is as true about them as the color of their eyes or skin — and just as unchangeable.
It’s also a fact that for any adolescent, being bullied and feeling unsupported leads to mental health problems. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) adolescents are not only often bullied or unsupported, they are often victims of violence. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), studies show that as many as a quarter of LGBT adolescents have been threatened or hurt with a weapon on school property. These adolescents have a high risk of depression and suicide, about twice that of their heterosexual peers; among transgender adolescents, in particular, the risk of depression and suicide appears to be even higher. LGBT adolescents, when rejected by their family, often find themselves homeless; a 2012 study found that 40% of homeless adolescents were LGBT…
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American College of Pediatricians
The American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) is a small, socially conservative advocacy group of pediatricians and other healthcare professionals in the United States.
The group was founded in 2002 by a group of pediatricians, including Joseph Zanga, a past president of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), as a protest against the AAP's support for adoption by gay couples. The group's membership has been estimated at between 60 and 200 members, in contrast to the AAP's over 60,000 members…
Criticism
Some scientists have voiced concerns that ACPeds mischaracterized or misused their work to advance its political agenda. Gary Remafedi, a pediatrician at the University of Minnesota, wrote ACPeds a public letter accusing them of fundamentally mischaracterizing his research in their publications to argue that schools should deny support to gay teenagers. Francis Collins, a geneticist and director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), issued a statement through the NIH accusing the ACPeds of misleading children and parents on its Facts About Youth website. Warren Throckmorton, a therapist who specializes in sexual orientation issues, similarly stated that his research had been misused, saying of ACPeds: "They say they're impartial and not motivated by political or religious concerns, but if you look at who they're affiliated with and how they're using the research, that's just obviously not true.”
In an amicus brief regarding the removal of a child from the foster home of a same sex couple (Kutil and Hess v West Virginia) the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) described ACPeds as a "small and marginal group" which was "out of step with the research-based position of the AAP and other medical and child welfare authorities.” The LGBT advocacy organization, PFLAG, categorizes the ACPeds as an anti-equality organization, describing the group as a "small splinter group of medical professionals who do not support the mainstream view of the American Academy of Pediatricians (AAP) that homosexuality is a normal aspect of human diversity."[16]
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has said that ACPeds is a "hate group" that closely collaborates with the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), and described ACPeds as a "fringe group" with "a history of propagating damaging falsehoods about LGBT people, including linking homosexuality to pedophilia".[10][11] In response to an ACPeds brief, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) wrote that ACPeds is a fringe group that has acted to promote "unscientific and harmful 'reparative therapies' for LGBTQ students.”…
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Southern Poverty Law Center
…While it originally focused on damages done by the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups, given the decline in such groups, over the years the SPLC has become involved in other civil rights causes, among them, cases concerned with institutional racial segregation and discrimination, discrimination based on sexual orientation, the mistreatment of illegal immigrants, and the separation of church and state…
THE SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER
History
The SPLC was founded in 1971 to ensure that the promise of the civil rights movement became a reality for all.
By the late 1960s, the civil rights movement had ushered in the promise of racial equality as new federal laws and decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court ended Jim Crow segregation. But resistance was strong, and these laws had not yet brought the fundamental changes needed in the South.
African Americans were still excluded from good jobs, decent housing, public office, a quality education and a range of other opportunities. There were few places for the disenfranchised and the poor to turn for justice. Enthusiasm for the civil rights movement had waned, and few lawyers in the South were willing to take controversial cases to test new civil rights laws.
Alabama lawyer and businessman Morris Dees sympathized with the plight of the poor and the powerless. The son of an Alabama farmer, he had witnessed firsthand the devastating consequences of bigotry and racial injustice. Dees decided to sell his successful book publishing business to start a civil rights law practice that would provide a voice for the disenfranchised.
“I had made up my mind,” Dees wrote in his autobiography, A Season for Justice. “I would sell the company as soon as possible and specialize in civil rights law. All the things in my life that had brought me to this point, all the pulls and tugs of my conscience, found a singular peace. It did not matter what my neighbors would think, or the judges, the bankers, or even my relatives.”
His decision led to the founding of the Southern Poverty Law Center…
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AMERICAN COLLEGE OF PEDIATRICIANS DEFAMES GAYS AND LESBIANS IN THE NAME OF PROTECTING CHILDREN
March 1, 2012
Along with NARTH, a deceptively named pediatricians’ group is a second primary source used vilify gay people.
The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) is not the only game in town when it comes to providing “scientific” support for anti-gay groups. The American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) has done as much to defame gays and lesbians, all in the name of protecting children.
A professional organization for socially conservative pediatricians and healthcare professionals, the group has taken a number of hard-line positions when it comes to LGBT rights, advocating for a prohibition against adoption rights for same-sex couples and also offering high praise for reparative therapy.
Like NARTH, ACPeds was born from an ideological split within a profession. It was founded in 2002 as a protest against the much larger American Academy of Pediatrics’ support for LGBT adoption rights — and that opposition remains central to the group’s identity.
ACPeds is believed to have no more than 200 members, a tiny fraction of the nearly 60,000 professionals who belong to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
But thanks to its deceptive name — which makes it sound as if it is the mainstream professional organization for pediatricians — ACPeds often serves as a supposedly scientific source for groups pushing utter falsehoods about LGBT people.
A prime example of that came on Nov. 29, 2010, when Family Research Council President Tony Perkins cited it on MSNBC’s “Hardball With Chris Matthews” to “prove” that “the research is overwhelming that homosexuality poses a danger to children.” Perkins, who was debating Intelligence Report Editor Mark Potok at the time, was referring to bogus claims that gay men molest children at far higher rates than others. The truth, as the American Psychological Association says in an official statement, is that “homosexual men are not more likely to sexually abuse children than heterosexual men are.”… Photo
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THE SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER
American Psychiatric Association
The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is the main professional organization of psychiatrists and trainee psychiatrists in the United States, and the largest psychiatric organization in the world. Its some 36,000 members are mainly American but some are international. The association publishes various journals and pamphlets, as well as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The DSM codifies psychiatric conditions and is used worldwide as a guide for diagnosing disorders…
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American Psychiatric Association
What is Gender Dysphoria
Gender dysphoria involves a conflict between a person's physical or assigned gender and the gender with which he/she/they identify. People with gender dysphoria may be very uncomfortable with the gender they were assigned, sometimes described as being uncomfortable with their body (particularly developments during puberty) or being uncomfortable with the expected roles of their assigned gender.
People with gender dysphoria may often experience significant distress and/or problems functioning associated with this conflict between the way they feel and think of themselves (referred to as experienced or expressed gender) and their physical or assigned gender.
The gender conflict affects people in different ways. It can change the way a person wants to express their gender and can influence behavior, dress and self-image. Some people may cross-dress, some may want to socially transition, others may want to medically transition with sex-change surgery and/or hormone treatment. Socially transitioning primarily involves transitioning into the affirmed gender’s pronouns and bathrooms.
People with gender dysphoria may allow themselves to express their true selves and may openly want to be affirmed in their gender identity. They may use clothes and hairstyles and adopt a new first name of their experienced gender. Similarly children with gender dysphoria may express the wish to be of the opposite gender and may assert they are (or will grow up to be) of the opposite gender. They prefer, or demand, clothing, hairstyles and to be called a name of the opposite gender. (Medical transition is only relevant at and after the onset of puberty.)
Gender dysphoria is not the same as gender nonconformity, which refers to behaviors not matching the gender norms or stereotypes of the gender assigned at birth. Examples of gender nonconformity (also referred to as gender expansiveness or gender creativity) include “tomboyism” in girls or occasional cross-dressing in adult men. Gender nonconformity is not a mental disorder. Gender dysphoria is also not the same being gay/lesbian…
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Help With Gender Dysphoria
American Psychiatric Association
Hate Group Masquerading As Pediatricians Attacks Transgender Youth - March 22, 2016
The American College of Pediatricians (ACP), which utilizes the totally convincing slogan “Best for Children,” has issued a new position statement claiming that respecting transgender children’s identities causes them harm and conservative groups are already latching onto it.
If the claim sounds peculiar, it’s because it’s a claim completely refuted by all available scientific evidence. It’s also because the ACP is not a legitimate medical organization; its name is designed to be mistaken for the American Academy of Pediatrics, which is a national organization with some 60,000 members. The ACP, by contrast, is estimated to have no more than 200 members, and it has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its anti-LGBT positions.
“The American College of Pediatricians urges educators and legislators to reject all policies that condition children to accept as normal a life of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex,” the statement reads. “Facts — not ideology — determine reality.” The “facts” that follow actually reflect a social conservative ideology that rejects the very reality of what transgender children experience.
For example, the statement not-so-subtly concludes that all transgender people must be mentally ill. “A person’s belief that he or she is something they are not is, at best, a sign of confused thinking,” the statement reads. “When an otherwise healthy biological boy believes he is a girl, or an otherwise healthy biological girl believes she is a boy, an objective psychological problem exists that lies in the mind not the body, and it should be treated as such.”
The 36,000-member American Psychiatric Association, which defines mental illnesses through its Diagnostics and Statistics Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), says the exact opposite, explaining, “It is important to note that gender nonconformity is NOT in itself a mental disorder.” It is only distress associated with such an identity that should be treated — and treated with affirmation.
The statement also relies on several myths about transgender people that have been debunked. For example, it reiterates the desistance myth, the claim that most “gender confused” children “eventually accept their biological sex after naturally passing through puberty.” This is a claim based on research that conflated children with some gender-variant behavior with children who actually asserted a different gender. The children in those studies who “desisted” in their identities were the kids who weren’t actually transgender to begin with. A recent study found that trans kids whose parents embrace their identities are as happy and healthy as their peers…
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American Academy of Pediatrics
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Health and Wellness
Caring for LGBT children and youth - AAP resources
Caring for children of LGBT parents - AAP resources
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employed a male prostitute - Rentboy.com
Family Research Council
National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH)
Conversion therapy
Conversion therapy is psychological treatment or spiritual counseling designed to change a person's sexual orientation from homosexual or bisexual to heterosexual. Such treatments are controversial and have been criticized as a form of pseudoscience. Medical, scientific, and government organizations in the United States and Britain have expressed concern over conversion therapy and consider it potentially harmful.The American Psychiatric Association opposes psychiatric treatment "based upon the assumption that homosexuality per se is a mental disorder or based upon the a priori assumption that a patient should change his/her sexual homosexual orientation"[8] and describes attempts to change sexual orientation by practitioners as unethical.[6] It also states that debates over the integration of gay and lesbian people have obscured science "by calling into question the motives and even the character of individuals on both sides of the issue" and that the advancement of conversion therapy may cause social harm by disseminating unscientific views about sexual orientation. United States Surgeon General David Satcher in 2001 issued a report stating that "there is no valid scientific evidence that sexual orientation can be changed".The highest-profile advocates of conversion therapy today tend to be fundamentalist Christian groups and other organizations which use a religious justification for the therapy rather than speaking of homosexuality as "a disease".[4] The main organization advocating secular forms of conversion therapy is the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), which often partners with religious groups.….
Techniques used in conversion therapy prior to 1981 in the United States and Western Europe included ice-pick lobotomies and chemical castration with hormonal treatment, aversive treatments, such as "the application of electric shock to the hands and/or genitals," and "nausea-inducing drugs...administered simultaneously with the presentation of homoerotic stimuli," and masturbatory reconditioning. More recent clinical techniques used in the United States have been limited to counseling, visualization, social skills training, psychoanalytic therapy, and spiritual interventions such as "prayer and group support and pressure," though there are some reports of aversive treatments through unlicensed practice as late as the 1990s. The term reparative therapy has been used as a synonym for conversion therapy in general, but it has been argued that strictly speaking it refers to a specific kind of therapy associated with Elizabeth Moberly and Joseph Nicolosi…
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Kirk Andrew Murphy
What Are Little Boys Made Of?
An investigation of an experimental program to train boys to be boys. - June 7, 2011
Kirk Andrew Murphy - childhood gender issues - George Alan Rekers therapist - beatings - suicide
Reporters find tragic story amid embarrassing scandal - June 10, 2011
New York (CNN) -- The story about Kirk Murphy's suicide began to come to light last year with an anonymous tip: Anti-gay rights activist George Alan Rekers was traveling to Europe with a male escort.
The tip came from one of the escort's acquaintances. We were skeptical, and the tipster answered our skepticism with screenshots of the e-mails Rekers had exchanged with his 20-year-old companion, whom he'd met at Rentboy.com. We used the screenshots to deduce the approximate time of the pair's return to the United States, and set off to take a picture…
Therapy to change 'feminine' boy created a troubled man, family says - June 10, 2011
Los Angeles (CNN) -- Kirk Andrew Murphy seemed to have everything to live for.
He put himself through school. He had a successful 8-year career in the Air Force. After the service, he landed a high profile position with an American finance company in India.
But in 2003 at age 38, Kirk Murphy took his own life.
A co-worker found him hanging from the fan of his apartment in New Delhi. His family has struggled for years to understand what happened…
Wanting a 'normal life'
Kirk Murphy was a bright 5-year-old boy, growing up near Los Angeles in the 1970s. He was the middle child, with big brother Mark, 8, and little sister Maris, just a baby at 9 months. Their mother, Kaytee Murphy, remembers Kirk's kind nature, "He was just very intelligent, and a sweet, sweet, child." But she was also worried.
"Well, I was becoming a little concerned, I guess, when he was playing with dolls and stuff," she said. "Playing with the girls' toys, and probably picking up little effeminate, well, like stroking the hair, the long hair and stuff. It just bothered me that maybe he was picking up maybe too many feminine traits." She said it bothered her because she wanted Kirk to grow up and have "a normal life.”…
…Kaytee Murphy took Kirk to UCLA, where he was treated largely by George A. Rekers, a doctoral student at the time.
In Rekers' study documenting his experimental therapy (PDF), he writes about a boy he calls "Kraig." Another UCLA gender researcher confirmed that "Kraig" was a pseudonym for Kirk.
The study, later published in an academic journal, concludes that after therapy, "Kraig's" feminine behavior was gone and he became "indistinguishable from any other boy."
"Kraig, I think, certainly was Rekers' poster boy for what Rekers was espousing for young children," said Jim Burroway, a writer and researcher who has studied Rekers' work…
According to the case study, Kaytee Murphy was told to ignore her son when he played with feminine toys and compliment him when he played with masculine toys.
"They pretty much told him he wasn't right the way that he was, but they never really explained it to him what the issue was. They did it through play," Maris said…
…At home, the punishment for feminine behavior would become more severe. The therapists instructed Kirk's parents to use poker chips as a system of rewards and punishments.
According to Rekers' case study, blue chips were given for masculine behavior and would bring rewards, such as candy. But the red chips, given for effeminate behavior, resulted in "physical punishment by spanking from the father."
Mark said he was told to participate in the chip reward-and-punishment system as a way to make Kirk feel like the system was OK.
The family said the spankings were severe. Maris remembers "lots of belt incidents." She escaped the screaming by going to her bed to "lay in the room with my pillow on my head." Later, she would go to Kirk's bedroom and "lay down and hug him and we would just lay there, and the thing that I remember is that he never even showed anger. He was just numb.”…
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The ‘Sissy Boy’ Experiment: Why Gender-Related Cases Call for Scientists’ Humility - June 6, 2011
Some of the most harrowing cases of psychological and medical malpractice involve attempts to change a child’s gender or sexual identity. Not only have such misguided “therapies” often resulted in patients’ suicides, but they also repeatedly appear to foster scientific misconduct.
