Sunday, July 29, 2012

The Vatican Promotes Another Defender Of Traditional Loveless Patriarchy


Bishop Sal is headed to San Francisco.  This is a shot meant to be heard all over the globe.


I can not even begin to describe the shock of anger and dismay I underwent when I read that Bishop Salvatore Cordileone was assigned to take over the Archdiocese of San Francisco.  And he will absolutely attempt to 'take over' the Archdiocese.  In my opinion, Cordileone is a very disingenuous and deceitful excuse for a bishop.  I followed his so called 'defense of marriage' campaign with some interest because it doesn't defend marriage so much as it reduces men and women to vessels for sperm and uteri. This is amply demonstrated in the following interview with the National Catholic Register's Sue Ellen Brewer.  I have edited this for length.  The link for the full article follows this excerpt.

What’s the cornerstone of marriage between a woman and a man?
The reality of marriage as the union of a mother and a father is grounded in our very biology. A child comes into the world by the union of a man and a woman. That’s a basic biological fact that cannot be denied. There’s a mother and a father for every child. (As you continue to read his answers, you will soon see that love between partners is never part of his definition of marriage.)

What do Catholics most need to understand to enter reasonably and effectively into the public debate over marriage in our society? 
Our people need to understand what’s really at stake here, and that’s the very concept of marriage itself. Is it a relationship to be defined by adults for their mutual benefit and enjoyment? Or is it a relationship to bring children into the world and to provide them with the best possible context for their well-being and education?(Not, love but the shared selfishness of 'mutual benefit and enjoyment.')
If it’s first and foremost about children, then we’ll want children to be connected to their mothers and fathers.

The definition of marriage as a relationship that exists “solely for the benefit of adults,” you point out, is an extremely recent development. In an interview on EWTN, you cited it as “the greatest error of our times.” 
It’s a completely novel concept. From the beginning of the human race, up until a few years ago, marriage has been understood as the best possible context for raising children, for giving children what they need, so they can be protected and nurtured. (This is such an absurd statement I don't know where to begin.  Marriage has historically been a property contract between men to insure the economic continuity of the paternal biological line.  Tribes, villages, or extended families were considered the best possible context for raising children and protecting their futures--especially those children who did not win the 'first born son' conception lottery slot.  And again, no mention of love.)

Why exclude people of the same sex as heads of a family?
Because children need, deserve and long for a mother and a father. The optimal situation for children is to be raised by the man and the woman who brought them into the world in a loving, committed, stable relationship.
Many studies show the role of the father figure — just the presence of the father figure in the family — is especially critical. Children need that. When they don’t have it, they long for it.
As someone wiser than I put it, when a child is born, the mother is sure to be nearby. There’s no guarantee the father will be nearby. Society needs a cultural mechanism to connect fathers to their children, and that mechanism is marriage. (Now Bishop Sal is telling us marriage exists as a coercive device to get men to take responsibility for their own children.  Again, no love allowed, not even paternal love.)

How does divorce fit into the bigger picture?
Sometimes divorce happens beyond people’s control, beyond their will for it to happen. Many single parents are making great sacrifices to give their children the best possible upbringing in less-than-ideal circumstances, and those parents need and deserve our affirmation and our support. Still, society should do everything it can to help children have what is best for them. (Which means their gay parents can never marry the person they love.)

Where does this error of thinking about marriage as “solely for the benefit of adults” come from?
Well, if you trace it back far enough, I’m convinced it comes from the contraceptive mentality.
The Church has always understood that the two ends of marriage are: first, the procreation and education of offspring and, second, the union of the man and the woman for the mutual good of the two spouses. They’re inseparable. The contraceptive mentality, however, attempts to separate those two.
When contraception became much more available and prevalent because of marketing, (yes indeedy, we women are so susceptible to marketing) as well as technology in the ’60s, we began to see much more sexual promiscuity. With more promiscuity, you have more children born out of wedlock. Because contraception is not perfect — it misfires, so to speak — children are conceived, so now we need abortion as a backup. We also see a rise in divorce.(Sexual promiscuity has always been 'prevalent'.  The difference in the 60's was people got over the cultural taboos and assorted sexual closets and started talking about sex in all it's here to for hidden facets.  The rise in divorce mirrored a rise in women's participation in the economic life of society. No question reliable birth control helped that trend, because women were no longer slaves to their reproductive biology.)

What’s essential to the definition of marriage? 
The Church has long understood the three “goods” of marriage as defining what is essential to marriage. Those three “goods” — the language comes from St. Augustine — are procreation, fidelity and permanence. (Well, using Augustine as your starting point, no wonder love isn't one of the three 'goods' of marriage.)

