Tag: Take Back The Chruch

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The Catholic Church in Michigan just made an important concession toward gay couples

By Peter Holley

rosary

For years, the Catholic Church has been in the throes of a heated debate over how accepting it should be of gay relationships.

The church teaches that gay behavior is sinful; however, no institution is immune from changes in the world around it.

The Michigan Catholic Conference — which oversees health care for Catholic employees in the state — announced in a letter last week that it is modifying its coverage in a way that will make it possible for gay employees of the church to get health benefits for their partners and spouses.

It does so in a way, however, that doesn’t affirm gay marriage, but simply redefines who qualifies for health coverage in a way that could include same-sex couples.

The move comes less than a year after a deeply divided Supreme Court delivered a historic victory for gay rights, ruling 5 to 4 that the Constitution requires that same-sex couples be allowed to marry no matter where they live.

The letter, sent to pastors and church employees, said health care coverage will be expanded to include legally domiciled adults. A person is considered an LDA, the letter notes, if they’re 18 or older, are financially interdependent with the church employee, and have lived with that person for at least six months.

Under the previous arrangement, a same-sex spouse would not be covered by health insurance because the Catholic Church defines a spouse as someone of the opposite gender, according to the Detroit Free Press.

A person’s sexual orientation or behavior will not factor into the church’s decision to provide employees with health care, according to Dave Maluchnik, director of communications for the MCC. Instead, he said, the church’s primary consideration will be residency.

“The church’s teaching on marriage and human sexuality is not changing,” Maluchnik told The Washington Post. “Our health benefit plan is expanding its eligibility to include a legally domiciled adult and, as such, the benefit is not dependent upon the relationship. It’s dependent upon residency. As long as the qualifications are met, then the benefit can be extended.”

The letter does not include the words “gay” or “same-sex relationship” and Maluchnik said projecting homosexuality into the letter was “a narrow reading” on the eligibility change. He pointed out that the rule change could just as easily apply to a friend, cousin, sibling or parent who lives with the employee.

But gay rights advocates celebrated the change nonetheless.

“The Catholic Church prides itself on being about families, so it’s good to see them taking a step that will actually protect families,” Stephanie White, executive director of Equality Michigan, told The Post.

She said the eligibility change is particularly important in Michigan, where there is no state law that protects LGBT people from discrimination. White believes the change also highlights the benefit of having federal agencies take a lead on “issues of fairness” and predicts that in time, people will realize there’s no reason not to outlaw discrimination.

“The policy also shows that even groups and businesses that are resistant to basic non-discrimination protections can find a way to follow the law and treat everyone equally,” White said.

Maluchnik noted that the decision to expand eligibility came after lengthy discussions among church officials. The alternative to expanding eligibility —removing spousal coverage entirely — would have hurt employees, he said.

“This decision was made following extensive consultation with the National Catholic Bioethics Center and also with our legal counsel to help us ensure that the health plan is compliant with federal and state laws and at the same time being consistent with Catholic teaching,” he said.

He told The Post that the modification to the church’s health plan occurred because of the federal government’s decision to “redefine marriage and the definition of a spouse.”

“It complies with federal law, as it is, in 2016,” Maluchnik told the Free Press. “This is the world in which we now live.”

Complete Article HERE!

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Catholic Leaders Say Zika Doesn’t Change Ban on Contraception

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

Zika

As the Zika virus spreads in Latin America, Catholic leaders are warning women against using contraceptives or having abortions, even as health officials in some countries are advising women not to get pregnant because of the risk of birth defects.

The challenge posed by Zika for the Roman Catholic Church comes as Pope Francis is making his first trip to Mexico, where the virus appears to be spreading.

After a period of saying little, bishops in Latin America are beginning to speak up and reassert the church’s opposition to birth control and abortion — positions that in Latin America are unpopular and often disregarded, even among Catholics.

“Contraceptives are not a solution,” said Bishop Leonardo Ulrich Steiner, the secretary general of the National Council of Bishops of Brazil, and an auxiliary bishop of Brasília, in an interview. “There is not a single change in the church’s position.”

