I wonder if King Henry VIII is smiling about this somewhere

As we noted yesterday, Pope Francis reaffirmed Catholic doctrine, and said that priests may not ‘bless’ homosexual unions of any sort.

Group of priests vows to defy Vatican and continue blessing same-sex couples

By Caitlyn O’Kane | March 17, 2021 | 9:43 AM EDT | CBS News

A group of priests who have distanced themselves from the Catholic Church are criticizing the Vatican’s recent decree that the Catholic Church cannot bless same-sex marriages. The Austrian Priests’ Initiative, a group of priests leading a campaign of disobedience against the Vatican, said this week they will continue to bless same-sex couples.

The initiative (also as Pfarrer-Initiative) said in a statement that its members “are deeply appalled by the new Roman decree that wants to prohibit the blessing of same-sex loving couples.”

Appalled? Then these turbulent priests must be appalled that God, the God they claim to worship and serve, did more than just “prohibit the blessing of same-sex loving couples,” but specified a rather harsh punishment for them. Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, whose name they invoke in every Mass, in whom they say they believe when they recite the Nicene Creed, which is part of the Mass that those priests supposedly celebrate every day, in which they purportedly believe, said that “until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke of a letter shall pass from the Law,” and that “whoever nullifies one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” The Law included the prohibitions on homosexual activity, and the Son of God said that the Law would not pass away, but apparently these priests believe themselves to be wiser, nobler, and just plain better than the Messiah they claim to worship.

King Henry VIII had his problems with the Church as well, and he went and split his kingdom away from the Catholic Church, though I would guess that even His Majesty the King would have problems with what the revolting priests are saying, given that he had An Acte for the punishment of the vice of Buggerie (25 Hen. 8 c. 6) passed by Parliament, which specified the penalty as death.

“This is a relapse into times that we had hoped to be overcome with Pope Francis,” the group’s statement continues. “In solidarity with so many, we will not reject any loving couple in the future who wants to celebrate God’s blessing, which they experience every day, in a church-service.”

“Reality has long since shown that same-sex couples connected in love can very well celebrate God’s blessing in church. A state-of-the-art theology establishes this responsible practice,” the statement reads.

Clearly, God, when he gave the Law to Moses, something every Catholic priest affirms that he believes truly happened, did not think that homosexual “love” was permissible, but, now we know that Father Helmut Schüller and his adherents believe that they are wiser than God. Obviously, when Jesus said, in the Sermon on the Mount, something that every Catholic priest supposedly believes happened, that the Law was and always would remain unchanged, he included the total prohibition on homosexual activity, but the roughly 350 members of the Austrian Priests’ Initiative must believe that they are somehow wiser than the only begotten Son of God, in whom they have professed belief.

We do have a word for it; it is called Protestantism. They should embrace that word, because that is what they have become.

“The Austrian Priest’s Initiative is an Austria-wide movement of Roman Catholic priests and deacons who follow their conscience and campaign for new paths in the church,” the group said in its statement. “Its goals are: lively congregations, contemporary synodal church structures and, above all, a credible and open-minded world church that focuses on sincere service to people.”

How odd. Here I thought that the Church focused primarily on bringing people closer to God, for the salvation of their souls.

The group also said it “vehemently” protests against the assumption that same-sex couples are not part of God’s divine plan. “We deeply regret that this decree, which seeks to revive the spirit of bygone times, widens the gap between Roman bureaucracy and the local Church,” the group said. “This decree offends many Christians and obscures and discredits the liberating message of Jesus.”

“The liberating message of Jesus”? The last I knew, Jesus did not liberate people from the Law, but tightened the law. He said that the Law concerning adultery stood, but also pointed out that the thought behind adultery was a violation, even if the physical act didn’t occur.

Is there an underlying reason that these priests are so dedicated to schism on this issue? As I asked 2½ years ago, How many priests are homosexual?

Of course, many factors influence a person’s decision to join the clergy; it’s not like sexuality alone determines vocations. But it’s dishonest to dismiss sexuality’s influence given that we know there is a disproportionate number of gay priests, despite the church’s hostility toward LGBTQ identity. As a gay priest told Frontline in a February 2014 episode“I cannot understand this schizophrenic attitude of the hierarchy against gays when a lot of priests are gay.”

So how many gay priests actually exist? While there’s a glut of homoerotic writings from priests going back to the Middle Ages, obtaining an accurate count is tough. But most surveys (which, due to the sensitivity of the subject, admittedly suffer from limited samples and other design issues) find between 15 percent and 50 percent of U.S. priests are gay, which is much greater than the 3.8 percent of people who identify as LGBTQ in the general population.

In the last half century there’s also been an increased “gaying of the priesthood” in the West. Throughout the 1970s, several hundred men left the priesthood each year, many of them for marriage. As straight priests left the church for domestic bliss, the proportion of remaining priests who were gay grew. In a survey of several thousand priests in the U.S., the Los Angeles Times found that 28 percent of priests between the ages of 46 and 55 reported that they were gay. This statistic was higher than the percentages found in other age brackets and reflected the outflow of straight priests throughout the 1970s and ’80s.