So how has the contraceptive mentality eaten away at this essential definition?
With the contraceptive mentality, we saw sexual promiscuity, which led to the novel concept of so-called “open” marriages. That strikes down the good of fidelity in marriage. Then we saw couples entering into marriage without any intention of having children, so that strikes down procreation. And in the early ‘70s, we had states passing laws allowing for no-fault divorce. When we’re in a divorce culture rather than a marriage culture, that strikes down the permanence of marriage.
So, this erosion of the meaning of marriage has been going on for a very long time.
('Open marriages?' Good God, that concept floated for about a summer amongst less than 5% of all marriages. There have always been childless marriages by choice. What changed was the move to children later in life. No fault divorce had a huge impact, but the Hierarchical Church was dead silent on this, seeing it as a civil issue which did not impact the Church's doctrine on marriage.)

And now we’re facing same-sex “marriage.”
It’s the latest and, I would say, most drastic, episode in this long-term erosion of the meaning of marriage.

What’s the result of emotionally changing the definition of marriage away from the way it has been reasonably understood since the beginning of the human race? (Notice how Sal doesn't answer this question about emotionally changing the definition of marriage.  He jumps right back to intellectual rationalization.)

The result of changing its definition is that marriage becomes drained of all meaning, because it can be defined in any way the people involved want to define it. If we start changing what is essential to marriage in its definition, then there is no end to it. If it doesn’t have to be a man and a woman, why does it have to be two people? Can’t there be several partners, male and female, in a marriage? Who’s to say it should be limited to two? So what is the point of government giving benefits to married people?
(It would appear that Bishop Sal has never read the Old Testament or studied much of the history of his fellow Mormon 'traditional marriage' supporters.)

When we defend marriage between a man and a woman, our opponents say we’re just imposing our religion on everyone else. What’s the answer to that?
This is not a matter of religion. This is how every society has understood marriage in all of human history. The truth is: They’re imposing their new idea of marriage — an idea no society has ever had before — on everyone else. This is a very serious social experiment that will have dire consequences.(Sighhhh, such blatant a lie. This all gets so gets old.)

You said we need a massive educational effort to defend marriage. Where should that begin?
We need to start with young people, teaching them the basic facts of life. The whole way man and woman are designed in nature, all the changes that take place in our bodies — especially the woman’s body — are geared to conceiving a new life and then nurturing that life to birth and even after birth.


Beginning with biology will help our young people better respect their own bodies, and it will lay the groundwork we need to teach them all the other reasons behind the Church’s teaching: the psychology, sociology, developing the virtue to be able to sustain a lifelong committed relationship, the benefits people derive from that relationship personally and the benefits to society. Then we can move out to the theology underlying marriage, the mystical marriage between Christ and the Church. It’s all interconnected. We need to begin with the biology and move out from there. (And since it's all about biology, and how that theologically relates to the 'mystical marriage' we don't ever need to talk about LOVE in any context at all.)


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One thing that struck me very strongly about this appointment of Cordileone to San Francisco is that this career trajectory of his has been thoroughly planned in advance to put him exactly in San Francisco.  He, like Cardinal Dolan, are where they are because the Vatican has long planned to put them there.  They are to serve as a message to the South that Roman Catholicism will not tolerate inroads into the patriarchy that is still so prevalent in the South and has been the historic foundation for the wealth of the West and the Church in particular.  In other words, the Vatican is sending the message that Roman Catholicism is not only not a threat to traditional African patriarchy, it will support and defend patriarchy as enthusiastically as Islam.
The anti gay marriage campaign serves as the perfect cover for sending the message that the Church will not support the emancipation of women in the South.  All the current Catholic culture crusades in the US are sending this same message, whether it be abortion, birth control, ordination of women, gay marriage, or the attack on the LCWR for not prioritizing those issues. 
 
It sure does look to me that the Roman Catholic Church is doubling down on presenting itself as all about male power and male control and the maintenance of same by exploiting the biology of women.  Given this, it's not surprising that Cordileone never mentions love, not once, not ever, in defending traditional marriage. The real threat in gay marriage is precisely the fact that it is being argued in terms of the equality of the love between partners,  and not the so called 'complementarity' of biological roles.  Male virility, as demonstrated by quiver fulls of children raised by exhausted mothers, is not part of the gay marriage equation.  Nor are traditional gender roles.  The culture Cordileone is worried about collapsing, is not the one that understands the need to procreate, it's the one that places men at the head of everything and raises male entitlement to a divine mandate.  You know, the male culture that is most completely represented in the clerical structure of the Roman Catholic Church.

