Cardinal Raymond Burke was asked about what to do if a family member brings their gay partner to an event which, I guess, we can use as a guideline to answering the question in my title.
This is a very delicate question, and it’s made even more delicate by the aggressiveness of the homosexual agenda. But one has to approach this in a very calm, serene, reasonable and faith-filled manner. If homosexual relations are intrinsically disordered, which indeed they are — reason teaches us that and also our faith — then, what would it mean to grandchildren to have present at a family gathering a family member who is living [in] a disordered relationship with another person? We wouldn’t, if it were another kind of relationship — something that was profoundly disordered and harmful — we wouldn’t expose our children to that relationship, to the direct experience of it. And neither should we do it in the context of a family member who not only suffers from same-sex attraction, but who has chosen to live out that attraction, to act upon it, committing acts which are always and everywhere wrong, evil.
And so, families have to find a way to stay close to a child in this situation — to a son or grandson, or whatever it may be — in order to try to draw the person away from a relationship which is disordered.
And we know that with time, these relationships leave the person profoundly unhappy. And so it’s important to stay [as] close as one can. But, that particular form of relationship should not be imposed upon family members, and especially upon impressionable children. And I urge parents or grandparents — whoever it may be — to be very, very prudent in this matter and not to scandalize their children or grandchildren.
Well. I certainly do regard the priesthood as a festering tradition of ignorance and evil, and I am concerned about not doing harm to my children and grandchildren, but I’m not going to accept the recommendations of an evil person. We should do the opposite. If a priest shows up at your garden party, don’t shun them, or call the police, or throw them out — treat them with sympathy and understanding. Explain to your kids that sometimes people fall into a bad crowd and make poor life decisions, but we still have to treat them with the dignity and respect owed to all human beings, no matter how flawed. Don’t try to convert them, no matter how obvious their suffering, because we don’t know what led them to this disgraceful state, and disrupting their life may cause even greater misery.
Let the kids learn from this person’s example…but by no means allow your children to be alone in a room with a Catholic priest.
“homosexual agenda”
Nope. Everything he has to say after those two words is completely irrelevant. He may as well have just declared the Earth is Flat and the Sun is God’s asshole.
“a family member who not only suffers from same-sex attraction, but who has chosen to live out that attraction, to act upon it”
That sounds an awful lot like “suffering” homosexual attraction isn’t a choice.
The harm caused by Catholic priests (and cardinals, and bishops, and popes…) is well known. I’m still waiting to hear about the harm caused by homosexual relationships.
“If a priest shows up at your garden party, don’t shun them, or call the police, or throw them out ”
Unless they start gobbing off like that, in which case point at them and jee, before showing them the quick way to the street.
Unctuous excrescence R. Burke (or should that be Berk) is nauseating.
My late mum, lifelong atheist, had a reverend (not sure which church) among her good friends; we ran her funeral ourselves, and invited 3 of her closest friends including the rev to say a few words interspersed with us siblings also speaking. All her friends were class acts: the rev spoke beautifully about her and did not mention one single solitary word about religion of any flavour. That’s the kind of person one is happy to have at a family gathering, not a p.o.s. like Burke.
Hide the Whiskey .
Or even Whisky .
opposablethumbs @5:
That sounds much nicer than the funeral for one of my friends, who was an atheist. His funeral arrangements were handled by his born-again Evangelical brother.
If my friend’s daughter, who was six at the time, hadn’t been present there would likely have been some exceedingly harsh words exchanged.
OK, most priests I’ve met are nice well-educated people, and fun to be around. Mendel was a monk even. OTOH a few are just awful in every sense and Burke has always been a particularly ripe example. Pope Francis can’t stand him. Still, he just recently spent five days at a Napa spa with Lindsey Graham, so there’s that.
“If a member of an atheist family brings home their christian partner …..”
There’s somewhere on Patheos a parody that begins like this, which I unfortunately can’t find back.
I guess it depends if the priest in question is your son, or your son’s partner.
