The August bulletin at Sacred Heart Church in Coronado contained a photo and announced the appearance of the former master general of the Dominican order on Saturday, Sept. 20 with these words:
“It is our privilege to welcome Fr. Timothy Radcliffe OP to Sacred Heart for this very special event prior to leading our Diocesan Priests convocation…. He is the author of several best-selling books that exhibit the subtlety of his thinking, the simplicity and depth of his language….”
On July 9 a story ran in California Catholic about Father Richard Perozich, a San Diego diocese pastor who announced to his parishioners at St. Mary’s in Escondido, “This year at our [San Diego diocese priests] convocation, they’ve invited a man named Timothy Radcliffe. He was the head of the Dominican Order, a Catholic priest. He’s been promoting homosexuality for years. Guess who’s not goin’? And guess who might get in trouble for it? But guess who doesn’t really care….” Father Perozich became pastor of Immaculate Conception parish in Old Town (San Diego) this summer.
Besides the appearance in Coronado and the priests’ retreat, Father Radcliffe has been invited to present a Religious of the Sacred Heart Lecture at the University of San Diego on Monday, Sept. 29.
The following comes from an article by James Hitchcock published in Catholic World Report in October, 2006. See Father Radcliffe’s response at the end and Hitchcock’s rejoinder. Hitchcock was professor of history at St. Louis University from 1966 to 2013.
The False Prophet
The annual Los Angeles Religious Education Conference claims to be the largest such gathering in the United States, and year after year it has featured speakers who either openly reject certain Catholic teachings or undermine them indirectly, with only occasional presentations of an unambiguously orthodox position.
But in 2006 the conference featured a keynote speech by Father Timothy Radcliffe, former Master General of the Dominican Order, who offered a way out of what he called unnecessary and destructive divisions in the Church. The talk was hailed by the editor of the National Catholic Reporter as a prophetic landmark. (Radcliffe’s talk, “Overcoming Discord in the Church,” appeared in the May 5th issue of NCR.)
Categories of “left and right, liberal and conservative” are alien to Catholic thinking and come from the Enlightenment, according to Radcliffe, who instead distinguished two kinds of Catholics, both of whom are necessary to the Church. Kingdom Catholics are on the way to the Kingdom and are open to grace outside the Church, seeing the world in hopeful terms. They include the theologians Gustavo Guttierez, Edouard Schillebeeckx, and Karl Rahner, as represented in the publication Concilium. On the other hand, Communion Catholics emphasize the integrity of Catholic identity and often invoke the Cross, Hans Urs Von Balthasar, Benedict XVI, and the journal Communio.
Insofar as Radcliffe attempted to deal with specific issues they were relatively superficial ones — disagreements over the Latin liturgy and nuns’ habits. Beyond that he approached Catholic divisions in psychological terms, as manifesting different “needs” that particular people have, especially the desire to live with people like themselves. He resolved these tensions by urging his hearers to “trust our imaginations” in order to understand “why others think and feel as they do,” since each group’s way of thinking offers them peace and “a place to be at home.”
Quoting a therapist named Mindy Thomson Fullilove, Radcliffe described a “root shock” that is detonated by the recognition that one’s community and whole system of values might be at stake, something that leaves people “chronically cranky, barking distinctive croaking complaints that their world was abruptly taken away,” each side blaming the other, a problem that Radcliffe thinks is especially serious in United States.
In arguing that “dialogue” is integral to Catholicism, Radcliffe offered a novel interpretation of the Last Supper — that the sharing of the bread was “centripetal” (“take and eat”) and the offering of the cup was “centrifugal” (“for you and for many”) — a separation of the two elements of the Eucharist that seemed to imply that the host should be given only to Catholics but the chalice offered to everyone or, even more strangely, that Christ shed his blood for everyone but offered his body only for some.
In the title “Roman Catholic,” according to Radcliffe, the word “Roman” represents the narrower identity and the word “Catholic” the wider one, a distinction that has no standing in historic Catholicism and in fact expresses the ecclesiology of the Eastern Orthodox and others who reject the primacy of the bishop of Rome. The Catholic Church regards the Roman primacy not as something merely provincial or territorial but as supporting the Church’s claim to universality.
In approaching the divisions in the Church primarily in terms of psychology, Radcliffe seemed to reduce doctrinal disputes to misunderstandings often arising from ill will. Responding to the Vatican’s document on homosexuals in the priesthood in 2005, he claimed that the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith “has often given tendentious interpretations of the writings of theologians,” while “theologians in turn give the most negative possible interpretation of Vatican documents,” a claim that seemed to impugn the integrity of the future Pope Benedict XVI during his years as head of the CDF.
A Stance Alien to the Dominican Tradition
The division between “left and right” that Radcliffe deplored is largely between those who emphasize continuity with the past and those who promote a continuous series of “breakthroughs” to a brighter future, and his own stance seems to make it almost impossible for him to make sense even of his own Dominican tradition. “In the Dominican approach you try to come to a common truth you can both agree on. We don’t aim for victory. We aim for community,” he told an audience at a Dominican high school in Chicago in 1997, a claim that is incomprehensible to anyone familiar with Dominican history.
Elsewhere he cited the Dominican founder, St. Dominic Guzman, to justify respect for the human body, because Dominic established his community in order to oppose the flesh-hating dualism of the Cathar heresy. Radcliffe, however, did not remind his audience of the inconvenient fact that the new order did so both through an aggressive kind of preaching that hardly qualified as “dialogue” and by using the coercive powers of the Inquisition, for which Dominicans continued to have primary responsibility for centuries. (Some Dominicans were also among the leading witch-hunters of late medieval and early modern times.)
An old pun called the Dominicans “the dogs of the Lord” (Domini canes), anticipating the modern liberal jibe at Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as a “rottweiler,” and, while popular philosophical relativism insists that “things are never black and white,” the stark black and white contrast of the Dominican habit has often been taken as expressing the rigor of the Dominican mind, a rigor quite foreign to Radcliffe’s own way of thinking.
In Los Angeles he cited St. Thomas Aquinas merely as a theological innovator, adding, “I have to bring him in. I know my duty as a Dominican,” a joke that in fact had serious meaning, since Radcliffe seems uncomfortable with the kind of rigor that the Thomistic tradition represents. On another occasion the former Master General told a joke whose punch line was, “You must be Dominican, because what you say is absolutely true and utterly useless,” a jibe often made with serious intent by those who regard classical dogmatic theology as irrelevant.
In Los Angeles Radcliffe asserted that, “We build a home for God through dialogue,” but Aquinas engaged in “dialogue” only to the extent of expounding positions other than his own in order to refute them and to arrive at precisely the kind of “victory” that Radcliffe eschews. The Thomistic tradition has never held that the purpose of theology is to arrive at “community” in the sense that Radcliffe seems to mean it, and his formula represents at best sloppy thinking — there is common belief or common opinion but no such thing as “common truth,” if by that is meant truth that is arrived at by consensus.
Significantly, in his various speeches, rather than citing Aquinas, Radcliffe is more likely to quote Meister Eckhart of Hochheim, a medieval Dominican whose orthodoxy was in question both in his own time and later, largely because his writings are so opaque that their meaning is often uncertain. (Radcliffe quotes Eckhart’s typically enigmatic pronouncement, “Stand firm and do not waver from your emptiness. We do not pray, we are prayed.”)
Radcliffe claims that, although the idea of dialogue is seen as “liberal,” it is in reality a Catholic idea, growing out of “conversations” among the persons of the Trinity. He notes that the origins of the dialogue lie with Plato and cites a few Christian examples, but it was a form of theology never widely adopted by Christian theologians as an appropriate way of pursuing truth. Jesus nowhere differed more dramatically from Socrates than in the fact that “he taught as one having authority.”
Radcliffe’s formula for overcoming divisions, as he expounded it to his Los Angeles audience, is to “transcend disagreements by going to a level where you get beyond them,” but nowhere in his talk did he even hint at how that might be achieved. While the Dominican intellectual tradition always placed great emphasis on the precision and clarity of its terms, Radcliffe habitually employs a sweeping rhetoric of dramatic phrases whose meaning is seldom clear. Decades-old battles over liturgy, for example, are dismissed with the simple formula that it is possible to regard worship simultaneously as both a gift and as something created by the worshippers, without even one concrete example of how that might work.
A kind of romantic popular existentialism, loosely derived from Eckhart, is Radcliffe’s characteristic mode of discourse, as in “We have no word which can offer meaning to people’s lives, unless we have been touched by their doubts, and glimpsed the abyss . . . We too are torn open and stretched out . . . hollowed out, opened up . . .” Terms like “suffering,” “passion,” “doubt,” and “self-emptying” are strewn throughout Radcliffe’s exhortations, in ways that are both hazy and self-dramatizing.
In a 1997 letter to the Dominican Order, Radcliffe denounced “the fundamentalism of today” (a term liberals now use to discredit orthodox believers) as “perhaps the frightened reaction of those who stood on the edge of that desert, but did not dare to endure it. The desert is a place of terrifying silence, which we may try to drown out by banging out old formulas with a terrible sincerity,” a diagnosis that showed his lack of respect for the “conservatives” with whom he professedly wishes to reconcile.
The Theology of Self-Congratulation
But it is a diagnosis very flattering to liberals, since by implication Radcliffe and those who are not “fundamentalists” have themselves journeyed into this desert and endured it, thereby revealing themselves to be moral and religious heroes. If traditional Catholicism denounced unbelief and personal sin, Radcliffe’s manner of preaching implicitly condemns people in an even deeper and more serious way, telling them in effect that they are not truly human — too timid, selfish, or cowardly to reach the “depths of being” that the Gospel allegedly demands, a condemnation rendered even more vexing because most of his hearers probably do not even understand what is being required of them, much less how they could achieve it.
The liberal religious world that Radcliffe inhabits, far from manifesting doubt and suffering, thrives on self-congratulation, and he is adept at the kind of gesture guaranteed to resonate with that audience. Thus while listening to an anti-male diatribe by the feminist nun Joan Chittester, he kissed her on the cheek and “the crowd went wild,” according to NCR correspondent John Allen Jr., a fervent Radcliffe admirer.
Almost as though he finds the Thomistic devotion to logic itself oppressive, Radcliffe’s utterances are full of inconsistencies, even contradictions, that, as in his vague “resolution” of liturgical disputes, he makes no effort to explain. Thus while identifying the desire to associate with people like oneself as a root cause of division in the Church, in addressing fellow Dominicans he extols the closest possible community life. Allen quotes him as telling his brethren, “If we test what we say against the reality of other people’s lives, then maybe our homilies will be more modest. The temptation of preachers is to make great and vague claims that must make our hearers smile to themselves.” But his own exhortations are grandiose — seemingly addressed to would-be mystics and connoisseurs of spirituality — and have no obvious relevance to most people’s daily lives.
The divisions that Radcliffe deplores in American Catholicism might at least be taken as a sign of a certain vitality, but in a letter to his brethren in 1998 he rationalized the steep decline of religious practice in Europe by speculating that “Perhaps in some countries the churches are empty because the preaching of the Gospel is experienced as an exercise in control rather than the expression of God’s boundless love.”
Since the churches are not empty in the United States, this diagnosis seems logically to imply that such “control” is not present in America, something he surely does not believe. Few accounts of Radcliffe fail to recall that he comes from an old aristocratic English family. But left-leaning ideology has long been compatible with a certain kind of social snobbery, and he seems to share the aristocratic disdain for the United States characteristic of even many conservative Englishmen, as when he pronounced in Chicago that “Americans have a money-driven culture. It can help you flourish or be devoured. American religious must refuse to let themselves get caught up in the culture of greed,” another provocative pronouncement not subjected to analysis. Is greed absent in Europe, in socialist societies, or in the Third World?
The “profundity” of Radcliffe’s rhetoric appeals especially to self-consciously enlightened people who disdain what they consider the dreariness of Western materialism and who romanticize non-Western cultures in ways that also resist critical thinking. Thus he cites a Dominican who became a Catholic after “seeing an elderly brother tenderly pouring a glass of water for a sick brother,” as though only Catholics (or vowed religious) do such things. He offers as profound wisdom the alleged remark of an old Eskimo woman, who, when asked why her people’s songs are short, replied, “because we know so much,” a comment that seems to require the higher levels of Zen enlightenment to make it comprehensible. At the Chicago high school he cited an Asian monk who “discovered Christ in the Buddhist tradition,” without explaining how that might have happened.
Before he offered himself as the prophet of reconciliation in the Church, Radcliffe’s own history for the most part placed him firmly on the “liberal” side of the divide, although he did on one occasion express doubts as to whether women should be ordained to the priesthood. (But in 2002 he told an organization of British priests that arguments for a married priesthood “are extremely strong, perhaps overwhelming.”) As head of the Dominicans he was scarcely a model of the collegial exercise of authority that liberals extol — in 1997, while serving as Master General, he vetoed the election of Father Augustine DiNoia as provincial of the Eastern province of the Order in the United States. (DiNoia, a noted theologian, went on to become secretary of the American Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine and is now under-secretary of the CDF.)
Virtually all the evils Radcliffe identifies in the world are the favored causes of enlightened liberals. Thus he has spoken of the “pain” of women, homosexuals, and ethnic minorities, stressed “human rights, nuclear disarmament, AIDS, and ‘a deep inward spirituality'” in his speech at the Chicago high school, and at the 1999 Synod of Bishops identified “women, the poor, the divorced, those who have had abortions, prisoners, people with AIDS, homosexuals, and drug addicts” as the groups to whom the Church should extend hospitality. Contrary to empirical evidence, he has predicted that those religious orders will grow that “learn to collaborate with women and be open to other cultures.”
But it is especially on the crucial subject of homosexuality that Radcliffe is not above the partisanship that he deplores. Characteristically, his ultimate wisdom about sexuality is that Catholics must get beyond familiar disputes by coming to understand it in the light of Christ’s words, “this is my body,” without explaining what he means, and he offers the equally vague exhortation “to allow our appetites full rein in a greater appetite for God.” (Does a strong bodily appetite lead to God? If so, how does it do so? Are persons with weak appetites farther from God?)
Slippery Spirituality
In a letter to his brethren while serving as Master General, he defined love as “friendship that invites us to see the other without seeking to possess them . . . We delight in them without seeking ownership,” something he contrasted with the “culture of the market,” as though it is possessiveness that is the root of modern sexual disorders rather than an unwillingness to make commitments, a casual attitude that permits only fleeting relationships and recommends an “open” view even of marriage.
In the same letter he recalled that the famous Trappist monk Thomas Merton once fell in love with a young woman, and he quoted Merton’s biographer as saying that the experience gave Merton “an inner liberation . . . a new sense of sureness, uncautiousness, defenselessness in his vocation and in the depths of himself,” qualities all of which are important to Radcliffe’s own description of human authenticity. But in typically confusing fashion, he immediately assured his brethren that he was not saying that such an experience was “a necessary step on the road to spiritual development,” even though the biographer explicitly claimed that it had made Merton both a better person and a better monk.
If the Master General was not saying that an experience like Merton’s is necessary, he also did not definitively pronounce it wrong and it was not evident why he was even citing it. Such a thing could do damage, he warned, but it was better to risk an occasional scandal rather than to have “a monastery full of dead men.” (Traditional spirituality taught that monks and nuns were “alive” in proportion to their closeness to God and that sexual relationships impeded this.)
Radcliffe did as much as anyone to “deconstruct” the Vatican’s 2005 document on homosexuals in the priesthood, “interpreting” it publicly even before it was officially released. Homosexuals, he asserted, were among “the most dedicated and impressive priests whom I have met” and should in no way think that the document classified them as defective. Having a permanent homosexual orientation could not be considered a barrier to the priesthood, and asking candidates to be candid about themselves would only force them to be devious. He acknowledged that the Church has an obligation to scrutinize religious vocations but also managed to say the opposite: “It is not for us to tell God whom he may or may not call to religious life.”
Radcliffe was sharply critical of the remarks of Archbishop Edwin O’Brien of the American military vicariate, who said that homosexuals do not belong in the priesthood, and he made the remarkable admission that he was unfamiliar with the concept of “spiritual fatherhood” and did not see how it had any connection with gender or sexual orientation, a claim basic to feminists who refuse to call God “Father.”