Vatican II's real 'heresy' was not in liturgical abuses or watered down ecumenism.  The real heresy was that taken to it's logical conclusion it mandated real power sharing and real gender equality. If that happened then by golly there would be no need for all that nonsense about 'mystical marriages' justifying ontological clerical superiority and the necessity for a working penis in order to confect the Eucharist. Apparently, as long as one culture is left standing that promotes patriarchy, it will have the Roman Catholic Church at it's beck and call.

65 comments:

  1. I, like you, am completely appalled by this appointment. My first reaction was a simple "Wow. That's a totally adversarial move by the Vatican". It's a slap across the face to the LGBT community in SF, that's for sure. One that'll reverberate around the country. I'm simply stunned by the speed at which this regressive movement is taking place. It's beginning to look like a military coop, for Christ's sake. At this pace, that leaner, and much meaner, Church will be just around the corner. If the LCWR decides next week to part ways, I'm going with them. I've had it.

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    1. It all seems to be on a strict time table to coincide with Romney's election via the electoral college in December.

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    2. You might be right about the next election being decided by the electoral college. I also think this 'coup' as FRK writes would be quite pleased if Mitt wound up the beneficiary of that vote, but I think the Vatican plan is global and aimed at more than the US White House. I also think it borders on psychosis in it's delusional assessment of where humanity is headed. The advent of instantaneous personal global communications has changed everything. Humanity no longer needs intermediaries to further communication and that fact will be reflected in our personal religious faith. It will dawn on more and more people we all have God's personal cell phone number, and don't need male operators. We will still need support service personnel, but that's different from needing an operator.

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  2. Well, I too, am shocked and almost speechless at this appointment. It does seem that whoever is running Benedict’s show at this point intends no compromise, no dialogue, no Vatican II. Just maybe these guys will run the whole thing into the ground.

    I think that it is right on, as you so well point out, that this new archbishop never, never mentions love as one of the purposes of marriage. Vatican II was beginning to struggle with that. What I think we have seen in the decades since, is a regression on the part of the official rc church from trying to understand that reality. The remark about Augustine is right on. Love was not foremost in his mind either. So why would the good bishop ever mention it as a purpose of marriage.

    What is there left to say. I hope Bishop Cordelione gets overwhelmed with all the gay love in San Francisco from single gay men and lesbians, to same sex couples, to transgendered and bisexual persons, that he finally comes to realize that the idealized “ontological” tower of rc patriarchy is not the real world.

    Welcome to the twenty-first century!

    Thanks for the political perspective on this in regard to Africa. I somehow think, and would need to research this, that the boys in the vatican may be losing South America on this one.

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    1. I think the Brazilian bishops are well aware of the fact the Church is losing South America and for much the same reasons as it is losing North America. Everyone ignores the ban on birth control, the laity are far better educated, and there aren't nearly enough priests. It didn't help that JPII also stamped out the Base Community movement whose leadership was skewed to women. Africa is a different story and a much younger church.

      I too hope Sal gets a dose of the reality of gay love, just as I hope Bishops like Blair get a dose of the feminine spiritual wisdom in the LCWR. The world has had more than enough of the unnuanced male wisdom of the Augustine's of the spiritual world.

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    2. There is wisdom and unwisdom. Men and women are share the cosmos, rather than inhabit two unbridgeable parralel universes in which one side exists male wisdom and the other female wisdom. The artificial separation of the two is a bit weird!

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    3. When I was a girl I thought the same thing about the communion rail. It physically separated the boys from the girls. Boys could be on the altar side with the 'transcendent' and girls absolutely could not.

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    4. Well, nearly 100% of male Catholics were on the same side of the rail as you, so it's a shame you took the thing so far out of context.
      And a much, much, much profounder shame that you never appreciated the preeminence of the sacrament of Holy Communion, instead apparently yearning for a male role.

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    5. Oh my Invictus, that's quite the attack. I have had to on more than one occasion remind priests that their 'magic' is real. Perhaps my frustration stems from the lack of belief in the ordained, more than it does from my own lack of ordination.

      But then, as I've written numerous times, I think the whole system needs to be scrapped and individual communities should elect their own gifted spiritual leaders. Seminary is just a four year trip down Canon Law lane.

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    6. Nobody has any magic, so I'm not sure how a priest would react to being reassured by a layperson that their 'magic is real'...