@microraptor, that must have been a horrible experience, over and above the loss of your friend. Shame on the evangelical brother for having no respect for his sibling’s personhood, thoughts and preferences (that was what I liked about my mum’s friend – I don’t doubt he was probably very sincere in his beliefs, but it didn’t stop him from respecting the fact that she and her family didn’t share them).
Don’t know if you refer to a recent event (in my case it’s a while ago now) but my sympathies to you.
@opposablethumbs: Yeah, it’s been… 12 years ago now, I think.
This particular bit of excrescence is over five years old, if the link is any indication. Not that his opinions will have changed, being (hrk) a Catholic. Disgusting.
There’s this oldie:
Homosexual Agenda #1
6:00 am Gym
8:00 am Breakfast
9:00 am Hair appointment
10:00 am Shopping
12:00 PM Brunch
2:00 PM (Here’s the really important part)
1) Assume complete control of the US Federal, State and local Governments as well as all other national governments
2) Recruit all straight youngsters to our debauched lifestyle
3) Destroy all healthy heterosexual marriages
4) Replace all school counselors in grades K-12 with agents of Colombian and Jamaican drug cartels
5) Establish planetary chain of “homo breeding gulags” where over -medicated imprisoned straight women are turned into artificially impregnated baby factories to produce prepubescent love slaves for our devotedly pederastic gay leadership
6) Bulldoze all houses of worship
7) Secure total control of the INTERNET and all mass media for the exclusive use of child pornographers.
2:30 PM Get Forty Winks of Beauty Rest to prevent facial wrinkles from stress of world conquest
4:00 PM Cocktails
6:00 PM Light Dinner
8:00 PM Theater
11:00 PM Bed
@bcwebb: There are probably right-wing websites that would print that as fact.
Life Site appears to be branching out. Their original deal was to make abortion illegal.
No surprise they are also anti-gay.
About that “agenda” business.
It’s really very simple. Your own side has a program, the other guy has an agenda.
A formerly neutral term goes the way of “propaganda”.
@16 Wait, it’s not fact? I have had my hair done for nothing?
A standard line from the “natural law” bozos. But how come reason never teaches me that?
I thought it was the “God said so” bozos. :)
I’ll second the comment from Piigham, #9. I went to Georgetown U a nice Jesuit school. The Jesuits are an interesting lot. Fr Robert Drinan was a liberal Democratic congressman in the ‘70s, John McLaughlin of the Nixon admin and McLaughlin group fame was also a Jesuit til he left the priesthood and married a nun. Most were reasonable, thoughtful guys. Of course the Jebbies have always been considered the intellectual priests. The Pope is a Jesuit and a scientist, that informs his more reasoned views.
Seriously. What is the “homosexual agenda” to these nimrods? I have known many gay men and women and not one has ever suggested to me there is a homosexual agenda. Is wanting to be accepted as a normal person and not harassed or condemned by society an agenda? Because we all have that one.
@Ed Peters
That’s just projection. Those who say that want a patriarchy and strict social hierarchies and control, but won’t admit to it.
@18 nomdeplume: If you’re getting your hair done for nothing, I want your stylist.
@ 9 pilgham
Pope Francis can’t stand him.
I was just going to ask if that video had the Pope’s imprimatur. Somehow I suspect it does not.
I wonder if Pope Francis sometimes envies Uncle Joe Stalin and his personnel policies.
@15 I had my hair down today. Oh no what have I done, what have I done.
“We wouldn’t, if it were another kind of relationship — something that was profoundly disordered and harmful — we wouldn’t expose our children to that relationship, to the direct experience of it.”
An excellent argument for keeping children far, far away from Catholic clergy.
@Meeker Morgan, #20
They say, “God said so,” and we say, “I’m not part of your religion, your God’s say-so doesn’t mean spit, and besides, other gods say different things anyway,” and that’s when they retort, “Oh, but Natural Law!“
How many Catholics, even more ostensibly enlightened ones, will take PZ’s take here as a cheap shot but not demand that this homophobe be removed from office as a moral disgrace and a barrier to evangelism?