In back-to-back shows on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper is exploring the tragic case history of Kirk Andrew Murphy. His story has been cited as evidence that the use of punitive behavioral therapy can prevent “sissy boys” from growing up gay. But Murphy’s family believes such “therapy” ultimately led to his suicide.
As a child, Murphy preferred playing with dolls and engaging in other stereotypically “girly” activities. Concerned that he was not “normal,” his mother took him to a young doctoral student at University of California-Los Angeles named George Rekers, who claimed to be able to prevent such boys from becoming gay.
If Rekers’ name sounds familiar, it may be because he has long crusaded against homosexuality as a founder of the conservative Family Research Council. It may also be because in 2010, he was photographed in the company of a male prostitute, Jo-Vanni Roman, whom he hired from Rentboy.com to accompany him on vacation. (Rekers continues to deny that he is gay or that he was sexually involved with Roman; Roman says otherwise.)…
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Science + Faith = Truth = L O V E
“Coming Out” - March 1997 - Gay Catholic Priest/Pastor
For Protection of Children From
Lifelong Harmful Effects
Caused by Lethally Inhuman Influence
of
U n s u b s t a n t i a t e d
Antigay Social and Religious Norms
Complete Void of Ongoing Dialogue With Science Searching for Truth (per: John Paul II & Benedict XVI)
Forcing Children
To Never Ever Fall In
L O V E
- - - Ella Fitzgerald - But Not For Me - - -
As
Displayed and Promoted
by
The Antigay Fundamentalists - Who Are The Majority of The Members of
The Curia and Hierarchy
i.e.
Burke, Gądecki, Chaput, Sarah, Muller, etc., etc., etc.,
Holy Family Parish, Sparta, Michigan, USA
Fr. Marty Kurylowicz
No Highway In the Sky
James Stewart, Marlene Dietrich, Glynis Johns,
No Highway In the Sky
...I say this in no way to protect myself - because the issue is not about me it is about truth and children - all children globally. The only thing I can be accused of - is resisting risking my life - in standing up for children, by “coming out.” And isn't that the very core of what it means to be a priest that we willingly sacrifice our lives for others, most especially for children! Or did you become a priest so that you could wear a dress! I willingly admit - I tried to get out of what I knew I had to do, however, now - it has been passed on to you.
I will explain, as I have written to many US politicians, how I handled this situation:
WELL-INFORMED CONSCIENCE
Protect Religious Freedom - but not
Tyranny in Religion
June 20, 2011
The way to begin for us all, not only the NY State Senators, to protect Religious Freedom and not Tyranny in Religion is by obtaining a well-informed conscience. We start by individually approaching and studying in great detail, because it involves the lives of children, from the best and the brightest (1) scripture scholars regarding the references related to homosexuality and (2) scientists in the field of study of human sexuality, in particular, but [not] limited to, the onset of sexual orientation. The prerequisite to the formation of a well-informed conscience is making a thorough study of all sides of the issue from all available authoritative data and research, including opposing views. Then in this way we are better equipped to decide who and what needs government protection in regards to the gay marriage bill. This exhaustive procedure follows to the letter the Gospel quotation about the “plank” and the” speck.”
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 6:42
The “plank” for us is ignorance. If we satisfactorily resolve this ignorance, then together we will be able to see more clearly, whether or not, as NY State Senators (government officials) and as citizens we are colluding with the Catholic Hierarchy and are harming children, as was found to be the case in the Ireland Murphy Report.
…This piece of legislation the gay marriage bill is not like any other in that it involves the well-being of children, at its very root…
How I resolved this situation was through hours upon hours of continuous prayer. Afterwards, I came to the realization that my life had already been altered – changed forever. Because there was no way I could pretend I did not know what I knew, how severely children are harmed for life by the Vatican unsubstantiated antigay teachings and antigay social norms. I decided that I could not live with the regret knowing that I had a chance to make a profound difference for the better for others, most especially children and that I did nothing. My life would be nothing. I took the bungee jump and I came out to my parishioners. It definitely was not easy, but one thing that happened to me is - I gained a real sense of peace and well-being that has remained constant and unshaken. The scripture passages that kept repeating over and over in my head were:
For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.
Matthew 16:25
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What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self?
Luke 9:25
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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
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…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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Written by
Fr Marty Kurylowicz
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Read more:
"FRUIT BOWL" - Vatican City - - - Synod 2015 - Burke’s Violence Against Gay People - “You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” - - - Apostolic Exhortation — KIDS ARE BEING HURT!!! THURSDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2015
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Except for a small "untouchable" group of scientists and members of the hierarchy commissioned by Pope John Paul II who studied the science and theology on homosexuality during his papacy, until his death in 2005: the Roman curia or hierarchy has had absolutely - no dialogue with science regarding homosexuality - since 1957, when Dr. Evelyn Hooker’s empirical groundbreaking research was completed - dispelling the widespread belief that homosexuality was a mental illness, as fiercely promoted by US Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. McCarthy's national terrorizing witch-hunt for homosexuals in the US government - needlessly was destroying 10s of 1000s careers and lives of innocent people (http://abcnews.go.com/Health/lavender-scare-us-fired-thousands-gays-infamous-chapter/story?id=15848947). Dr. Hooker’s research found “…that homosexuality is N O T a mental disorder, as there was no detectable difference between homosexual and heterosexual men in terms of mental adjustment…(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Hooker).” Instead, for the past 6 decades - the curia and hierarchy have obsessively and ruthlessly silenced and removed anyone who openly discussed the emerging science homosexuality - - - that was until Pope Francis emphatically insisted on continuous open dialogue at the Synod on Family 2014.
Synod draft furthers ‘welcoming’ tone towards gay people from Pope Francis - October 14, 2014
A year ago, Pope Francis stunned the world by talking about gay men and lesbians and their relationships with the church with unheard-of compassion, respect and openness. But those were just the musings of a new pontiff in a magazine interview. Not the stuff of church policy. That’s why what was said about gay people in the first draft of the document on family by the Synod of Bishops gathering in Rome is being called “an earthquake.”
One sentence — “Homosexuals have gifts and qualities to offer to the Christian community” — sets the tone from a church hierarchy known for its harsh and negative judgment of gay men and lesbians. There were nods to unions between committed same-sex couples and the children in families with same-sex parents, even though they make a point of saying such unions “cannot be considered on the same footing as matrimony between man and woman.” I found interesting the use of “sexual orientation” instead of the sneering “sexual preference” favored by many of faith who firmly and falsely believe that being gay is a choice. What was more startling about the Synod draft was the word not used at all in relation to homosexuals or homosexuality: sin.
Welcoming homosexual persons
50. Homosexuals have gifts and qualities to offer to the Christian community: are we capable of welcoming these people, guaranteeing to them a fraternal space in our communities? Often they wish to encounter a Church that offers them a welcoming home. Are our communities capable of providing that, accepting and valuing their sexual orientation, without compromising Catholic doctrine on the family and matrimony?
51. The question of homosexuality leads to a serious reflection on how to elaborate realistic paths of affective growth and human and evangelical maturity integrating the sexual dimension: it appears therefore as an important educative challenge. The Church furthermore affirms that unions between people of the same sex cannot be considered on the same footing as matrimony between man and woman. Nor is it acceptable that pressure be brought to bear on pastors or that international bodies make financial aid dependent on the introduction of regulations inspired by gender ideology.
52. Without denying the moral problems connected to 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…
Read more
Prime Minister of Canada
Justin Trudeau to apologize for historic persecution of gay Canadians - August 12, 2016
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Pope Francis
Pope Francis - “f u n d a m e n t a l i s m
is an illness that is in all religions” November 30, 2015
We are all children of God, we have the same father. And in this sense one must make a politics of unity, or reconciliation, and – though I do not like the word, but I must use it –tolerance. So, fundamentalism is an illness that is in all religions.
We Catholics have them, not a few but many, who think they have the absolute truth, and they go ahead throwing mud on others with calumny, defamation, and they do harm. I can say this because it is my church: also we, and we all. One must fight, because religious fundamentalism is not religious. Why? Because it lacks God. It is idolatry, just as money is idolatry. To do politics in the sense of convincing the people that have this tendency is a politics that we religious leaders must do. But fundamentalism that always ends in a tragedy or in crimes is a bad thing, but a piece of it comes in all religions…
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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,
‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’
when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?
You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye,
and then you will see clearly
to remove the speck from
your brother’s eye.
Matthew 7:3-5
ANTIGAY FUNDAMENTALISTS and
GAY PORNOGRAPHY
WHAT P L A N K ?
IN WHOSE E Y E ?
Is Homophobia Associated With Homosexual Arousal? 1996
…The results of this study indicate that individuals who score in the homophobic range and admit negative affect toward homosexuality demonstrate significant sexual arousal to male homosexual erotic stimuli…
PARENTING AND HOMOPHOBIA
Parental Autonomy Support and Discrepancies Between Implicit and Explicit Sexual Identities: Dynamics of Self-Acceptance and Defense - 2012
When individuals grow up with autonomy-thwarting parents, they may be prevented from exploring internally endorsed values and identities and as a result shut out aspects of the self perceived to be unacceptable. Given the stigmatization of homosexuality, individuals perceiving low autonomy support from parents may be especially motivated to conceal same-sex sexual attraction, leading to defensive processes such as reaction formation…
…Psychodynamic traditions hold that people have a preferred view of themselves, which may not reflect reality. When this idealized view is threatened by contradictory thoughts or feelings, people engage in one or more unconscious processes to defend against the threat to self. Among defensive processes that have been recognized as having some empirical support is reaction formation, a process indicated in the modern body of research on self-esteem preservation (e.g., Baumeister, Dale, & Sommer, 1998).
Reaction formation refers to the process of adopting values or beliefs, or engaging in behaviors, that are in opposition to feelings or impulses experienced within oneself that are deemed unacceptable. Empirical work has shown reaction formation processes with respect to sexism (Sherman & Garkin, 1980), sex guilt (Morokoff, 1985), and prejudice (Dutton & Lake, 1973), indicating that individuals sometimes defend against self-relevant, threatening information by engaging in opposing behaviors…
The Eyes Have It: Sex and Sexual Orientation Differences in Pupil Dilation Patterns - August 3. 2012
…pupil dilation to stimuli indicates activation of the autonomic nervous system. This system is associated with many automatic processes such as perspiration, digestion, blood pressure, and heart rate. For this reason, pupil dilation has been used as indicator of automatic response, for example, in studies of implicit reaction and cognitive load. Other research suggests that pupil dilation can reflect automatic attention, or attention that is likely not in the conscious control of participants. It is therefore unlikely that participants suppress pupil dilation to stimuli they are sexually attracted to. Pupil dilation patterns could therefore reflect, with high sensitivity, automatic attention related to sexual attraction and sexual orientation… Photo
17 Antigay Leaders Exposed as Gay or Bi - January 27, 2016
The internet was buzzing in January when an editor at a gay website in Virginia wrote that he'd encountered an antigay Republican lawmaker while on Grindr, without naming the person. Not every antigay crackpot is actually gay, but there's no shortage of those who actually are. Here are some hypocrites who just couldn't practice what they preached…
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Given Uganda's homophobia, why does it lead the way in Googling gay porn? - 10 January 2014 - Is there a connection, then, between homophobia and suppressed homosexuality, along the lines of "me thinks he protesteth too much"? Is it that homosexual desires, when shut out because of some sense of shame, can easily express themselves as a form of homophobia? When the US conservative evangelical pastor Ted Haggard, well known for his anti-gay preaching, was discovered to have been paying a masseur for gay sex, he explained that "I think I was partially so vehement because of my own war". Freud coined the description "reaction-formation", in which anxiety-generating feelings are masked by an exaggerated reaction in the opposite direction. There is some experimental evidence to back this up, with one study showing that 20% of those who self-described as "highly straight" indicated some level of same-sex attraction. This discrepancy is often put down to highly controlling parents who do not allow their children room to explore their sexual identity.
Yes, of course, there are many people who do not experience same-sex attraction who are anti-gay. But one of the features of reaction-formation is its paranoia and lack of proportion. And this is precisely what the scaremongering nonsense about gay people being out to get our children – a common line in the Ugandan debate – clearly demonstrates. In conservative religious environments where God is depicted as a powerful all-controlling parent, it makes sense to me that this reaction-formation will be particularly strong… Photo
GAY ADULT PORNOGRAPHY - and - SEXUAL REPRESSED HOMOSEXUALS & BISEXUALS
- | - RC’s Curia and Hierarchy Violent Reaction Formation - “The Machine of The Slime” and Antigay Crusade Continues - Exploiting Pope Benedict XVI - - - - KIDS ARE BEING HURT!!! - FRIDAY, APRIL 29, 2016
Web Porn Searches Mock Anti-Gay Laws in Muslim World and Africa - March 28, 2013
Web users are defying legal bans on homosexuality to enjoy an array of gay pornography on their computers in countries where same-sex relations are prohibited.
Sex searches compiled by country reveal appetites for gay activity in African countries where homosexuals are stigmatised and hounded by the law.
In Iran, gay porn searches litter the top of the XXX search charts.
Porn searches in some countries revealed startling gaps between public social attitudes and private tastes, according to figures by PornMD.
In Kenya, homosexuality is a crime and an overwhelming 96 percent of Kenyans think it is unacceptable. Yet the second most popular search in the country was "gay monster cock".
Nigeria has similar homophobic attitudes woven in to its criminal justice system. However, web users there sought out "gay South African" on their computers and made it the fourth most popular search…
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Pakistan internet users top Google searches for gay sex despite being one of the world's most homophobic countries - 5 June 2013
Pakistan has the highest volume of internet searches for gay pornography despite being one of the least tolerant countries when it comes to homosexuality.
The most searches for terms related to same-sex acts came from a conservative stronghold, the city of Peshawar, rather than major cosmopolitan cities such as Lahore and Karachi, according to analysis of Google trends by Mother Jones…
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Above excerpts taken from:
FRIDAY, JUNE 3, 2016
M O R A L - R E A L I S M - - D é j à _V u -
V i o l e n c e Disguised As T R U T H - 1986 - 1997 - 2012 - 2014 - 2015
- Only in truth does charity shine forth, only in truth can charity be authentically lived - Benedict XVI
- Welcoming gay people - Synod 2014 & 2015 - Where was the truth??? Where was the dialogue??? There was no love!!!
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Below excerpts taken from:
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 29, 2016
POPE FRANCIS - WE Christians must
A P O L O G I Z E to GAY PEOPLE for marginalizing them - June 26, 2016
ANTIGAY FUNDAMENTALISM - ISIS & Curia-Hierarchy - Gay Massacre Orlando ISIS - Deadliest Mass Shooting U.S. History - June 12, 2016
New Hope -> Cardinal Reinhard Marx - Church M U S T apologise to GAY PEOPLE, pope’s adviser declares - June 24, 2016
Cardinal Marx: Wants the Church to do M O R E than apologize to GAY people - - - Society must create structures to respect gay rights
June 28, 2016
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Pulse nightclub massacre - June 12, 2016
Officially, 49 people were killed by Mateen in the massacre that began around 2 a.m. Sunday. Another 53 were wounded. Six remained in critical condition Tuesday. Officials say some of the gravely wounded may die...