      If you want to scrap what Jesus has bequeathed us, you have misunderstood the nature of the game as catastrophically as you've misunderstood the nature of a modern seminary.

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    7. Jesus did not bequeath us the ordained ministry. He did not ordain anyone. Jesus commissioned disciples of both sexes.

      My use of the term 'magic' is irony. The modern seminary is a trip down Canon Law Lane, with a few side roads thrown in.

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    8. So you agree with the ordination of women to the priesthood? That's not Catholic teaching, and has never been a tradition of the Church, so I'm curious - where did you pick it up from?

      With respect, you clearly don't have the faintest idea about seminary. At all. You're so wide of the mark, it's like me saying "Going to college is mostly about learning the college rules".

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    9. Actually I don't want women ordained into this version of the priesthood. I just as soon the whole thing imploded and people were called forth from their communities--you know like it was in the beginning, but is not now, but perhaps shall be.

      I had friends go through seminary training so I have some idea. I just like to tweak you, because you can't stop yourself from responding.

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    10. There's only one priesthood, AFAIK. Which "version" would you want women ordained to?

      If you truly have some idea about seminary training, why would you post lies rather than those truths just to bait me? That's really odd.

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    11. Invictus, did the Seminary dip you in the nasty pool?
      --HeilMary1

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    12. Never been to seminary.

      Have you? Tell us more about this Nasty Pool? Sounds fascinating.

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  3. As a non-religious theist who doesn't believe the necessary Infinitely First Cause writes books or starts fan clubs for itself,I think that its position on homosexuality is just about the best thing about the Roman Catholic hierarchy...there is simply no justification for same-sex sexual activity in a sexually dimorphic species,no matter how much you may wish "love" excused it.

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    1. You never grew up on a ranch Louis E. I have found your comments utterly hysterical on the NCR in the shallowness of their understanding. Sex doesn't just serve a procreative function in the animal kingdom any more than it does in the human. Grow up.

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    2. Research is indicating that we ourselves are not so sexually dimorphic as we for so long believed. Research in Italy indicates that women raised with a gay male sibling are more fertile (i.e. have more children) than women raised without. Research indicates that several primate species engage in various forms of gay sexual relationships as a means of increasing the pool of caregivers for their young. Apparently, there really is some organic evolutionary reason that primates and humans have gay people in their communities. I would contend that it's suppression in western and patriarchal based societies has been detrimental to the natural order of things and as gay people have moved beyond the suppressing closet, they have begun again to fulfill that function much to the delight of family members who affirmed their gay member's organic existence and integrated/included them into the family's dynamic and development...

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    3. Our "non religious theist" here misuses a key word. Dimorphism refers to there being different body sizes between the sexes of any given species, some species do not have that characteristic at all.

      No what our poster really means to say here, I think, is "gender binary", but even then their argument falls flat. Firstly the mere fact that there are men and then there are women does not logically lead us to the conclusion that all men and women must therefore pair up with the opposite sex, it does not follow. Secondly, there is no sharp binary line delineating gender, there are "feminine" characteristics in men and "masculine" characteristics in women, not to mention those born between genders (Intersex people) and those who transition between genders (Transgendered).

      The poster may benefit from closer study of these aforementioned phenomena and I would leave them with another piece of advice to boot. The Divine gave birth to all creation and when She/He saw it She/He declared it very Good. It is high past time we started to see creation in the same way and began to love *all* members of our Human Family in the same way She/He does.

      Kallisti

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    4. Thank you, Kallisti! Just as we see enormous variations in human skin color, height, shape and abilities, we also see gender variation in male, female and intersex people. I believe intersex people prove the redundancy and persistence of nature to thrive no matter what (like clownfish that change their sex to reproduce when needed). Moreover, intersex and gay people provide essential skills, etc. to society without burdening it with extra mouths during food shortages. Opposite sex twinning is a major cause of natural in-utero endocrine disrupting hormone exposure, yet I don't think God/Goddess would be pleased if fundies declared war on fraternal twins.
      --HeilMary1

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  4. Reading our pastoral associate's plans and views on his blog-sparksandstubble.blogspot.com makes it clear what the JPII crowd, aided by the present regime in the Vatican, has in mind.
    My husband is 88 and he says, "I never thought I would see a schism in my lifetime, but if they don't change their tune on the nuns, I think I will!" Seeing appointments like Cordileone, I don't see any chance the bishops cheered on by Rome will back down because of their contempt for women, gays, older people, poor and anyone who questions their opinion.
    cool mom
    I too grew up on a farm and knew all about procreation by the time I started kindergarten, including that some bulls would not breed unless AI was used because they liked the other bulls better than cows. This was a problem for a farmer not from a moral viewpoint but because the goal was to produce calves. Hopefully people matter whether or not they procreate, but the Church doesn't seem to think so.