Radcliffe endorsed the Vatican’s strictures against priests involved in the homosexual sub-culture, warning his men against frequenting homosexual bars or otherwise participating in public affirmations of sexual identity, because that would be to celebrate as central what ought not to be. But this apparent acknowledgement of the wisdom of the Church’s official position in fact undermined it in a fundamental if rather subtle way, because he immediately added a warning against participation in a “macho” sub-culture of heterosexuals, a warning that placed both “lifestyles” on an equal moral footing and repeating the common homosexual claim that sexual identities are not fixed or stable.
His exhortation to his brethren to lead chaste lives involved a fallacy basic to homosexual ideology, since it avoided the fact that, according to Catholic teaching, vowed religious refrain from marriage as the sacrifice of a good for the sake of Christ, whereas homosexual actions are sinful and can never be legitimate. If religious should be chaste because of their vows, Radcliffe left open the crucial question whether lay homosexuals have a right to engage in such actions but curiously remarked that “Sometimes we receive requests from brethren for dispensations because only late in life have they realized that they are fundamentally heterosexual and so able to marry,” a statement that seemed to imply that a religious would remain in his community so long as he thought himself to be homosexual but would leave once he realized that he was “able to marry.”
Radcliffe also warned his brethren against “sub-groups” based on sexual identity, because they divide religious communities, a warning that seemed to acknowledge that homosexuals are much more than a small minority in religious life and implies that heterosexuality is not to be considered normal but merely representative of another divisive special-interest group.
While Radcliffe’s ideas about the morality of homosexual acts remain cloudy, he has been unambiguous on the political dimensions of the question — “. . . all priests must be prepared to side with gay people if they suffer oppression, and must be seen to be on their side.” Homosexual “marriage,” he admitted, is a complication, since some people see its prohibition as discrimination, whereas in Catholic teaching it is not. His resolution was that “if one becomes involved in any opposition to discrimination, then one is liable to be misunderstood. It is a risk one must sometimes take,” but he did not explain what this means in regard to homosexual marriage — whether priests should oppose it and risk being thought “homophobic” or support it and thereby reject Catholic teaching.
He has had little to say about the scandals of clerical sexual abuse, except to claim that the Dominicans have not been much affected by them, but in Los Angeles he warned that “this environment of accusation, in society and in the Church, contributes to an uncomfortable climate” and identified accused priests as among the people the community needs to welcome.
A Convenient Formula for Unity
After the Los Angeles meeting, Tom Roberts, editor of the NCR, “wanted to stand up and cheer” Radcliffe’s call for the healing of divisions, a reaction that itself confirmed that the Dominican’s proposal did not rise above partisanship. For over forty years the NCR’s very reason for existing has been to promote dissent from the official teachings of the Church and, judging by the long columns of letters from readers, the paper primarily appeals to people who have an almost incandescent hatred of ecclesiastical authority and an animosity towards everything Catholic that dates from before 1960.
Although there is much talk about “pluralism” and “freedom” in the pages of the NCR, in fact it recognizes only one acceptable view on such subjects as birth control, the ordination of women, priestly celibacy, and homosexuality — the “hierarchical Church” is wrong and the dissenters right, and it is wicked not to acknowledge that fact. Thus if the paper were to transform itself according to some formula for reconciliation, it would have to become a radically different kind of publication.
Roberts’ only attempt to deal with this dilemma was, ironically, to claim in effect that liberals have been too conservative, employing a “pre-conciliar ecclesiology” that has left people feeling “steamrollered.” He admitted to no substantive mistakes and signaled that “reconciliation” would mean merely pursuing the same agenda in somewhat more diplomatic ways.
A month before publishing Radcliffe’s call for mutual forbearance, NCR’s editors published an editorial titled “Unity, yes, but not at any cost,” sternly warning Benedict XVI not to reach an agreement with the schismatic followers of the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, because the Lefebvrists claim a “right of dissent” and the pope was to “make it crystal clear that the price of admission is assent to Vatican II, whole and entire.” Since NCR’s very existence is predicated on the right of dissent and it rejects any number of the teachings of Vatican II, the editorial might be thought to have been written with tongue in cheek, but it clearly was not.
Roberts’ grudging admission, a month later, that liberals may have sometimes dealt with conservatives insensitively also revealed what may be the motive for this call for reconciliation. Liberals, he said, can now understand what conservatives have felt since Vatican II, because they themselves now feel aggrieved by a new spirit of retrenchment emanating from the Vatican. For decades those who resisted the liberal agenda were ignored or marginalized as mere obstructionists, but a “counter-reformation” from Rome (if in fact such is occurring) requires that liberals now employ different tactics.
The principal way by which Radcliffe proposed to “transcend” differences is by decreeing that they no longer matter. The Kingdom is coming “and we will reach the home for which we long. Even though every bishop in the world belonged to Opus Dei,” he assured his Los Angeles audience, adding for the comfort of the orthodox that the ancient Church did not collapse even though many bishops were Arians.
However, the Church has always held that souls are lost as a result of false teachings, so that the struggle must go on in every age, and logically Radcliffe would have to see the founding of his own Dominicans as a tragic mistake, based on the erroneous notion that it was necessary to oppose heresy aggressively. By explaining such divisions in terms of psychological insecurities, he implicitly denied that there are any real threats about which people can and ought to feel anxiety.
The role that he proposed for himself in Los Angeles was not something new but one that has been familiar since Vatican II — that of the “moderate” who is really an “enabler” (in the useful term of Alcoholics Anonymous), someone who does not directly espouse heterodox ideas but minimizes the issues to the point where they lose their significance. Radcliffe is correct that the terms “liberal” and “conservative” are not properly applicable to religion, but they have come into common use because the appropriate terms — orthodox and heterodox — are no longer permitted. Those who are called liberals indignantly demand the right to define orthodoxy in any way they see fit, while those who attempt to defend orthodoxy are denounced for fomenting division. Radcliffe’s formula for unity is thus merely a restatement of one side of the division.
The various strands in Radcliffe’s way of viewing the Church coalesced in Los Angeles in an exhortation that, perhaps quite consciously, departed radically from Christian orthodoxy and contravened almost everything that the Dominican tradition itself has historically stood for. The way to unity, he explained to those whose vocation is to teach the faith, is to respect “fellow seekers, people who are also searching for God in their own way . . . Since they too are on a journey, even if they seem to be walking in the opposite direction.”
Editor’s note: In the October issue of CWR, “The False Prophet” by James Hitchcock appeared. The article critiqued Dominican Father Timothy Radcliffe. Father Radcliffe has sent a reply to CWR. It appears below, along with a response from James Hitchcock.
Father Timothy Radcliffe, OP:
James Hitchcock denounces me in his article “The False Prophet.” I am not sure why he has done this. The sole purpose of the article appears to be to discredit me, an exercise which does not smack of Christian charity.
His wrath was provoked by a lecture that I gave at Los Angeles earlier this year, in which I urged the importance of overcoming polarization within the Church. However unhappy Professor Hitchcock may be with my theological position, I would have hoped that at least he would share this aim, but he only suggests that these divisions “may be taken as a sign of a certain vitality.” Divisions that lead to debate in the shared search for the truth would indeed be signs of vitality, but divisions that provoke mere denunciation, as in his attack on me, are just a sign that the Body of Christ is wounded.
This is central to a Catholic understanding of Christianity. The Church is called to be a visible sign of unity in Christ and thus, according to Lumen Gentium, a sign of the unity of humanity in Christ. Most forms of Protestantism do not stress the fundamental priority of unity in this way, which is why Protestantism, from the beginning, has been so fissiparous. I am therefore surprised that someone who clearly treasures Catholicism seems so little concerned to overcome division. I have no desire to denounce the Professor. I would hope that we could have courteous discussion in which we could learn from each other. I must, though, first defend myself against some of his accusations.
Professor Hitchcock tries to discredit me in a rich variety of ways. First of all he states several times that I use vague language, “filled with inconsistencies and contradictions.” It is true that the principal document to which he refers, the speech at Los Angeles, does not have academic rigor. It was not an academic lecture but the introduction to a workshop and was designed to initiate debate. But even so I must say that he is remarkably vague about my vagueness and inaccurate about my inaccuracies.
He quotes me as saying in Los Angeles that we must “trust our imaginations.” But this phrase does not occur in the speech. In an article in The Tablet on the admission of homosexuals to seminaries he quotes me as first saying that the Church has the duty to scrutinize vocations and argues that I then contradict myself by writing, “It is not for us to tell God whom he may or may not call to religious life.” I have reread the article three times, and I cannot find that phrase there. Anyway, there would be no contradiction between asserting that God is free to call whom he wishes to the priesthood and asserting that the Church must carefully discern who has indeed been called. He accuses me of using the language of “romantic popular existentialism” and gives as examples my use of words like “suffering,” “passion” and “self-emptying.” The first two words are central to the gospels and the last is taken from St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians.
Professor Hitchcock accuses me of being more a follower of Meister Eckhart than of St. Thomas Aquinas. He finds evidence of this in my speech in Los Angeles when I say, concerning St. Thomas: “I have to bring him in. I know my duty as a Dominican.” I did not say that. I actually said, “Think of St. Thomas Aquinas. As a Dominican I often do.” Hitchcock seems incapable of making an accurate quotation. Much as I admire Eckhart, I am far more indebted to St. Thomas.
In my latest book, What is the point of being a Christian?, I quote St. Thomas 37 times, and Eckhart only five times. He mentions that Eckhart’s orthodoxy was questioned “in his own time and later” but the present Holy Father, when he was Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine for the Faith, reassured the Dominican Order that no doubts were now held as to his orthodoxy. Hitchcock claims that Eckhart is an enigmatic thinker, and tries to show this by referring to a quotation he claims to have found in my writing. In fact it is the amalgamation of two different quotes, taken from different talks. No wonder it appears to be incomprehensible.
Professor Hitchcock attacks me because of my use of psychological terms. In fact I share his concerns about the frequent psychologization of theology. What I am proposing is quite different, which is the hard labor of understanding people who think differently from oneself. This is a moral, intellectual and Christian duty and one that he has failed to exercise in his reading of my writings.
He attacks as contrary to the Dominican tradition my conviction that argument should be about attaining consensus. This has been stressed not just by me but my two predecessors as Master of the Order, Vincent de Couesnongle and Damian Byrne. Searching for consensus has nothing to do with fuzzy compromise, but is part of an exigent search for the truth. The whole point of the medieval disputatio was to try to reach agreement by analyzing one’s opponent’s position and trying to clarify his ideas by distinguishing between the senses in which his propositions are or are not true. This pursuit of consensus is rigorously logical.
Professor Hitchcock believes that despite my rhetoric about overcoming divisions in the Church I am really just a liberal in disguise. He invokes as evidence of this the fact that I did not confirm the election of Father Augustine DiNoia as provincial of the Eastern province of the Order in the United States. This is a terrible accusation. It is strictly forbidden for any election to be disclosed outside the chapter until it has been confirmed by the relevant superior, as to protect the good name of any brother whose election is not confirmed. The release to the press of the news of Father Augustine’s election prior to confirmation was a gross error, even though I am sure that it was an innocent mistake. It was made clear to the brother who was presiding over the election that the failure to confirm the election was in no way a reflection of Father Augustine’s theological views or his moral character, but solely because of a fault in the way that the election was conducted. To present it as a rejection of his views is deeply unfair both to Father Augustine and to myself. This incident should never be publicly discussed again.
Hitchcock also finds evidence of my rejection of conservative Catholicism in my criticism of theological fundamentalism. He says that because fundamentalism “is a term that liberals now use to discredit orthodox believers,” that therefore I am attacking conservative Catholics. This is quite simply, once again, illogical. I make no equation between fundamentalism and conservatism and would never do so. So he has taken other people’s usage of the word and then uses it to assert that I am holding a position that is not mine.
Professor Hitchcock also tries to demonstrate that I am a liberal because of the concerns that I have often voiced, especially for the marginal, women, ethnic minorities, gay people, people with AIDS and so on. I do believe, as Pope John Paul II often asserted, that we should indeed be committed to care for those on the edge of society. And even if it were true that I do share many concerns with so-called liberals, then why does this mean that my desire to heal divisions is false? There are people on both sides of the division in the Church who are deeply committed to the healing of these wounds.
And even if it might be true to say that I am, as far as my social concerns go “liberal,” then it is simply prejudiced therefore to allocate me to a camp within the polarized world of the American Church. If my social concerns might identify me with “liberalism” then my theological position is distinctly conservative. Professor Hitchcock cannot but have noticed how the fundamental doctrines of the Creed — the divinity of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, the Trinity and so on — are central to all of my reflections.
He concludes his attack by asserting that I depart radically from orthodoxy, quoting my assertion that the way to unity with people from whom we differ is to see them “as fellow seekers, people who also are searching for God, in their own way. They too are on a journey, even if they seem to be walking in the opposite direction.” This would only be evidence of a departure from orthodoxy if I were proposing a vague wishy-washy pluralism, as if the truth does not matter. But this is not what I was asserting at all. Within orthodoxy there are legitimate differences of opinions, as there were between St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas Aquinas, and frequently between Jesuits and Dominicans, or between Yves Congar and Hans von Balthasar more recently. Orthodox Catholicism does not assert that orthodoxy is a narrow ideology, which demands that we all speak in the same way and use the same theological language. The four gospels differ profoundly in their understanding of the Incarnation, and yet they are all orthodox. No group within the Church can claim sole possession of orthodoxy, which is why dialogue does not imply relativism.
I am saddened by Professor Hitchcock’s article. He seems to have read so much that I have written and yet understood so little. I am sure that we share a fundamental commitment to orthodox Catholicism. If he could come to see that, and begin a conversation with others like me who do genuinely seek to heal the wounds of the Church, then it would be wonderful. I pray that it may happen.
James Hitchcock:
My criticisms of Father Radcliffe indeed show that “the Body of Christ is wounded.” My point is that his proposal for healing those wounds does not succeed and may even make things worse.
As to my alleged misquotations, in his Los Angeles speech Father Radcliffe’s exact words were, “We will only heal our divisions if we stretch our imaginations open to understand why the others think and feel as they do.” The quip about Thomas Aquinas — “I have to bring him in, I know it’s my duty as a Dominican” — is in the second paragraph of that speech, as published in the National Catholic Reporter. The statement, “It is not for us to tell God whom he may or may not call to religious life,” is in Father Radcliffe’s Ash Wednesday sermon for 1998. I do not understand his claim about two sentences taken from different parts of Eckhart’s writings. They are quoted together by Father Radcliffe.
The idea that Catholicism values unity so highly that it is not as “fissiparous” as Protestantism is an instance of Father Radcliffe’s rather eccentric reading of Church history. Theological disputes have been endemic in the Church since the days of St. Paul and are highly characteristic of Catholicism, a history in which his own Dominican Order has played a major role. The Church has never held that ecclesial unity can be maintained without unity of belief. If it did, those fissiparous Protestants would still be Catholics.
Words like “passion” and “self-emptying” obviously do not in themselves constitute a kind of existentialism, but Father Radcliffe’s writings are replete with romantic celebrations of such things in a way made popular by 1950’s existentialism and that have little precedent in classic Christian spirituality. (St. Augustine did not describe his anguish in order to prove his authenticity but to confess his sinfulness. The claim repeated by Father Radcliffe that a monk [Thomas Merton] achieved “inner liberation” by having a love affair would have shocked every Catholic spiritual teacher until very recently.)
Meister Eckhart has always been considered enigmatic. If he was indeed orthodox, he has been badly served by many of his admirers over the centuries, most recently by the former Dominican Matthew Fox. The pronouncement that Father Radcliffe quotes — “We do not pray, we are prayed” — insofar as it means anything, seems to express the heresy of Quietism. (Jesus taught that we do pray, or should.)
To attempt to resolve disagreement by turning away from what people actually say in order to speculate about their hidden motives is the essence of psychologism, and to attribute those beliefs to emotional insecurity, as Father Radcliffe did in Los Angeles, is to reduce psychologism to its lowest common denominator. It seems to me perfectly obvious why contending groups in the Church believe as they do; they have explained it very clearly many times.
Carefully studying one’s opponent’s position in order to discern what may be true in it is not the same as achieving consensus. After discussing positions at variance with his own, Thomas Aquinas always ended by arguing that those positions were erroneous.
