I don’t usually write about religion because it is too personal for many people and I respect their beliefs… but I feel that I have to speak out when their comments affect me.
The Pope in his Christmas speech called LGBT the Pope said “the profound falsehood of this theory [Gender Theory] and of the anthropological revolution contained within it is obvious...” The Catholic Online said,
The Pope can believe anything he was to believe, but they should not try to deny me the right to be the person I am. We are not attacking their family structure or marriage, they are not being forced to marry someone who does not follow the Catholic teachings and we are not forcing any family to accept any family member that they don’t want to accept. They still have the right to throw their son or daughter out on the street to fend for themselves.
There has been some backlash from Catholics around the world to the Pope’s letter. In the Netherlands there are a growing number of Catholics seeking to leave the church.
The Pope in his Christmas speech called LGBT the Pope said “the profound falsehood of this theory [Gender Theory] and of the anthropological revolution contained within it is obvious...” The Catholic Online said,
Pope Benedict XVI Exposes the Profound Falsehood of the Philosophy of the Gender Identity MovementThis rejects what we see with our own eyes! He totally discounts people who are intersex; he rejects what science has learned for the last 200 years. This rejects all medical and scientific evidence about gender identity and goes against what the APA, AMA and WPATH says about gender identity. The Pope ignores intersex genetic disorders like Klinefelter’s (XXY) and Turner’s (XO) syndromes, Congenital adrenal hyperplasia and Alpha-5-reductase deficiency. They ignore research that found ovarian cystic may affect as many as 25% of trans-men compared to 5–10% of women in the general population. Or research that found the brain of trans-men closely resembles that of men and the brains of trans-women resembles neither brains of men or women but more a blend of the male/female brains. This is like Galileo’s theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun reborn; it took the Church 400 years to admit that they were wrong, let’s hope that it doesn’t take another 400 years for to admit that they are wrong here.
By Deacon Keith Fournier
12/28/2012
VATICAN CITY (Catholic Online) - In an insightful address to the Roman Curia on Thursday, December 21, 2012, Pope Benedict XVI addressed the inherent falsity and social danger of what is being called "gender theory" in many circles these days. The following excerpt from his address sets the context for considering what is being called the gender identity or gender expression movement:
"The Chief Rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim, has shown in a very detailed and profoundly moving study that the attack we are currently experiencing on the true structure of the family, made up of father, mother, and child, goes much deeper. While up to now we regarded a false understanding of the nature of human freedom as one cause of the crisis of the family, it is now becoming clear that the very notion of being - of what being human really means - is being called into question."
[…]
"The profound falsehood of this theory and of the anthropological revolution contained within it is obvious. People dispute the idea that they have a nature, given by their bodily identity, which serves as a defining element of the human being. They deny their nature and decide that it is not something previously given to them, but that they make it for themselves. According to the biblical creation account, being created by God as male and female pertains to the essence of the human creature. This duality is an essential aspect of what being human is all about, as ordained by God."
The Pope can believe anything he was to believe, but they should not try to deny me the right to be the person I am. We are not attacking their family structure or marriage, they are not being forced to marry someone who does not follow the Catholic teachings and we are not forcing any family to accept any family member that they don’t want to accept. They still have the right to throw their son or daughter out on the street to fend for themselves.
There has been some backlash from Catholics around the world to the Pope’s letter. In the Netherlands there are a growing number of Catholics seeking to leave the church.
Dutch Catholics 'De-Baptize' Themselves Over Gay Marriage Via Website
Huffington Post
Reporting by Sara Webb; Editing by Robin Pomeroy
December 27, 2012
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Thousands of Dutch Catholics are researching how they can leave the church in protest at its opposition to gay marriage, according to the creator of a website aimed at helping them find the information.
Tom Roes, whose website allows people to download the documents needed to leave the church, said traffic on ontdopen.nl - "de-baptise.nl" - had soared from about 10 visits a day to more than 10,000 after Pope Benedict's latest denunciation of gay marriage this month.
[…]
In a Christmas address to Vatican officials, the pope signaled the he was ready to forge alliances with other religions against gay marriage, saying the family was threatened "to its foundations" by attempts to change its "true structure".
As a practicing Catholic, I am disturbed by the Pope's statements as it, as noted by you, brings us back to the days of Galileo. I take comfort in a number of ways. First is the presidence of the Church did eventually realized that Galileo was right. The second is that I learned that the Church can be lead by the Holy Spirit thorugh the faithful and not the Clergy and lastly, the Pope was not speaking ex cathedra, that is, infallibly. I know that God made me this way and whatever the Pope says cannot change who or what I am. I pray that the Pope will learn that God created a very diverse world out there and we are a glorious part of that diversity.
ReplyDeleteLeann
I have learned to discount the RC church's opinion on virtually everything. Yes, there will be people who take the Pope's word as gospel - but I'll never be one of them.
ReplyDeleteThere have been enough times where the RC church has had questionable dogma and practices, that make me wonder - what were they thinking? Don't they pay attention to their own scriptures? When I read in my history books about things like the Spanish Inquisition, the corruption of the church via people such as the Borgias, and the Pope's silence as millions of religious and political prisoners were herded to slave camps and death camps, I have no faith that the leaders of the church know anything about ethics or morality - except to corrupt it....
So I go my way and let them go theirs. But if I'm ever in a position to expose their leadership to prosecution by secular authority - I will, even if it were to mean the destruction of the church....