Wrong side of history
Below is an article called “Wrong side of history”. In the article, Mark discusses the Catholic stance on homosexuality and the effect the stance has on the church. Sadly, the Catholics are not the only mainline denomination with this misguided view of homosexuality. Here’s to hoping God will reveal to them the truth in coming years.
Wrong side of history
By Mark Sullivan, Managing Editor of Guide magazine, December 2009
Several years ago, I watched as my mother trundled off to Mass one morning. She had long since stopping asking my father whether he was coming along. Her only comment was that he shouldn’t eat “everything in the refrigerator” before she returned.
After she left, my father joked about how he hoped she didn’t rush home, because he enjoyed having “a couple of hours of peace and quiet.”
Then he got serious, and admitted he had plenty of problems with the Catholic Church. The news that it had for years been covering up reports of priests abusing children was only its most recent transgression. He felt disheartened that on so many issues, the church had been on the wrong side of history.
I thought of my father this morning when I read the news that voters in Maine had stripped marriage rights from gay couples. Just as the Mormons had worked so hard last year to repeal same-sex marriage in California, the Catholic Church has poured so much of its resources into doing the same thing in Maine.
This isn’t a case of a few impassioned pleas from the pulpits. At a time when it is shuttering churches for lack of funds, the Catholic Diocese of Portland pumped hundreds of thousands into the repeal campaign.
Bishop Richard Malone warned that same-sex marriage was a “dangerous sociological experiment” that would “reverberate through society with tragic consequences.”
Malone’s comments are measured compared to those made by other church leaders. The Catholic Archdiocese of Guam last week issued a statement saying, in effect, that gays are worse than terrorists.
“Islamic fundamentalists clearly understand the damage that homosexual behavior inflicts on a culture,” read the three-page statement. “That is why they repress such behavior by death. It may be brutal at times, but any culture that is able to produce wave after wave of suicide bombers (women as well as men) is a culture that at least knows how to value self-sacrifice.”
Gays are no longer welcome in the Vatican, not even as tourists, according to one bishop. Janusz Kaleta said stepping foot inside would be “a provocation and an abuse of this place.”
This anti-gay rhetoric is coming directly from the top. After all, it was Pope Benedict XVI, when he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who in 1986 penned a letter calling homosexuality “an intrinsic moral evil.” Six years later, he issued a statement that bias against gays couldn’t be compared to that based on race or religion, and that it was “not unjust discrimination to take sexual orientation into account.”
Less than a year ago, Pope Benedict spoke about gender roles and how those who that did not follow the laws
“set down by creation” were in “violation of the natural order.”
Choosing this particular path, the Catholic Church is taking quite a risk. The number of Catholics in the US is declining (offset somewhat by new immigrants). The drop is even more precipitous in New England, which has lost one million congregants in the past two decades. And they are not migrating to other religions. Most now report having none.
Will the church’s hard-line stance on homosexuality slow the decline? Most likely it will do just the opposite. The more bishops rail against gays, progressive and even middle-of-the-road Catholics are likely to leave in droves. They may not be in favor of same-sex marriage, but they’re all for treating gays with respect.
For proof, look to Europe. A poll released earlier this year of young people in Spain, long a Catholic country, found that less than half consider themselves part of the church. They blame outdated teachings on homosexuality, abortion and other issues.
Once again, the Catholic Church is on the wrong side of history. And it may find that this time its members aren’t going along for the ride.