Patients were being dropped off "in truckloads and ambulance-loads," one hospital nurse said. Photo
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Christians should apologize for helping to marginalize gays, pope says - June 26, 2016
…Spending close to an hour answering questions from reporters traveling with him, Pope Francis was asked to comment on remarks reportedly made a few days previously by Cardinal Reinhard Marx, president of the German bishops' conference, that the Catholic Church must apologize to gay people for contributing to their marginalization.
At the mention of the massacre in early June at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, Pope Francis closed his eyes as if in pain and shook his head in dismay.
"The church must say it is sorry for not having behaved as it should many times, many times -- when I say the 'church,' I mean we Christians because the church is holy; we are the sinners," the pope said. "We Christians must say we are sorry."
Changing what he had said in the past to the plural "we," Pope Francis said that a gay person, "who has good will and is seeking God, who are we to judge him?"
The Catechism of the Catholic Church is clear, he said. "They must not be discriminated against. They must be respected, pastorally accompanied.”… Photo
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Pope says Christians should apologize to gay people - June 26, 2016
Pope Francis said Sunday that Christians should apologize to people who have been offended or exploited by the church, including gays and lesbians, in remarks that have quickly been hailed as historic.
"I repeat what the Catechism of the Catholic Church says: that they must not be discriminated against, that they must be respected and accompanied pastorally,”…
…”I believe that the church not only should apologize to the person who is gay whom it has offended," he added, "but has to apologize to the poor, to exploited women, to children exploited for labor; it has to ask forgiveness for having blessed many weapons."
The Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and editor at large of America magazine, called the Pope's apology to gays and lesbians "a groundbreaking moment."
"While St. John Paul II apologized to several groups in 2000 -- the Jewish people, indigenous peoples, immigrants and women, among them -- no pope has ever come close to apologizing to the LGBT community. And the Pope is correct of course. First, because forgiveness is an essential part of the Christian life. And second, because no group feels more marginalized in the church today than LGBT people."
The Pope's comments came in response to a question about a German Cardinal [Cardinal Reinhard Marx] who said the Catholic Church should apologize for being "very negative" about gays. The Pope was also asked, by the same journalist, whether Christians bear some blame for hatred toward the LGBT community, as horrifically demonstrated in the Orlando massacre at a gay night club that killed 49 people on June 12…
Cindy Wooden - Rome Bureau Chief, Catholic News Service - stated that -
Sorrow. Dismay. Pain. #PopeFrancis, when I mentioned Orlando massacre. Photo
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Deep Appreciation - for your honesty and healing words - Pope Francis - MSK
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Church must apologise to gay people, pope’s adviser declares - June 24, 2016
Cardinal Reinhard Marx: ‘We’ve done a lot to marginalise homosexuals’
A leading cardinal has said the Catholic Church should apologise to the gay community for its scandalous and terrible treatment of them, which had not changed until “very recently”.
Speaking in Dublin, Cardinal Reinhard Marx said: “The history of homosexuals in our societies is very bad because we’ve done a lot to marginalise [them].”
As church and society “we’ve also to say ‘sorry, sorry’ ”.
The German cardinal is a member of the council of nine cardinals chosen by Pope Francis to advise him.
Until “very recently”, the church, but also society at large, had been “very negative about gay people . . . it was the whole society. It was a scandal and terrible,” he told The Irish Times after speaking at a conference held in Trinity College.
“We have to respect the decisions of people. We have to respect also, as I said in the first synod on the family, some were shocked but I think it’s normal, you cannot say that a relationship between a man and a man and they are faithful [that] that is nothing, that has no worth,” he said…
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Amid criticism, Cardinal Marx supports synod's midterm report - October 17, 2014
Thank you very much - Cardinal Reinhard Marx - MSK
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June 19, 2016. It's been one week since the Pulse shootings claimed 50 lives. ...Orlando residents paused throughout the day — at a bar in the early morning hours, at morning church services and at an evening candlelight vigil in the heart of downtown — to remember the victims of the worse mass shooting in modern U.S. history, exactly a week later.
"We are hurting. We are exhausted, confused, and there is so much grief," said Larry Watchorn, a ministerial intern, during a sermon at Joy Metropolitan Community Church in Orlando, whose congregants are predominantly gay. "We come to have our tears wiped away and our strength renewed."
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'Angels' blocked anti-gay protesters from Orlando shooting victim's burial - June 19, 2016
Funerals for two of the 49 Orlando massacre victims took place amid anti-gay protesters and an impatient driver who cut through a funeral procession, injuring two deputies.
The four anti-gay protesters were from the homophobic Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church. They raised signs with anti-gay slogans outside the Cathedral Church of St. Luke, where services took place for Christopher Leinonen, who was one of those killed in the attack on the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.
Police formed a line between the Westboro protesters and the hundreds of funeral attendees, who included members of the LGBTQ community, priests, bikers, and locals.
The crowd cheered when members of Orlando's Shakespeare Theater wearing huge "angel wings" showed up to block out the Westboro protesters.
The wings, which measured eight feet across and rose three feet above their shoulders, were made of white cloth and plastic piping. Reuters reported that the wings first surfaced at the 1998 funeral of Matthew Shepard, a gay student who was brutally murdered in Wyoming…
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Florida Catholic bishop: ‘It is religion, including our own,’ that targets LGBT people - June 13, 2016
Today I write with a heavy heart arising from the tragedy that occurred in the early morning hours of Sunday at a gay nightclub in Orlando, the neighbor to the east of my Diocese of St. Petersburg.
Yesterday, the best I could muster was to send these words by text message to my brother, Bishop John Noonan, bishop of Orlando: “John, I am so sorry. With love to and for all.” Today, with a new dawn, I again have some thoughts that I wish to share…
…Second, sadly it is religion, including our own, that targets, mostly verbally, and often breeds contempt for gays, lesbians and transgender people. Attacks today on LGBT men and women often plant the seed of contempt, then hatred, which can ultimately lead to violence.
Those women and men who were mowed down Sunday were all made in the image and likeness of God. We teach that. We should believe that. We must stand for that.
Even before I knew who perpetrated the mass murders at Pulse, I knew that somewhere in the story there would be a search for religion as motivation. While deranged people do senseless things, all of us observe and judge and act from some kind of religious background. Singling out people for victimization because of their religion, their sexual orientation, their nationality must be offensive to God’s ears. It has to stop, too…
Will we ever learn? I hope so. But until the above three points are taken seriously by society, sadly, tragically, we can expect more Orlandos. May the souls of those faithful departed who met their God early Sunday rest in peace and those recovering from deep wounds heal, help and hope.
Robert Lynch is the bishop of St. Petersburg. This piece was originally published on his blog.
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Thank you - Bishop Robert Lynch - MSK
[CHICAGO] - Cupich in letter to LGBT community: 'I stand with you.’ - June 13, 2016
A letter from Chicago Archbishop Blase Cupich expressing solidarity with the Catholic gay and lesbian community in that city, following the mass shooting in Orlando, was read prior to a Sunday night mass for the lay organization AGLO (Archdiocesan Gay and Lesbian Outreach).
Addressing the group as “Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,” Cupich wrote: “For you here today and throughout the whole lesbian and gay community, who are particularly touched by the heinous crimes committed in Orlando, motivated by hate, driven perhaps by mental instability and certainly empowered by a culture of violence, know this: the Archdiocese of Chicago stands with you. I stand with you.
“Let our shared grief and our common faith in Jesus, who called the persecuted blessed, unite us so that hatred and intolerance are not allowed to flourish, so that those who suffer mental illness know the support of a compassionate society, so that we find the courage to face forthrightly the falsehood that weapons of combat belong anywhere in the civilian population.”
According to a statement on the organization’s website, AGLOChicago was founded in 1988 “through the efforts of several members of Chicago LGBT community working together” with the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin “to provide a ministry of outreach.”
Cupich’s letter to the gay and lesbian community gathered for mass was separate from an earlier statement the archbishop released decrying the violence against gays and lesbians in Orlando, as well as the ongoing gun violence in the United States. “The people of the Archdiocese of Chicago stand with the victims and their loved ones and reaffirm our commitment, with Pope Francis, to address the causes of such tragedy, including easy access to deadly weapons," Cupich said. "We can no longer stand by and do nothing.”…
Thank you - Archbishop Blase Cupich - MSK
Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi
LGBT Community Mourns Orlando Attack, Boosts Security At Pride Events - June 12, 2016
With sorrow, anger and expressions of unity, the LGBT community across the world is mourning Sunday's deadly attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando. Meanwhile, security has been increased at LGBT landmarks and events in cities across America.
The attack — in which a gunman killed 50 people, making it the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, and injured 53 — struck during Pride Month, which commemorates the Stonewall Riots of 1969 and the gay rights movement more broadly…
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Hundreds line up to donate blood to gay nightclub shooting victims - June 12, 2016
Officials at OneBlood say they have received such an overwhelming response that they are now asking donors to come back over the next several days.
More than 50 people were injured and 50 were killed when a gunman opened fire inside a gay nightclub in Orlando overnight.
In the hours after the worst mass shooting in US history, officials urged people to donate blood to help the victims…
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I s l a m i c f u n d a m e n t a l i s m
Islamic fundamentalism (Arabic: الأصولية الإسلامية, al-oṣooleyyah al-eslaameyyah) has been defined variously as a movement of Muslims who harken back to earlier times and seek to return to the fundamentals of the religion and live similarly to how the prophet Muhammad and his companions lived. Islamic fundamentalists favor "a literal and originalist interpretation" of the primary sources of Islam (the Quran and Sunnah), and seek to eliminate (what they perceive to be) "corrupting" non-Islamic influences from every part of their lives,[3] and see "Islamic fundamentalism" as a pejorative term used by outsiders for Islamic revivalism and Islamic activism…
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Pope Francis - “f u n d a m e n t a l i s m is an illness that is in all religions” November 30, 2015
We are all children of God, we have the same father. And in this sense one must make a politics of unity, or reconciliation, and – though I do not like the word, but I must use it –tolerance. So, fundamentalism is an illness that is in all religions.
We Catholics have them, not a few but many, who think they have the absolute truth, and they go ahead throwing mud on others with calumny, defamation, and they do harm. I can say this because it is my church: also we, and we all. One must fight, because religious fundamentalism is not religious. Why? Because it lacks God. It is idolatry, just as money is idolatry. To do politics in the sense of convincing the people that have this tendency is a politics that we religious leaders must do. But fundamentalism that always ends in a tragedy or in crimes is a bad thing, but a piece of it comes in all religions…
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C h r i s t i a n f u n d a m e n t a l i s m
Christian fundamentalism began in the late 19th and early 20th centuries among British and American Protestants as a reaction to theological liberalism and cultural modernism. Fundamentalists argued that 19th-century modernist theologians had misinterpreted or rejected certain doctrines, especially biblical inerrancy, that they viewed as the fundamentals of Christian faith. A few scholars regard Catholics who reject modern theology in favor of more traditional doctrines as fundamentalists. Scholars debate how much the terms "evangelical" and "fundamentalist" are synonymous…
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F u n d a m e n t a l i s m
Fundamentalism usually has a religious connotation that indicates unwavering attachment to a set of irreducible beliefs. However, fundamentalism has come to apply to a tendency among certain groups—mainly, though not exclusively, in religion—that is characterized by a markedly strict literalism as applied to certain specific scriptures, dogmas, or ideologies, and a strong sense of the importance of maintaining ingroup and outgroup distinctions, leading to an emphasis on purity and the desire to return to a previous ideal from which advocates believe members have strayed. Rejection of diversity of opinion as applied to these established "fundamentals" and their accepted interpretation within the group is often the result of this tendency.
Depending upon the context, fundamentalism can be a pejorative rather than neutral characterization, similar to the ways that calling political perspectives "right-wing" or "left-wing" can, for some, have negative connotations…
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Pope Francis decries Orlando massacre and prays for victims - June 12, 2016
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis is shaken and saddened by the ‘homicidal folly and senseless hatred’ that has left at least 50 people dead in an attack on a nightclub in Orlando, Florida.
A statement released by the Holy See Press Office Director, Father Federico Lombardi SJ, on the Orlando massacre which has been described as the worst mass shooting in American history…
The terrible massacre that has taken place in Orlando, with its dreadfully high number of innocent victims, has caused in Pope Francis, and in all of us, the deepest feelings of horror and condemnation, of pain and turmoil before this new manifestation of homicidal folly and senseless hatred. Pope Francis joins the families of the victims and all of the injured in prayer and in compassion. Sharing in their indescribable suffering he entrusts them to the Lord so they may find comfort. We all hope that ways may be found, as soon as possible, to effectively identify and contrast the causes of such terrible and absurd violence which so deeply upsets the desire for peace of the American people and of the whole of humanity…
Vatican
Terror in Orlando: 50 killed in shooting rampage at gay club; gunman pledged allegiance to ISIS - June 12, 2016
ORLANDO — The gunman who opened fire inside a crowded nightclub here early Sunday morning, launching a rampage that killed 50 people and injured 53 others in the deadliest shooting spree in the country’s history, had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State before the attack, according to U.S. law enforcement officials.
In a rampage that President Obama said the FBI was investigating as an act of terrorism, this gunman fired a barrage of bullets inside Pulse, a popular gay bar and dance club, forcing people to drop to the floor and rush out through a back entrance…
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50 killed in Florida nightclub, shooter pledged ISIS allegiance - June 12, 2016
CBS News: ISIS Claims Responsibility For Orlando Nightclub Attack That Left 50 Dead - June 12, 2106
ORLANDO, Fla. (CBSNewYork/AP) — A gunman wielding an assault-type rifle and a handgun opened fire inside a crowded Florida gay nightclub early Sunday before dying in a gunfight with SWAT officers, police said. The attack left at least 50 people dead, making it the worst mass shooting in American history.
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has claimed responsibility for the shooting, CBS News reports. The terror group’s news organization, Aamaq Agency, said the attack was “carried out by an Islamic State fighter.”…
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ISIS Claims Responsibility for Attack at Orlando Gay Club, the Deadliest Mass Shooting in U.S. History - June 12, 2016
The Latest: American Muslim Leaders Condemn Nightclub Attack - June 12, 2016
American Muslim leaders are condemning the attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando that killed 50 people and wounded more than 50 others.
Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, called the killings a hate crime and said the group has no tolerance for extremism of any kind.
A law enforcement official has said the gunman, Omar Mateen, called 911 from the nightclub and expressed allegiance to an Islamic State leader.
Awad says members of the LGBT community have stood with Muslims in the past and today they stand that community…
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Pulse DJ Saved Lives Behind His Booth as Gunfire Tore Into Club - June 12, 2016
Ray Rivera went from spinning records to saving lives in an instant.
Rivera, a.k.a. DJ Infinite, was the performer at the gay nightclub Pulse in Orlando where Omar Mateen shot more than 100 people, killing 50, in the worst mass shooting in American history. Just before 2 a.m. Riviera started playing reggae music to mellow out the crowd when he heard the first gunshots ring out.
“I thought it was someone lighting firecrackers,” Rivera told The Daily Beast. “So I turned the music down, and heard some more. I turned the music off.”
Mateen had opened fire with an AR-15-style assault rifle…
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The Toronto sign in front of city hall is lit up in honour of the victims of the Orlando attack. - June 12, 2016
Orlando shooting victims remembered in vigils across city, nation and world - June 12, 2016
Mourners across Orlando - as well as the nation and world - paused Sunday night to remember the 50 people killed and 53 injured in the Pulse nightclub shooting, the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.