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    1. I think the plan is to foment a schism while keeping the assets in Rome's hands. JPII and Benedict don't care about the West because the Church has historically been at war with the evolution of thought in the West. Vatican II was the one and only time there was a change in this thinking. What was amazing is that so many of the world's bishops, 95% or better, wanted a change in the historic seige mentality. I guess it just goes to show what 5% can accomplish if they are determined and don't have to answer to any outside agency. They can completely take over a global entity the size of Roman Catholicism.

      The hitch in their plans is the abuse crisis. That will eventually bring them down because it will eventually shine a very bright spot light on some very dark dark corners in this 'retrenchment' campaign of the last two popes.

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    2. I've told the story somewhere on the blog about my dad's prize black angus bull. Same thing, except then dad sent this bull on to the McDonald's solution--so to speak

      I had to laugh earlier today reading about the Chik-Fil-A crusade on Bill's blog. I was thinking about that bull, and how somewhere in a McDonald's some Christian traditional marriage supporter had been victimized by being forced to eat a piece of 'gay bull'.

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    3. Have you heard of freemartin cows? From Wikipedia:
      "... an infertile female mammal which has masculinized behavior and non-functioning ovaries.[1] Genetically the animal is chimeric: karyotyping of a sample of cells shows XX/XY chromosomes. [The animal originates as a female (XX), but acquires the male (XY) component in utero by exchange of some cellular material from a male twin, via vascular connections between placentas.] Externally, the animal appears female, but various aspects of female reproductive development are altered due to acquisition of anti-Müllerian hormone from the male twin.[2] Freemartinism is the normal outcome of mixed-sex twins in all cattle species that have been studied, and it also occurs occasionally in other mammals including sheep, goats and pigs."
      --HeilMary1

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    4. No I had not, and this quite fascinating, especially given that twins in cows is relatively rare and even rarer to have mixed sex twins.

      Here's another fascinating anecdotal observation. The smartest little cow I ever worked with, was an infertile dwarf. We named her Wart. It was weird how she would bawl and bawl until one of us came out to see what was up, and she would invariably lead us to a sick cow or sick yearling. My dad would come in and tell me "Wart's out there bellowing, go find out what the problem is now." Wart should have become hamburger as soon as we realized she was a dwarf, but she was so useful that Dad couldn't bring himself to do it, so she stayed with the main herd until she died at four. Broke our hearts it did, but she sure did save a lot of animals.

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  5. "Why exclude people of the same sex as heads of a family?"

    "Because children need, deserve and long for a mother and a father. The optimal situation for children is to be raised by the man and the woman who brought them into the world in a loving, committed, stable relationship."

    ## Therefore, when that best alternative is not available, others are. That they may not be the best, does not stop them being good. Lots of people have parents one of whom dies when the person is a child, or not much older - if the surviving parent does not re-marry (& often, such parents don't), does it follow that the child is not being well & happily brought up ? There are many such families. Conversely, many marriages with children are loveless, even horrible. Are the mothers who had to cope without their husbands during WW2 to be called bad mothers ? Sorry, but sometimes - often - it is just not possible for a home to be as he describes. And the bishop has not justified "exclud[ing] people of the same sex as heads of a family" (the meaning is clear, sort of; even though the words are clumsily chosen).

    "Many studies show the role of the father figure — just the presence of the father figure in the family — is especially critical. Children need that. When they don’t have it, they long for it."

    ## And in many gay households, there isn't one. There are two. And, a father is not the same as father-figure; any more than the devil is the same as a devil-figure in (say) a film. A father can be very motherly, and a mother can be very fatherly: this is a fact, not a horrible gay invention. And it has nothing to do with being "effeminate" or "butch".

    "As someone wiser than I put it, when a child is born, the mother is sure to be nearby. There’s no guarantee the father will be nearby. Society needs a cultural mechanism to connect fathers to their children, and that mechanism is marriage. ."

    ## That's not an argument against plural marriage, or for monogamy.

    Sometimes "the mother is nearby", but completely unfit to look after children. Sometimes, the child has to look after the mother. To exaggerate the number of such instances would be wrong, but it would be equally wrong to ignore these realities.

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  6. "Why exclude people of the same sex as heads of a family?"