He urged couples to practice chastity or use “natural family planning,” a method in which women monitor their menstrual cycles and abstain from sex when they are fertile.

This is not a stance likely to win many new followers. South America happens to be the continent with the highest proportion of Catholics who already disagree with the church on abortion and birth control, according to a large international poll commissioned by Univision in 2014. Seventy-three percent of Catholics in Latin America said that abortion should be allowed in some or all cases, and 91 percent supported the use of contraceptives — a higher percentage even than in Europe or the United States.

While church leaders frequently say that doctrine is not determined by polls or popularity contests, they are nevertheless sensitive to counts of their flock. And the Catholic Church has been losing adherents in Latin America in recent decades as people leave to join evangelical and Pentecostal churches, or reject religion entirely.

Nearly 70 percent of adults in Latin America still identify as Catholic, but that is down from 94 percent in 1950, according to a study by the Pew Research Center. Much of the fall-off has occurred in just the last generation.

No Vatican department has yet issued a statement about the Zika issue, and it is not clear whether Pope Francis will address it during his trip to Mexico, where he will be until Thursday, said the Rev. Thomas Rosica, the English-language media attaché to the Vatican’s press office.

“The Vatican is very well aware of the seriousness of this issue, and the Holy Father is very aware of it,” Father Rosica said. “We’re waiting to see how the local churches in those countries respond.”

But Father Rosica said church teaching on abortion and contraception remains the same. The Zika epidemic, he said, presents “an opportunity for the church to recommit itself to the dignity and sacredness of life, even in very precarious moments like this.”

The five countries in Latin America and the Caribbean that have advised women to delay pregnancy are Brazil, Ecuador, El Salvador, Colombia and Jamaica. But access to contraception is limited throughout the region, especially for poor and rural women. Abortion is restricted in many countries, and it is illegal without exceptions in the Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Nicaragua, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The Zika virus is spread by mosquitoes of the Aedes genus, but researchers have found some cases transmitted by sexual contact. Experts are not yet sure whether Zika is the cause of a sudden surge in babies born in Brazil with microcephaly — unusually small heads and, often, damaged brains. Microcephaly could lead to serious disabilities — but not always.

There is no vaccine for the Zika virus, and no cure for microcephaly. The World Health Organization this month declared the Zika epidemic an international public health emergency. The organization advised that women should have full access to a range of contraceptive options, as well as “safe abortion services to the full extent of the law.”

Many church officials are wary that the Zika epidemic will lead to the loosening of laws on abortion and contraception. Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga of Honduras, who serves on Pope Francis’ nine-member advisory council, denounced the notion of “therapeutic abortions” for women carrying babies with microcephaly. He spoke at a Mass attended by the Honduran president and first lady.

“Therapeutic means curative, and abortion doesn’t cure anything,” he said, according to a report in the newspaper La Tribuna. “It takes innocent lives away.”

Cardinal Odilo Scherer of São Paulo said recently that mothers must accept babies born with microcephaly “as a mission,” and that abortion was out of the question. However, he appeared to open a door to using condoms, saying that is “personal choice” because a new life has not yet been formed.

The papal encyclical Humanae Vitae, issued by Pope Paul VI in 1968, said that artificial contraception was forbidden because sexual intercourse must always be open to procreation.

“The teaching is fairly clear that contraception is not ethically permissible,” said Christopher Kaczor, a professor of philosophy at Loyola Marymount University, in Los Angeles, and a corresponding member of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life.

“That doesn’t mean a couple has to have a child,” he said, because it is possible to use natural family planning methods.

He and other Catholic scholars cited a study showing that when used properly, natural family planning is as effective as birth control pills. However, the United States Department of Health and Human Services reports that the failure rate for natural family planning is 25 out of 100 women, while for birth control pills it is five out of 100.