So far, seven of the victims of gunman Omar Mateen's spree have been identifed: Edward Sotomayor Jr., 34 years old; Stanley Almodovar III, 23; Luis Omar Ocasio-Capo, 20; Juan Ramon Guerrero, 22; Eric Ivan Ortiz-Rivera, 36; Peter O. Gonzalez-Cruz, 22; Luis S. Vielma, 22; and Kimberly Morris, 37…
Braden Cowell, 27, of Orlando, also came to Ember for the vigil, bringing rainbow banners in a gesture of defiance against terror.
“If we don’t come out today and support our community, they win,” he said.
At Jones High School, just a few miles from Pulse, a vigil organized by the Experience Christian Center brought together seven pastors, “all sharing in prayer, different denominations all coming together for a common cause,” said Experience Senior Pastor Derrick McCrae.
“What prayer does is give direction,” McCrae said. “People find inner strength through a conversation with God. We want to see no division, and only see unity. We want to be mindful of what could happen to us at any point in life, but also be confident in who is keeping us.”…
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Barack Obama On Orlando Shooting: ‘We Will Not Give In To Fear’ - June 12, 2016
President Barack Obama called Sunday’s mass shooting at a gay club in Orlando, Florida, an “act of terror and an act of hate.” He added that while authorities have not reached a definitive judgement as to the shooter’s motivation, the FBI would be investigating the matter as an act of terrorism.
“What is clear, he was a person filled with hatred,” Obama said of the shooter, who was an American citizen. “Over the coming days we will uncover how and why this happened.”
“This could have been any one of our communities,” he said. “As a country, we will be there for the people of Orlando, today, tomorrow and for all the days to come.”
The president noted the shooting took place at an “especially heartbreaking” time during LGBT pride month. He said the place where it happened was more than a nightclub, but a “place of solidarity and empowerment” where people went to “raise awareness, to speak their minds and to advocate for their civil rights.”
“This is a sobering reminder that attacks on any American, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation, is an attack on all of us, and the fundamental values of equality and dignity that define us as a country,” he said. “No act of terror will change who we are or the values that make us Americans.”…
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President Obama calls Orlando shooting — deadliest in U.S. history — 'an act of terror and an act of hate' - June 12, 2016
President Obama delivered a sobering address Sunday afternoon in the aftermath of the horrific Orlando nightclub shooting — the worst in U.S. history — calling the brazen attack "an act of terror and an act of hate."
"As Americans we are united in our grief and our outrage and in our resolve to defend our people," he said in a brief and solemn statement from the White House.
"This is sobering reminder that attacks on any Americans, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation, is an attack on all of us and on the fundamental values of equality and dignity that define us as a country.”…
"As Americans we grieve the brutal murder, the horrific massacre of dozens of innocent people," Obama said during his address.
"We pray for their families, who are grasping for answers with broken hearts," he added. "We stand with the people of Orlando, who have endured a terrible attack on their city.”…
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Orlando Nightclub Shooting: Mass Casualties After Gunman Opens Fire in Gay Club - June 12, 2016
…Police initially said about 20 people were dead, but Orlando Police Chief John Mina said that once authorities were able to get into the club, many more victims were discovered. Mina called the attack "one of the worst tragedies we've seen."
Mina said a uniformed officer working extra duty initially traded gunfire with the shooter, who officials say was armed with at least two firearms.
"The officer engaged in a gun battle with that suspect. The suspect at some point went back inside the club, and more shots were fired. This did turn into a hostage situation," Mina said.
Officials decided "to go in on a rescue" just after 5 a.m. Mina said, adding that an officer was injured after being shot in the head.
"It appears his helmet saved his life," he said. "So he has an injury to his eye, but it looks like the bullet did hit his helmet."
Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings said the incident "could definitely be classified as domestic terrorism."
Florida Gov. Rick Scott traveled to Orlando on Sunday morning and declared a state of emergency in the city.
"Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims, families and all those affected by this horrific tragedy. We are a strong and resilient state and we will devote every resource available to assist with the shooting in Orlando," Scott said in a statement….
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‘Hamilton’ Star Pays Tribute to Orlando Victims at Tony Awards: ‘Love Cannot Be Killed’ (VIDEO) - June 12, 2016
Eiffel Tower
to light up for Orlando
The French capital will pay tribute to the massacre victims.
World pays tribute to Orlando shooting victims with vigils and rainbow flags - June 13, 2016
Vigils have been held around the world in solidarity with the victims of the Orlando nightclub shooting.
In London, venues along Old Compton Street, the heart of the capital’s gay community, stopped serving at 7pm on Monday and people were invited into the street. Heads were bowed for a minute before defiant cheers and applause greeted the release of dozens of balloons into the skies above Soho…
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Orlando gay club shooting: World pays tribute to victims with vigils and rainbow flags - June 14, 2016
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Hindu Family Shows Love for Gay Son with Amazing Wedding - 2016-06-01
Rishi Agarwal’s story is nothing especially new, but his happy ending is one that's spreading a message of tolerance and acceptance within a community that desperately needs it.
Agarwal was raised in a devout Hindu home in suburban Toronto by his parents Vijay and Sushma, who both emigrated there from India over 30 years ago. When Rishi came out to them in 2004, they were initially shocked and devastated.
But after opening themselves up and doing some research, the parents changed their opinion.
“There is a cultural kind of a stigma,” Vijay told The Toronto Star. "This is strictly our baggage, what we bring from India," said Rishi's mother Sushma. When their son asked them if he should move out of the house after coming out of the closet, they told him absolutely not, and that they still loved him…
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S E L E C T I V E I N A T T E N T I O N
D i s s o c i a t i o n
Orlando shooter Omar Mateen was g a y, former classmate says - June 14, 2016
The FBI is investigating reports that Orlando nightclub shooter Omar Mateen used gay dating apps and regularly visited Pulse before he shot more than 100 people inside, killing 49.
At least five people have come forward saying they saw Mateen at gay clubs, painting a complicated portrait of the American-born Muslim whom the FBI believes was radicalized by terrorist groups.
One former classmate of Omar Mateen’s 2006 police academy class told The Palm Beach Post that he believed Mateen was gay, saying Mateen once tried to pick him up at a bar.
The classmate said that he, Mateen and other classmates would hang out, sometimes going to gay nightclubs, after classes at Indian River Community College police academy. One night, he said Mateen asked him if he was gay. He said no, because he wasn’t telling people he was gay at the time…
…“He said, ‘Well if you were gay, you would be my type.’ I said OK and just went on with the night,” he said. “It was not anything too crazy, but I take that as a pick-up line.”
He believed Mateen was gay, but not open about it. Mateen was awkward, and for a while the classmate and the rest in the group of friends felt sorry for him…
Jim Van Horn, 71, told The Associated Press that Mateen was a regular at the club. “He was trying to pick up people. Men,” he said.
While acknowledging he didn’t know Mateen well, Van Horn said: “I think it’s possible that he was trying to deal with his inner demons, of trying to get rid of his anger of homosexuality.”…
...The Los Angeles Times reported that Mateen attended the Pulse nightclub possibly as many as a dozen times before the rampage. Kevin West said he had messaged Mateen back and forth over a year’s time on the gay dating app Jack’d but never met him until he saw Mateen crossing the street about 1 a.m. Sunday...
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D i s s o c i a t i o n
S e l e c t i v e I n a t t e n t i o n
Jack Drescher, MD, 2004
What psychological mechanisms facilitate separating one's sexual identity from the rest of one's persona? Sullivan's (1956) concept of dissociation may be illuminating, particularly its most common aspect: selective inattention. A ubiquitous, nonpathological process, selective inattention makes life more manageable, like tuning out the background noise on a busy street. However, through dissociation of anxiety-provoking knowledge about the self, a whole double life can be lived and yet, in some ways, not be known. Clinical presentations of closeted gay people may lie somewhere in s e v e r i t y between selective inattention--most commonly seen in the case of homosexually self-aware patients thinking about "the possibility" that they might be gay--to more severe dissociation--in which any hint of same-sex feelings resides totally out of conscious awareness. More severe forms of dissociation are commonly observed in married men who are homosexually self-aware but cannot permit the thought of themselves as gay (Roughton, 2002)…
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17 Antigay Leaders Exposed as Gay or Bi - January 27, 2016
The internet was buzzing in January when an editor at a gay website in Virginia wrote that he'd encountered an antigay Republican lawmaker while on Grindr, without naming the person. Not every antigay crackpot is actually gay, but there's no shortage of those who actually are. Here are some hypocrites who just couldn't practice what they preached…
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Given Uganda's homophobia, why does it lead the way in Googling gay porn? - 10 January 2014
Is there a connection, then, between homophobia and suppressed homosexuality, along the lines of "me thinks he protesteth too much"? Is it that homosexual desires, when shut out because of some sense of shame, can easily express themselves as a form of homophobia? When the US conservative evangelical pastor Ted Haggard, well known for his anti-gay preaching, was discovered to have been paying a masseur for gay sex, he explained that "I think I was partially so vehement because of my own war". Freud coined the description "reaction-formation", in which anxiety-generating feelings are masked by an exaggerated reaction in the opposite direction. There is some experimental evidence to back this up, with one study showing that 20% of those who self-described as "highly straight" indicated some level of same-sex attraction. This discrepancy is often put down to highly controlling parents who do not allow their children room to explore their sexual identity.
Yes, of course, there are many people who do not experience same-sex attraction who are anti-gay. But one of the features of reaction-formation is its paranoia and lack of proportion. And this is precisely what the scaremongering nonsense about gay people being out to get our children – a common line in the Ugandan debate – clearly demonstrates. In conservative religious environments where God is depicted as a powerful all-controlling parent, it makes sense to me that this reaction-formation will be particularly strong…
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ISIS, many of their enemies share a homicidal hatred of gays - CBS/AP - June 13, 2016
REYHANLI, Turkey - The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has frequently used the Islamic holy month of Ramadan - which is supposed to be for fasting and prayer - as an excuse to step up its slaughter of people it considers heretics.
Last year, ISIS supporters bombed a Shiite mosque in Kuwait and attacked tourists at a Tunisian beach resort, among other atrocities, during the holy month.
Last month, an ISIS leader put out a call for "a month of hurt" in the United States as well as Europe during Ramadan.
On Monday, the group called the Orlando nightclub shooter Omar Mateen "one of the soldiers of the caliphate in America," and Mateen pledged allegiance to the group in a 911 call during the shooting. However there has been no evidence uncovered so far of a direct link between the shooter and the group's Mideast leaders.
Still, the Orlando nightclub massacre would fall in line with ISIS' goals, as the group has a history of targeting gays with brutal public killings…
The most recent, self-reported execution the terrorists undertook happened around May 7 of this year, according to OutRight. A "blindfolded young boy" can be seen in photos getting tossed off a roof and then pelted with stones after landing, with an audience of men and children taking part.
ISIS frequently reserves one of its most gruesome methods of killing for suspected gays -- throwing them to their death from building rooftops…
…Videos ISIS has released show masked militants dangling men over the precipices of buildings by their legs to drop them head-first or tossing them over the edge. At least 36 men in Syria and Iraq have been killed by ISIS militants on charges of sodomy, according to OutRight Action International, though its Middle East and North Africa coordinator, Hossein Alizadeh, said it was not possible to confirm the sexual orientation of the victims…
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ISIS stone 'gay' man to death after he survived being thrown off a roof - May 5, 2015
ISIS militants have released harrowing photographs of a gay man being stoned to death after he survived their first attempt at killing him.
Eleven men, one of them holding an Islamic State flag, held the blindfolded man at the top of a tall building, taking pictures on mobile phones before throwing their victim off the roof.
The killing, which supposedly took place in Raqqua, Syria – although other sources say it happened somewhere in Iraq – was watched by a large crowd.
A picture showing the man half way to earth circulated on Twitter over the weekend, with images of the injured man lying on the ground following soon.
The victim survived the fall but, badly injured and unable to defend himself, was killed by men, some of them armed, from the crowd who were queueing up to throw rocks’, according to the Daily Mail.
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ISIS throw 4 more gay men to their deaths - 5 October 2015
Executions were carried out in two Iraqi cities over the weekend
Islamic State (ISIS) militants executed four more gay men in Iraq over the weekend.
Two young men were thrown off the roof a building in Mosul under the pretext they were a gay couple.
‘On Sunday afternoon, Daesh called on the people of Mosul to gather in the square of Bab al-Toub in order to witness the execution of the two allegedly men,’ an eyewitness told ARA News.
‘The victims were taken to the top of a building and were brutally thrown off the roof.’
Also on Sunday, the Terror Monitor group tweeted photos of a separate execution of two ‘gay’ men, who were thrown from a building in Ninevah into a pile of cement blocks.
The photos show an imam reading out their sentence and large crowd of spectators:
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Islamic State group targets gays with brutal public killings - June 13, 2016
The Associated Press is reproducing an article on IS treatment of gays that initially ran on Dec. 2 and was part of a 2015 AP series of stories, “Inside the Caliphate,” which explored life under Islamic State rule…
In this picture posted on a social media account affiliated with the Islamic State group on June 14, 2015, IS militants stone a man accused of violating the extremists' ban on homosexuality after they threw him from a roof in the city of Homs, Syria. One witness of such a killing in Syria described to The Associated Press how the victim pleaded with militants to shoot him in the head rather than drop him from a nearby four-story building. (militant photo via AP) Photo
Islamic State group publicly killing gays in Syria and Iraq to show its 'ideological purity’ - December 2, 2015
REYHANLI, Turkey (AP) — Before a crowd of men on a street in the Syrian city of Palmyra, the masked Islamic State group judge read out the sentence against the two men convicted of homosexuality: They would be thrown to their deaths from the roof of the nearby Wael Hotel.
He asked one of the men if he was satisfied with the sentence. Death, the judge told him, would help cleanse him of his sin.
"I'd prefer it if you shoot me in the head," 32-year-old Hawas Mallah replied helplessly. The second man, 21-year-old Mohammed Salameh, pleaded for a chance to repent, promising never to have sex with a man again, according to a witness among the onlookers that sunny July morning who gave The Associated Press a rare first-hand account.
"Take them and throw them off," the judge ordered. Other masked extremists tied the men's hands behind their backs and blindfolded them. They led them to the roof of the four-story hotel, according to the witness, who spoke in the Turkish city of Reyhanli on condition he be identified only by his first name, Omar, for fear of reprisals.
Notorious for their gruesome methods of killing, the Islamic State group reserves one of its most brutal for suspected homosexuals. Videos it has released show masked militants dangling men over the precipices of buildings by their legs to drop them head-first or tossing them over the edge. At least 36 men in Syria and Iraq have been killed by IS militants on charges of sodomy, according to the New York-based OutRight Action International, though its Middle East and North Africa coordinator, Hossein Alizadeh, said it was not possible to confirm the sexual orientation of the victims.
The fear of a horrific death among gay men under Islamic State rule is further compounded by their isolation in a deeply conservative society that largely shuns them…
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Blindfolded, bound and thrown off buildings … inside the ISIS Sharia court’s treatment of homosexuals - 2nd December 2015
…“They are violating God’s laws and doing something that is forbidden in Islam, so this is a legitimate punishment,” said Hajji Mohammed, a resident of the
IS-held northern Iraqi city of Mosul. There the group has thrown men suspected of being gay off the Insurance Building, a landmark about 10 stories high.
