God cannot bless sin
Rules are rules, and the Vatican can’t just go around breaking them whenever it feels like it.
The Roman Catholic Church cannot bless same-sex marriages, no matter how stable or positive the couples’ relationships are, the Vatican said on Monday. The message, approved by Pope Francis, came in response to questions about whether the church should reflect the increasing social and legal acceptance of same-sex unions.
Tsss. Of course not. The Vatican isn’t about social and legal, the Vatican is about God Said So.
But how does the Vatican know God said so? God said God said so. But how do the rest of us know that’s true? God said so.
The message underlines the church’s insistence that marriage should be limited to a union between a man and a woman, saying that same-sex unions involve “sexual activity outside of marriage.” In the Vatican’s view, same-sex marriages are not part of God’s plan for families and raising children.
But how does the Vatican know what God’s plan is? (See above; repeat indefinitely.)
Bestowing a blessing on a same-sex couple’s relationship would also be an “imitation” of the nuptial blessing, the Vatican said. God, the Vatican said, “does not and cannot bless sin.”
What is “sin”?
While we ponder that question it’s interesting to remember that for generations the Vatican protected priests who sexually molested children. It’s interesting to note that the Vatican considers sex between two loving adults “sin” and considers sexual molestation of children by Vatican-affiliated adults something to protect and conceal from the authorities. “Sin” must be a very strange and complicated thing altogether.
Because of the Vatican’s stance on marriage, critics have accused the church of treating LGBTQ people as lesser members of its congregation. In an apparent response to those concerns, the Vatican said on Monday that its declaration is not meant to be “unjust discrimination.”
It called on Catholics “to welcome with respect and sensitivity persons with homosexual inclinations.”
And in particular, if they’re priests who like to grope and fondle children, welcome them and hide them and protect them – the priests, that is, not the children. The children are filthy little demons.
The message cited Francis’ own words from 2016, when he wrote, “there are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family.”
That line comes from “Amoris Laetitia” (The Joy of Love), the papal treatise on families that was widely seen as Pope Francis’ move to make the Catholic Church more inclusive.
Don’t bother.
I dunno. God moves in mysterious ways?
Suffer the little children?
Nope. I got nuthin.
Yes, but I imagine my abusive parents/siblings were part of God’s plan for families and raising children. Everything my mother did to me she did in God’s name.
The pope can FO.
My parents are both ministers. Once, an incident occurred between two members of the congregation. A sheep had been attacked by a dog. Perhaps a wild dog, or perhaps their own dog. No one knew. Both members prayed on the matter. God spoke to them both. God’s word was, regrettably, inconsistent. One was told it was the dog, the other, that it wasn’t. They came to my father to settle the matter. I remember him coming home and saying “what am I supposed to do when God has told two people different things?”
The Church routinely waived consanguinity laws, annulled politically redundant marriages, married children to adults etc. etc. For centuries. And just where in the Bible is this one-to-one ‘official’ form of marriage actually dictated?
John, I am told it comes from St. Paul. Which is funny, since Paul actually advised people to be celibate, and only marry if they couldn’t manage it. He didn’t advocate marriage except as a salvation for a sinning soul, but now I hear people tout the beauty of marriage and how Paul sanctioned it and made it so beautiful for them. (I guess no one was ever married before the current era?)