The high number of gay priests also became evident in the 1980s, when the priesthood was hit hard by the AIDS crisis that was afflicting the gay community. The Kansas City Star estimated that at least 300 U.S. priests suffered AIDS-related deaths between the mid-1980s and 1999. The Star concluded that priests were about twice as likely as other adult men to die from AIDS.

I do not know why so many homosexual men are attracted to the priesthood, though I do have a pet theory. But that there are so many of them leads to the obvious question: are they doing this because they wish to enter into homosexual marriages themselves? After all: one of the goals of the Austrian Priest’s Initiative is that a man or woman, married or unmarried, can serve as a priest. They could, were their group to get its way, enter into homosexual marriages and still keep their jobs as priests.

Is that cynical thinking on my part? Yes, I suppose that it is. But it is also thinking that makes perfect sense.

The Bible holds many laws and restrictions for living a life that is upright and moral, things which Catholic priests claim to believe. Do the members of the Austrian Priest’s Initiative believe that, say, the commandment that we shall not commit adultery is somehow not really valid anymore, because, hey, an adulterous couple really could love each other? Maybe the Austrian priests would say, “Hey, they can get divorced and then marry each other, but, oops!, Jesus had something to say about that as well, something stricter than Mosaic Law.

What about the teaching on abortion? After all, some women feel that they really, really need to have an abortion! Do the Austrian priests simply nod sagely and tell them that it’s sad, but acceptable?

Perhaps my conclusion is harsh, but I have to say that it appears that the Austrian priests either do not believe in that part of the Nicene Creed, “I look forward to the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come,” or at least they think that less important than our limited, mortal lives here on earth.

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2 thoughts on “I wonder if King Henry VIII is smiling about this somewhere

  1. As a Lutheran observer I will try and make a point without insulting my Catholic friend Dana. The Catholic Church brought this stuff on itself by doing one thing: allowing priests to be homosexual. That was the watershed moment when the heathen left knew the Church had lost its mission to Christ. And those heathens have been deconstructing the Catholic Church ever since that un Christian decision. It is NOT Christian to tolerate perversion any more than it is Christian to tolerate crime, illegitimacy, prostitution or any of the other Deadly Sins or anything that breaks a Commandment. In any compromise between good and evil, evil always wins. Because the nature of compromise is that each side gives a little for the sake of agreement it follows that good has to give something in to evil to compromise with it. We are seeing the same thing in American politics.

    The Hymn “Onward Christian Soldiers” (Which is Protestant, I know) has a line: “Thou therefore endure the hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ”. WE REAL CHRISTIANS DON’T COMPROMISE WITH EVIL. We don’t compromise the Word with homosexuals, with “critical race theory”, with communism or fascism and not with any people who support such anti Christ ideologies. Period.

    • The Rt Rev Hoagie wrote:

      The Catholic Church brought this stuff on itself by doing one thing: allowing priests to be homosexual.

      You needn’t worry about insulting me on that, because I completely agree with you.

      It is my pet theory that homosexual males who aspire to the priesthood understand that homosexuality is wrong and ‘gravely disordered,’ as the Catechism states, and are hoping, with the Grace of God, to be able to tamp down their desires and live celibately. I’m sure that some actually succeed.

      But too much has been allowed in seminaries, too many not-so-closeted homosexuals living together in their dorm rooms, and they begin to reinforce each other. The scandal of defrocked Cardinal Theodore McCarrick was far too widely known within the Church and tolerated.

      From Wikipedia:

      Kevin Joseph Farrell KGCHS (born September 2, 1947) is an Irish-American prelate and a cardinal of the Catholic Church. Born in Dublin, Ireland, he was a former member of the Legion of Christ, and served as the seventh Bishop of Dallas, as well as the chancellor of the University of Dallas. On September 1, 2016, he was appointed the prefect of the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life. He was created a cardinal on November 19, 2016, by Pope Francis.

      In July 2018, revelations that Farrell’s mentor and former archbishop of Washington, Theodore McCarrick, was guilty of abusing many young seminarians and priests over several decades brought calls in countless American publications for Farrell to clarify whether he knew of the allegations and did nothing. McCarrick consecrated Farrell to the episcopacy in 2001 and Farrell served as an auxiliary bishop under McCarrick in the Archdiocese of Washington through 2006 before being transferred to Dallas. On February 14, 2019, Pope Francis named Farrell Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church. In June 2019, Farrell admitted to receiving $29,000 from disgraced Bishop Michael J. Bransfield to refurbish his Rome apartment.

      Cardinal Farrell is Prefect of the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life.

      The Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life is a dicastery of the Roman Curia. Pope Francis announced its creation on 15 August 2016, effective 1 September 2016. It took over the functions and responsibilities of the Pontifical Council for the Laity and the Pontifical Council for the Family. It has responsibility “for the promotion of the life and apostolate of the lay faithful, for the pastoral care of the family and its mission according to God’s plan and for the protection and support of human life.”

      Ain’t that great? We have a (probable) homosexual and enabler of Cardinal McCarrick’s leading a dicastery for “the pastoral care of the family and its mission according to God’s plan,” and that makes sense?

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