    "Because children need, deserve and long for a mother and a father. The optimal situation for children is to be raised by the man and the woman who brought them into the world in a loving, committed, stable relationship."

    ## Therefore, when that best alternative is not available, others are. That they may not be the best, does not stop them being good. Lots of people have parents one of whom dies when the person is a child, or not much older - if the surviving parent does not re-marry (& often, such parents don't), does it follow that the child is not being well & happily brought up ? There are many such families. Conversely, many marriages with children are loveless, even horrible. Are the mothers who had to cope without their husbands during WW2 to be called bad mothers ? Sorry, but sometimes - often - it is just not possible for a home to be as he describes. And the bishop has not justified "exclud[ing] people of the same sex as heads of a family" (the meaning is clear, sort of; even though the words are clumsily chosen).

    "Many studies show the role of the father figure — just the presence of the father figure in the family — is especially critical. Children need that. When they don’t have it, they long for it."

    ## And in many gay households, there isn't one. There are two. And, a father is not the same as father-figure; any more than the devil is the same as a devil-figure in (say) a film. A father can be very motherly, and a mother can be very fatherly: this is a fact, not a horrible gay invention. And it has nothing to do with being "effeminate" or "butch".

    "As someone wiser than I put it, when a child is born, the mother is sure to be nearby. There’s no guarantee the father will be nearby. Society needs a cultural mechanism to connect fathers to their children, and that mechanism is marriage. ."

    ## That's not an argument against plural marriage, or for monogamy.

    Sometimes "the mother is nearby", but completely unfit to look after children. Sometimes, the child has to look after the mother. To exaggerate the number of such instances would be wrong, but it would be equally wrong to ignore these realities.

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  7. The people of the Diocese of Oakland (of which I am a geographical but not tempramental member) wish to thank the people of the Archdiocese of San Francisco for removing the rather large sword from our sides.

    Have fun and always stand with your backside to the wall when in the presence of His Dressiness.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDcwyXiLc0w

    http://www.ktvu.com/videos/news/san-francisco-archdiocese-introduces-conservative/vc3jJ/

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    1. Cordeleone reminds me of someone well known in the Harry Potter novels/movies.

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    2. Deriding the Mass? Well, at least your colours are clear to everyone. No wonder you're only a 'geographical member'!

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    3. What seminary do you go to (anonymous) Invictus 88 ?

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    4. As I said on your own blog - I don't. And I find the assumption insulting.

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  8. Watch the flock defect en masse with Cordileone in charge, and watch the collection dollars dwindle.

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  9. Leaving aside the recurring bitterness about men and penises (an obsession I'm certainly not qualified to tackle), it's important to keep the nature of the interview in context.

    The interview was clearly about the 'definition' of a marriage and the goods which arise from it.

    You have used the scant reference to love as an excuse to dismiss the Catholic definition of marriage, but this is not legitimate. The definition of a marriage is not something to do with love (or the marriage would end if the love disappeared, but it does not), and nor is love one of the goods of marriage, not because the Catholic Church is hateful and bigoted and full or repressed men who can't stand to think of intimacy (as you seem to infer), but simply because the love in marriage is usually considered to be that love which arose first and guided the two people together before God. Thus, it is not so much a good of marriage, but more typically a predicate, a foundation of marriage.

    Quite simply, gay marriage does not and cannot exist. What can and does exist are civilly licenced partnerships which permit the state benefits usually accorded to married couples.

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    1. I use the penis reference to point out that what the Church actually practices is radical masculinism. This is certainly true if one used the real definition of radical feminism as a comparison. The complete and total exclusion of women from the sacramental and governmental structures of the Church is radical in it's exclusion. It can't get more radical. To claim this is somehow Godly is heresy given Paul's teaching that there is 'no male/no female we are all one in Christ.'

      Invictus just try to imagine a Church in which all leadership is female and you are not allowed in it because of your penis. Every time you go to Mass you know you will listen to women telling men what to do with men's bodies, with men's gender definition, with men's place in God's creation. Men's place in this system is emphatically subservient to women but those women will then redefine it as 'complimentary'. Additionally you will be conditioned to believe that because you can't have babies, you have no say in making them. Your sexuality must be at the beck and call and control of the woman in your marriage.

      The theology for this would be based on the fact that back in the day no one really knew who the father was, but everyone knew who the mother was, there for men just provided the fertilizer that started the woman's seed growing in her womb. Women were commanded by God to be in charge of when the fertilizing would happen.