Other Catholic moral theologians say the church’s ban is not so clear-cut. The Rev. James Bretzke, a moral theologian at Boston College, said that some theologians interpreted a passage in Humanae Vitae as an “escape clause” that essentially permitted women to use an artificial means of contraception if it had the effect of curing or treating disease — for example, using birth control pills to treat menstrual pain or acne. Theologians could apply the same approach to the Zika situation, he said.

“My prediction is this Zika virus is going to reignite the unresolved debate that’s existed since 1968 about the moral status of artificial contraception when applied to extraordinary cases,” Father Bretzke said.

“Now we have not just an individual extraordinary case, but a situation in which these cases are extraordinary for a large group of people,” he said. “You’ve got one competing value — to have every act open to procreation — running up against another competing value — which is to protect the public health.”

The Catholic Church faced intense pressure as the AIDS epidemic spread to lift its ban on the use of condoms to help prevent transmission of the disease. Some nuns and priests who treated AIDS patients, and even the South African Bishops Conference, publicly said that the church should make an exception for married couples to use condoms when one partner tested positive for H.I.V.

Then in 2010, Pope Benedict XVI was quoted in a book saying that in some exceptional cases, when the motivation is to prevent disease rather than pregnancy, using a condom could be a “first step” towards moral responsibility. He said that this might be the case for a prostitute who uses a condom. Benedict’s remark set off widespread controversy and speculation about whether the Vatican would officially issue an exception or change to doctrine. But none came.

Complete Article HERE!

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Catholic high school: Archdiocese ‘does not permit’ same-sex wedding announcement

By BY JOEL CONNELLY

Sartain
Seattle Archbishop J. Peter Sartain: Catholic Church can in no way associate itself with same-sex marriage.

Bishop Blanchet High School in Seattle has refused to run an announcement in its alumni magazine for the same-sex marriage of an alumna who once served as student body vice president and homecoming queen.

In response to the submission by the 1997 graduate, the school sent her a letter saying, in part, “… the archdiocese does not permit this type of information to be published in our Catholic school magazine.”

The reaction has been a much-circulated Facebook post by James Nau, who was student body president in Blanchet’s class of 1997 and homecoming king.

In an open letter to the Archdiocese of Seattle, Nau quoted St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians — “if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it” and wrote:

“The policy which prohibits the public acknowledgment of (the)  marriage stands behind a faith that you no doubt believe is right, but it does so at the cost of what is greater: Love.

“When there is an opportunity to rejoice in love that exists among the members of your community, you have chosen instead to shut them out, and on this issue Pope Francis has warned, ‘a church with closed doors betrays herself and her mission.'”

Seattle Archbishop J. Peter Sartain firmly closed all doors to same-sex marriage after Washington voted for marriage equality in 2012.

Sartain published a “policy refresher” raining down prohibitions on same-sex “marriage” — quotation marks courtesy of the archbishop. They include:

  • “No priest or deacon or lay minister may officiate at a same-sex marriage.”
  • “No church facility or school facility may be offered for such an event, even if it is to be witnessed by a non-Catholic minister or civil official.”
  • “No church facility or school facility may be used for a reception after such an event.”
  • “No church ministers, ordained or lay, may offer ‘wedding preparation’ for such couples.”

The archbishop’s chilly, hard-line stand on same-sex marriage has never gone down well with many Catholics.

Then-Gov. Chris Gregoire, a Catholic, helped persuade the Legislature to vote for marriage equality.  Eastside Catholic High School students walked out of school and mounted a sustained protest in late 2013 after the school’s vice principal was forced out over marriage to his husband.

Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, a devout Catholic, went to St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in 2013 to marry his husband, Michael Shiosaki, in a deeply traditional ceremony.

Nau has received a strong, affirming response to his Facebook post, 227 “likes,” 59 comments and 122 shares by mid-afternoon Thursday.

“The Catholic Archdiocese of Seattle has played a large role in my life,” he wrote.

