
*
In a strongly worded attack, Benedict XVI insisted that marriage should be founded on the "indissoluble" marriage between a man and a woman. Addressing a huge crowd at the shrine of Fatima at the climax of his four day visit to Portugal, the 83-year-old Pope said that same sex marriage and abortion were among the "most insidious and dangerous challenges that today confront the common good."
*
The Vatican regards being homosexual as a "deviation" and an "irregularity" and the act of homosexual sex as a sin.
*
In December a leading Roman Catholic cardinal reinforced the message, saying that homosexuality was an "insult to God" and that homosexuals and transsexuals will never go to heaven. In remarks which outraged gay rights groups, Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, 76, claimed that people were not born homosexual, but chose to embrace homosexuality of their own free will.
*
The Pope's remarks carried particular resonance for his host country – three years ago Portugal decriminalised abortion and it is now on the verge of legalising homosexual unions. A law allowing same-sex marriage was passed by parliament in February. President Anibal Cavaco Silva, a practising Catholic, is expected to sign the bill into law by May 17, three days after the end of the papal visit. His ratification would make Portugal the sixth country in Europe to allow same-sex marriages after Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Norway.
*
The true irony will, of course, be when gays and transgender people find themselves in Heaven and Benedict and other gay-haters are shocked to find themselves in Hell for the evils they have perpetrated in the name of God.
1 comment:
"most insidious and dangerous challenges that today confront the common good."
Really? Not global warming, or the myriad other environmental catastrophes we are engaging in, or war, or over population, or hunger, or poverty, or, I don't know, the rampant abuse of children by a religion that shall remain nameless?
No, it's two consenting adults loving each other. Oh, the horror.
Post a Comment