…By employing the grisly method of execution, the Islamic State group aims to show to radicals that it is unflinchingly carrying out the most extreme strains in Islam — a sort of “ideological purity” which the group boasts distinguishes it even from other militants. The punishment “will protect the Muslims from treading the same rotten course that the West has chosen to pursue,” IS proclaimed in its online English-language magazine Dabiq…
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Isis has killed at least 25 men in Syria suspected of being gay, group claims - Tuesday 5 January 2016
Figures revealed as reports emerged of a teenager in the Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor was thrown to his death
At least 25 people have been murdered in Syria by the so-called Islamic State for being gay, a UK-based monitoring group has told the Independent.
Amid reports of a 15-year-old boy being thrown from the rooftop of a high-rise building in the Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor - seemingly the latest victim of the Islamist group's brutal crackdown - the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told The Independent that dozens of men had been killed by Isis jihadists.
Six have been stoned to death, three killed from direct shooting to the head and 16 thrown from high-rise buildings. Those that survived the fall, the group added, were then stoned on the streets below by scores of bystanders. Two of those killed were under 18.
It is alleged that the man who raped the 15-year-old, a senior Isis officer called Abu Zaid al-Jazrawi, was spared execution.
Instead, he faced a demotion and was forced to leave Syria and join the fighting fronts in north-western Iraq.
“The horrific execution took place in front of large crowd,” said Sarai al-Din, a local media activist who witnessed the murder, told Syrian news agency ARA.
Speaking to the news agency, civil rights activist Rawd Ahmed, said: “Daesh (another name for Isis) accuses people of being gay only on the basis of some superficial information without any investigation. Although the Islamic law bans homosexuality, the brutal punishment by Daesh has never been witnessed throughout history.”
Footage of terrified men in blindfolds being escorted to the rooftops of high-rise buildings and then being thrown to their death has become commonplace. It has led human rights groups to become increasingly concerned that this extreme violence is inspiring other militias in the war-torn region to attack men they suspect of being gay…
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Study: Islamic fundamentalism is not a marginal phenomenon in Europe - January 16, 2015
Last week's attacks in Paris, committed in the name of a god, reopen a badly-healed scar in Europe. The world once again turns towards religious fundamentalism. A new study shows that hostility towards other out-groups is not an isolated phenomenon among Muslims living in Europe; but nor is it a synonym of violence. According to the author of the study, Ruud Koopmans, director of the WZB Berlín Social Science Centre (Germany), "Islam is not the problem”…
…Although violence does not necessarily form part of this ideology, hostility towards other out-groups including homosexuals, Jews, and Westerners (in the case of Muslims) or Muslims (in the case of Christians) is evident. As a whole, Muslims are shown to be more hostile towards the three out-groups mentioned above, with between 25% and 30% rejecting these groups. Christian hostility is not as much as 5%.
However, independently, Christian fundamentalists show greater hostility towards Muslims (more than 50%) and towards Jews (between 30 and 35% of Christian fundamentalists were revealed to be hostile). In the case of Islamic fundamentalists, more than 70% of followers feel hostility towards homosexuals, Jews and Westerners.
Religious fundamentalism is closely linked to hostility towards other out-groups," says Koopmans. But social and economic levels also have a bearing. Individuals with a high social and economic status are more tolerant and less xenophobic…
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Islamic State of Iraq and Syria
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, IPA /ˈaɪsᵻl/), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria[note 1] (ISIS, /ˈaɪsᵻs/),[31] and by its Arabic language acronym Daesh (داعش dāʿish, IPA: [ˈdaːʕiʃ]), is a Salafi jihadist militant group that follows an Islamic fundamentalist, Wahhabi doctrine of Sunni Islam…
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ISIS stands for Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and is an extremist militant group that rules by Wahhabi/Salafi law. In Arabic, the group is also known as Daesh. An example of ISIS is the terrorist group that is known for kidnapping western journalists and aid workers as part of their tactics.
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Pope Francis blasts religious fundamentalism - September 14, 2015
As news of Muslim fundamentalists killing Christians continues to come out of Syria and Iraq - and Christian extremists murdering Muslims in the Central African Republic - Pope Francis has come out to decry the killings, saying that no religion is immune to extremism.
“In any confession, there’s a small group of fundamentalists whose job is to destroy for the sake of an idea, not a reality,” Francis said in an interview with the Argentinian radio station Milenium.
“God in Judaism, in Christianity, in Islam, accompanies his people,” he said. “God is a God who comes close to us. [But] fundamentalists take God away from his people, disembodying him. In the name of that ideologist God, they kill, attack, destroy, slander.”…
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Pope Francis urges world religions to fight extremism, fundamentalism - October 28, 2015
Catholicism can and must change, Francis forcefully tells Italian church gathering - November 10, 2015
FLORENCE, ITALY Pope Francis has strongly outlined anew a comprehensive vision for the future of the Catholic church, forcefully telling an emblematic meeting of the entire Italian church community here that our times require a deeply merciful Catholicism that is unafraid of change…
Francis said Catholics must realize: "We are not living an era of change but a change of era."
"Before the problems of the church it is not useful to search for solutions in conservatism or fundamentalism in the restoration of obsolete conduct and forms that no longer have the capacity of being significant culturally," the pontiff said at one point during his remarks.
"Christian doctrine is not a closed system incapable of generating questions, doubts, interrogatives -- but is alive, knows being unsettled, enlivened," said the pope. "It has a face that is not rigid, it has a body that moves and grows, it has a soft flesh: it is called Jesus Christ."
"The reform of the church then, and the church is semper reformanda ... does not end in the umpteenth plan to change structures," he continued. "It means instead grafting yourself to and rooting yourself in Christ, leaving yourself to be guided by the Spirit -- so that all will be possible with genius and creativity.”…
"A new humanism in Jesus Christ…” Photo
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Pope Francis continues his critique of religious fundamentalism - Dec. 3, 2015
Pope’s Press Conference on Flight from Bangui to Rome (Unofficial Transcript) - Nov. 30, 2015
…We are all children of God, we have the same father. And in this sense one must make a politics of unity, or reconciliation, and – though I do not like the word, but I must use it –tolerance. So, fundamentalism is an illness that is in all religions.
We Catholics have them, not a few but many, who think they have the absolute truth, and they go ahead throwing mud on others with calumny, defamation, and they do harm. I can say this because it is my church: also we, and we all. One must fight, because religious fundamentalism is not religious. Why? Because it lacks God. It is idolatry, just as money is idolatry. To do politics in the sense of convincing the people that have this tendency is a politics that we religious leaders must do. But fundamentalism that always ends in a tragedy or in crimes is a bad thing, but a piece of it comes in all religions…
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Pope: Those who say “this or nothing” are heretics not Catholics - 09/06/2016
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis warned on Thursday against an excessive rigidity, saying those within the Church who tell us “it’s this or nothing” are heretics and not Catholics. His remarks came during the morning Mass on Thursday celebrated at the Santa Marta residence.
In his homily the Pope reflected on the harm caused by Churchmen who do the opposite of what they preach and urged them to free themselves from a rigid idealism that prevents reconciliation between each other.
Taking his cue from Jesus’ warning to his disciples that unless their righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees they will not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, Pope Francis stressed the importance of Christian realism. Jesus, he said, asks us to go beyond the laws and love God and neighbour, stressing that whoever is angry with their brother will be liable to judgement…
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Pope: Avoid 'heresy' of rigid faith & settle differences - 10 June, 2016
ROME (Christian Examiner) – In another dialogue that is sure to infuriate his conservative critics, Pope Francis warned Thursday that Catholics must avoid a rigid faith and disputes over doctrine or personal issues, Vatican Radio has reported.
Francis said in the address that Catholics should consider how Jesus looked beyond a rigid faith to generosity and holiness to care for others. Such a practice, the leader of Catholics worldwide said, frees Christians from the "idealism" that harms relationships.
"This (is the) healthy realism of the Catholic Church: the Church never teaches us 'this or that.' That is not Catholic," Francis said. "The Church says to us: 'this and that.' 'Strive for perfectionism; reconcile with your brother. Do not insult him. Love him. And if there is a problem, at the very least settle your differences so that war doesn't break out.' This [is] the healthy realism of Catholicism.”...
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Pope Francis: A ‘my-way-or-the-highway’ faith is heretical - June 9, 2016
VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope Francis has called on Catholics to adopt a “healthy realism” in their approach to their faith, and he decried rigid idealists as heretics.
Speaking during morning Mass on Thursday (June 9), Francis told congregants at the chapel in the Vatican guesthouse to try their best to seek reconciliation with others rather than pushing strict rules and a “take-it-or-leave-it” style of evangelism…
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FRIDAY, APRIL 29, 2016
CURIA’S & HIERARCHY’S Heteronomous Morality | Only in truth does charity shine forth, only in truth can charity be authentically lived - Benedict XVI - - Welcoming gay people - Synod 2014 & 2015 - Where was the truth??? Where was the dialogue??? There was no love!!! - 1st Posted - APRIL 7, 2016 | Revised & Updated 4/30/16
Excerpts:
Moral realism is associated with "objective responsibility", which is valuing
the letter of the law above
the purpose of the law.
Jean Piaget
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...
Closing Mass of the XIV Ordinary General Assembly - October 25, 2015 Photo
H e t e r o n o m o u s P h a s e
Secret Letter Allegedly Sent To Pope Francis By Conservative Cardinals Fuels Speculations At Vatican Synod - 10/12/15
…In the letter, the senior churchmen said that if the reformers succeeded in changing the church’s approach to modern families it could send the Catholic Church down the path of Protestant denominations that abandoned “key elements of Christian belief and practice in the name of pastoral adaptation.”
…The mystery also fueled intrigue about the three-week meeting, called a synod. It also spotlighted increasingly bold efforts by traditionalists to thwart any changes to church doctrine or practices, in particular proposals to allow divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Communion.
…as well as efforts to make the church more open to cohabiting couples and gays and lesbians — has become a focus and flashpoint for the wide-ranging synod of 270 bishops from around the world.
…This fall’s gathering follows a previous synod that Francis convened here last October as part of his effort to foster dialogue within the hierarchy and to discuss possible reforms to pastoral practices (though not necessarily doctrines) that could make the church more welcoming and inclusive.
Yet raising the specter of any change set off alarm bells for conservatives who have been lobbying fiercely, in public and behind the scenes, to ensure that the synod acts to remove any doubts about the possibility of changing church teachings or policies…
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Opposition to Pope Francis Comes Out of the Closet - December 4, 2015
…First up is Cardinal Raymond Burke’s recent op-ed in the National Catholic Register. The flamboyant cardinal uses the old trick of attacking someone close to the pope, rather than the pope directly, in this instance, Father Antonio Spadaro, S.J. Fr. Spadaro had written that the synod opened a door toward the divorced and remarried. +Burke replies: “The fact is that the synod could not open a door which does not exist and cannot exist, namely, a discernment in conscience which contradicts the truth about the supreme sanctity of the Most Holy Eucharist and the indissolubility of the marriage bond.” Who said anything about “contradicting” the truth? The contradiction – and it is only an apparent one to us poor humans who have more theological work to do – is between “the truth” about marriage and the Eucharist and “the truth” about God’s mercy and, relatedly, “the truth” about the practice of our sister Churches of the East. But, Cardinal Burke expects everyone to use his lens, his weighting of the issues, his sense of what is, and is not, possible. Someone needs to tell him that he was not elected pope in 2013…
Above excerpts taken from:
FRIDAY, APRIL 29, 2016
CURIA’S & HIERARCHY’S Heteronomous Morality | Only in truth does charity shine forth, only in truth can charity be authentically lived - Benedict XVI - - Welcoming gay people - Synod 2014 & 2015 - Where was the truth??? Where was the dialogue??? There was no love!!! - 1st Posted - APRIL 7, 2016 | Revised & Updated 4/30/16
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, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?
You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye,
and then you will see clearly
to remove the speck from
your brother’s eye.
Matthew 7:3-5
H o m o s e x u a l
S E L E C T I V E I N A T T E N T I O N
D i s s o c i a t i o n
Archbishop Chaput blasts Vatican debate on family, says 'confusion is of the devil’ - October 21, 2014
NEW YORK Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput says he was "very disturbed" by the debate over church teachings on gays and remarried Catholics at this month's Vatican summit, saying it sent a confusing message, and "confusion is of the devil.”…
Francis convened the synod as part of a two-year discussion on the Catholic church's response to rapid changes in modern family dynamics. Media attention focused on proposals that would push the church to be more welcoming to gay Catholics, and to cohabiting couples and the divorced and remarried, who are currently barred from receiving Communion.
An interim report on the closed-door discussions included calls for the church to reject an all-or-nothing approach to families in "irregular" situations, such as those who are divorced or living together without being married.
The midpoint report also said there were "positive elements" in those relationships, as well as in the love between gay couples, and it said gay Catholics have "gifts and qualities" to offer the church and should be welcomed.
Such language, even if not final or official, was unprecedented for church leaders, and it prompted a media tsunami. It also upset conservative churchmen at the synod, and they spent the second week engaged in a concerted effort to water down that language for the final report.
They largely succeeded, though Francis said the church's approach to gays and lesbians, and to divorced and remarried Catholics, should continue to be debated…
Read more:
Burke: Church under Francis is a 'ship without a rudder’ - October 31, 2014
VATICAN CITY 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…
When the synod signaled a more welcoming tone to gay and lesbian Catholics, Burke publicly accused the global gathering of bias and was among those who pushed for a less conciliatory approach in the final report.
Burke had previously said that Catholic families should not expose children to the "evil" of homosexuality by inviting a gay son home for Christmas with his partner.
In his latest interview, Burke said the church was "the pillar of marriage" and challenged the pope's revolutionary "Who am I to judge?" remark on gay people…
Read more:
Cardinal Burke: Gays, remarried Catholics, and murderers are all the same - March 27, 2015
...The cardinal also blamed gay clergy for the church's sexual abuse crisis, saying priests "who were feminized and confused about their own sexual identity" were the ones who molested children...
Cardinal Raymond Burke: ‘Feminized’ church and altar girls caused priest shortage - January 7, 2015
...In the interview, Burke also blamed gay clergy for the church’s sexual abuse crisis, saying priests “who were feminized and confused about their own sexual identity” were the ones who molested children.
Researchers have disputed that claim, and experts note that the reported rise in the number of gay men entering the priesthood since the 1980s coincided with a sharp drop-off in abuse cases…
Read more:
European church gears up for battle at Vatican's family synod - Gadecki - Ignorance & Lack of Charity - June 20, 2015
…The president of the Polish Episcopal Conference, Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki of Poznan, chaired the meeting and used his keynote speech to denounce a litany of modern-day ills, including same-sex unions, divorce and contraception.
