10.08.2005 | The Pope they love to hate

"They" being those who would tell us that a homosexual "lifestyle" is but one choice among many. Sort of like choosing to decorate your home in the Shaker style, or in the Virginia colonial style. Here he comes again, that pesky former Cardinal Ratzinger, now Papa Benedict XVI, reminding his flock, all billion or so of them, that homosexuals are to be treated with kindness -- but not to the extent of approving of or even excusing homosexual acts. From the Washington Post story:

"It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech and action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the Church's pastors wherever it occurs," he wrote in "The Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons."

But he also came down hard on homosexuality as both a proclivity and a practice: "Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency toward an intrinsic moral evil and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder."

"The use of the sexual faculty can be morally good" only in a marital relation framed by procreation, he added. "A person engaging in homosexual behavior therefore acts immorally."

This is nothing new for Benedict, and any objective observer of the Catholic Church in America must have noticed an awful lot of members of the "lavender mafia" in the seminaries, orders, and parishes. But then, some people are very good at not seeing what is in front of them. Else why would the RC church need to send "inspectors" out to determine "Is there evidence of homosexuality in the seminary? (This question must be answered.)"

Well, better late than never, one supposes.

| technorati tag | Christianity|