I do not claim to know why the election of Father DiNoia was disapproved. It was widely reported at the time, without any explanation. But while Father Radcliffe urges endless dialogue in order to resolve disagreements over matters of faith and morals, in this case he swiftly and decisively exercised his disciplinary authority to quash what was only an alleged violation of procedure.
Father Radcliffe does not define “fundamentalism.” Formerly it was a word not used in Catholicism, but now it is often applied to, among others, the two most recent popes.
I do not fault Father Radcliffe for calling attention to “marginalized” people in the Church but for the selective nature of his list. I do raise my eyebrows at his inclusion of priests accused of pedophilia (not much of a problem for the Dominicans, he reports), with no mention of their victims.
There has always been theological and spiritual variety in the Church, but never to the point of embracing outright contradiction. To take only the most sensitive example, if Father Radcliffe can resolve the differences between those who think homosexual actions are sinful and those who think homosexuality is a gift from God, he should by all means do so.
To view original story, archived by Catholic Culture, click here.
There is no “right” and “left” in the Church, only those who are “Faithful Catholics’ who adhere to the “Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition” in entirety, and Catholic heretics/schismatics.
Has anyone forwarded this article to San Diego Diocese Bishop CIRILO FLORES ? ? ?
Remember that he is responsible for everything “Catholic” that takes place within his own Diocese, and this includes Catholic parish property and Catholic universities.
There is time to have the invitation revoked and for Radcliffe to be forbidden to speak within the Diocese.
“LETTER to the BISHOPS on the PASTORAL CARE of HOMOSEXUAL PERSONS”
https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19861001_homosexual-persons_en.html
and
“APOSTOLIC CONSTITUTION of the SUPREME PONTIFF JOHN PAUL II
on CATHOLIC UNIVERSITIES”
https://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_jp-ii_apc_15081990_ex-corde-ecclesiae_en.html
All BISHOPS and PRIESTS have to do to end all evil debate full of error is to read or re-read the “Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition”.
Amen to that MAC…again words of wisdom and truth!
Jesus is a perfect gentleman, He knocks on one’s door and waits to be invited in. But the devil is clever, he just waits for a tiny little opening/crack to any entry and he forces himself in! That is what is happening everywhere, what you see here is the defect of mankind, it’s sinfulness and its lack of faith and faithfulness. Those of us who love and revere everything pure, holy and genuine in the Lord, need to keep our eye’s fixed on Jesus and not allow the devil to divided us but fixing our eye’s on Jesus will help us “act” pray and persevere with fortitude until our Lord returns once again. Reflect on John 17
Dear Friends,
This is a serious matter with serious CONSEQUENCES!
1. Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, OP, is scheduled to be the “star” speaker at the five-day, San Diego Diocese’s 2014 Priests Convocation, Monday to Friday, September, 22-26.
See: https://www.diocese-sdiego.org/DIOCESE/NewsandCalendar/tabid/148/ModuleID/968/ItemID/61/mctl/EventDetails/language/en-US/Default.aspx
All the priests of the San Diego Diocese will be expected to attend this five day 2014 Priests Convocation.
Fr. Timothy Radcliffe’s life, person, views, and writings are going to be held up to the priests of the San Diego Diocese as exemplary. No doubt many San Diego Diocese priests will be very impressed with his charm, eloquence, world-wide fame and celebrity biography! No one is likely to be able to critique or oppose his insidious promotion of the acceptability of homosexuality in the Catholic Church and in society.
2. On Monday, September 29, at 7 pm, at the University of San Diego, Shiley Theater. Fr. Radcliffe, OP, is scheduled to give the “Religious of the Sacred Heart” lecture entitled: “How Does God Dwell in Our Love of Each Other”.
See: https://www.sandiego.edu/ccs/rscj-lecture/index.php
The Radcliffe lecture is sponsored by the University of San Diego, Center for Christian Spirituality which has brought other dissenting priests like Fr. Ronald Rolheiser, OMI and Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM to San Diego.
See: https://www.sandiego.edu/ccs/about-ccs/history.php
Many naive and uncatechised University of San Diego students and others will be bamboozled by Fr. Radcliffe’s glib tongue.
3. On Saturday, September 20th, from 10 to 11:30 am, as the above article states, False Prophet Fr. Radcliffe will make a presentation entitled “Being the Body of Christ” at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Coronado, California. The parish bulletin promotes this as “our privilege” and a “very special event prior to (Fr. Radcliffe) leading our Diocesan Priests convocation.” Again, there will likely be no one to counter the clever dissenting message that Fr. Radcliffe can be expected to give to parishioners who will be prepared to enthusiastically accept all the humorous heresy that drips from his forked tongue.
Thus, Fr. Radcliffe is being given “star billing” for more than a week, from Saturday, September 20 to Monday, September 29 to speak to parishioners at the Sacred Heart parish in Coronado, to the 2014 Convocation of all the priests in the San Diego Diocese, and at the University of San Diego — and no doubt to other impromptu gatherings.
These events have probably been orchestrated by small group of “progressive” priests and “professional” Catholics in the San Diego Diocese.
But the one responsible to Our Lord’s judgment for all of these events is San Diego Bishop Cirilo Flores.
It is URGENT that real Catholics contact Bishop Cirilo Flores or his staff to urge him to do his duty to protect San Diego priests, lay people and young people from the dissenting Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, OP.
Phone: 858-490-8200
Fax: 858-490-8272
E-Mail: avargas@diocese-sdiego.org
or: scallaha@diocese-sdiego.org (Vicar General, Msgr. Steven Callahan)
Mailing address:
Post Office Box 85728
San Diego CA 92186-5728
Street address:
3888 Paducah Dr.
San Diego 92117
Take Action Now points out that the Lord’s judgment will be upon Bishop Cirilo Flores if he allows Fr. Radcliffe to spread his poison at these events in the San Diego area. Does anyone give any thought to the fact that so many, in fact, most bishops allow this sort of perverted Catholicism to be disseminated and fostered? Is it poor judgment or ignorance? How could it be? Catholics need to realize that the organizational one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church has been taken over by Satan. What else could explain the consistent efforts by bishops to pursue the “gay agenda”? Perhaps Bishop Flores will stand up for Christ’s Church and have Fr. Radcliffe’s presentations cancelled. Pray that he will.
Thanks for the link to the announcement that Bishop Flores had a stroke in late April.
“The most evident mark of God’s anger, and the most terrible castigation He can inflict upon the world, is manifest when He permits His people to fall into the hands of a clergy who are more in name than in deed, priests who practice the cruelty of ravening wolves rather than the charity and affection of devoted shepherds. They abandon the things of God to devote themselves to the things of the world and, in their saintly calling of holiness, they spend their time in profane and worldly pursuits. When God permits such things, it is a very positive proof that He is thoroughly angry with His people and is visiting His most dreadful wrath upon them.”
–Saint John Eudes
Sodomites are the “smoke of Satan” (Pope Paul VI) and “filth” (Pope Benedict XVI) our Holy Fathers have warned about.
You have zero evidence for either of those statements. And certainly Benedict could have said what he really meant by filfth if it meant gay people in general, and he has had years to do so, even up until today. Yet he refuses to take your bait. Wonder why that is?
Would you have me to believe that the Priests who molested the Altar Boys were heterosexual women trapped in the bodies of men?
I don’t understand why Anonymouse is allowed to put his garbage into this site. He so heavily promotes homosexuality that Cal Catholic readers feel compelled to reply – and this provides him a further forum to pour out his venom. See, I fell for the trap myself. Sorry.
90% of the priest sex abuse was by sodomites, and Pope Benedict made clear that these sodomites were “filth”.
Why is Fr. Radcliffe even a priest. And why is it necessary to “redefine” Catholic teaching and Tradition to accommodate homosexual sexualists? It simply makes your head hurt to read on and on about “nuances” of this and that teaching — the answer is “No” to homosexual sexuality in any form or manner. No time or resources should be spent on trying to make this happen; Church and religion are for worship, thanksgiving, and efforts to attain salvation; nothing more. People like Radcliffe need to work for universities, but then, they would have no power. If they can convince the Church to follow their way of thinking, then they are excited by making such change. Otherwise, no one cares.
“…And why is it necessary to “redefine” Catholic teaching and Tradition to accommodate homosexual sexualists?”
It absolutely isn’t necessary, St. Christopher. Thanks for your post.
It’s priests like Timothy Radcliffe who hate the CCC from the Magisterium.
They want to be able to spread their lies with no reasonable discussion or dissent.
They want a captive, unsuspecting and ignorant audience.
Read your CCC folks so you can challenge the devil.
Statement from Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, OP. (early 2014): “I am sorry that so many people seem alarmed at my forthcoming presence at the [2014 Dublin] Divine Mercy Conference. I am sure that they are moved by a sincere love of the Church and its teachings, which I share. I have been surprised at the wide concern with my views on homosexuality. I have written or edited eight books, and given over a thousand lectures since my return from Rome, and none of these have been about homosexuality, except in passing. I did write an article on the admission of homosexuals to seminaries, which received the approval of my successor as Master of the Order, and of the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster prior to publication. I have presided occasionally at Masses which were intended to be especially welcoming to gay people. These Masses are part of the pastoral programme of the Archdiocese of Westminster, approved by Cardinal Murphy O’Connor, who consulted the then Cardinal Ratzinger and received his support. There are no grounds at all for regarding these Masses as gatherings of dissenters from the Church’s teaching. I addressed the Anglican Commission on Sexuality, which prepared the Pilling report. The key issue was ‘gay marriage’ which I opposed. Nothing that I said was against the teaching of the Church. May the Divine Mercy Conference be a time of peace and blessing for us all.” Timothy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mounsEj14-c
Obviously, someone has worked to ruin his reputation and it appears to be working.
And the bishop doesn’t know? He didn’t have to approve this?
This is the kind of thing that motivates many to leave, Nothing is done about this “priest” so people feel that if the Church doesn’t care….
I have heard Father Radcliffe speak, and he’s terrific!
He’s knows his stuff, he’s funny, he’s compassionate, he smart, and he doesn’t act like a jerk even when people angrily disagree with him.
Breath of fresh air!!!
Terrific for what, “Anonymous”? Heresy? Radcliffe’s ideas may be delivered in an erudite manner, but how is he different than, say, the “moral philosopher” professor Peter Singer of Princeton University. Recall that Professor Singer, who is supposed to be a very good lecturer, created the notion of “speciesism,” which challenges the allegedly “artificial” boundaries between the Human Race and animals. You know, like PETA President Ingrid Newkirk said, “A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. They’re all mammals.” This kind of nonsense, like the moral nonsense spouted by Fr. Radcliffe do nothing to advance the Faith or assist others towards salvation. Instead, such ideas spread scandal and heresy, no matter how grandly composed, or delivered.
Radcliff is a heretic and a schismatic by church definition.
CCC: ” 2089 … HERESY is the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and catholic faith, or it is likewise an obstinate doubt concerning the same; …
SCHSIM is the refusal of submission to the Roman Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him.”
For REQUIRED beliefs regarding HOMOSEXUALITY, see the “Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition” # 2357, 2358, 2359, & 2396.
From the Vatican web site also see: “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons”
https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19861001_homosexual-persons_en.html
It includes but is not limted to:
” 15. We encourage the Bishops, then, to provide pastoral care in full accord with the teaching of the Church for homosexual persons of their dioceses.
No authentic pastoral programme will include organizations in which homosexual persons associate with each other without clearly stating that homosexual activity is immoral.
A truly pastoral approach will appreciate the need for homosexual persons to avoid the near occasions of sin.”
OK folks time to make phone calls, call the Bishop…its time again….don’t give up, just take action!
This man is a raving heretic who is being allowed to inject his poison into the Church. Typical post Vatican II garbage, mocking the Holy Faith, and inventing for themselves a new man created religion.
“For there shall be a time when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires they will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears. And will turn away indeed their hearing from the truth, but will be turned to fables.” 2 Timothy 4:3-4
When is the Vatican going to have the guts to EXCOMMUNICATE this “Dominican priest??” There is NO SUCH THING– in either our Bible or Catechism– as “conservative” or “liberal” Catholic followers of Jesus Christ!! There is, after proper instruction in the Faith, only ONE QUESTION: “Do you BELIEVE?” If so, “Do you want the holy Sacrament of Baptism?” Then, the catechumen is ready to take the next step. There is NO SUCH THING– as “dialogue,” with illiterate, disrespectful people, not truly interested in following Christ! If you are a holy and faithful priest– your job is to EDUCATE these people, step-by-step, in the Catholic Faith!! If these people disagree, and DISRESPECTFULLY demand that Christ, the Son of God, make a CHEAP BARGAIN with them in their stupidity– flatly say: “NO!!” Either we say “YES!”, like Our Blessed Mother’s famous “fiat”– affirming to God, our simple Faith and obedience to Him, and to the way of life to which He is calling us— or “No,” and then be honest, and go your own way, rejecting Christ! It is as simple as that!!
Ah, yes, this is the same “funny, compassionate, and smart” Father Radcliffe who at the 2006 L.A. Religious Ed Congress advised us to go see Brokeback Mountain and read gay novels, and who dissents from key Church moral teachings on divorce, remarriage, and homosexuality. He should have no place in the San Diego diocese, and it’s terrible that Father Michael Murphy, pastor of Sacred Heart in Coronado, has invited him. I call on Father Murphy and USD to immediately disinvite Father Radcliffe and substitute orthodox speakers in his place.
Then Lets call them, I am today. Come on Joan what cha say? Lets act.
Father Murphy is out of the office I think for a week, but I left a voice mail. Next call the Bishops office and send emails, letters to the Vatican. We can pray and maybe we can take up a protest as well. TIME TO ACT FOLKS. The reason this has been going on its because of division and people just nagging, whining and not acting. Be a doer of the Word!
Here is their contact info website with all in parish emails too:
https://www.sacredheartcor.org/content/sacred-heart-parish-staff?page=1
Those that may know more about this fellow in dissent, may be better at conveying because I am just learning about this man, I don’t know much about him but am trying to learn more facts (Key words Facts) before I send my complaint to the Vatican!
I agree! I, too, will call Fr. Murphy, USD, and the bishop of San Diego!
abeca pssssst, He is not a dissenter. In order to be a dissenter one must publicly oppose the Church’s teaching. He does not do that. I agree that some of what he has written or said can, when taken out of context, be misconstrued by naive Catholics who are being manipulated by Internet pundits. But seriously, have you read his books-they are about the Rosary and the Mother of God and the Blessed Sacrament? Mr Hitchcock took him to task over mis-quotes from…wait for it….the National catholic Reporter. We expect the usual people to fly off the handle and condemn him without checking it out and I am very glad that you are trying to find out the truth. I would not give much credence to ProtectthePope except to get resources. His talk at the Divine Mercy conference is online. His books are at Amazon. It will take a while for you to check everything out. Please don’t take other people’s word for it. Someone has it in for this priest.
AND don’t be disappointed if things don’t go your way. We can act but we must be meek and humble. Trusting that God is in control. Sometimes people just want to make excuses so they won’t preserve in their doing what God calls on us to keep doing. Humans lose interest very easy, often change their minds but to be virtuous, we must do the opposite of what our flesh tells us.
It takes fortitude to persevere and most people don’t want to suffer anymore nor do they want to be inconvenienced. They get disappointing easily if things don’t go their way. But look at the enemy, he does not give up? So why should God’s people. Yes get your facts right before one speaks too. But wrong is still wrong too.
They hate confrontations, but why does it have to be a confrontation? It does not, its how we approach situations, not all are called to act but to just pray too. But you never know until you try it. If our Lord has not given up on us sinners, why should we give up trying to do the will of God. We can pick and choose our battles but we must not give up doing good by God.
Let go of feelings of intimidation, humiliation, hopelessness, pride, embarrassment etc….when doing good. Who cares what they think, as long as we are pleasing to God, ABBA our father, that is all that matters. Now if we are ever weak, lets pray that someone is kind enough to help lift us up in Christ. Because we are all human with flaws, we are not better than anyone else, we must take mercy on those in dissent, without ever compromising what truly matters, our relationship with our Lord and charity. Everything must be done in love. I am not perfect either, I fall off track too, but remember that often it is through our being weak, that God can do all things, we can grow more virtuous if we are open to all suffering that comes our way. I am a big baby on the outside, yes, but in the inside, I strive to overcome what I can and the rest the good Lord, I trust He will continue to heal.