He warned against "modifying the church's discipline" for those in unmarried relationships, and urged "people with homosexual tendencies" to undergo therapy and not expect pastoral help…
Part 2 - OBEDIENT to WHOM??? - Fr. Marty Kurylowicz’s 1997-2015 Protecting Gay Children - vs. - Burke’s Hysterical Antigay Demagoguery - JULY 7, 2015
Orlando victims named as tributes flow around the world - June 13, 2016
The city of Orlando on Monday released the names of some of those killed in the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
More names were added throughout the day to the list once their next of kin were notified. Those identified are:
• Edward Sotomayor Jr., 34 years old
• Stanley Almodovar III, 23 years old
• Luis Omar Ocasio-Capo, 20 years old
• Juan Ramon Guerrero, 22 years old
• Eric Ivan Ortiz-Rivera, 36 years old
• Peter O. Gonzalez-Cruz, 22 years old
• Luis S. Vielma, 22 years old
• Kimberly Morris, 37 years old
• Eddie Jamoldroy Justice, 30 years old
• Darryl Roman Burt II, 29 years old
• Deonka Deidra Drayton, 32 years old
• Alejandro Barrios Martinez, 21 years old
• Anthony Luis Laureanodisla, 25 years old
• Jean Carlos Mendez Perez, 35 years old
• Franky Jimmy Dejesus Velazquez, 50 years old
• Amanda Alvear, 25 years old
• Martin Benitez Torres, 33 years old
• Luis Daniel Wilson-Leon, 37 years old
• Mercedez Marisol Flores, 26 years old
• Xavier Emmanuel Serrano Rosado, 35 years old
• Gilberto Ramon Silva Menendez, 25 years old
• Simon Adrian Carrillo Fernandez, 31 years old
• Oscar A. Aracena-Montero, 26 years old
• Enrique L. Rios Jr., 25 years old
• Miguel Angel Honorato, 30 years old
• Javier Jorge-Reyes, 40 years old
• Joel Rayon Paniagua, 32 years old
• Jason Benjamin Josaphat, 19 years old
• Cory James Connell, 21 years old
• Juan P. Rivera Velazquez, 37 years old
• Luis Daniel Conde, 39 years old
• Shane Evan Tomlinson, 33 years old
• Juan Chevez-Martinez, 25 years old
• Jerald Arthur Wright, 31 years old
• Leroy Valentin Fernandez, 25 years old
• Tevin Eugene Crosby, 25 years old
• Jonathan Antonio Camuy Vega, 24 years old
• Jean C. Nives Rodriguez, 27 years old
• Rodolfo Ayala-Ayala, 33 years old
• Brenda Lee Marquez McCool, 49 years old
• Yilmary Rodriguez Sulivan, 24 years old
• Christopher Andrew Leinonen, 32 years old
• Angel L. Candelario-Padro, 28 years old
• Frank Hernandez, 27 years old
• Paul Terrell Henry, 41 years old
• Antonio Davon Brown, 29 years old
• Christopher Joseph Sanfeliz 24 years old
• Akyra Monet Murray, 18 years old
“We will not be defined by the act of a cowardly hater,” Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said at a Monday morning press conference.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott called Orlando a “melting pot” of 20 million people who will take care of their family members…
Meanwhile, tributes to the victims poured in from cities in the U.S. to Berlin, Germany, and Seoul, South Korea.
June is LGBT Pride Month, and some pre-planned events turned to remembrances for the Pulse nightclub attendees. Thousands gathered in Miami Beach; Chicago; New York; Austin, Texas, and elsewhere.
“Love is stronger than hate,” said the Rev. Amanda Henderson, director of the Interfaith Alliance at a vigil in Denver. “The voices that seek to divide us will not work.”…
Above excerpts taken from:
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Below more excerpts taken from:
FRIDAY, JUNE 3, 2016
M O R A L - R E A L I S M - - D é j à _V u -
V i o l e n c e Disguised As T R U T H - 1986 - 1997 - 2012 - 2014 - 2015
- Only in truth does charity shine forth, only in truth can charity be authentically lived - Benedict XVI
- Welcoming gay people - Synod 2014 & 2015 - Where was the truth??? Where was the dialogue??? There was no love!!!
WHAT P L A N K ?
IN WHOSE E Y E ?
This entire posting has been previously sent out as a US group mailing prior to posting it here on the Thalamus Center.
SCIENCE and RELIGION of Homosexuality = Truth = LOVE
I N S E P A R A B L E
DIALOGUE not ISOLATION
John Paul II - 1988 and Benedict XVI - 2009
“[Galileo] declared explicitly that the two truths, of
faith and of science,
can never contradict each other,
'Sacred Scripture and the natural world
proceeding equally from the divine Word,
the first as dictated by the Holy Spirit,
the second as a very faithful executor of the commands of God',
as he wrote in his letter to
Father Benedetto Castelli on
21 December 1613…”
FIDES ET RATIO - John Paul II - 1998
What is important, as we have already stressed, is that the
dialogue should continue and grow in depth and scope.
In the process we must overcome every
regressive tendency to a
unilateral reductionism, to
fear, and to
self-imposed isolation.
What is critically important is that each discipline should continue to enrich, nourish and challenge the other to be more fully what it can be and to contribute to our vision of who we are and who we are becoming…
For the truth of the matter is that
the Church and the scientific community
will inevitably interact;
their options do not include isolation. Photo
John Paul II - 1988
https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/letters/1988/documents/hf_jp-ii_let_19880601_padre-coyne.html
Reason always stands in need of being
purified by faith:
this also holds true for political reason,
which must not consider itself
omnipotent.
For its part,
religion always needs to be purified by
reason in order to show its authentically
human face.
Any breach in this dialogue
comes only at an enormous price to human development… Photo
CARITAS IN VERITATE - Benedict XVI - 2009
SCIENCE and RELIGION of Homosexuality =
Truth = LOVE
A mature and a more thorough educated understanding of sexual orientation from a variety of academic disciplines of science, biblical studies and theology - will help to gave a more broader and unifying perspective - to be able to view sexual orientation as not exclusively limited to sexual behavior - rather that it is about expressing and receiving the totality of the meaning of love and that we will find it is the binding force that though we are many it binds us all together as one. It is the key to understanding the reality of the words of Christ regarding the Last Judgment. It is the wonder of how God created us - a slice of heaven on earth.
The Last Judgment
“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
Matthew 25:31-46
NO SCIENCE - RELIGION of Homosexuality ≠ Truth ≠ LOVE
A startling immaturity and even more alarming - an irrational and ruthless antigay obsession - originating initially from the dictates of a small group of fundamentalist (a person who believes in the strict, literal interpretation of scripture in a religion) curia staff members, ("hiding behind the cardinal skirts of Ratzinger" http://articles.latimes.com/1986-11-07/news/mn-15599_1_congregation) to globally silence, by permanently removing and discrediting anyone in the Church promoting the education or open discussion on the emerging science of the sexual orientation or supportive of gay people. Photo
'A great temptation is to say that there is only one way to practice any religion. That may sound benign, …because it simplifies things, but it really leads to ban the books, change the faculties in the seminaries and universities and, at the limit, mount a crusade.
The science on the sexual orientation of homosexuality began emerging over the pass 60 years, after Evelyn Hooker completed her international accepted - ground breaking research in 1957 - that found “…that homosexuality is not a mental disorder, as there was no detectable difference between homosexual and heterosexual men in terms of mental adjustment…(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Hooker).” This science and historical evidence kept increasing that led to its universal acceptance by all the “mainstream medical and mental health organizations” that homosexuality is a normal part human sexuality. Photo
Sexual Orientation & Homosexuality
American Psychological Association
Is homosexuality a mental disorder?
No, lesbian, gay and bisexual orientations are not disorders. Research has found no inherent association between any of these sexual orientations and psychopathology. Both heterosexual behavior and homosexual behavior are normal aspects of human sexuality. Both have been documented in many different cultures and historical eras. Despite the persistence of stereotypes that portray lesbian, gay and bisexual people as disturbed, several decades of research and clinical experience have led all mainstream medical and mental health organizations in this country to conclude that these orientations represent normal forms of human experience. Lesbian, gay and bisexual relationships are normal forms of human bonding. Therefore, these mainstream organizations long ago abandoned classifications of homosexuality as a mental disorder.
However, in direct contrast, this small group of curial fundamentalists in the Vatican became increasingly evermore obsessive in maintaining the absolute silence in the Church regarding this emerging science on homosexuality. Gradually over a period of 30 years, they covertly increased in number and assumed the height of Church authority within the Vatican - using fear as the controlling force. “Don’t make waves!”
…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…
D é j à V u
In the early 1980s - this curial group of antigay fundamentalists was identified as ruthless and inept extremists who strove to “coerce doctrinal uniformity by punishing dissenters.” In 1986, remarks were addressed to “Vatican inquisitors” and not to then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. Photo
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, but now the soft-spoken Milwaukee prelate is cultivating a reputation as the nation`s boldest bishop, as well…
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…
…in his columns, titled “The Price of Orthodoxy,” Archbishop Weakland appeared to be directing his remarks to Vatican inquisitors.
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…
Read more:
The examples given were the use of Draconian measures (Draconian - meaning great severity, that derives from Draco, an Athenian law scribe under whom small offenses had heavy punishments (Draconian laws) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draconian) in their crackdown against Archbishop Hunthausen who was supportive of gay people and Fr. Curran who in 1968, questioned the justification of several issues listed in Pope Paul VI's controversial encyclical - Humane Vitae, including in some cases the support of homosexuals. “In 1979, the congregation sent Curran a 16-page list of the "principal errors and ambiguities" in his writings. Curran refused to back down, claiming that his views were shared by a majority of Catholic theologians, and that responsible dissent is permissible to teachings not taught as "infallible" church dogma (http://articles.latimes.com/1986-11-07/news/mn-15599_1_congregation/3).”
In 1986, Archbishop Weakland criticized the actions taken against Hunthausen and Curran - he sternly warned that “the desire to preserve doctrinal purity in the church must ‘avoid the fanaticism and small-mindedness that has characterized so many periods of the church in history--tendencies that lead to much cruelty, suppression of theological creativity and lack of growth (http://articles.latimes.com/1986-11-07/news/mn-15599_1_congregation/4).’” It was reported then, in 1986 that Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) was being “used” - “exploited” being made out to be the "the ax man, the bad guy" who was forcing the severity of the crackdown against Hunthausen and Curran, stating that “the impetus for the moves against Curran and Hunthausen originated not with Ratzinger or Pope”John Paul II.
Now, months after the Synod sessions on Family 2014 and 2015 - the curia’s antigay fundamentalists who had been "hiding behind the cardinal skirts of Ratzinger” for over the past 30 years had overplayed their hand by attacking Pope Francis because he strongly promoted the open dialogue on homosexuality. Photo
Pope Francis faces an uphill climb to get the synod he wants - October 3, 2015
…This synod is actually round two of a process that began last October with a first summit on the family. Back then, fierce debate broke out over homosexuality, the pastoral care of divorced Catholics, and what to make of other “irregular” relationships.
The hope had been that the year between the first synod and the second one might allow time to cool those tensions and find common ground, but there’s not a great deal of evidence that things have played out that way.
Instead, there seems to be a mounting tendency on all sides to suspect skullduggery and underhanded tactics.
…If these opening salvos are any indication, the synod may be defined not just by disagreements on substance, but also suspicions of Machiavellian maneuvers along the way. That’s not exactly a prescription for meeting in the middle.
More basically, the emotional intensity of the synod is amped up because of perceptions that the pope’s position is still a work in progress.
Whenever topics such as homosexuality and divorce are on the docket, feelings will run strong. What’s new now is a sense, however exaggerated, that movement might actually be possible. That’s elicited strong passions both from those who see such movement as desirable, and those who view it as alarming…
Vatican Says Rumors About Pope's Health Are Attempt To Undermine Him - October 22, 2015
After repeatedly denying reports that Pope Francis has a benign brain tumor Wednesday, the Vatican is going a step further, calling the rumor "false information" that's meant to destabilize the papacy. The doctor named in the reports also says they're untrue… Photo
From Rome, NPR'S Sylvia Poggioli reports:
"The suggestion that the tumor report was part of a plot against Pope Francis was put forth by the official Vatican daily L'Osservatore Romano. It wrote, "the timing of the claim reveals there was an intent to manipulate and cause a dust storm of confusion."
"Cardinal Walter Kasper said it was part of an effort to undermine the bishops' assembly…
In the last 50 years a pope has not been criticised so brazenly - 13 November 2014
US bloggers and “culture warriors” – even the now-former Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, Cardinal Burke – have publicly laid into Pope Francis in the media, criticising the calling and content of last month’s Extraordinary Synod on the Family.
…But I do not think that US culture warriors should publicly criticise Pope Francis, who is not only restoring episcopal collegiality but the scriptural based notion of God’s “infinite love and mercy” rather than just man-made Pharisaic and poorly drafted canon law.
Read more:
Pope Francis has a brain tumor? Sharp denials amid synod silly season - October 21, 2015
VATICAN CITY (RNS) The Vatican on Wednesday (Oct. 21) categorically denied a story from an Italian news agency that Pope Francis has been diagnosed with a brain tumor, calling the report “unfounded” and “seriously irresponsible…
The scoop was quickly called into question, in part because the story provided so few details and because the Vatican has been swirling with rumors this month during an intense and contentious debate over church teachings among 270 bishops gathered for a global synod on the family.
The synod has featured unusually open arguments and no small amount of public sniping among churchmen, as well as revelations of a secret letter to the pope and accusations of behind-the-scenes “rigging” and “manipulation.”…
Read more:
&
Pope lectures Catholic elders at closing of synod on family - October 25, 2015
…But there were limits. Bishop Johan Bonny of Antwerp, Belgium, said that when he raised the idea in his working group at the synod that committed same-sex relationships could have spiritual value, “bad feelings came up.”
In the end, he said he was pleased that the synod did not delve deeper into the issue of homosexuality.
“That is a point for next time,” he said. “Better to leave it for later than discuss it in a hot and bad atmosphere.” Photo
Read more:
They were unaware that they were no longer protected by the Vatican’s shield of bureaucratic anonymity - as they were during the crackdown of Hunthausen and Curran. They publicly exposed themselves by repeating - throughout the Synod 2014 and 2015 - the same degree of “fanaticism and small-mindedness” as described by Weakland in 1986 that led “to much cruelty, suppression of theological creativity and lack of growth” by forcing their same unsubstantiated - strict rules on homosexuality (Lays Down Rules - Homosexuality http://articles.latimes.com/1986-11-07/news/mn-15599_1_congregation/3).
Are conservatives at the high-stakes Vatican summit overplaying their hand? - 10/16/15
VATICAN CITY — Ever since a Vatican summit last year raised the possibility of making the Church more open to those whose family lives may not mirror the Catholic ideal, conservative foes have been in an uproar, waging an intense campaign to block any reforms from being adopted.
Yet as a follow-up meeting this month has progressed, the enthusiasm of the traditionalists could be overwhelming their tactical judgment — annoying and even angering enough of their fellow bishops that they may have weakened what was once considered a strong position…
With all these twists and turns, the saga was quickly becoming as absurd as it was convoluted, and it might have been seen as just another chapter in the legacy of Vatican intrigue that stretches from the era of the Borgia popes to the novels of Dan Brown — except that the plot seemed so backhanded it made the synod look faithless as well as foolish.
“The general opinion I detected among the bishops was a sense of disgust,” Bishop Marcello Semeraro, an Italian who is on the final drafting committee along with Wuerl, told Vatican Insider.
Another synod delegate, Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Australia, called the leaked letter affair a “typically Roman melodrama” that was “not untinged with psychodrama.”
The problem, Coleridge wrote on his blog, is that episodes like this tend to “aggravate the sense that the Synod is not much more than a political caucus, with ideological riptides swirling around us and the odd stinger drifting by.”
