Next weekend San Diego's Old Mission Beach Athletic Club will host yet another Over the Line tournament. For those of you who don't know, this is a four-day bacchanalia of hedonism and heavy drinking, ostensibly in the name of finding the true "champions" of this beachfront hybrid of baseball and softball.
The team names are a study in themselves. Most are double entendres like "The Spanish Flies" or "The Twelve-Inch Strokers" and many of the names are so sexually explicit that I could not print them here. Reading over a list of names one year, I noticed one that was particularly bizarre:
"Gay Nazis for Christ".
Of course, the name is patently absurd because the Nazis were anti-Christian and anti-homosexuality to the point of committing genocide. Homosexuality and Christianity are both irreconcilable with Nazi philosophy (and each other). You simply cannot be a Nazi and tolerate homosexuality. You cannot be a Nazi and tolerate Christianity (just ask Saints Edith Stein and Maximilian Kolbe). One is inimical to the other.
Yet we see something equally absurd in play today: Catholics taking anti-Catholic positions and Catholics living anti-Catholic lives, both privately and publicly.
The Church explicitly teaches that abortion is wrong. Killing an unborn child is not a mere "choice".
YET THERE ARE CATHOLICS WHO INSIST THAT THEY CAN BE CATHOLIC AND PRO-CHOICE
The Church explicitly forbids the use of artificial contraception. Most are abortifacients and using them demonstrates the exclusion of new life.
YET THERE ARE CATHOLICS WHO INSIST THAT THIS IS A PRIVATE MATTER AND DO IT ANYWAY.
The Church explicitly forbids In Vitro Fertilization for conceiving children. The practice removes the necessity of the sexual act and creates multiple embryos, most of which end up being destroyed.
YET THERE ARE CATHOLICS WHO INSIST THAT THIS IS A PRIVATE MATTER AND DO IT ANYWAY.
The Church explicitly forbids homosexual behavior. It is objectively disordered, is not oriented toward life and has destructive consequences for individuals, families and society.
YET THERE ARE CATHOLICS WHO BELIEVE THAT HOMOSEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS SHOULD ENJOY MARITAL STATUS AND THOSE WHO LIVE LIVES OF CONTINUAL FORNICATION IN THIS MANNER SHOULD BE WELCOMED AS FULLY-PARTICIPATING MEMBERS OF THE CHURCH.
The Church has spoken definitively that ordination is a sacrament that is exclusively for men and the Church has no authority to ordain women.
YET THERE ARE CATHOLICS WHO INSIST THAT THIS IS "CHANGEABLE" AND SOME EVEN GO SO FAR AS TO PARTICIPATE IN PRETEND "ORDINATIONS" OF WOMEN.
The Catholic Church is not exclusionary. Everyone is welcome. However, like any other organization, those who are members must abide by its laws and teachings. God loves sinners (if He doesn't we're all in trouble). God welcomes us because we are to welcome HIM and when HE enters our lives, we are called to change. Christianity is a lifetime of repentance, change, self-denial and shunning our personal desires for what God asks of us. We cannot claim to be a member of a family when we live in a state of perpetual disobedience against our Father.
That makes about as much sense as Gay Nazis for Christ.
6 comments:
It is all very sad. Even our own parish in Valdosta has those in leadership roles who voted for Obama? Is that a sin?
Why are you asking me? Aren't there any priests nearby who have enough sense to answer that question with the mind of the Church?
Besides, sin--and the degree of sin--depends on the level of knowledge about the gravity of the act and the consent of the will. So, in some cases, for the not-so-ignorant, it would definitely be a sin. If not a sin, voting for Obama was definitely stupid.
I was told to read the statement made by the USCCB before the election. It didn't help much but I knew I had to vote for the pro-life candidate even if I didn't agree with other issues.
Thanks anyway.
Now THAT is interesting. Many bishops, knowing how deficient and misleading the "faithful citizenship" document was, made their own statements warning the faithful that Catholics could not vote for a pro-abortion candidate. Many other bishops, chose to simply refer their faithful to the document. So you had one group of bishops who did a bit extra because they knew they should and then you had another group who shirked their responsibility.
Nazis were not against Christianity! What rubbish. They were merely against individual Christians who didn't agree with Nazism. Hitler had the support of the German Protestants.
With all due respect, the Nazis were vehemently anti-Christian in their beliefs, even though they kept the facade of tolerating "Christianity". There are plenty of "Catholic" politicians today who "don't agree" with abortion but vote for it because they "don't want to impose" their morality on everyone else. In fact, B.O. could never have been elected without the Catholic vote and now he is trying to split the Church by appointing pro-abort "Catholics" to key positions, marginalizing faithful Catholics who don't sell out on abortion. THAT is rubbish--no, I take that back. It's evil.
Post a Comment