News Item: : Everybody's Welcome... Except Jesus and orthodox Catholics!
(Category: Torch of The Faith News)
Posted by admin
Thursday 04 December 2008 - 18:10:27

cbcseal.jpgAn excellent blog-post by Fr. Ray Blake at marymagdalen.blogspot.com regarding the 'Marriage and Family Life Project Office,' brought back some memories to both of us earlier this week.

First, here is Fr. Ray's commentary;

A new document has been released from the Bishop's Conference of England and Wales entitled
What is life like if you or someone in your family is gay or lesbian in their sexual orientation? ...and what can your parish family do to make a difference?
issued by

Marriage and Family Life Project Office
Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales
39 Eccleston Square, London, SW1V 1BX

There are lots of references to various documents, mainly from US Bishops, ones which have come in for serious criticism by different Roman Congregations, and some which the US Bishops themselves have replaced.
As priest in Brighton I spend quite a bit of time trying to help people make sense of their sexual attraction, I really find this document troubling. We used to speak a lot about "meeting people where they are at" which is fine, Christ does that but he calls us break from sin and to live a new Life in him.
As this document is issued by the Bishop Conference, one of course accepts that there is great eagerness to pass on the Catholic faith whole and entire, here there seems to be something missing, no-one is well served by partial truths. This document is aimed at supporting families with "gay or lesbian" members, but we are called to much more than that.

Article 2358 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church says,

"The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition."

There is a great deal about "acceptance" of gay people in this document but nothing about Christ's radical call to "unite to the sacrifice of the [his] Cross", nor is there any teaching about the sinfulness of genital acts outside of marriage despite the fact that this document comes from the "Marriage and Family Life Project".
Compare and contrast this document this little document with
Cardinal Biffi's radical vision which I linked to yesterday. It seems to lack something important, could it be a relationship with the person of Jesus Christ?

In 2002 we attended a compulsory day of 'marriage preparation' in the Archdiocese of Liverpool a few months prior to our own wedding.

marrage.jpgThankfully, our wedding day was a beautiful, Christ centred experience which we were blessed to receive from God through His Holy Church.

That is more than can be said for our Archdiocesan 'marriage preparation day' which was led by the, then Archdiocesan representative for marriage and the family; Margaret Rogers and her husband. Let us speak clearly; if Satan had devised a day for engaged couples this would have been it!

We began with 'small group discussions' about 'what marriage means to me.' We were corrected by the leaders for sharing our faith, 'as this may not be relevant to everyone here and we must include everyone's experiences.' 

Then we endured nothing less than bullying from the leaders of the day, because we told the truth that cohabitation went against the authentic teaching of the Church. (Out of about 17 couples on the day there were just ourselves and another couple who were not 'living together.' The other couples were very open about this and many did not realise this was a problem). Margaret and her husband claimed that we had 'an old fashioned model of Church which had been replaced by Vatican II'. They claimed that the Church was 'no longer heirarchical' and that teachings now developed through discussions amongst the laity... (Vatican II devotes Chapter 3 of Lumen Gentium to the fact that the Church is Heirarchical).

The Rogers' claimed that the Church had thus changed its teachings on sex outside marriage, contraception and homosexual relationships.

When Angeline intervened to say that no-one all day had mentioned Jesus Christ, Margaret cut her short and said condescendingly 'You may be comfortable with that title my dear, but others in the room may prefer to speak of a transcendental reality.'

I said that the whole day had been an example of moral relativism which was contradicted by Pope John Paul II's teaching in Fides et Ratio. Mr. Rogers suddenly sprang up and wrote 'Challenging' on the white-board...

We wrote to Archbishop Kelly and received a polite reply. Nevertheless Mrs. Rogers remained in her post until 2007 when she retired after helping to set up the 'Listening 2004' project, which forms part of the ongoing, and expensive looking Everybody's Welcome initiative. The summary of Listening 2004 is to be found on the web-site of the Bishop's Conference of England and Wales and provides a clear example of how deep (and how high) dissent from the authentic teachings of Christ and His Church now goes.

After Margaret retired I applied for a job in the Marriage and Family office at Liverpool's LACE centre. After all, by then I had 2 First Class degrees in Theology and had specialisations in Marriage and the Family and Bioethics. I also had several years of pastoral experience working with a variety of groups including prisoners, teenagers from difficult backgrounds, primary school children, elderly people and a cross section of Catholic parishioners. I desired to help implement the authentic teaching of Vatican II and to share the rich insights of Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body as a means to help heal our culture and bring people back to Christ.

I was interviewed by a panel which included (amongst others ); a liberal priest in lay clothes (I discovered he was a priest during the day - to which I had made the effort and worn a smart suit and shirt and tie); a woman who gives 'homilies' at Masses and has a long history in the liberal 'pastoral' department, and a priest known for his Buddhist and liberal leanings...

Needless to say I did not get the job. A couple of weeks later a priest friend called me to inform me that the latest project from the Marriage and Family office included the one on 'acceptance' mentioned in Fr. Ray's commentary above. It seems that this has only now become a national issue across the dioceses.

In any case Peter Tatchell of the homosexual activist group Outrage! (with a radical history which included breaking up Church services) has strongly welcomed this initiative, and publicly thanked the 'liberal' bishops of England and Wales for challenging the 'outdated, bigoted' attitude of the Vatican towards homosexuality. 

John Kearney on his blog Catholic Rights says;
'The bishops spend a lot of time trying to pretend that their teaching is identical to that of the Holy Father. How embarassing for them that Peter Tatchell has revealed the vast gulf between Eccleston Square and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.'

As we say in the title of this piece... It now seems that Everybody's Welcome... except Jesus and orthodox Catholics!

Anyway... Don't worry, but do KEEP THE FAITH!



This news item is from Torch of The Faith
( http://www.torchofthefaith.com/news.php?extend.144 )