Already, he said, the deliberations are struggling to battle against “a fear that can become a kind of paranoia.”…
Read more:
The fact that Pope Benedict XVI has been in retirement, since, February 2013, there clearly appears to be a definite pattern emerging that he is N O T the force behind this 30 years antigay fundamentalism. The pattern that is emerging is that Pope Benedict XVI has been possibly endlessly exploited and that the butler was most likely truly tying to protect him during the Vatileaks 2012. Photo
Vatican leaks: No respite for Pope Benedict as more documents published - 3 June 2012
Butler Paolo Gabriele believed to be one of 20 whistleblowers trying to oust pontiff's prime minister, Tarcisio Bertone
As Vatican Manages Crisis, Book Details Infighting - June 3, 2012
…Above all, “VatiLeaks” has once again revealed how the Vatican is not only a global force with one billion faithful worldwide, but also a deeply Italian institution where connections and loyalty often count more than merit and Machiavellian power plays are the rule more than the exception…
What is becoming ever so clear is that the ruthlessly obsessive antigay crusade made of the majority members of the curia and hierarchy - like Cardinal Burke are losing all their cover, including that of their accomplices. What is needed to remove this entrenched corruption of the curia is more light - a lot more light. Cardinal Burke is self-destructing simply by making his public statements and the revelations of his supporters. Photo
Focus of Controversy : Ratzinger: Point Man for Vatican
November 07, 1986
In the five years since Pope John Paul II handpicked him to be the church's official "defender of the faith" and ultimate judge of Catholic scholars, Ratzinger has shaped the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith into a powerful weapon against dissent.
Bitter Attacks
And in the wake of the recent disciplining of American scholar Father Charles Curran and Seattle Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen, no one--the Pope included--has come under such bitter attack as the 59-year-old Ratzinger and his "watchdog" congregation.
The congregation's actions against Curran, who lost his authority to teach as an official church theologian, and Hunthausen, who was relieved of pastoral responsibility in five key areas, have triggered an outpouring of protest by U.S. theological societies, priests, lay persons and even bishops.
Critics of the congregation contend that regional church councils and bishops could adequately defend the faith and that the Vatican body is too rigid. Because of its broad powers to ferret out and punish dissent, opponents say, the congregation creates a chilling effect on innovative theological work and a climate of suspicion that reaches even to local priests and their parishioners…
' Lightning Rod'
At the same time, Ratzinger is the acknowledged "lightning rod" for the Pope, deflecting criticism that would otherwise be heaped on the Pontiff directly.
"Ratzinger's job is a thankless one," declared a high Vatican official, who, like most other church officials interviewed, spoke on the condition that he not be identified. "It's inevitable that he would be seen as the 'fall guy.' And general civility within the church would avoid an overly blunt, personal attack on the Pope."
However, a top church official, an American in Rome, said the impetus for the moves against Curran and Hunthausen originated not with Ratzinger or the Pope [Pope John Paul II], but with church conservatives in the United States. These conservatives are "hiding behind the cardinal skirts of Ratzinger" and making him "the ax man, the bad guy," the official said…
Read more:
A N T I G A Y F U N D A M E N T A L I S T S
SEPARATION of SCIENCE and RELIGION ≠ TRUTH
T H O R N S o f D E C E I T F U L N E S S &
H A T E
The Parable of the Sower
The seed falling among the thorns
refers to someone who hears the word,
but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth
choke the word, making it unfruitful.
But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.
Matthew 13: 22-23
Gradually over the years, a hedge of thorny briar-roses grew
round about the King’s castle. Every year
it grew higher, and the brambles
and weeds grew stronger
and thicker, ntil at last
a great forest of
stems and thorns surrounded the entire place.
Sleeping Beauty
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Being Gay Is Just as Healthy as Being Straight - 2003
Evelyn Hooker's pioneering research [1957] 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…
John Jay College of Criminal Justice - 5-Year Study by American Bishops – Roman Catholic Church Sex Abuse Cases - May 18, 2011
...Since the scandal broke, conservatives in the church have blamed gay priests for perpetrating the abuse...
The report notes that homosexual men began entering the seminaries “in noticeable numbers” from the late 1970s through the 1980s. By the time this cohort entered the priesthood, in the mid-1980s, the reports of sexual abuse of minors by priests began to drop and then to level off. If anything, the report says, the abuse
decreased as more gay priests began serving the church...
American Psychiatric Association - Official Actions
Position Statement on Issues Related to Homosexuality - Dec. 2013
…It is the American Psychiatric Association’s position that same-sex attraction, whether expressed in action, fantasy, or identity, implies no impairment per se in judgment, stability, reliability, or general social or vocational capabilities…
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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,
‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’
when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?
You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye,
and then you will see clearly
to remove the speck from
your brother’s eye.
Matthew 7:3-5
ANTIGAY FUNDAMENTALISTS and
GAY PORNOGRAPHY
WHAT P L A N K ?
IN WHOSE E Y E ?
Is Homophobia Associated With Homosexual Arousal? 1996
…The results of this study indicate that individuals who score in the homophobic range and admit negative affect toward homosexuality demonstrate significant sexual arousal to male homosexual erotic stimuli…
PARENTING AND HOMOPHOBIA
Parental Autonomy Support and Discrepancies Between Implicit and Explicit Sexual Identities: Dynamics of Self-Acceptance and Defense - 2012
When individuals grow up with autonomy-thwarting parents, they may be prevented from exploring internally endorsed values and identities and as a result shut out aspects of the self perceived to be unacceptable. Given the stigmatization of homosexuality, individuals perceiving low autonomy support from parents may be especially motivated to conceal same-sex sexual attraction, leading to defensive processes such as reaction formation…
…Psychodynamic traditions hold that people have a preferred view of themselves, which may not reflect reality. When this idealized view is threatened by contradictory thoughts or feelings, people engage in one or more unconscious processes to defend against the threat to self. Among defensive processes that have been recognized as having some empirical support is reaction formation, a process indicated in the modern body of research on self-esteem preservation (e.g., Baumeister, Dale, & Sommer, 1998).
Reaction formation refers to the process of adopting values or beliefs, or engaging in behaviors, that are in opposition to feelings or impulses experienced within oneself that are deemed unacceptable. Empirical work has shown reaction formation processes with respect to sexism (Sherman & Garkin, 1980), sex guilt (Morokoff, 1985), and prejudice (Dutton & Lake, 1973), indicating that individuals sometimes defend against self-relevant, threatening information by engaging in opposing behaviors…
A K I S S
“I N T R I N S I C A L L Y
D I S O R D E R E D” ???
O N L Y - T H R E A T E N S - I D E A L I Z E D
S E L F - P E R C E P T I O N - O F
D I S S O C I A T E D H O M O S E X U A L S
C U R I A & H I E R A R C H Y
How this antigay group made up of members of the curia and hierarchy came to be and to grow to the size that it has - becoming a global dominating force of fundamentalists - needs to be thoroughly investigated - so that we can prevent it from ever happening again. There appears to be several interesting correlations related to the flourishing of fundamentalism among global terrorist groups and world powers. There are a few striking characteristics shared among these powerful fundamentalists groups - to name a few - their (1) complete lack of human compassion, (2) irrational and arbitrary ideologies, (3) entrenched corruption, (4) severe and lethal antigay tactics and (5) they are the world’s largest consumers of gay pornography (http://fathermartykurylowicz.blogspot.com/2016/04/gay-adult-pornography-and-sexual.html ).
Vatican debate on gays provokes strong reaction from all corners - October 10, 2014
...“They fully believed in the church’s teachings and they knew their grandchildren would see them welcome the son and his partner into the family,” the couple told those assembled in the Vatican’s Paul VI hall. “Their response could be summed up in three words: ‘He’s our son.’”
American hard-liner Cardinal Raymond Burke shot back on Thursday (Oct. 9) that children should be protected from “exposure” to gay relationships, which he rejected as “evil.”...
They would be hysterically extremely more overwhelmed by Pete Kuzak naked butt and completely unconcerned about the lifetime harm that they are endlessly inflicting on children as young as 4 and 5 years of age, globally - by their obsessive antigay crusade that is completely unsubstantiated by science or scripture. And this is the human atrocities that are caused by the mindless contagion effect of the fanatical antigay obsession of fundamentalism, it is a fatal group blindness to science and religion. Photo
Catholicism can and must change, Francis forcefully tells Italian church gathering - November 10, 2015
FLORENCE, ITALY Pope Francis has strongly outlined anew a comprehensive vision for the future of the Catholic church, forcefully telling an emblematic meeting of the entire Italian church community here that our times require a deeply merciful Catholicism that is unafraid of change…
Francis said Catholics must realize: "We are not living an era of change but a change of era."
"Before the problems of the church it is not useful to search for solutions in conservatism or fundamentalism in the restoration of obsolete conduct and forms that no longer have the capacity of being significant culturally," the pontiff said at one point during his remarks.
"Christian doctrine is not a closed system incapable of generating questions, doubts, interrogatives -- but is alive, knows being unsettled, enlivened," said the pope. "It has a face that is not rigid, it has a body that moves and grows, it has a soft flesh: it is called Jesus Christ."
"The reform of the church then, and the church is semper reformanda ... does not end in the umpteenth plan to change structures," he continued. "It means instead grafting yourself to and rooting yourself in Christ, leaving yourself to be guided by the Spirit -- so that all will be possible with genius and creativity.”…
"A new humanism in Jesus Christ…”
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N E V E R G R E W U P
S A R A H
A B S E N C E of D I A L O G U E
NO S C I E N C E - NO T R U T H - NO L O V E
K I D S A R E B E I N G H U R T ! ! !
Sarah linked - gay rights to “Nazi-Fascism and Communism” October 22, 2015
…Of the many measures under debate here, two have emerged as the most polemic.
One is whether to grant divorced and remarried Catholics, who are committing adultery in the church’s view, access to Communion. The other is the question of whether to offer a warmer welcome to gays and lesbians, including cutting references to being gay as “intrinsically disordered” from church teachings.
The divide is not just a liberal-conservative split; it is also geographic, with prelates in Africa, for instance, denouncing the “Eurocentric” and “Western” fixation with issues such as gay rights.
Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah linked the push for gay rights to abortion and Islamic extremism, comparing them all to what “Nazi-Fascism and Communism were in the 20th century.”
The vehemence of the backlash has shocked even some moderate conservatives, and it has suggested the rise of a tea-party-like faction of bishops within the hierarchy.
“Some of them are talking now like this is Armageddon,” Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Brisbane, Australia, said in an interview with The Washington Post.
“They see themselves as the sons of goodness and others as the sons of darkness and evil. I have been very surprised by this apocalyptic view of things at the synod. . . . This isn’t the way discussions are done,” he added…
Reactions to Pete Kuzak naked butt are more revealing of a person’s internal state of well-being, moral state of development, level of maturity and sexual orientation. These reactions, if they are sexual arousal reactions - they cannot be consciously suppressed, because they are under the control of the autonomic nervous system.
Autonomic nervous system
The autonomic nervous system is a control system that acts largely unconsciously and regulates bodily functions such as the heart rate, digestion, respiratory rate, pupillary response, urination, and sexual arousal…
The bodily functions that are under the control of the autonomic nervous systems - means that they are not under our conscious control. They function involuntary and reflexively. However, their continuous functioning is crucial in keeping us alive. They are our survival mechanism, because - we cannot live without breathing or our hearts beating or exist without love and any impairment to these functions will shorten our lifespan.
T H E E Y E S H A V E I T
Sexual orientation (bisexual, homosexual and heterosexual) - functions automatically and continuously throughout life - as part of the autonomic nervous system - like breathing, or the heart beating, they functions unconsciously meaning we do not have think about breathing that we need to take a breath. A research study, at Cornell University found that measurements of pupil dilation taken while study participants viewed erotic videos of people they found attractive - was a robust indicator of - a person’s sexual orientation and of the activation of the autonomic nervous system. The results of bisexual men was of significant importance in this new study that revealed they had substantial pupil dilations to sexual videos of both men and women.
The Eyes Have It: Sex and Sexual Orientation Differences in Pupil Dilation Patterns - August 3. 2012
…pupil dilation to stimuli indicates activation of the autonomic nervous system. This system is associated with many automatic processes such as perspiration, digestion, blood pressure, and heart rate. For this reason, pupil dilation has been used as indicator of automatic response, for example, in studies of implicit reaction and cognitive load. Other research suggests that pupil dilation can reflect automatic attention, or attention that is likely not in the conscious control of participants. It is therefore unlikely that participants suppress pupil dilation to stimuli they are sexually attracted to. Pupil dilation patterns could therefore reflect, with high sensitivity, automatic attention related to sexual attraction and sexual orientation… Photo
WHAT P L A N K ?
IN WHOSE E Y E ?
This research gives new meaning to the Jesus’s works about removing the plank from our own eyes first before removing the speck from the eyes of our brothers and sisters. It is a perfect example of the words of Pope John Paul II confirming the truth that science and faith can never be separated - “[Galileo] declared explicitly that the two truths, of faith and of science, can never contradict each other, 'Sacred Scripture and the natural world proceeding equally from the divine Word, the first as dictated by the Holy Spirit, the second as a very faithful executor of the commands of God’, as he wrote in his letter to Father Benedetto Castelli on 21 December 1613… (FIDES ET RATIO - John Paul II - 1998 https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091998_fides-et-ratio.html)."
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, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?
You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye,
and then you will see clearly
to remove the speck from
your brother’s eye.
Matthew 7:3-5
If we are able to look closer at these extreme antigay fundamentalists, (which we could only do this, if we have first looked closer in the same way to fully examined ourselves) - we are likely to find this is exactly the way they were treated as children, as young as 4 and 5 years of age and no one cared enough to protect them. And the only way children are protected is by adults who are responsible enough to removed the plank (out ignorance and fear about homosexuality and truthfully acknowledge our individual sexual orientation i.e. gay, straight or bisexual) from their own eyes first, to avoided attempting to use the unsubstantiated antigay social and religious norms - to cure gay people. When we are successful in this process - as commanded by Christ (Matthew 7:3-5) - Pete Kuzak's butt - will not be a caused of uncontrollable hysteria and paranoia - but rather an appreciation for the beauty of God's creation, like any sunrise or sunset. It will be the forward movement in the moral developmental maturation process described by Jean Piaget from the Heteronomous Morality Phase to the Autonomous Morality Phase (http://www.simplypsychology.org/piaget-moral.html). This early childhood development process will be explained below in more detail. Photo Michelangelo, The Last Judgment, Sistine Chapel ceiling, The dome of St Peter's Basilica, Pietà - the body of Jesus on the lap of his mother Mary after the Crucifixion
Heteronomous Morality Phase
egocentrism
moral realism
immanent justice - immediate and severe punishment
expiatory punishment - to make the guilty suffer
rules - absolute and unchanging
judging - consequences NOT intentions
morality of obedience
regulation by others
unthinking obedience
coercion or constraint
mindless conformity
Autonomous Morality Phase
self regulation
internal convictions
necessity of respect for persons in relationships with others
mutual respect and cooperation
thinking independently, creatively
develop moral feelings and convictions - best interests of all parties
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Piaget's Social Theory
Rheta L. DeVries
University of Northern Iowa
Piaget's (1932/1965) description of sociomoral development was expressed as movement from anomy (non-regulation by others or the self) to heteronomy (regulation by others) to autonomy (self-regulation). He described two types of morality corresponding to two types of adult-child relationships, one that he believed to promote children's development in all domains and one that he believed to retard development.
The first type of morality is a morality of obedience. Piaget called this "heteronomous" morality, reflecting roots meaning regulation by others. Therefore, the individual who is heteronomously moral follows moral rules given by others out of obedience to an authority who has coercive power. Heteronomous morality means that the individual does not regulate his or her behavior by means of personal convictions. Rather, his or her activity is regulated by impulse or unthinking obedience.