      If this all sounds absurd to you, it should. That you can't see this kind of absurdity is women's lot in life in the Catholic Church speaks volumes about the amount of conditioning you've undergone.

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    2. Our inheritance of a male priesthood can in now way undermine the truth that "we are all one in Christ", especially when we consider the full meaning of Holy Communion.

      It's unfortunate that you have such a cold view of Church teaching. I don't know what your parish is like, but if you were in any of the parishes I'm acquainted with then I am confident that those prejudices would soften if you went regularly to Mass.
      As it is, it seems to be that your characterisation of the Church is an absurd and grotesque straw-man.

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    3. It would have to be a 'straw-man' because women have no say.

      As to Eucharistic influence, that Influence doesn't need my assent to any of the dogma the Church surrounds it with. I know It's real and I know It's effect and I know It would be far more effective for far more people if that Power wasn't confined by idiotic ideas about controlling such a profound Influence.

      By the way, did you try my little exercise or did you just jump to the 'absurd and grotesque straw man card'?

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    4. Your little exercise was meaningless, because it was a false parody of the role of men in the Church. As I said, it was an absurd and grotesque straw-man.

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    5. Well, Colleen, you tried. There are none so blind as those that refuse to see.
      Veronica

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    6. Thanks Veronica, I was actually going to respond with that same quote.

      The other point Invictus made that saddens me is his claim that most men aren't priests either, and so women have no right to complain. What he fails to 'see' is that men have a choice about that and women do not. Big, big difference.

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    7. The poster who commented above that "The definition of a marriage is not something to do with love (or the marriage would end if the love disappeared, but it does not), and nor is love one of the goods of marriage, not because the Catholic Church is hateful and bigoted and full or repressed men who can't stand to think of intimacy (as you seem to infer), but simply because the love in marriage is usually considered to be that love which arose first and guided the two people together before God. Thus, it is not so much a good of marriage, but more typically a predicate, a foundation of marriage." seems to be somewhat mistaken and I respectfully direct him to that great document of the Church, Gaudium et Spes which states:



      "Marriage to be sure is not instituted solely for procreation; rather, its very nature as an unbreakable compact between persons, and the welfare of the children, both demand that the mutual love of the spouses be embodied in a rightly ordered manner, that it grow and ripen. Therefore, marriage persists as a whole manner and communion of life, and maintains its value and indissolubility, even when despite the often intense desire of the couple, offspring are lacking."

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    8. Colkoch,
      Men don't have a choice. They don't 'opt in' to the priesthood just as women don't 'opt in' to marriage, celibacy, or the religious life. We are called to our vocations, nobody has a "right" to be a priest, or religious, or married.

      Olivia,
      A brilliant extract, and one to be shared widely!
      It doesn't contradict what I said though. The definition part of that extract is the "unbreakable compact between persons" part, to which the hetero-sexual gender relationship is another defining aspect and the one which became a focus of the interview.
      The ripening of mutual love is, like the creation of new life, an end toward which marriage is directed. It's importance is hugely important, but it operates not as a part of the definition of marriage, but as a natural good arising from it.

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    9. Cordileone is not talking about Catholic sacramental marriage and it's definitions to Catholics exclusively. He is talking about forcing that definition on secular American society. I would be just as irritated if Mormon polygamous cults attempted to force their definition of a religious marriage on American secular society.

      I don't know very many people who would agree that love is not the foundation of marriage. In point of fact they would place love as the bedrock and rank everything else as a fruit or 'goods' of that love, including any desire to marry.

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    10. "Foundation", "natural good arising from", these are all good things and important things to understand.

      But they are not a part of the definition. The foundation is not the definition of the house, even though it is important, even if it is necessary.

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  10. "As someone wiser than I put it, when a child is born, the mother is sure to be nearby. There’s no guarantee the father will be nearby."
    Reminds me of comedian Stewart Francis: "I was raised by my father; my mother left before I was born..."

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32pq2QycIEA

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  11. A brilliant defense of a pre-industrial, agriculturally based theology, one based on ancient archtypes that followed the rhytms of the growing cycle but that that are now, curiosities.

    We, in the post-industrialized "advanced" countries and cultures, no longer live in such a world. There is no need for men and women to marry at an extremely, ( for industrialized countries), young age, facing the hazards of childbirth, ( maternal death, infant death), and the dangers of regular life,( most people died before age 40- and that was an old age).

    No. We live in an entirely different world and the Third World is fast approaching the same reality.

    But, the official Church is still mired in the past, now seemingly willing to be so, defending not the Christian faith but the faith of agricultural society.