ABBA our father https://goodlogo.com/extended.info/abba-logo-2980
Ah, good bloggers, the Vatican, and certainly the USCCB, know all about Fr. Radcliffe, yet do nothing. Why, you say? Because control of the Church has passed to men of little Faith. Ohhhh — everyone makes a very big deal about Abp. Cordileone saying a “Pontifical Mass” at Star of the Sea Catholic Church in SF next month, but why is this news? While a good and wonderful thing, a Pontifical High Mass should be a regularly scheduled occurence in every diocese. But, no, most diocese, say in NYC, with anti-Traditionalist Cardinal Dolan, the approach is just the opposite: kill Tradition, up with fuzzy theology and the mish-mash of liturgy given out under the Novus Ordo banner. This type of “new” Catholicism (just like “new evangelization”) confuses everything, and serves to encourage dolts like Fr. Radcliffe to say whatever they please (and for attending pastors to permit this, given their craven attitude to be pleasing to the Vatican “Court”). Very sad to find that the Church still welcomes people like Radcliffe, but they do, and they will, until a true Reformation takes hold (or until it is over, if that is the will of the Holy Ghost).
That’s funny, calling Cardinal Dolan “anti-traditionalist.”
Oh believe it he is, Dolan is known to hate the old mass and will probably soon be closing Holy Innocents parish which is ground zero for traditionalist in the NY area.
We are in such deep doo-doo. It is all beyond my comprehension. I pray for Fr. Rich every day.
Do the people here conflate homosexuality with sodomy?
They are not the same thing.
Temptations are not sins if they are rebuked.
Same sex attraction is not in itself a sin.
Homosexual ACTS are Mortal Sins and include but is not limited to sodomy.
Homosexual marriage is support for sodomy, and support for mortal sin.
Witnessing the reality of marriage
https://www.legatusmagazine.org/witnessing-the-reality-of-marriage/
William May writes that the state has an big stake in protecting traditional marriage . . . by William B. May
Mozilla’s Brendan Eichs was not the first person to lose his job for supporting marriage, but he was the most senior and most prominent to do so. Attacked for having given $1,000 to support California’s Proposition 8 six years ago, he was forced to resign 10 days after becoming CEO.
With judges redefining marriage across the country and an increasing campaign of intimidation by secularists, how can faithful Catholics witness the truth about marriage without putting themselves in jeopardy?
Even more importantly, how can we explain marriage in ways our children can repeat without exposing them to ridicule or attacks by teachers and peers?
I, and most of the gay community Supports Marriage!!! We want marriage to be the most common and important place in which sexuality is expressed, into which children are raised, and for whom government ought to give special place.
Others want civil marriage to be between two Christians! Uh OH. What if we are Jews, or athiests, or Mormons.
The Mozilla CEO wasn’t forced out by gays….he was forced out by employees and clients of Mozilla!!! Hello!! Name me one LGBT organization that asked for his ouster!!
YFC, you are not a Faithful Catholic. If you are a Catholic at all, you are a heretic and schismatic. Your support of HOMOSEXUAL Marriage (including your past posts) is clear.
Homosexual Marriage is support for sodomy.
Unrepentant ADULTERY, FORNICATION, and HOMOSEXUAL ACTs are Mortal Sins which send Souls to Hell for eternity.
I agree 100%, YFC.
peter of course you agree…..you are all enablers to each others sins. An Anonymous out there lied and said you were chaste! If you were, you would not be here promoting “gay” agendas. You are not chaste like some ill willed anonymous wants us to believe. MIKE is correct.
God bless you MIKE!
Correction I meant to say An Anonymous out there lied about YFC and said you were chaste!
IT was referring to YFC on what one anony person said
This guy would fit right in – With the Larry Brinkin Posse or some of our Faux ‘catholics’ Trolls on this board. Talk about ‘happy’ inclusiveness, even the swastikas he wears on his chest proudly shout it out.
Maybe he is actually Channeling for Ernst Rohm (Homo-Nazi ‘party’ founder and mentor to protege hitler), in a ‘catholic’ (small ‘c’) kind of way.
SEE
“Free the Children ‘We Day’ leader moonlights as gay stripper
The popular Canadian charity Free the Children is defending a Toronto-based employee who moonlights as a graphic sex-show performer in a homosexual-themed troupe.
The employee in question is one of the leaders at Free the Children’s wildly popular “We Day” events that in Toronto alone drew 20,000 students – many of them Catholic – to the Air Canada Centre in 2012.
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/free-the-children-we-day-leader-moonlights-as-gay-stripper?
“Your Fellow Catholic” and “Anonymous” and “PJT” and others: You are not really Catholic, correct? So many errors, which are constantly brought up to your attention, and all you can respond is with a supposed point of grammar, definition, or some irrelevant fact. Homosexual sexualists argue incessantly, and wrongly, that the bible never really mentions or rejects homosexual sex (everyone commits “sodomy” now and then, don’t they — wink, wink). As for your point on “I support marriage,” YFC, marriage can only be — in a Catholic sense — between a man and a woman; nothing else will do. Surely you may get what you want civilly (although you should not), but that means nothing to God and to His Church. And, watch out for those big words — “conflate” — which, here is correct as homosexuality and male on male lust is clearly conflated with “sodomy,” both as to biblical interpretation and as to civil and criminal law. Space does not permit more, but the literature is pretty extensive on this, but who cares? And, “PJT” Cardinal Dolan is completely anti-Traditional; he is a Company man who does not tolerate any priest saying the TLM, except in very rare circumstances. What he constantly ignored Pope Benedict and now is slavish in wanting to curry favor from the Francis Papal Court by moving against Tradition in as many ways as possible (e.g., by eliminating the free standing, and very solvent, Traditional Church of the Holy Innocents and combining it into the completely lost parish of St. Francis Xavier, a place of Catholic apostasy. Dolan likes nothing so much as power, yucking it up with our Abortionist-in-Chief Obama, helping to move Catholic votes into electing and re-electing an unspeakably immoral man as President. Your comments, and the intent behind them, are execrable.
I am Catholic. As you know, homosexuality is not a sin. Sodomy is.
English a second language for you? No one said that being a homosexual was a sin (although longing for someone of the same sex is sinful). What is a sin is any man-to-man sex (or woman-to-woman). And, any sex outside of a man-woman marriage is sinful (although homosexual sex occupies a special place here).
Well, I thought my name spoke for itself.
Satan quoted scripture to Jesus. This did not make Lucifer a rabbi.
YFC, your name does not speak for itself. It is false, since you publically promote homosexual marriage (sodomy).
Your moniker would be accurate if your moniker would be “Your Faithful Heretic and Schismatic”.
See CCC #2089 for the Church definition of heresy and schism.
YFC I agree with MEGAN. You are not honest to yourself and to others.
Fortunately Megan, it is not up to you to decide who is catholic and who is not. One would think that having a relationship with the Risen Lord, living in the midst of the Spirit of God, and being close enough to the Father that we dare call him ‘Papa’ would bring such joy to us all that we wouldn’t say such horrific things about one another and take such utter delight at pushing people from the Church. Really makes evangelism a hard sell when they see Christians treat each other with such disrespect. Who in their right mind would want to join such an organization?
MEGAN, Thank you! YFC is posting like a true disciple of the diabolically disorienting “smoke of satan” that has entered the sanctuary” instead of a follower of Jesus Christ.
Matthew 10:38 Douay-Rheims Bible
And he that taketh not up his cross, and followeth me, is not worthy of me.
1 John 3:10 By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God..
Righteous — Morally right; just.
Just — consistent with standards of what is moral and proper.
“You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. “But because I speak the truth, you do not believe Me. John 8: 44-45
yfc, you speak like a proud Protestant!
Being close enough to the Father that we dare to call him ‘Papa’ should give us pause at the very least when promoting sodomy, YFC, which is gravely offensive to our loving Lord. You know this.
So please, stop attempting to cast those who love the Father and do not wish to see Him slyly offended by those who would rather, by all appearances, take advantage of that closeness to promote sin. Sin is what crucified Our Lord, YFC. And so your actions do not bespeak love of the Papa, but rather the opposite.
Yes YFC but the church has already spoken and you do continue to dissent and excommunicate yourself. You do not deceive us, you are only deceiving yourself.
Ladies, your arguments might be persuasive if you made any arguments, you told the truth and you did not get Catholic teaching wrong.
Try talking to your pastors or a priest about how you should treat these situations
YFC, the Church is not an organization. It the Mystical Body of Christ. Those who belong to it are members of His Body These ladies are wrong in telling you that you are not Catholic and in saying that you excommunicate yourself.
Your stand on civil marriage is not in conformity with the Church. It is always good to obey the Church’s teaching even if one disagrees with it. Arguing against the Church’s teaching in public can have negative consequences that you do not intend (and I don’t mean to yourself-but to others).
“YFC,” You should closely read Matthew 5:48, “Be you therefore perfect as also your heavenly Father is perfect.” It is not a question of someone here issuing disrespect. Rather, everyone that is a practicing Catholic is only saying (1) recognize the commands of the Faith, (2) stop holding up homosexual sexuality as a good thing and its practice as acceptable, and (3) agree that all who are homosexuals with sexual lives must confess, repent, amend their lives, and then follow the dictates of the Catholic Church. Your constant attempts to redefine what is acceptable in the Catholic Church are not only tiresome, but wrong (as well as a danger to you). Wait, wait . . . maybe, just maybe you are taking your cue form Catholics like, let’s see, Cardinal Dolan. Mr. Chuckles loves a party, telling jokes, and not offending (except Traditionalists). And, he simply loves to publicly thanks and praise all homosexuals that “come out.” Instead of immediately saying — publicly — that a professional football player needs to seek counseling and confess his homosexual actions to save his soul, Cardinal Yuck-It-Up cannot say anything against any sinner, but a lot against anyone who seems to criticize him (sorry, Eminence, no one here is ordained, so you have no “obedience” club to yield). Do not be mislead by these clergy, YFC, homosexuality is not OK, not acceptable, and not morally licit. Jesus did not “condemn” the adulterous woman, but she was commanded to cease the sin. Fair warning.
St. Christopher, you continually misstate the teachings of the Church. It does not teach that homosexuality is “not ok”. In fact, it teaches that homosexuality is relatively common.
I think you might have more effect if you and folks around you spent as much time helping LGB people and supporting them in a life of celibacy. I also think you need a certain reality check: One would think that church teaching about the varying gravity of sin would help you see that a person who has sex with multiple and sometimes anonymous partners is in a very different moral situation than someone who commits to another person for life, and agrees to be with them through trials, sickness, and death. Even a 4 year old gets that.
A calm consistency in relaying the truth is the right approach, Anonymous. There is no attempt to persuade as YFC and others are adults and not uneducated. Respect for man’s intelligence and his capacity to say no works both ways, for man can say no to sin or he can say no to the doctrine that teaches against it.
This belief that persuasion or change or modification of method is going to to thee trick is no answer. We are not recalcitrant children. And if we are, there is a time to grow up and take responsibility for the yes and the no that we make with actions.
To think otherwise invites the idea that we are the ones transmitting Faith when in reality it is grace. We should give immense thanks for the grace to say yes to God’s law for it is a tremendous gift. But one easily and often rejected despite the foolishness of doing so.
Anonymous you are wrong to assume that this holy admonishment is wrong. The saints have spoken and have been very clear on those who break a loving relationship with God, we are all sinners and we can excommunicate ourselves when we gravely break away from God. We are all sinners. No one is without sin. On one point you may be correct, we can not question what is really in his or her heart when it comes to his love for Christ, people love imperfect, so he may have the best intention to be Catholic but as a Catholic, myself, know better, that as a Catholic Christian I must not mislead or help others fall astray from God.
We must not fall for tricks, unless you know him/her, can you really know if he is here on a good intent or a bad one. Look at the name “Your Fellow Catholic” (he is beginning to sound like the Pharasee’s, thinking he is a better Catholic because he feels the need to enlighten us about homosexuality and tell us that what God has revealed to us is wrong and questionable)….FACTs:
1. Defends “gay” agendas
2. Calls the church and people of faith Bigots, homophobes
3. Uses or used another website bashing my name and who knows who else (even tried to get information about me)
4. Seems to know the faith but incorporates his agenda’s to help defend his cause against the natural law
5. He may be Catholic, who knows, God bless him, I pray for him because I am not without sin either but we have the moral obligation to let him know that His theologies and theories are not welcome in a faith based website.
6. Dialogue is good and there has been many, if not years, spend charitably with him. Etc.
Anony and as for your comment from August 16, 2014 at 6:12 pm. We have…..you can’t beat it into him. Why should we spend long comments as there has been many from the past. Aren’t you paying attention? This is frustration to no end with self righteous thinkers, thinking they can do better. Why did you feel the need to criticize our efforts? Where are your efforts, since you know better?
I see that no good deed goes unpunished. It works both ways, if he is a Catholic, he sure likes to beat “gay” agenda’s unto us. He sure loves to persecute the people with morals. I am a sinner too, where is his gentle approach.
Well anyways, I pray for God’s graces to help us all. So YFC for the record, I am no better than you. I’m worst my brother. No matter, I have the same free will as you. God love you.
Well ta ta…. PAZ CHRISTI
Anonymous, please show me where in binding Church teaching there exists a proscription against states offering civil marriage.
Even a four year old gets that a union based on a relationship that only has sodomy as its sexual expression is no expression of love. Rather it is the commitment to sin with only one person instead of sinning with multiple partners. And if those persons adhere to the Catholic Faith, they they should understand that this supposed love is exactly the opposite as those persons would be willing to consign their ‘loved one’ to eternal damnation.
I realize that this is difficult for you to understand.
Really important:stop treating YFC as a gay activist. Stop telling him he is not Catholic. Stop accusing him of committing sins that he has said over and over that he does not commit.
Did you ever think that God sent him to the gay community at MHR to model the way gay men can live chastely? Did you ever think that in his personal life he is doing exactly as the Lord commands?
As for his support for gay marriage, many many Catholics are confused by this. He may not ever accept the Church’s teaching but others who are reading this might. Did you ever think that God sent him here with his erroneous arguments in favor of recognizing same sex civil marriage so that you could state the correct belief? Are you able to? How does being mean to someone that does not accept a Church teaching (which almost everyone here is guilty of) help anyone learn the Truth?
YFC, thank you for your question. It is here:
https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20030731_homosexual-unions_en.html
The present Considerations do not contain new doctrinal elements; they seek rather to reiterate the essential points on this question and provide arguments drawn from reason
1988 Pope John Paul II reaffirms the authority of the CDF: according to Article 48 of the Apostolic Constitution on the Roman Curia, Pastor Bonus, promulgated by Pope John Paul II on June 28, 1988: “The proper duty of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is to promote and safeguard the doctrine on faith and morals in the whole Catholic world; so it has competence in things that touch this matter in any way.
STOP Anonymous, you are bullying people of faith…you need to stop and tell YFC to stop promoting gay crap on this website, to stop bullying people of faith, to stop name calling people of faith, ….this anonymous is of bad will and could be in connection to YFC.
You are preaching at the wrong person…leave people of faith alone. I find your bickering repulsive. I said my peace. I won’t reply to anymore comments from this thread because I will be busy fighting the good fight and guess what? You won’t know what that is, because its time to end this madness. Our greatest weapon is prayer and God wins in the end.
Grave sin is grave sin. It is no less a sin if an adulterer has one extramarital partner whom he loves and is committed to or an array of one night stands. Both are gravely sinful. A relationship between 2 people of the same gender can have love, commitment but not sexual expression. They cannot marry without incurring the guilt of disobedience. They should be willing to sacrifice the worldly benefit of civil marriage to witness to holiness and to not give the appearance of sin. A Catholic cannot support civil marriage for same sex persons or heterosexual Catholics. We have a higher ideal than love and commitment to one person. Our commitment is to Christ. Death to self, renouncement of the world which is His enemy and putting God above all-even our dearest human love is required of all Catholics.
You are correct, YFC it is up to the Church to determine who is a Faithful Catholic, and who are Catholic heretics and schismatics.
The Church sets the definition.
Here is the Church definition:
CCC: # 2089
2089 ” HERESY is the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and catholic faith, or it is likewise an obstinate doubt concerning the same; ….
SCHISM is the refusal of submission to the Roman Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him.”
Any Catholic who does not adhere to the “Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition” in full is not a Faithful Catholic.