The second type of morality is autonomous, reflecting roots meaning self regulation. The individual who is autonomously moral follows moral rules that are self-constructed, self-regulating principles. These rules have a feeling of personal necessity for the individual. The individual who is autonomously moral follows internal convictions about the necessity of respect for persons in relationships with others…
These two types of morality correspond, in Piaget's theory, to two types of adult-child relationships. The first type [Heteronomous morality] is one of coercion or constraint in which the adult prescribes what the child must do by giving ready-made rules and instructions for behavior. In this relation, respect is a one-way affair. That is, the child is expected to respect the adult, and the adult uses authority to socialize and instruct the child. The adult controls the child's behavior…
…According to this view, when children are governed continually by the values, beliefs, and ideas of others, they practice a submission that can lead to mindless conformity in both moral and intellectual life…In Piaget's view, a life dominated by the rules of others through a morality of obedience will never lead to the kind of reflection necessary for commitment to internal or autonomous principles of moral judgment. Piaget warned that coercion socializes only the surface of behavior and actually reinforces the child's tendency to rely on regulation by others…
Piaget contrasted the heteronomous adult-child relationship with a second type [autonomous] that is characterized by mutual respect and cooperation. The adult returns children's respect by giving them the possibility to regulate their behavior voluntarily. This type of relation Piaget called "cooperative." He argued that it is only by refraining from exercising unnecessary coercion that the adult opens the way for children to develop minds capable of thinking independently and creatively and to develop moral feelings and convictions that take into account the best interests of all parties. The method by which this relationship operates is co-operation…Co-operating means striving to attain a common goal while coordinating one's own feelings and perspective with a consciousness of another's feelings and perspective…The motive for cooperation begins in feelings of mutual affection and mutual trust which become elaborated into feelings of sympathy and consciousness of the intentions of self and others…
…Piaget was not advocating that children have complete freedom because total freedom without any constraints is inconsistent with moral relations with others…
…The child's construction of moral rules begins with learning to follow parental commands. However, these norms must be generalized because commands cannot specify all possible situations. According to Piaget, when children are encouraged to think for themselves and reflect on the moral issues in their lives, they rework commands through differentiation, reinterpretation, and elaboration in the course of lived experiences. The individual who does not do this reworking to construct new and personal norms with a feeling of personal necessity remains susceptible to the vicissitudes of others' opinions and directions…
Piaget (1932/1965) emphasized that ego development necessitates liberation from the thought and will of others (that is, from heteronomy). Lack of this liberation results in inability to co-operate. How does this liberation come about? For Piaget, it is through the child's experience of being respected by the adult who co-operates with the child. Learning to understand others begins as others show that they understand the child's inner feelings and ideas. In this way, Piaget (1932/1965) noted that co-operation is a factor in the creation of personality as a stable ego. Personality is the result of continuous interaction with others--comparison, opposition, and mutual adjustment. For affective and personality development, as in the development of reasoning and moral judgment, Piaget argued that heteronomous relationships are counterproductive, and that co-operative relationships are necessary. For Piaget, therefore, co- operation is an essential characteristic of developmentally-oriented education not simply because it is a culturally valued virtue, but because of its psychodynamic developmental significance…
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Dr. Rheta L. DeVries
University of Northern Iowa
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AUTONOMOUS MORALITY PHASE
M U T U A L
R E S P E C T & C O-O P E R A T I O N
D I A L O G U E
Pope Francis by all indications appears to a good an example of an autonomous person, because he understands the meaning of being one with everyone. He takes into account "the best interests of all parties." Photo
…The method by which this relationship operates is co-operation…Co-operating means striving to attain a common goal while coordinating one's own feelings and perspective with a consciousness of another's feelings and perspective…The motive for cooperation begins in feelings of mutual affection and mutual trust which become elaborated into feelings of sympathy and consciousness of the intentions of self and others…
He remains secure in his faith, and as the leader of the Catholic Church, while at the same time, as demonstrated by his example, he works hard through dialogue to understand and to be inclusive of everyone.
A Big Heart Open to God - September 30, 2013
The Model: Peter Faber, ‘Reformed Priest’
I am wondering if there are figures among the Jesuits, from the origins of the Society to the present date, that have affected him in a particular way, so I ask the pope who they are and why. He begins by mentioning Ignatius Loyola [founder of the Jesuits] and Francis Xavier, but then focuses on a figure that other Jesuits certainly know, but who is of course not as well known to the general public: Peter Faber (1506-46), from Savoy. He was one of the first companions of St. Ignatius, in fact the first, with whom he shared a room when the two were students at the University of Paris…I ask the pope why he is so impressed by Faber, and which of Faber’s traits he finds particularly moving.
“[His] dialogue with all,” the pope says, “even the most remote and even with his opponents; his simple piety, a certain naïveté perhaps, his being available straightaway, his careful interior discernment, the fact that he was a man capable of great and strong decisions but also capable of being so gentle and loving.”…
Pope Francis sits down with one of his fiercest ex-critics - May 28, 2016
ROME— Pope Francis routinely extols the virtues of dialogue and building bridges, and on Friday he put his schedule where his mouth is, welcoming a figure from his native country who had been not only one of his most vocal critics, but who actually once occupied his cathedral and used the area behind the altar as a bathroom.
Argentine human right activist Hebe de Bonafini called on Francis at the pope’s home, the Santa Marta residence on Vatican grounds, marking the first time the two have seen each other since Francis’ election to the papacy in March 2013. The session lasted over an hour, one of the longest private audiences Francis has given since his election…
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Pope Francis to Scholas Occurrentes: in dialogue, everybody wins, 30.05.2016
Vatican City, 30 May 2016 – Yesterday afternoon Pope Francis met with the participants in the world congress, "Between university and school, a wall or a bridge" (Rome, 27-29 May 2016), organised by the foundation of pontifical right, "Scholas Occurrentes", which promotes social integration of the young and the culture of encounter for peace, also making use of a technological and editorial platform. …
…Francis again stressed the importance of dialogue, "of listening, of not arguing immediately, of asking questions: this is dialogue, and dialogue is a bridge. Do not be afraid of dialogue. … It is about agreeing on proposals for forging ahead together. In dialogue everybody wins, and no-one loses. In arguments there is someone who wins and someone who loses, or both lose. Dialogue is gentleness, it is the capacity to listen, it is putting yourself in the other person's shoes, and building bridges. During dialogue, even if we think differently, not arguing but instead persuading gently. … Pride and arrogance must be uprooted. Pride and arrogance always finish badly. The proud ends badly. Or rather, I would answer to this question: how can we build a better world? Via this path. We need to reduce the level of aggressiveness in the world. The world needs tenderness, gentleness, listening, journeying together. Otherwise, today these things happen, because the attitudes I have mentioned are lacking.”…
Now, that seems to be the true meaning of being Catholic, universal. This is a sign of an autonomous person. Pope Francis through decades of personal dialogue, always appears to fine new ways of genuinely connecting to an enormous number of people on all levels. It is an example of someone who struggled endlessly to know himself, which is no easy task, as well as, a never ending task. He confirmed this fact when he stated, in 2013 that he is a sinner, literally a sinner (http://americamagazine.org/pope-interview). "Maturity is the quest to achieve balance and harmony in our physical, mental and spiritual gifts. It is the goal and outcome of a never-ending process of development which has nothing to do with age (http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2015/12/21/pope_tells_roman_curia_to_return_to_the_essentials/1195844)." Even though, this life struggle is endless, for everyone, he appears to be genuinely happy, able to laugh at himself and enjoys being with people. He seems to mirror rather well the words of St. Paul about childhood and adulthood, including the words of Christ about the storeroom and the use of its treasures.
When I was a child, I talked like a child,
I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.
When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.
Therefore every teacher of the law
who has become a disciple in the kingdom of heaven
is like the owner of a house
who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old.
Matthew 13:52
He most courageously demonstrated this extraordinary phenomenon, on his in flight news media conference from Brazil back to Rome July 29, 2013.
On Gay Priests, Pope Francis Asks, ‘Who Am I to Judge?’
July 29, 2013
ROME — For generations, homosexuality has largely been a taboo topic for the Vatican, ignored altogether or treated as “an intrinsic moral evil,” in the words of the previous pope.
In that context, brief remarks by Pope Francis suggesting that he would not judge priests for their sexual orientation, made aboard the papal airplane on the way back from his first foreign trip, to Brazil, resonated through the church. Never veering from church doctrine opposing homosexuality, Francis did strike a more compassionate tone than that of his predecessors, some of whom had largely avoided even saying the more colloquial “gay.”
“If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” Francis told reporters, speaking in Italian but using the English word “gay.”…
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LETHAL VIOLENCE
ANTIGAY FUNDAMENTALISTS
Al-Qaeda affiliate says it killed a gay rights activist and his friend in Bangladesh - April 26, 2016
A Bangladesh-based militant faction linked to al-Qaeda claimed responsibility Tuesday for hacking to death two men, one of whom was a gay rights activist and employee for a U.S. government aid program…
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Why does the battle for gay rights stop at the borders of Islam? Feb 3, 2015
You can tell when a battle has been won. Read the Pink News or any other gay news site and you will see that there are almost no stories left to report. A politician in Northern Ireland may be caught expressing an opinion on gay marriage which was the view of all mainstream UK political parties ten years ago. There might be some gossip about various celebrities (so no different from any other newspapers). But otherwise gay news sites are reduced to tentatively wondering if Transgender rights are the same as gay rights (the jury is out) and otherwise running mainstream politics stories which strangely favour the Lib Dems while expressing an inherited hostility towards the Tories and Ukip. This is no tragedy. It is a demonstration of the fact that after victory people get on with life as normal.
Of course not very far away there are people who take a quite different view of these matters. In the newspapers today we can see photos of events in the Syrian town of Raqqa. There Isis have just carried out another ‘execution’ of someone accused of being gay. The victim – this time a man in his 50s – was thrown off the top floor of a seven-storey building. He appears to have survived the fall and so was stoned to death by the crowd on the ground…
There are those who believe that the fight for gay rights, or indeed human rights in general, stops at the borders of Islam. Very few people seem to realise that they should not…
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C O R R E L A T I O N
SUPPRESSION OF GAY SEXUAL ORIENTATION
and
HETERONOMOUS MORALITY PHASE
A N T I G A Y F U N D A M E N T A L I S T S
and
V I O L E N C E
Pope Francis's unexpected support for gay people was extraordinary, it instantly shook the world.
“If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” Francis told reporters, speaking in Italian but using the English word “gay.”
His statement had the reverse effect of extreme hatred and fear that was caused by the Islamist-based fundamentalist terrorism organization by their surprised attacks on the USA of 9/11. “The September 11, 2001 attacks were a series of four coordinated terrorist attacks by the Islamic terrorist group Al-Qaeda on the United States on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001. The attacks consisted of suicide attacks used to target symbolic U.S. landmarks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks)."
It was an astounding unbelievable global expression of love coming from the leader of a major global organization, where a small group of antigay fundamentalists (curia staff members of the 1980s) had gradually increased in number - over a period of 3 decades, into making the Vatican a noted world - bastion of antigay fundamentalism.
ROME — For generations, homosexuality has largely been a taboo topic for the Vatican, ignored altogether or treated as “an intrinsic moral evil,” in the words of the previous pope.
Pope Francis's global expression of love and respect for gay people so incredulous because no one in the world ever expected such powerful love would be forthcoming from the Vatican to the world on topic of homosexuality.
It is indeed, an extremely sad commentary that the Vatican is viewed globally as an extreme antigay fundamentalist religious organization. "Fundamentalism - a form of a religion, especially Islam or Protestant Christianity, that upholds belief in the strict, literal interpretation of scripture." Fundamentalism is a separation of science and religion. It is contradictory to Pope John Paul stating that science and religion must never be separated that continuous dialogue must be maintained (FIDES ET RATIO - JOHN PAUL II - 1998 https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091998_fides-et-ratio.html). Pope Benedict XVI concurs stating that "Any breach in this dialogue comes only at an enormous price to human development…" He explains that without truth there is no love "Truth is the light that gives meaning and value to charity. That light is both the light of reason and the light of faith...Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality. Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way (CARITAS IN VERITATE - Benedict XVI - 2009 http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate.html)." Because of this major shift in the Catholic Church leadership to the obsessive form of antigay fundamentalism that took place over the past 30 years - it follows why Pope Francis was elected to reform the curia to bring the Church leadership back into the truth and love that is - only found through maintaining the continuous dialogue between science and religion. It is interesting that in less than 3 months of after he was elected to the papacy in March 2013 that on July 29, 2013, he makes this incredible global supportive statement about gay people. Because the Church leadership's antigay fundamentalism had long isolated from any dialogue with science on the topic of homosexuality and their idea of love/charity had significantly degenerated to non-existence and were saturated into the sentimentality of the obsessive nostalgia of out dated liturgical rituals and vestments, careerism, and riches (http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2014/12/22/pope_francis_christmas_greetings_to_curia/1115668). Their idea of morality and justice had become completely arbitrary. It allowed the rationalization of the endless child sexual abuse cover-ups, silencing and removing anyone in the Church who did not absolutely agree and pledge blind obedience to their antigay fundamentalistic dictates. It permitted a stream of corruption to run continuously throughout the curia, though there are good people there, too (http://www.reuters.com/article/us-pope-gaylobby-idUSBRE95B00I20130612). It was the curia's and the hierarchy's antigay fundamentalism that caused enormous global devastation and it was imploding in on them, i.e. the Vatileaks 2012 (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/28/vatileaks-pope-benedict-butler-trial).
This is clearly why Pope Francis stated that unless a new balance is found the moral edifice of the Church - would like a house of cards. Even Pope Francis's use of words to fall like a "house of cards" denotes the idea of an "empty shell," sentimentality and arbitrary foundations.
We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel. The proposal of the Gospel must be more simple, profound, radiant. It is from this proposition that the moral consequences then flow…
A Big Heart Open to God - September 30, 2013
Pope Francis at Mass calls for greater openness - October 17, 2013
If a Christian “becomes a disciple of the ideology, he has lost the faith.”
This was the theme of Pope Francis’ homily during his Thursday morning Mass at the Domus Sanctae Marthae. During his homily, the Pope warned Christians against behaving as though the “key is in [their] pocket, and the door closed.” He reiterated that without prayer, one abandons the faith and descends into ideology and moralism. “Woe to you, scholars of the law! You have taken away the key of knowledge!” (Luke 11: 52)
Pope Francis - Faith is not casuistry
21 February 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 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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&
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 even reprimanding 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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C U R I A & H I E R A R C H Y
I M M A T U R I T Y
S U R R E A L I S T I C - M A K E - B E L I E V E
F a i r y T a l e W o r l d
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A R B I T R A R Y - L O V E —— Absence of Dialogue - Science & Faith - Gay Sexual Orientation - Violence Ensues - - - UPDATE Aug 1, 2016 - Hillary Clinton Exonerated for President - Excessive & Extreme Demonization - Backfires - Convicting GOP Convention Organizers - Exposing Entrenched Corruption - July 26, 2016
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Injustice anywhere is a
threat to
Justice everywhere
Martin Luther King
The Nobel Peace Prize 1964
Martin Luther King Jr.
What you cannot do is accept injustice.
From Hitler – or anyone.
You must make the injustice visible
– be prepared to die like a
soldier to do so.
Mahatma Gandhi
Kids Are Being Hurt!!!
“Someday, maybe, there will exist a well-informed,
well considered and yet fervent public conviction that
the most deadly of all
possible sins
is the mutilation of
a child’s spirit.”
…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
Important note: No disrespect meant to Pope Benedict XVI or the hierarchy, the one and only concern is the safety and well-being of children.
Kids Are Being Hurt!!!
