Scandal ! Shock and horror!

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

According to The Boston Pilot, the oldest Roman Catholic newspaper in America, if science suggests that gay people are made in the womb, it must be because Satan is interfering with pregnant women.



The newspaper ran a column — which it has now pulled — saying that:

“…the scientific evidence of how same-sex attraction most likely may be created provides a credible basis for a spiritual explanation that indicts the devil.”

It also said that natural disasters are caused by the evil one rather than, for example, tectonic plate movements. Truth Wins Out points out that this is in direct contrast to the actual position of the American Catholic Bishops.

The Pilot is the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Boston.

The column’s author is Massachusetts attorney Daniel Avila, who serves as Policy Advisor for Marriage and Family to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage. He wrote:

“Any time natural disasters occur, we as people of faith look back to Scripture’s account of those angels who rebelled and fell from grace. In their anger against God, these malcontents prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. They continue to do all they can to mar, distort and destroy God’s handiwork.”

“Therefore, whenever natural causes disturb otherwise typical biological development, leading to the personally unchosen beginnings of same-sex attraction, the ultimate responsibility, on a theological level, is and should be imputed to the evil one, not God,” Avila wrote.

But after someone noticed and protested, Avila now does not believe this, writing in a retraction about his ‘theological error’:

“The teaching of Sacred Scripture and of the Catechism of the Catholic Church make it clear that all persons are created in the image and likeness of God and have inviolable dignity.”

“I deeply apologize for the hurt and confusion that this column has caused.”
Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/gays-result-of-satan-interfering-with-fetuses.html#ixzz1cvIm2iGx



Ok - the Catholic Church, the people who tried to gag Galileo and are currently fighting against the use of condoms in developing nations, are still trying to supplant science with a belief in Satan in order to justify their homophobic views.

Americans need to be on the watch against any group trying to fudge the facts with ' supernatural' explanations for natural phenomenon. far from taking a courageous stand on what they might call a deeply held principle, the Church has given way and apologised, and so they show themselves for what they are.

Comments

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

As your article clearly indicates, this is in direct contrast to the actual position of the American Catholic Bishops.. It goes on to it was the Church who took Mr. Avila to the wood shed and convinced him to retract his article. Somehow, this obvious hole in your argument totally escaped you.

I continue to find your anti-Papal prejudice charmingly English, but none the less fallacious.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

^And what he said in his first sentence.

[paedraggaidin.livejournal.com]

Seconded.

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

The fact is, the paper ran with the story, it got called on it, and Mr Avila has not been forced to resign.

In other words, they tried to put this view across, they got rejected, and have had to rethink.

This does not mean they came up smelling of roses.

[notmrgarrison.livejournal.com]

It's conspiracy month!

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

Because it can't be that the Church isn't in the role of editor for the magazine and that it didn't read the article before it went to print.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

have had to rethink

Members of many organizations hold opinions that are in conflict with the official position. This magazine may have many editorial positions that are at odds with the Magisterium, as do many Catholics. At the insistence of the Church of Rome, Mr. Avila has, much like Galileo, publicly recanted and disavowed this article. Other than now burning Mr. Avila at the stake, I am not sure what you actually want from the Church.

Good point.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

The papacy is such a jolly good office that has been at the forefront of decency and human progress throughout history. The last thing anyone would want to do would be to denigrate it.

Re: Good point.

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

There is justifiable criticism and then there's criticism that indicts the critic rather than the criticized.

Oftentimes the lack of acknowledgement that any mistake was made is the source of ire, and in this case acknowledgement was made and the article retracted. I'm not sure what else someone is looking for in this case. Contrary to the headline, there is no discernible scandal here. Saying so can hardly be reasonably interpreted as mounting a defense of the Church's actions throughout the ages.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

As a first, I should hardly need to say that conflating people with the incarnate Dark Lord of all EvilTM is indefensible.

As a second, however, the Catholics did not try to gag Galileo, he overstepped patronage in a patronage-dependent time and got in deep shit for it.

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

he overstepped patronage in a patronage-dependent time and got in deep shit for it.

Even so, nobody said " Ok, this guy is an obnoxious little so and so, but let us, in all humility, concede that he is actually right, and that we need to rethink our ideas on cosmology".

Nope - he got put under house arrest and was forced to retract his beliefs. And that *isn't* trying to gag someone ?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Given this is the era of the Reformation were the Church *really* angry at him, the price would have been far more than house arrest.

[brockulfsen.livejournal.com]

Not if you call him, in approximately increasing historical depth:
Terrorist
Pedophile
Satanist
Socialist
Anarchist
Catholic
Mason
etc

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

Lankers is right. Galileo overstepped himself and the Pope couldn't let it slide.

[paedraggaidin.livejournal.com]

..
As a second, however, the Catholics did not try to gag Galileo, he overstepped patronage in a patronage-dependent time and got in deep shit for it.

Shhh...the Catholic-bashers don't want to hear that. And don't let them know the Inquisition didn't kill millions of people, eh?

Galileo spoke truth to power.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

I admire the way he refused to recant. He blew smoke in the face of the bad boyz by claiming that he never truly believed in a moving Earth. Although that may not seem like speaking truth to power, it was deception when deception was appropriate.

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

Satan is responsible for this post.

[soliloquy76.livejournal.com]

I would love to see anyone prove you wrong.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

And your comment.

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

A few things that haven't yet been addressed by others here...

"far from taking a courageous stand on what they might call a deeply held principle, the Church has given way and apologised, and so they show themselves for what they are."

This post presumes the Church has control of, and individually authorizes every article written in Catholic publications across the globe, and that in 'allowing' the article to be run and retracting it after 'getting called out on it' that they're just cowardly shying away from what they 'really believe' under the light of public scrutiny (as if in 'allowing' something to be published, there isn't an expectation that it will be visible to the public in general, an odd position to take in and of itself).

This has the distinct air of selling a narrative of events which reality cannot support.

Catholics need someone to demonize.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Since the demise of Stalin and his fraternal followers, the Church has been pretty hard up to find a replacement. It is ironic that they pick on gays since the Church has a long history of being a sanctuary for homosexuals of both genders.

Flip Wilson "The Devil Made Me Do It"

[telemann.livejournal.com]

[lilenth.livejournal.com]

Nothing new, those are the type of people people think ad preach shit like people are born disabled due to "sinning in the womb", though precisely what sin you'd do a fetus is something I've never been given an answer to.

Not to mention, if you can sin in the womb, then doesn't that make the whole "teh babies are innocent" pro-life stance a load of crap?

TL;DR: Catholics and Christians in general can't make up their minds and believe lots of contradictory shit, so should probably not be taken seriously at all.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

Catholicism and Original Sin is a lot more complex than that.

Catholicism is a lot more internally consistent than you seem to believe.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Leaving aside that original sin is somewhat more complicated than that, there are Christian denominations, primarily the various stripes of Orthodoxy, that reject the concept of original sin altogether. In fact the rejection of original sin by Orthodox is one reason the two sects have had their hatred, rivalries, and wars over the age.