“ The Catechism of the Catholic Church, which I approved … and the publication of which I today order by virtue of my Apostolic Authority, is a statement of the Church’s faith and of catholic doctrine, attested to or illumined by Sacred Scripture, the Apostolic Tradition and the Church’s Magisterium. : – Pope John Paul II
“What Catholics REALLY Believe SOURCE”
https://whatcatholicsreallybelieve.com/
Anonymous, you are confused with regard to YFC’s promotions. Being mean, in truth, is ignoring that serious reality.
“…As for his support for gay marriage, many many Catholics are confused by this.”
Many are confused because the confusion is intentional, Anonymous, at least by all appearances. That intentional part, to me at least, in many ways could be considered even more insidious for there seems to be no innocent misguiding, but rather a calculated effort to obfuscate, redefine, wheedle, backpedal, and cry victim while continuing to spread a blanket of who-knows over acts of sodomy that are very clearly condemned in even the Bible itself.
If a rapist insisted on being a chaste rapist and only forced himself on one woman for her whole life while supporting her, would that render him to be okay in your estimation? How about an adulterer that only cheated with the same mistress for years while supporting her? Would these men be examples to others of how to be chaste? No.
Example one would be against the law of the land and God’s law. Example two would be against God’s law. But really, would you consider example two to be the better because at least the adulterer limited the partners with whom he transgressed God’s law to one? And well, the woman was willing. That seems to be your logic here and also what is confusing as more and more people attempt to insert man’s ways above God’s ways.
IOW: Two consenting adults might be the law of the land, but it is not God’s law or the natural law. That seems to be what you cannot grasp or will not. I don’t know. Also, you seem incapable of grasping the intimation of the word chaste with regard to one who considers themselves married. The word implies that these persons only have sexual relations with the one that is their spouse.
Actually, Ann Malley, four year olds see the love between 2 people and don’t bring prior notions of what should and shouldn’t be. They see the love and intuitively know it is good. For them, it’s just one more fascinating thing they learned that day.
Yes, YFC, and if left to their own devices these little four year olds will manifest all manner of behavior that is inappropriate as they do not have the correct filter of understanding. That is why God, in His wisdom, gives them parents to protect, guide, and instruct. (Living life guided by the mind and instincts of 4 year olds is not wisdom despite the sentimentality of the idea.)
As to ‘prior notions’ those notions are the word of God and His law, YFC. Something we need or else there would have been need of the Incarnation or redemption.
This isn’t fantasy island where all the little cherubs get along naturally. It is actually Christian restraint that would keep young men from behaving violently against those manifesting unnatural inclinations. For natural instinct includes such sad realities as shunning, killing, and all manner of other behaviors that naturally occur in order to weed out that which is not beneficial to the group.
So I wouldn’t be that quick in decrying ‘prior notions’.
Thank you Anonymous, but it is not a binding teaching, which is what I asked for. It was a political directive issued to bishops for how to argue against legal recognition of SS relationships. Most bishops ignored the directive, by the way.
Ann Malley, as a person who picks and chooses what she deems to be Catholic Truth and rejects what she doesn’t, certainly you can understand that despite the efforts of the Church to teach and require its members to stand up for traditional marriage, many if not most of them, believe whatever they want.
The only thing I choose to dismiss is that which is ambiguous, Anonymous, something you seem unwilling to come to terms with. And it is the ambiguity of ‘think what you will’ and the perversion of conscience that has led to folks believing and doing whatever they want while still considering themselves to be Catholics in good standing. Monkey see, monkey do.
Hence a promoter of homosexuality is welcome in Coronado. (Oh, my! However in the world did that happen?! Could be he was invited.)
So the ‘efforts of the Church’ need to get on the same page, Anonymous, that is teach from the same source. Tradition would be a good starting point as much has gone awry in this new springtime as evidenced by YFC’s post of August 18, 2014 at 9:04 am.
Not that there is any magic bullet here, but usually when solving a problem one attempts to do a reset back to that time-frame when things were proceeding somewhat normally or at least with some reasonable normalcy. Much like restoring a computer that now refuses to function, one picks the date on which the computer seemingly functioned as it should and then opts for that date.
Would be worth a try. But in the meantime, much like those who ran to the hills when the destruction of Jerusalem was at hand, I’ll continue to reject that which is not straight forward and in line with what was very clear and praiseworthy prior to the advent of chaos.
YFC, it is binding. I put the quotes the said that on the post.
It is not political, it is doctrinal. The CDF does not do politics.
Please name any bishop that ignored it.
Honest question here: are you entirely serious in your Catholicism?
I am sure every cafeteria catholic has their reasons and excuses.
Ann Malley, you or anyone else here have not provided any evidence that this priest is a promoter of homosexuality. You also continue to disparage the teaching of the Church on the primacy of conscience. Catholics are instructed that it is absolutely forbidden to violate one’s conscience, yet you seem to have missed that day in Sunday School.
Much like those who fancy themselves in full communion use the excuse of ‘Catholic’ on the menu when choking down rancid heterodoxy. No doubt they too have their reasons, but it won’t really matter when their kids get sick and die.
Ann Malley, responding to your 8:59 AM post: it is simply bizarre to believe that God gave children parents in order to “instruct” them that when they see love, their eyes are deceiving them. This is, rather, the work of the devil. Recognizing love and celebrating it is the vocation of every parent, not disparaging love. Kids know this intuitively. The voice of the heart is the basis of conscience. Embedded in every human heart is a guide to do this and shun that. And when 4 year olds see love between a couple, their hearts guide them appropriately. This is why marriage equality is so popular among young people today.
“…Embedded in every human heart is a guide to do this and shun that.”
Again, YFC, not spoken like a Catholic, a realist, or a parent. Human nature is fallen and prone to believe that which looks good is good. Experience teaches that that which looks good often is not when one experiences it. Or better still when one suffers through it.
Your playing the in-love-with-life ingenue is so overdone. But the idea of adults wanting to play the part of doe-eyed children who learn from children what is right and wrong is exactly why the younger generation is so enamored of false marriage ‘equality’. Every child likes to think they know better than their parent.
Same old game, same old lies.
As to conscience, the conscience should not be intentionally malformed in order to allow for sinful conduct, YFC. And that is precisely what is occurring by allowing false prophets and compromised clergy ‘out’ without proper supervision. They pervert the mind.
No doubt that is why you would consider a parent’s guidance of children ‘bizarre’. “…Recognizing love and celebrating it is the vocation of every parent,” was good for a laugh though. Good grief.
Prayers for you.
Ann Malley, are you really a Catholic? I ask because your view of human’s fallen nature has a decidedly protestant bent. Your pessimism of human nature forgets that our Church doesn’t believe that humans are eternally fallen creatures, but in fact Adam and Eve were constituted in an original state of holiness and justice. This grace of original holiness was to share in divine life. The Fall certainly divided God from his creation, but of course the happy fault of Adam won for us so great a Redeemer.
Responding to your post at Aug 18 1:55 PM, you respond to my statement that “embedded in every human heart is a guide to do this and shun that” by saying that I am not speaking like a Catholic. In fact, it was a paraphrase (from memory) of Vatican II’s tour de force Gaudiem et spes: ““Always summoning [one] to love good and avoid evil, the voice of conscience can when necessary speak to [one’s] heart more
specifically: do this, shun that” (Gaudium et Spes 16). Not a bad paraphrase if I may say so myself. But then again, you reject Vatican II, which is why you probably didn’t get the reference and went on to call my paraphrase not Catholic.
As to other places where you show disdain for the Church’s teaching on acting out of conscience, I refer you to the CCC, especially paragraph 1790 “A human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience. If he were deliberately to act against it, he would condemn himself.”
YFC, the acceptance of man’s fallen nature is Catholic. Otherwise, there would be no need for or messing with Confession or even the Redemption. But whereas Protestant theory presumes that man is like dung covered by the snow of grace, Catholics believe that man can overcome sin by clinging and corresponding to the grace that WILL transform him despite human weakness. That is why those who are afflicted with SSA just like any other temptation to sin should not take the Protestant tack of believing themselves incapable of change, but only ‘covering’ themselves in Christ.
Catholics are called to acknowledge their sinful inclinations and weakness and use that knowing of themselves (specifically their penchant to sin) to fuel their clinging to the grace offered by Christ in order to reject sin. So whereas you erroneously believe me to be pessimistic about the reality of fallen human nature, you seem to be pessimistic with regard to the effectiveness of God’s grace in battling mortal sin.
“…with God all things are possible,” does not mean that one can sin now because you’re with God, rather it means that man cannot avoid sin on his own, but with God, all things are possible.
With regard to the primacy of conscience, one is required to educate themselves and properly form conscience, YFC. That is why you purporting to be a fellow Catholic who embraces mortal sin as a gift from God (God does not contradict Himself) comes off, to me, as either an agitators shtick or perhaps the result of exceedingly poor catechesis. By your reasoning a married man or woman could take a lover based on their marriage being woefully dissatisfying and the other person being an answer to their prayer. Loving, understanding, sympathetic, etc.
YFC, I think you are romanticizing. I don’t think 4 year olds think that much about adults being in love at all. Most would think same sex romance is ooky. They probably think the same about heterosexual romance.
And it is very disturbing Ann Malley thinks a 4 year old knows about sodomy. Really worrisome.
Love you too, Anonymous :)
Anonymous, I’m not sure if he is 4, but he is close: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ybAlFrV8f4
Poor child. Being intentionally indoctrinated…. and obviously confused.
I does not YFC. you are a false catholic
You are a false Cansisus.
The difference between you and me YFC, is I confess my sins, you want to make them part of civil law and celebrate them…….
Another difference between you and me, Canisius, is that you promote violence against those you disagree with, and I promote dialogue. What good is confession if you continue to foment violence?
Endless dialogue that intimates that sodomy between homosexuals should be okay is helping no one, YFC. And goodness knows, even Our Lord used violence when need be. God the Father surely does when the cup of his justice is overflowing.
And don’t forget, the soul is the temple of God. So Jesus is rightly eaten up with zeal for it. I can only imagine the whip of justice is even now being plaited and rightly so.
“YFC” — You are wrong again, attempting to make Homofascist points, instead of accurately responding to prior blogs, or to true Catholic teaching. The blog centered on “homosexuals with sexual lives” and “homosexual sexuality”. None of what homosexuals do sexually (unless they force themselves to marry someone of the opposite sex, and are faithful to them) is acceptable to the Catholic Church, even to Cardinal Dolan. You just refuse to acknowledge this. You cannot, cannot, have a homosexual sexual relationship and remain a faithful, practicing Catholic. And, anyone who argues that you can is making heretical statements, even Cardinal Dolan, or Pope Francis, for that matter. It does not matter if you volunteer for the safety patrol at school, or the local library, or the soup kitchen, or visit the poor, or tithe, or help old ladies on and off the bus — none of this matters at all. Catholics are not guided by Cardinal Bernardin (although watch out for the October Synod) and his dopey “seamless garment” theories. And your theory about differences in the levels of sinfulness between the person who practices random sex with hundreds, and the person — let’s say a homosexual — who is “committed” to only one other homosexual for sexual relations, is a false question. No difference exists, even though Homofascists have certainly attempted to make inroads into the Catholic Church on this crazy theory for some time. You know, probably a good number of clergy agree with you; likely the ones that are homosexuals themselves. But, both relationships are morally evil.
“St.” Christopher, you offer a lot to respond to, and I’m pretty sure I have already responded to most of your points in prior posts. But for now, I just want to address ONE of your points.
You wrote, “None of what homosexuals do sexually (unless they force themselves to marry someone of the opposite sex, and are faithful to them) is acceptable to the Catholic Church, even to Cardinal Dolan.”
Do you REALLY want your daughter to marry a gay guy hoping he will force himself upon her? Doesn’t that kind of go against natural law? IMO, using Catholic church doctrine to justify a gay person – or any person for that matter – to force themselves to marry someone is just plain sick. You think gay sex is disordered….forcing oneself to marry another has got to be even more disordered.
YFC, here is another silly statement.
Could you not have just said that “yes, the Catholic Church teaches that sexual acts are reserved for a man and woman who are sacrament-ally married to each other.”
St.Chris. There is an excellent piece in New Oxford Review (Jan.2014) by Wm. Kilpatrick “Has the Church in the U.S. Succumbed to the Charms of Islam?” which describes Cd.Dolan’s bizarre (my word) inroads with his ‘dialog partners’, muslims, which seems to promote and defend Islam. I don’t have permission to quote from the article, but if you go to https://www.newoxfordreview.org/archives.jsp
you can find at least part of it.
And faithful priests like Fr. Richard Perozich get transferred for speaking the truth. Dear Heavenly Father, help us out down here.
I am glad that CC Daily has called to the important 2006 piece by James Hitchcock. An even more powerful tool to alert the Faithful to Fr. Radcliffe’s problematic teachings on homosexuality is to pay close attention to the transcription of the recent presentation that he contributed to the Church of England’s PILLING REPORT, published in November 2013. Here is exactly what Fr. Radcliffe provided to the group, in his exact own words: https://www.churchofengland.org/media/1879636/radcliffepresentation.pdf The Church of England then went inserted his ideas into their report, starting at #257 https://www.churchofengland.org/media/1891063/pilling_report_gs_1929_web.pdf Fr. Radcliffe states that he is giving a Catholic perspective on human sexuality. he then goes on to hypothesize, and it’s these hypotheses that deviate from the language of traditional Catholic sexual ethics. Sadly, he makes no mention of the CCC, nor Pope St. John Paul II’s THEOLOGY OF THE BODY.
“When people want to destroy religion they begin by attacking the priest; for when there is no priest, there is no sacrifice: and when there is no sacrifice, there is no religion.”
— St. John Vianney
St. John Vianney spoke with the Church unlike the priest in question, Anonymous. You may want to dig up quotes that refer to priests who preach their own opinion to the detriment of the flock.
Anonyous how misleading you are….St. John Vianney was referring to holy priests! Not ones that promote homosexuality! Know your faith better.
Praise Jesus that He protects us from those who want to deceive us. Anonymous did you know that St. Augustine, was a Priest, Bishop too, spoke against Homosexual acts. Yes he did and why are the homosexuals attacking those important teachings? Well its because they only pick and choose what benefits them. You can’t have a house divided Mr. or Ms. Don’t tear one of Jesus limb just because you don’t like another, just like those heretics and schismatics of the church.
So “This Anonymous from August 16, 2014 at 6:45 pm, stop being double standard, stop picking and choosing just to meet your needs, our Lord does not like this nor does he approves. Stop shoving our Lord in a box, to best suit your agenda’s, those actions do not help sinners return to God.
To help this misleading use of holy quotes, lets connect the puzzle to the truth, Jesus is the way and life, the Truth! Here is this quote, which is the church, never changes:
The Third Lateran Council (1179) establishes: “Anyone caught in the practice of the sin against nature, on account of which the wrath of God was unleashed upon the children of disobedience (Eph. 5:6), if he is a cleric, let him be demoted from his state and kept in reclusion in a monastery to do penance; if he is a layman, let him be excommunicated and kept rigorously distant from the communion of the faithful.”
Saint Augustine is categorical in the combat against sodomy and similar vices. The great Bishop of Hippo writes: “Sins against nature, therefore, like the sin of Sodom, are abominable and deserve punishment whenever and wherever they are committed. If all nations committed them, all alike would be held guilty of the same charge in God’s law, for our Maker did not prescribe that we should use each other in this way. In fact, the relationship that we ought to have with God is itself violated when our nature, of which He is Author, is desecrated by perverted lust.”
Further on he reiterates: “Your punishments are for the sins which men commit against themselves, because, although they sin against You, they do wrong in their own souls and their malice is selfbetrayed. They corrupt and pervert their own nature, which You made and for which You shaped the rules, either by making wrong use of the things which You allow, or by becoming inflamed with passion ‘to make unnatural use of things which You do not allow’ (Rom. 1:26).”
Saint John Chrysostom denounces homosexual acts as being contrary to nature. Commenting on the Epistle to the Romans (1:26-27), he says that the pleasures of sodomy are an unpardonable offense to nature and are doubly destructive, since they threaten the species by deviating the sexual organs away from their primary procreative end and they sow disharmony between men and women, who no longer are inclined by physical desire to live together in peace.