    It just doesn't quite add up.

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    1. The Church does not, and has never, dictated the age at which people are to marry, so your comment is a libel.

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    2. Depends how you look at the problem. The age of sexual consent in the Vatican City States is twelve for both boys and girls. Very convenient for very early marriage and legal man/boy sex. I bet Cardinal Groer loved that particular law.

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    3. "The age of sexual consent in the Vatican City States is twelve for both boys and girls."

      That says it all for me who the men in the Vatican City States are all about !!!! A bunch of perverts! It is just pathetic to have that kind of age for supposed "consent" for children to have sex!! How disgusting. Dirty old men. The men in the Vatican are a bunch of dirty old men.

      Fran Schultz

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    4. Furthermore, regarding the age of sexual consent being 12. There should be a petition, an outcry against this pitiful law in the Vatican City States. How can they get away with having such a law like that? Why is it that they are always screaming about their religious rights, and what are the rights of these 12 year old children in the Vatican City States? They have lost their rights to a bunch of perverts who have that law for a reason, and it ain't for the love of Jesus either. It's a disgrace!

      Talk about mortal sin. We know what Jesus says about those who hinder the little children. You know the saying, Invictus_88, don't you?

      Fran Schultz

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    5. Yawn. Tell me, how many 12 year olds are resident in the Vatican City?

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    6. Invictus, the age of consent issue does matter because there are children of Vatican employees living in the Vatican City States. Here's a link to an article you might want to read.

      http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4332601/Missing-girl-kidnapped-for-Vatican-sex-parties.html

      If you are going to arrange sex parties for Vatican diplomats it helps if you don't have to worry about statutory rape charges.

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    7. A big yawn for your boring & typical response, Invictus. For somebody who loves to boast about the laws of the Church & put those laws above everything else, desirous for no discussion that is mature, condemning Catholics in your post, this is a law of the Church's Vatican States that ALLOWS sex with 12 year olds, and you just want to ignore the obvious implications for the hierarchy in the Vatican that made this law & keep it their law, for their evil purposes of allowing sex with 12 year olds and enabling pedophiles.

      Colleen, thank you for posting that. The Vatican, the Pope, have their reasons for having the age of sexual consent at 12 years old!!

      Fran Schultz

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    8. I call out one libel, and get faced with even more vicious ones.

      You people, you people..

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    9. Invictus, you are the only vicious and libelous one here!
      --HeilMary1

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    10. Oh? Where's my libel? Go on, show the world.

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  12. Bishop Sal has no business even discussing marriage between anyone. He's never been married. He has no fricken idea what the hell he is talking about. He sounds just like a politician mouthing off the party line for his boss, in this case Pope Benedickhead, who also know squat about love, compassion and loving relationships.

    What a mess these men such as Bishop Sal bring to places. Nothing like St. Paul or any other Saint does he resemble. He's a hatchet man, a political parrot. He's too immature to even know he is immature.

    Butterfly

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    1. No less angry since we last spoke, then? Shame. It must to terrible things to your heart.

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    2. Invictus, At least I have a heart that speaks the truth!!! If one is angry about something that is important enough to be angry about, one should let some steam out, with care and with the truth. What is bad for the heart is to hold the anger in and deny it and shame it. That causes cancer.

      I have no less anger than Jesus or Mary when witnessing another political appointment by the fascist Nazi-lover Ratzinger. An appointment that has nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus Christ and everything to do with spreading evil and ignorance.

      I'm not sorry for being angry about another gay basher, pedophile enabler, woman hater, hypocrite entering into a high position in the Catholic Church.

      Butterfly

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    3. lol!

      "Pope Benidickhead"? "fascist Nazi-lover Ratzinger"?

      A heart that speaks the truth? "Heart Speaks Unto Heart"? On the evidence above?

      Calm down, please, if you can. You're whipped up into a frenzy, and there's really no need to be thus. It burns out nobody but yourself.

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  13. This is brilliant commentary, Colleen. I've just shared it with my Facebook circle.

    Your final observation--"the Roman Catholic Church is doubling down on presenting itself as all about male power and male control and the maintenance of same by exploiting the biology of women"--seems right on track to me, as does your argument that the war against the gays in the North is all about reassuring the South that the church will keep women in their places.

    Pseudo-biology trumps real love in contemporary hierarchical thinking. Every time.

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    1. I know Bill. Pseudo biology is a good way to put, and love got lost in the hierarchical equation along time ago. Now it's always obedience all the time.

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    2. "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres."

      Hard words to follow, but apt nonetheless.

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