The opinions of saints, be they Augustine or Chrisostom are not infallible or binding teachings of the Church. We can’t know, for example, whether the acts they were opining about were acts by straight people, or instead, acts by gay people. Certainly, if straight people are engaging in gay sex, they would fit this description.
Of course, there is no question that homosexual acts are grave sins, even mortal sins if done with full knowledge and full consent of the will. Bearing false witness against one’s neighbor is also.
If you want to be good and really serve the faithful, stop being carried away by something you read ON THE INTERNET.
And St. John Vianney’s quote does not just apply to priests that you opine are good. Every priest has faults. Some of the worst of the child molesters were extremely orthodox priests.
Pray over the damage you do to the Body of Christ by your willingness to believe and support online smear campaigns.
YFC, sodomy is a grave sin whether committed by heterosexual or homosexual persons. It is also not a healthy practice for anyone.
I think you let the people here goad you into saying things that are kind of silly.
Anonymous, I think you might be missing that YFC posts what he believes. Give the man some credit. He is a grown up after all.
So are you saying, YFC, that sodomy between those with SSA is okay, but not heterosexuals? I find that really odd as the premier purpose of sexual acts is the procreation of children. So by your way of thinking, at least if I’m understanding you correctly, you believe that heterosexuals should bear all the burden for having their sexual acts be open to procreation while creating some protected class in homosexuals who can commit sodomy without any penalty of God’s law and without the resulting fruit of children which requires exhaustive self sacrifice.
Interesting.
Have you found anything in your research of Father Ratcliffe where he promoted homosexuality? And could you please explain to me, exactly what promoting homosexuality is? Is it telling people they should become homosexuals? Do you think they mean promoting acceptance of homosexual persons? That is Catholic Teaching! Do you think it means promoting acceptance of homosexual sex? I doubt very much that he did that and if he did he would be very wrong. What does it mean? What have you found?
I will not waste anymore time entertaining you Anony. Your on your own, you do the research.
PAX Christi
You do not entertain me. You disappoint me.
If you are not willing to do the research, don’t complain about him. Don’t slander him.
Anony sure get disappointed I don’t care…I have nothing to prove to you. You don’t know me, I am ten steps ahead now. You are assuming again…not a good quality of yours. You are way behind….keep walking.
Anonymous writes, “When people want to destroy religion they begin by attacking the priest; for when there is no priest, there is no sacrifice: and when there is no sacrifice, there is no religion.”
— St. John Vianney
You are right, Anonymous. Those that want to destroy the Catholic Faith have been very busy and for a long, long time. Many ‘priests’ have long since been attacked by Satan and those who would use them to promote sodomy as good in direct contrast to the Truth of the Catholic Church. That said, rooting out these compromised individuals is precisely the method required to preserve the Faith. Allowing compromised priests to compromise the Faith in practice and teaching will lead to a dearth of faithful and a subsequent lack of vocations to the priesthood. And no priesthood will equal no sacrifice. (And a priesthood of those who have no Faith will also equate to no sacrifice even if the robes and offices still seem to exist.)
So absolutely, protect priests. Protect them from the scurrilous attacks of the devil that would see them trade the Faith and their holy office for that of an agitator for that which is displeasing to God.
We are living in modern day Sodom and Gomorrah, the church does have compassion for those suffering with same sex attraction. We treat them with love and respect by sharing the truth with them, but the church also instructs us when to discern to admonish a sinner as well.
Like I expect and pray to be admonished when I offend my Lord, those practicing homosexual acts should receive no less love or respect of dignity as we heterosexual sinners get, because they are as worthy to partake in our Lord’s sanctifying graces, just like any one of us. Even more, they are in great need of God’s mercy and saving blood.
They are my brothers and sisters, whom need the nurturing and healing truths that only our Lord can provide, His graces and love. We hurt and ache to have them united with us in Christ. We appreciate the dignity of their soul, they are too, children of Christ, who are worthy as the same love that Jesus gives to us. Our Lord corrects us and we can with humility, understand the importance of this, this applying to us all. But we must be humble, knowing that our sins make us unworthy, its our insecurities, our free will that demands of the sick, weak of flesh, to want to change the church. Then are we truly seeking a relationship with God, or are we guilty of idolatry of self? Think before you act, do…lean on Christ and the intercession of our Lady. God bless you all.
“Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.”
Keep reading, YFC. Sodom’s sins as you describe were the prelude to her committing abominations before the Lord for which they were taken away:
“…Behold this was the iniquity of Sodom thy sister, pride, fullness of bread, and abundance, and the idleness of her, and of her daughters: and they did not put forth their hand to the needy, and to the poor. [50] And they were lifted up, and committed abominations before me: and I took them away as thou hast seen.”
exactly AM. So what is your point? They were lifted up and taken away because they didn’t see the plight of the poor. THIS is what scripture says is the sin of Sodom.
In the CCC, there are 13 paragraphs that clearly state that Marriage is between one man and one woman.
Gen 2:24
And additional CCC paragraphs state: Adultery, Fornication and Homosexual Acts are Mortal Sins.
Gen 19:1-29; Rom 1:24-27; 1 Cor 6:10; 1 Tim 1:10, Jude 1:7.
Homosexual Marriage / SODOMY –
This is a reference to marriage in the religious sense, ie sacramental marriage. The question at hand is civil marriage, which by definition includes many kinds of marriages that the Church would NEVER recognize as a sacramental marriage!
” LETTER to the BISHOPS of the CATHOLIC CHURCH on the PASTORAL CARE of HOMOSEXUAL PERSONS ”
” 15. We encourage the Bishops, then, to provide pastoral care in full accord with the teaching of the Church for homosexual persons of their dioceses. No authentic pastoral programme will include organizations in which homosexual persons associate with each other without clearly stating that homosexual activity is immoral.
A truly pastoral approach will appreciate the need for homosexual persons to avoid the near occasions of sin.”
https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19861001_homosexual-persons_en.html
You are a one note wonder when you only quote that line and do not quote all the other places in which straight people are urged to treat gay people with compassion and to avoid discrimination against them. Funny, how easy it is to avoid those other parts of Church teaching, isn;t it?
It is compassionate to share the truth and encourage folks to find and follow it, YFC.
My post was directed at you YFC and a couple of other posters who encourage mortal sin.
People who have same sex attraction should be treated kindly.
It has nothing to do YFC, with YOUR advocating the Mortal Sin of homosexual acts, and homosexual marriage / sodomy in many of your posts.
Most Catholics have no problem being kind to those who are struggling with temptation,
but have trouble tolerating those like you who want to encourage mortal sins (while pretending to be Catholic).
And it being kind has nothing to do with YOUR heresy and schism, including choosing a moniker that is a lie. You are not a “Faithful Catholic”.
CCC: ” 1868 Sin is a personal act. Moreover, we have a responsibility for the sins committed by others when we cooperate in them:
– by participating directly and voluntarily in them;
– by ordering, advising, praising, or approving them;
– by not disclosing or not hindering them when we have an obligation to do so;
– by protecting evil-doers. ”
Do you understand that anger is not directed by most posters at those who are struggling with same sex attraction, it is directed at posters like you who want others to sin.
.
Wow now I’ve seen everything, a different Anonymous, one of many….OK well good for this anonymous. Glad to know that not all anonymous posters are of bad will.
Skai Ven, you know me, your fellow catholic. I have been the gay guy who was a hairsbreath away from death because I am gay.
No, YFC, I have no idea who you are. Anyone can come along and call themselves Your Fellow Catholic and make any kind of claim and no one has any way of knowing if what they say is true. So, no, I do not know you. You do not know me and we continue to disagree. You complain about people being disrespectful of you and about the language that they use. But you reserve to yourself the right to use disrespectful words like bigot, homophobe, and religious fanatic to attack people that you do not like. If you don’t want to abide by your own injunctions, when why should anybody else? Hmmm? You deliberately mangled my name as a sign of mockery. So far, I have refrained from doing the same to you, but I will not refrain any more. I will give you the same treatment that you dish out to faithful Catholics. You remind me of media bully Perez Hilton. You know the guy who picked on Carrie Prejean and then picked on some rappers and got whipped. After he got whipped, he started crying and complaining about how homosexuals are so hated and everyone keeps picking on them. Poor baby, he came across someone that was able to fight back against his aggression and he didn’t know how to handle it.
Are you the same Your Fellow Catholic who had to be told by others about MarkF because you did not know about him?
Ski Ven, you don’t want to believe that gay people get attacked and murdered every day in this world for being gay. You just keep telling yourself that Catholics are the only ones persecuted. Try looking up the hate crimes statistics if you don’t want to believe me. All violence is evil. Whether it’s against Catholics, gays, athiests, Jews, or whatever. It is such a simple concept. Why is it so difficult for you to understand?
https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/couple_on_trial_for_murder_of_8_year_old_they_called_gay_tortured_him_more_severely_than_many_pows
Couple On Trial For Murder Of 8 Year Old Called Him Gay, Tortured Him ‘More Severely Than Many POWs’
A mother and her boyfriend are on trial for murdering her 8-year old son. They allegedly called him gay, and abused, beat and tortured him “more severely than many prisoners of war.”
Pearl Fernandez, 30, and her boyfriend Isauro Aguirre, 34, are on trial in Los Angeles for the murder of her 8-year old son, Gabriel Hernandez. The details of the case are horrific, as are the accusations that young Gabriel “fell through the cracks” after case workers ignored clear warning signs, including a suicide note he had penned.
“For eight straight months,” Deputy District Attorney Jonathan Hatami told a grand jury this week, Gabriel “was abused, beaten and tortured more severely than many prisoners of war.”
Some of the alleged attacks on young Gabriel included calling him “gay,” punishing him “when he played with dolls” and forcing him to “wear girls’ clothes to school,” according to his remaining siblings, the LA Times reports in an extensive article.
YFC, Changing the subject is a simple concept that I can understand. You were originally claiming that I know you even though I have never met you. Anyone can come on this site and use the name Your Fellow Catholic. I have demonstrated that what you said is false. So you have decided to change the subject rather than admit that you were wrong. You are also falsely stating that I said that Catholics are the only ones who are persecuted. There is another comment that I previously wrote in this very article that contradicts your filthy lie. So what if homosexual people around the world are attacked for being homosexual. Catholics around the world are also attacked for being Catholic. China, North Korea, and the Muslims are famous for doing these things. You do not have a monopoly on being a victim of hate. Homosexuals dish out some of the hating themselves while at the same time they are giving everyone else pious sermons of loving and respecting other people. I am not in the mood for sob stories about homosexuals being victims while homosexuals are working feverishly to exclude true Catholics from participating in the economy. You all tried it with Chick-fil-A, Phil Robertson, the Colorado Baker, a wedding photographer, and the recently fired CEO of Mozilla.
I can understand why you would not want to answer the question that I asked you at August 20, 2014 at 1:23 pm.
Anonymous, I have endured more anger and more hatred because of being gay than I hope you ever have to for any reason. I have had eggs thrown at me, I have been yelled at (regularly) on the street, I was even attacked to the point of near death with a severe concussion and broken bones. A person was literally beaten to death 2 blocks from my house last week. The people who you should be lecturing about sin should be people who have nothing but disdain for gay people who, in their words, act to create an environment in which gay people are indeed treated to deadly violence. This constant harping on homosexuality creates just such an environment, and is part of the cooperation of sin about which you so glibly write.
On the other hand, I have also been on the receiving end (and hopefully on the giving end) of an amazing, loving and life giving relationship. For me to look at that love and call it sinful, or to not recognize it as a gift directly from God, would be itself a sin. It would be blasphemy to tell God that the love he has sent into my life is a cruel hoax, somehow meant to test me to see if I would sin in some other way. But I won’t do that. I will call love what it is, and thank my Creator for it. Every single day. My conscience allows me to do no other.
Right now, in Iraq, Christians are being attacked for their faith. Their houses were marked to identify them as being Christian. They have been told to convert or die. Many of them have fled with only the clothes on their backs. They are being hunted down by blood thirsty Muslims. Many of them are getting beheaded. Women are getting raped and then killed. Small children are being sawed in half. You want to talk about being persecuted, YFC, when you have the power of the federal government, wealthy corporations, ( ex. Mozilla ) and the judicial system at your beck and call. When is the last time you had to flee from a city because a mob was going through the entire city and locating all of the homosexuals and telling them to convert or die. Christians are losing their businesses to an authoritarian police state for refusing to condone sodomy. Churches have been vandalized because homosexuals can’t stand their belief that marriage is a union between a man and a woman. The federal government has targeted Catholics with a contraception mandate that no true Catholic can comply with. The IRS is demanding that faith based groups disclose to them the content of their prayers. The IRS had reached an agreement with the Freedom From Religion Foundation to monitor the sermons of Churches. Due to pressure from homosexual activists, Christians are being systematically excluded from the economy. To be a Christian is to be marked for persecution.
Ski Ven, Catholics in America do not face the kind of every day violence that LGBT people face, often at the hands of “Christians”. What is happenning in Iraq is horrible, sure, but the violence there doesn’t justify violence there. Besides which, American churches, like the one Scott Lively runs, are taking their anti gay message to Africa, resulting in Uganda, for example, passing a kill the gays bill.
Have you EVER spent a night in an emergency room for being catholic? Do you know anyone personally who has? No, I didn’t think so. But you DO know a gay person who has come within a hairsbreath of his life because he is gay.
Then love, YFC, by doing that which will aid your beloved to attain God. Mortal sin is not love, but the opposite.
This YFC wants to sell false compassion! (just like this priest is)
“:gay’ (a homosexual agenda name and people living those lifestyles). Most and if not all homosexuals, they get special treatment in schools, workplace etc etc….they are forcing people of faith to accept their agenda. So for what he just said, makes me angry because he is selling a propaganda so they can further their “gay” agendas! FALSE COMPASSION WALLAH! . People are more tolerant, even while I was growing up, I saw lot of tolerance. If they were bullied, well guess what…most of us were bullied at one point of another. I was hated in high school because girls where jealous of my figure and my smile. How about the kids that wore glasses, or the skinny kid on the back of the line. I don’t condone any type of bullying but I know that its human nature for people to bully anyone depending on the area. Even confused kids bully Christians. No one is making the Bible the number book in schools due to because Christians are being bullied, but instead they are pushing “gay” agendas.
No, YFC, I do not know a homosexual person who has come within a hairsbreadth of his life because he is a homosexual. Where did you get that idea from? You do not know anything about me. You have no basis to make such an assertion. I do not know any people who go around looking for homosexuals to beat up. I have never been in a Church where the pastor tells the people that they must beat up homosexuals. I did not say that violence in Iraq justifies violence against homosexuals here. I have never on this site called for unprovoked attacks against homosexuals. Many of us Christians were bullied in Junior High School for saving ourselves for a Sacramental Marriage by the very same creeps who bullied boys for being nerdy or effeminate. Those bullies somehow got virginity confused with being homosexual. To imply that Christians are the cause of violence against homosexuals is a filthy bold face lie. People who do not care if they offend God are not gonna be worried about being held accountable for what they do to others. They are the ones you have to be worried about, not those who are worried about being punished with eternal fire for the way they treat others.
YFC, you try to say that I know you, even though I have never met you. Anyone can come on here and use the name Your Fellow Catholic. You are trying to say that I am having a “relationship” with you, but I don’t really know who I am dealing with. I know that at least two people used the name Your Fellow Catholic on this site. I try to find out who I am dealing with and who I am supposedly having a “relationship” with, and I am told that I am just playing silly games. In the comments section for another article, I said something that you agree with and you bashed me for that. I don’t appreciate being played with. The way that you are treating me does not exactly inspire me to have warm and fuzzy feelings for homosexuals.
P.S. I am not your dear, either.
Catherine, sweet sister in Christ, thank you for your comment. It seems like it is hard to get a straight answer out of these people. It is like pulling teeth. They make it look like they are trying to hide something. They can end up making it look worse for themselves trying to doge and weave than if they gave a straight answer. It’s like running away as soon as you see a police officer when the police officer might have just wanted to help you change your flat tire or call a tow truck for you.
Ski Ven, if you want to define “knowing” someone as actually have shaken hands, then probably we have not met, then fine, it is true we have not met and in that sense you do not “know” me. But I am not just some random person either, I am someone who you have enough of a relationship with to ask me questions and expect me to answer that. You aren’t just throwing those questions out into the internets for some random person to answer, you know that there is a person to whom you are addressing. You know I am not a robot, you know a bit about my life, and hence in some very real ways you know me better than you would know me had we actually shaken hands at the sign of the peace.
Further, if you followed my statements (it can be difficult because of the way CCD interleaves responses), I already said that we should all agree that violence against anyone should be deplored and condemned. Whether against Catholics, gays, Jews, children, Arabs, women, whatever. Will you agree with me on that??
Which Your Fellow Catholic will be the person who answers the questions? Will it be the one who was arguing with MarkF, or the one who never heard of MarkF? Will the real Your Fellow Catholic please stand up? You say you are not a random person, but how am I supposed to know? Does a different person use the name Your Fellow Catholic each month or something?
Dear Ski Ven, I’ve answered this question several times. Some of you think everyone is k or “k anonymous”. Now some of you are spreading rumors that there is more than one YFC. You folks really get into making up silly games!
YFC writes to Ski Ven, “I already said that we should all agree that violence against anyone should be deplored and condemned.” = YFC, So why aren’t you? You’ve certainly had plenty of opportunities. Please look in the mirror. We all know what happened to Pinnochio when he lied or falsely exaggerated about himself. Please direct us to even *one single post* in one of CCD’s numerous “In the trenches” articles where you have condemned the violence or deplored the violence of murdering innocent babies. Better yet, I’ll even ask you to show us one single post in where you encouraged the brave sidewalk counselors who actually do decry violence. YFC, You have only decried the so called violence of Jack not being able to place a legal wedding band on Bob so that they may adopt and actually do violence to the innocence of little children. You are still traveling down the broad road to perdition.
: > > > ( Those are three Pinnochio sad face nose reminders. Consistent posting actions always speak louder than the *still ringing hollow* posts of an unrepentant homosexual activist.
Ski Ven,
Thank you! Excellent questions!
Catherine you are a piece of work. You would accuse a blade of grass of not being green enough.
And you would rebrand grass as the sky and then get all pushed out of joint if nobody agreed with you, YFC. That’s a real piece of work.
Thank you Ann Malley! : )
testing 1 2 3
YFC writes ” urged to treat gay people with compassion and to avoid discrimination against them”
No one has not treated the homosexuals here without any compassion nor have they discriminated. YFC has been noted as calling Catholic Christians as bigots, homophobes. The church does not acknowledge those words as words to use against people of faith, people who fear the Lord, the word bigot actually is more directed to non-believers, like those who are pushing anti-Christian bigotry!
You are just looking for special treatment so you can say what you want and do what you want without any consequences. In fact the few homosexual that chose to be chaste and follow what the church teachings including in marriage, One which was MarkF, was treated with disrespect and without compassion from those suffering with same sex attractions.
My good friend, who is no longer professing to be “gay”, praise God, told me that there is a lot of hypocrisy amongst the homosexuals and the abuse they give to those who left that lifestyle. When such directions are given about the care of homosexuals, it applies as well to all sinners. The church is not giving special treatment to them either but all teachings apply to all whom wish to have a loving relationship with God.
Abeca, don’t try to feed me that nonsense. Everyday you read people on CCD calling me and other gay people homofascist, child molesters, and claims that we were the heart of the Nazi Gestapo, then they lie about the Dyke March, they claim falsely claim that the child abuse crisis was all a gay problem, and they make the claim that we are the smoke of the devil and the filth of the Church (even though the reference was to corrupt Vatican bankers). I’m not buying your bs about there being no discrimination and no honest person would. I’m also not buying your totally made up notion that Catholics aren’t to be called bigots and homophobes when the titles fit. When catholics are bigots or homophobes, that is EXACTLY what they should be called.
What do you call a Catholic then who incessantly berates the teachings of the Church with regard to homosexual sexual relations and attempts to bully believing Catholics into thinking they have to condone mortal sin?
By your own protestations, you are just as much of a bigot with regard to your line of thinking.
Bigot: a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance.
You are intolerant of faithful, believing Catholics. That said, believing Catholics are not obstinate or intolerant based on their own opinions or prejudices. Faithful Catholics are only acting on that which has been handed down, YFC, from Our Lord. It is the dignity of the One making the pronouncement that lends credence and weight to it, not any one individual.
So when you are battling on CCD as to the legitimacy of homosexual sexual relations, you are not battling with individuals and personal opinions.
YFC you are what you eat. If you reject the church teachings on chastity, purity, modesty….what can I tell you. My response to you sir, is simple, its what I saw here, you keep bullying people of faith.
If you continue believing what you feed yourself constantly, you will be what you consume. That is why I feel that if you continue this way and you mock our Lord by receiving holy communion, you may have placed yourself in worst sins. St. Paul warned us against receiving our Lord when one is living in immortal sin.
It is you who rejects the writings of St. Augustine, St. Thomas just because you reject their message of salvation, which leads all souls towards sanctifying grace. Its the very same message preached today by our modern day Popes too, whether they or some have toned down that message, its still the same. For God never changes, but people change.
I am sorry that you felt wronged. There is nothing I can say or do, that will please you because you are looking for approval of certain sins that I can not ever accept because they offend God and what offends God, should offend us all. My prayers continue on, for you, as I pray that you too can pray for us.
YFC, some of what you complain about, people have challenged long before you began posting here. It did no good. In fact, the individuals got worse. They would make sure to use the offensive phrase or word every time they posted. Eventually, people just stop reading their posts or just ignore them.
It must seem to you that you are alone in standing up against them, but honestly, the rest of us figured out who the trolls were and stopped feeding them. You know who they are too. Just don’t read them. And don’t respond to them You are not going to teach them anything. They don’t obey Jesus Christ, they don’t obey the Church and they ain’t gonna obey you.
Pope Francis asks: Where are you on your spiritual journey? | Pope Francis, spiritual journey, Casa Santa Marta
Casa Santa Marta chapel
Where are you on your spiritual journey? Are you wandering aimlessly like a tourist? Have you stopped or lost your way? Or are you heading straight for your destination? Pope Francis reflected on these questions during his homily at Mass in Casa Santa Marta on Monday morning.
Reflecting on the day’s readings from Isaiah and St John’s Gospel Pope Francis distinguished between three different types of Christians and how they live their spiritual lives. Before God asks anything of us, the Pope said, He always promises us a new life of joy, so the essence of our Christian life is always to journey in hope and trust towards those promises.
But there are many Christians whose hope is weak and while they believe and follow the commandments, they have come to a standstill in their spiritual lives. Pope Francis said God cannot use them as a leaven among his people because they have stopped and they are no longer moving forward.
cont
Secondly, he said there are those among us who have taken the wrong turning and lost our way. Of course, the Pope continued, we all sometimes take the wrong road, but the real problem arises if we don’t turn back when we realize that we’ve made a mistake.
The model of a true believer who follows the promises of faith, Pope Francis said, is the royal official from today’s Gospel reading, who asks Jesus to heal his son and does not doubt for a second when the Master tells him the child has been cured. But unlike that man, the Pope said, there are many Christians who deceive themselves and wander aimlessly without moving forward.
These people, Pope Francis said are perhaps the most dangerous group because they wander through life like existential tourists without a goal and without taking God’s promises seriously. But the Lord asks us not to stop, not to lose our way and not to wander through life. He asks us to journey on towards his promises like the official who believed what Jesus told him.
… the Lord always gives us grace to turn back….. If we have chosen the wrong road, we should go to Confession and return to the right way. If we are a theological tourist wandering aimlessly through life, we must ask the Lord for grace to head off again on the journey towards the promises of our faith.
Abeca, chastity, purity and modesty. These three are eternal?
I’m not sure where I have ever opined upon them one or all. What I believe eternal are faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love. I’m not sure I’ve ever rejected the teachings of Aquinas, but if I had to be, I’d rather be on record as rejecting Thomas than Paul.
One last think YFC…yes there is discrimination, one that God allows. It helps people discern. I’m not going to try to explain it to you….I think it has been brought up before but you may forget just like you forgot who MarkF is…..if I continue responding to you and anonymous, I will have to live here in cyberspace. I am a busy person. Telling from your posts here, you are not looking for answers, you are working to enforce an agenda.
I am not your enemy YFC nor do I want to argue with you or Anonymous. If we are enemies it is due to sin. Nothing new has been said to you here. Its all church teachings. Not our invention. God bless you both. You can discriminate against me because of my love of faith. The real enemy is the devil and his lies. Saint Padre Pio once said to a woman or man, who said they didn’t believe in Hell…he replied with “You will when you get there”. That applies to all sinners who do not repent. But there is always hope for you YFC! yes there is. Peace in Christ. You are a precious human being with the ability to love and choose freely. You have free will. We all have free will.
Jmj
AM you don’t understand intolerance, do you? Intolerance is not the same as disagreement. Or did you know? Every time I provide sure evidence for your failure to provide a Catholic perspective, I am suddenly accused of being intolerant! Nonetheless, let me continue to show how my view is the Catholic view:
Our Lord proclaimed love above all else. Even above any external authority, including religious authority, or did you know?
Where, even once, have I asked you to condone mortal sin, even once? What I have asked you to do is to understand the fullness of Catholic teaching with regard to the nature on the human person, the fullness of the incarnation, the self giving love that we receive in the Eucharist and to which we are ALL called, the nature of love itself, the primacy of conscience – the voice within each human heart which calls us to do this and shun that. Each human heart, not just heterosexual hearts, dear Ann Malley!
You are the one intent on making distinctions between homosexual vs. heterosexual hearts, YFC. But there is no distinction. Each heart is called to live in the love of Truth which is Christ Jesus. That is love, YFC, Truth. Not sentiment or desire or inclination. That is why your attempt to recast homosexual sexual relations as somehow not mortally sinful – but rather an expression of love – is sinful in itself.
Please stop pretending that there is anymore fullness than what Christ taught with regard to marriage and the necessity of purity. There isn’t. Times change, but people and their desire to follow fleshly temptation is always present.
So I’ll say again that you seem intolerant of Catholic beliefs. Beliefs that are held precisely because they have been handed down by God. Not man. And if you don’t believe that, well, then that’s the real issue.
And please refrain from addressing me as dear.
Anonymous at Aug 19 4:28 PM You are quite possibly right. I don’t post to change the minds of the trolls, I post to give hope to those innocents who happen upon this site searching for spiritual direction but finding condemnation. If one Catholic teenager finds more hope by my posts than despair from the others, then I have succeeded.
The only trolls here are that anonymous poster and who knows YFC…..how absurd calling people of faith trolls…what I tell you, these individuals are here to BULLY people of faith!
Go to confession Anonymous…..you are not walking the walk and certain best to let you talk to the hand. NO MORE MRS NICE for you! You need to be admonished!
Dear Ann Malley, thank you for agreeing with me that there is no difference between a homoseuxal heart and a heterosexual heart. Love is love, whether it is homosexual or heterosexual. It is you who tries to make a distinction between the two.
And by the way, Dear Ann Malley, please stop ordering me about as though I answer to you. I’m not your slave.
Anonymous, I do remember Maguire trying to bully me and tell me what I can say and can’t say on this website. He was trying to tell me that I can’t use the word CINO. I said that I am gonna use the word CINO and I don’t care what Maguire has to say. I started using the word CINO even more to show that he is not in charge of me. Do you remember that? Didn’t you tell me that the moment I refer to my brother or sister Catholic as a CINO, I become one and that I indict myself. You seem to be in favor of protecting CINOs and not protecting Catholic teaching. Those who uphold God’s definition of marriage are not being disobedient to Jesus Christ. Those who are promoting a redefinition of marriage are. You are right about us not obeying YFC. YFC is not the boss. Jesus Christ is.
That is what Mark from PA used to say.
When he stopped posting 90% of it stopped.
Some of the worst offenders don’t post here anymore.
Some of the one’s that challenge you were the one’s that challenged him. Some of them are newbies.
Abeca Christian, I was not talking about “people of faith.” I was talking about the people who do not obey God. There is not just one sin, you know. All sin is evil. People of faith commit sin but they repent.
Considering the hostility and rudeness of your post, I cannot even imagine what your idea of a person of faith is. Stand with the Lord. Speak of the Lord. Bow to the Lord.
YFC, every time you talk about love and commitment all I can think about is bacon and eggs. It is used as an example of the difference between involvement and commitment. The hen is involved. The pig is committed.
People don’t necessarily understand that they are trolling.
A list of trolling behaviors:
Pithy put-downs
Name-calling and insults
Ad hominem attacks that try to negate an opinion by alleging negatives about the person supporting it
Impugning other’s motives
Emotional rants
Bullying and harassment
Completely off-topic posts
Posting inaccurate “facts”
Where unintentional trolling becomes a problem is when a person engages in such behavior repeatedly because he doesn’t recognize that he’s trolling. Some people think it’s cool to post snappy put-downs. Or they casually question the intelligence or sincerity of others. Or they name-call. Often these people would be surprised to be called trolls. Yet when they post like this they are trolling just as surely as the intentional troll. Why? Because their posts have the same effect. They sidetrack useful discussion into offensive, heated exchanges. They destroy threads.
Some who repeatedly troll but don’t mean to lack social sensitivity. Discussion requires give-and-take. Some aren’t socially mature. Some can’t accept or handle disagreement. We’ve all been too thin-skinned on occasion.”
cont
The only slavery you seem to be into YFC is that associated with disordered sexual inclination. And please, don’t call me dear.
But it is good to know you finally, at least today, understand that there is no difference in hearts being called to love. That is why I cannot understand why, after being bullied to near death for homosexual inclinations, that you would then in turn consign one that you say you love to death of soul by being a perpetual occasion of sin. That’s a form of sexual bullying if you ask me. Makes no sense.
You would castigate those who would harm the bodies of homosexuals and yet you have no qualms in killing souls by similarly targeting those with SSA with something far more deadly. As if homosexual folks didn’t have free will to act or not act just like anyone else. How cruel and self defeating.
Almost everyone unintentionally trolls at least sometimes.
This website is really bad for it because it deals with religion and politics and those issues which upset people. People have very strong opinions when it comes to religion, politics and the changes that are going on in our culture. Notice which articles get hundreds of comments and which get less than 20. Comment threads like this that go over 100 usually are sparked by trolling. People here have strong needs to correct others. I include myself but I am committed to stop. Sometimes you feel like you are serving God but really all you are doing is inflaming people who are already upset. They take it wrong. And it does no good. From now on, my policy is to pray only.
Dear Ann Malley – responding to your post at August 20, 2014 at 2:56 pm: I have explained to you already that for me to deny love would be to act against my conscience which is forbidden. To deny love is to deny God himself, to make a mockery of him and his gifts to us.
You like to sit in judgement of me and my relationship, as though that is your prerogative. I assure you that to judge a relationship you have never witnessed is utter folly, and it is you who will have to account to our Father for this.
YFC, rejecting God’s commandments is not an act of love for God. It is an act of rebellion. How does this primacy of conscience thing work out if someone’s conscience tells him to beat up homosexuals? Who are you to sit in judgment of Ann Malley? Did your conscience tell you to do that?
Homosexual sex is that which is forbidden, YFC. So your waxing poetic with, “…To deny love is to deny God himself, to make a mockery of him and his gifts to us,” is the mockery. It is also misleading for those with SSA who are attempting to carry their cross.
I can’t speak for the consciences of others. I can only speak for my own, and I am obligated by the very long teachings of the Church to follow my conscience or face certain condemnation. This is why we are admonished not to rush to judge the souls of others, even if we believe their behavior may be objectionable.
Nobody is judging your conscience or your soul, YFC, just that which is objectively and very clearly disordered human sexual behavior according to the moral law. That is the long teaching of the Church. And although science may be learning new things, the discoveries are of things already there, nothing new.
YFC, do you respect the primacy of Jeffery Dahmer’s conscience?
I hope there is hope for me, too, Abeca. And I hope there is hope for you too.
You are so stubbornly wrong, “Your Fellow Catholic” regarding treatment of homosexual persons by Catholics; respect, yes, acceptance of homosexual sexual lifestyle, no. It is really very simple, although Homofascists attempt to redefine it at every turn. Catholics, out of charity, are also supposed to advise their “brothers” when their behavior is morally wrong. Homosexuals (practicing homosexual sex, that is), and their sympathetic, or co-practicing priests, say, “Stop,” you must be “pastoral” and all that stuff. It winds up misleading homosexual sexualists that what they are doing is “OK” as no one can judge them, etc. That is wrong, and you and every homosexual that is a Catholic knows it. It is not a question of “judging” which is up to Christ, but a question of advising what is correct. And, no, you cannot turn this around and say, well, if Pope Francis says, “who am I to judge” then it means that we will just leave it up to Jesus and you must take me as I am. This is not correct, and you should not be so misled. Homosexual sex is deeply offensive to God, a mortal sin, and never acceptable. No, it does not matter at all if the homosexual does a bunch of good things, or if his “conscience” is clear (where did you ever learn that “conscience” trumps sin??) by committing homosexual sexual acts. But then, there is always the October Synod and many, many zombie liberal clerics are gearing up for another run at “fulfilling the promise of Vatican II” by changing everything about the Church’s sexual ethics. Regardless, stay true to the Faith.
Church Militant TV had a great episode on “Father Gay” – which is kind of like ‘father christmas’, only different.
https://www.churchmilitant.tv/daily/?today=2014-08-18
Its plain and simple, after doing my research, this priest is a heretic and be careful, he is very intelligent, that he may fool even those who preach to be Catholic. Look who he is fooling now. I am praying that we can knock down this Goliath heretical theologies sooner or later. He contradicts what the church has always stood for and warned about homosexual priests and homosexuality, he is a modern day heretic that has swept in the church. His vocabulary can grab your attention and before long, he has you under his spell. Pray the rosary, go to confession and say a few exorcism prayers before reading these facts to try to combat the indirect twisted assault this man has against truth The truth is simple and direct, not how this man tries to twist it. All who fear the Lord, those who are gifted in God’s wisdom and knowledge and who think they can take on this duty to write to the Pope and combat what evil and desensitizing this heretic is trying to accomplish, please do so. Lets pray and fast for his salvation and pray for our Church.
Reflect John 17
Thank you, but you need to document it.
While documentation can be good please stop pretending that it would just simply take documentation to stop these wolves in sheep’s clothing.
It did not take only take documentation of evidence to prove the horrific sex abuse scandals were taking place. Numerous voices cried out for many years and our shepherds ignored those voices too and many simply hid the evidence. Our compromised shepherds became even more proficient at hiding documentation and denying the existence of the scandals and shuffling molesters. They rationalized this by claiming to protect the Church. Nothing could be further from the truth. Today the same denying and rationalization is taking place with the heterodoxy that is rampant. Our faithful shepherds who do know that this is taking place must feel powerless because they seem to be completely paralyzed with inaction. The best evidence of Father Timothy Radcliffe’s clever ambiguous enabling comes from the glowing reports on gay websites that herald his subversively clever tactics. These are the same websites that absolutely despise Church teaching but they also call themselves Catholic. It does not take a rocket scientist to put two and two together but it does take a group of compromised shepherds to rationalize the allowing of this ravenous wolf to enable sinners to be quite proud of their sins. As one deacon on another website wrote about Father Timothy Radcliffe, “He is as cute as a fox and I don’t mean that in a complimentary way.”
Return O ye revolting children … and I will give you pastors according to My own heart’. (Jer. 3:14,15)
Once again anonymous,
Return O ye revolting children … and I will give you pastors according to My own heart’. (Jer. 3:14,15)
“The most evident mark of God’s anger, and the most terrible castigation He can inflict upon the world, is manifest when He permits His people to fall into the hands of a clergy who are more in name than in deed, priests who practice the cruelty of ravening wolves rather than the charity and affection of devoted shepherds. They abandon the things of God to devote themselves to the things of the world and, in their saintly calling of holiness, they spend their time in profane and worldly pursuits. When God permits such things, it is a very positive proof that He is thoroughly angry with His people and is visiting His most dreadful wrath upon them.” Saint John Eudes
Catherine, you know the Church better than Abeca. You know nothing will happen. The worst thing that will happen is they will issue a notification. And that won’t happen because even though he writes things that are problematic, he knows where to stop. He does not commit heresy. He calls himself orthodox ( I wouldn’t).
The problem with the slander about him on the internet is that rather than addressing his real statements in their context and giving a thoughtful response to them, lazy (or upset) people take shortcuts and end up committing sin.
As for your quote, some of this is being addressed by Pope Francis and things have vastly improved in the last 30 years. I do not think that Father Radcliffe fits that description at all. He owns nothing except a few books and his clothes. He does not concern himself with the world but the Church. He is a person who is trying to bring sheep back into the fold or promote unity in the Church. In doing so, in my opinion, he says things that can be taken out of context and used by those who want to promote the gay agenda to further their error. (But the Word of God has been misused that way, too.) It is not good to take a short part of what someone said and use it to sin against them. We all must take care to not offend Jesus Christ.
When the saints preached about homosexuality, it was clear and direct. There was no misunderstanding. The teachings are not to be re-invented and certainty not by a modern day person whom so far neglects to quote the severity of the offense humans have produced by their dis-respect for the natural law and sodomy. If he was preaching sound Catholic doctrine, then it would not cause confusion like it seems to have caused here with you fighting us with words of division. Lets agree to disagree Anonymous poster. I think that you may agree with his point of view, obviously but this priest, what makes him in error is new introduciton version of what needs to happen to get the church united but how he goes about it, is not close to Catholic especially since it is in regards to homosexuality. The church has already spoken, a new re-creation of it is only a sure sign of man made views.
Even what Father Shannon Collins (a faithful priest) wrote exactly what the saints have expressed on not allowing homosexual men into the priesthood. To be honest, I don’t think you know exactly what this priest is preaching. If you compare them to St. Augustine, St. Paul etc…they are not matching up. I don’t think you fully understand, even the little that I saw, gave me red flags. Don’t worry about me,worry about yourself and what is it that is driving you to behave in this divisive way? Do you really think that if for a moment, if I thought that this man was not trying to preach some sort of heresy, that I would not stand by him? Come on. Plus I trust that Fr. Rich, him being a good priest and very intelligent would know better too.
You are defending this priest more and more and you yourself does not comprehend what he is doing exactly but you have some sort of false compassion towards homosexuals, looking for hope for them or what? Can you see that it is not to be re-invented, mankind can not re-invent something that GOD HAS PERFECTED. The message of salvation is still the same, yesterday, today and tomorrow. The saints are in heaven with God. They know better.
Abeca, it is extremely appropriate to voice your concerns because of things that have been written on the internet, including this article. If you are a member of the parish, you have a duty to attend and document if anything is said that is contrary to the faith. If nothing is said contrary to the faith, you have a duty to report that also. If I am not mistaken, you do not attend this parish or even reside in this diocese. Therefore for you to complain about him and be taken seriously, you must have first hand knowledge of things that he said that were wrong. Otherwise your complaint just becomes someone who got wound up by something they read on the internet that is really not affecting them. There have been internet campaigns like that and some bishops will cancel appearances simply because there is controversy, but other bishops want to make sure that it is not just a case of an internet loudmouth who got people upset.
I don’t agree with some of the things that this priest has written and said. I think he overlooks the seriousness of the sin of sodomy, but I haven’t seen anything that I could present to a bishop and say “he’s a heretic.” If he was coming to my parish, I would definitely attend and if he said something that needed challenging, I would challenge or notify the bishop. If I was on the committee to find a speaker and his name came up, I would discourage him from being selected.
cont
You bet there are red flags and it is not inappropriate to voice your concerns. i was encouraging you to do so. But to do so in an educated and intelligent manner.
Father Radcliffe does not really preach about homosexuality, he is opposed to gay marriage, he is not condoning of gay sex.
He seems genuinely confused by the reaction of people to his talks. He feels misunderstood and to be honest, he is misunderstood. He could use the help in learning how to communicate what he wants to say without providing sound bites to those who wish to change the Church’s teaching on sexuality.
Abeca, with all respect, I think you won’t find saints teaching anything at all about homosexuality. When they talk about anything remotely related, they are talking about a particular act, which they presume to be in the context of a straight marriage. “Sodomy”, as you all like to call it, is an act of a straight person who ought to be oriented towards another straight person. To my knowledge, the saints have never every opined about homosexuality as a sexual orientation, or about the lifetimes of love and commitment that are possible among people of the same sex. It is important to distinguish between the two, just as we distinguish between what happens between married couples and unmarried couples.
Stop lying, YFC. God said that it is an abomination for a man to lie with a man the way a man lies with a woman. A same sex relationship can not be consummated without committing a mortal sin. If you love God, you would keep his commandments, one of which is telling the truth, by the way.
YFC, they weren’t talking about sodomy in a heterosexual marriage. They were talking about 2 men. People did not talk about sexual orientation back then, you know that.
When homosexuality is condemned in the writing of the saints they are speaking of the act of 2 men or 2 women having sexual relations. It is irrelevant whether the people love each other or have a lifetime commitment to each other. It could be a man cheating on his wife with a boy. Or a man who is not married experimenting with another man. Or a committed couple. It does not matter. Anyone who has “sex” with a person of the same gender, even if civilly married is guilty of committing a grave sin.
An inclination to be attracted to one’s own gender is not sinful. One must not act on it in any way.
Love is never irrelevant. If you think it is, you might want to consult Scripture, especially the New Testament.
There is no love in sin.
God’s commandments are not irrelevant.
YFC writes, “I think you won’t find saints teaching anything at all about homosexuality.” = Once again, YFC distorts and YFC is wrong.
The following 12 quotes come from the writings of St. Peter Damian, a great ascetic and monk who was especially troubled by the clergy and religious of his time who failed in their duties, especially celibacy. Think of them as a year of monthly intentions for the US bishops to meditate upon in reparation for the Scandal:
“Tell us, you unmanly and effeminate man, what do you seek in another male that you do not find in yourself?”
“For God’s sake, why do you damnable sodomites pursue the heights of ecclesiastical dignity with such fiery ambition?”
“By what right or by what law can one bind or loose the other when he is constrained by the bonds of evil deeds common to them both?”
“Who can expect the flock to prosper when its shepherd has sunk so deep into the bowels of the devil?
“Who, by his lust, will consign a son whom he spiritually begotten for God to slavery under the iron law of Satanic tyranny?”
“This utterly diseased queen of Sodom renders him who obeys the laws of her tyranny infamous to men and odious to God.”
continued……
continued from August 21, 2014 at 12:50 pm
St Peter Damian writes:
“Without fail, [the vice of sodomy] brings death to the body and destruction to the soul. It pollutes the flesh, extinguishes the light of the mind, expels the Holy Spirit from the temple of the human heart, and gives entrance to the devil, the stimulator of lust.”
”[The vice of sodomy] leads to error, totally removes truth from the deluded mind . . . It opens up Hell and closes the gates of Paradise.”
”[The vice of sodomy] is this vice that violates temperance, slays modesty, strangles chastity, and slaughters virginity.”
[The vice of sodomy] defiles all things, sullies all things, pollutes all things.”
“Who will make a mistress of a cleric, or a woman of a man?”
“It is not sinners, but the wicked who should despair; it is not the magnitude of one’s crime, but contempt of God that dashes one’s hopes.”
St. Peter Damien lived many centuries before there was a concept of sexual orientation and therefore of homosexuality. You can see this quite clearly in his discussion of the sexual sins by celibate clergy. He was neither talking about celibate homosexual clergy, nor about homosexual laity. I do however, appreciate your bringing some real quotes to the table for us to discuss.
Don’t kid yourself, YFC. Sexual orientation is just the modern term for something that, while perhaps not scientifically defined, was recognized.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyv-nzQBjYo
This appears to be a similar theme as to what he is preaching at Sacred Heart.
Fact:
1. Fr Timothy Radcliffe OP frequently celebrated Mass for the gay dissent group the Soho Masses Pastoral Council. During the reign of Pope Benedict XVI Fr Timothy Radcliffe was stopped from speaking at the General Assembly of the Catholic development agencies. Fr Radcliffe is well known for his liberal positions on morality, including his public opposition to the Church’s teaching on homosexuality.
2. A selection of Fr Radcliffe’s writings expressing dissent from the Church’s teaching:
Fr Radcliffe gave the following contribution to the Church of England ‘s review of homosexuality and gay marriage:
Fr Radcliffe OP expands the meaning of fertility to include gay sex
More to follow but this is enough evidence! Lets begin the process to tell this priest that his false theology is not welcomed!
Be warned of false preachers and also be warned of false anonymous posters pretending to know their Catholic faith!
Continued:
3. Fr. Radcliffe quoted this heretical teaching:
“And what about fertility? I have suggested that one should not stick to a crude, mechanistic understanding of fertility. Biological fertility is inseparable from the fertility of our mutual tenderness and compassion. And so that might seem to remove one objection to gay marriage. I am not entirely convinced, since it seems to me that our tradition is incarnational, the word becoming bodily flesh. And some heterosexual relationships may be accidentally infertile in this sense, but homosexual ones are intrinsically so.
Sexual ethics is about what our acts say. And I have the impression that we are not very sure of what gay sexual acts signify. Maybe we need to ask gay Christians who have been living in committed relationships for years. I suspect that sex will turn out to be rather unimportant.’”
More on his heretical views: https://protectthepope.com/?p=9494
Abeca Christian, you can’t send this to the bishops or Vatican. You have to send the original writing or video of Father Radcliffe with the problematic part highlighted. Part of the problem with taking things out of context is that Father Radcliffe’s rhetorical style sometimes includes an adoption of the thoughts of a person struggling with the Church’s teachings. From there he leads them away from the error.
And you really can’t send a google list of articles by people who are trying to make him look bad like in your post below.
And-I am sure you know this but just in case someone doesn’t-when the Church says sexual acts must be open to fertilitym it means only biological fertility-making babies.
Good point, Anonymous. The sodomy lovers may claim that sodomy is open to fertility because the material that is released during sodomy can be used as a fertilizer for plants.
I want to thank CCD for making us aware of this crises….NOW PEOPLE WHO FEAR THE LORD…take action!
More proof:
https://learningmycatholicfaith.blogspot.com/2014/03/fr-timothy-radcliffe-dissents-from.html
Thanks CCD I can’t thank you enough for your good fight in this battle and for informing us. God bless you, know that I included you in my prayers too. May God reward you for your help and for your love in Jesus. Jesus is my beloved. No one is good enough for me but Him. His loves for us is so huge, that I can’t wait to get to heaven to be with my Love but for my I am secure in His for Love. As all who choose to follow Him and His ways. If you reflect on His holy words, there is nothing but love, forgiveness and healing to anyone that chooses His will. He came to make us aware of His salvation, we must remain in Him as He remains in us. He perfected what a teacher is and mostly He is a perfect witness of What God, the Father wanted to send. That is why it hurts us when people use their gifts to spread heresies, they try to deceive and to change His church, which we hold sacred in Him. He shed so much blood, He bore so much pain and still does because of our sins. Since we are part of Him and He is part of us, we should feel the pain, the betrayal, we should be so sensitive to the sins that people commit against our Lord but it must always begin with us, we must first see how we contributed to that pain as well, before we can make a difference in this life, we must first begin with one self, then the rest, we must trust in God to lead and continue to fast, pray and take action when we can. JMJ
Our Lord’s revelations to Mutter Vogel
“One should NEVER attack a priest, even when he’s in error, rather one should pray and do penance that I’ll grant him My grace again. He alone fully represents Me, even when he doesn’t live after My example!”
When a Priest falls we should extend him a helping hand THROUGH PRAYER AND NOT THROUGH ATTACKS! “I myself will be his judge, NO ONE BUT I!” “Whoever voices judgment over a priest has voiced it over Me; child, never let a Priest be attacked, take up his defense.”
“Child, Never judge your confessor, rather pray much for him and offer every Thursday, through the hands of My blessed Mother, Holy Communion (for Him) “Never again accept an out-of-the-way word about a Priest, and speak no unkind word (about them) EVEN IF IT WERE TRUE! Every Priest is My Vicar and My heart will be sickened and insulted because of it! If you hear a judgment (against a Priest) pray a Hail Mary.”
“If you see a Priest who celebrates the Holy Mass unworthily then say nothing about him, rather tell it to Me alone! I stand beside him on the altar!” “Oh pray much for My priests, that they’ll love purity above all, that they’ll celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass with pure hands and heart. Certainly the Holy Sacrifice is one and the same even when it is celebrated by an unworthy priest, but the graces called down upon the people is not the same!”
Mary. Queen of the Clergy, pray for them.