Nau is a graduate of St. Louise School, Blanchet and Seattle University. He has mentored fellow Catholics at confirmation, worked at CYO summer camps, taught and coached for three years at Blanchet, and participated in campus ministries.  He stood vigil beside the body of Archbishop Thomas Murphy as the popular prelate lay in state at St. James Cathedral.

“It is my education by the Archdiocese of Seattle that has made me into the person who writes this letter,” he concluded.

In a subsequent update, Nau writes that he received a “gracious” email response from Antonio DeSapio, in which the president of Bishop Blanchet thanked Nau for his engagement but said that “we cannot knowingly publish anything that is contrary to Church teachings.”

The experience has been “very alienating,” Nau wrote in a response to DeSapio, adding:

“As a teacher, I keep thinking about what this policy says to your current students, and I hope that you consider what this incident teaches the students in the Archdiocese who might be gay or questioning their sexual identity as well as what it says to their friends, families and teachers who love and support them.

“What does it teach students whose parents are gay?”

The Blanchet denial, as with removal of the vice principal at Eastside Catholic, appears to have had an unintended consequence — one worth pondering at the archdiocesan chancery on First Hill.

The Eastside Catholic students came together in their protest and bonded with students at other Catholic high schools, such as Seattle Prep and Blanchet.

The refusal to announce the wedding appears to have similarly connected and reconnected Blanchet alumni.  Here is how Nau put it to DeSapio:

“Thanks to social media, we do not lack the means to come together in support and celebration of one of our own, but your policy forces us to do it outside your walls.

“Do you wish for Blanchet to remain an institution that forces large portions of its warm and affirming alumni community to exist separate from itself?

“This effort to rally . . . has more quickly and effectively connected me with my classmates than any issue of the Blanchet magazine. … My connection to the archdiocesan community has grown not because of your policy, but because of our shared objection to it.”

Does the chancery understand this?

Complete Article HERE!

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Episcopal leader: Church will not reverse gay marriage stand

Bishop Michael Curry
Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Michael Curry speaks to churchgoers as he arrives at the Washington National Cathedral in November. On Thursday, Anglican leaders temporarily restricted the role of the U.S. Episcopal Church in their global fellowship as a sanction over the American church’s acceptance of gay marriage.

The Associated Press reports:

Presiding Bishop Michael Curry said Friday the U.S. Episcopal Church will not roll back its acceptance of gay marriage despite sanctions imposed this week by Anglican leaders.

In a phone interview from England, where he attended the gathering of top Anglican archbishops, Curry said he told his fellow leaders they should expect no change. The top Episcopal legislative body, called General Convention, last year voted overwhelmingly to authorize same-sex marriage ceremonies in church. In response, Anglican leaders Thursday stripped the Episcopal Church of any role in deciding doctrine or determining how the Anglican Communion operates for three years, effectively reducing the church to observer status in the 85 million-member global fellowship.

“They heard from me directly that that’s not something that we’re considering,” Curry said. “They basically understand we made our decision, and this is who we are, and we’re committed to being a house of prayer for all.”

Curry said the church was resolved to work toward building acceptance of same-sex relationships throughout the Anglican fellowship, which the Episcopal Church represents in the United States. A majority of Anglican leaders at the meeting affirmed the teaching that marriage is only the union of a man and a woman.

“We are loyal members of the Anglican Communion, but we need to say we must find a better way,” Curry said. “I really believe it’s part of our vocation.”

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, the spiritual leader of the Anglican family, had organized the assembly in Canterbury to help avoid a split in the fellowship that had been building for decades over differences about homosexuality, women’s ordination and other issues.

Those rifts blew wide open in 2003 when the New York-based Episcopal Church consecrated the first openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson, in New Hampshire. Ever since, theological conservatives, led by Anglican leaders in Africa, have demanded some penalty for the U.S. church. Many have distanced themselves from the Episcopal Church and in 2009 helped form an alternative to the U.S. denomination, called the Anglican Church in North America.

Welby does not have the authority to force a resolution of the conflict.

In their statement from this week’s meeting, Anglican leaders called the Episcopal Church approval of gay marriage “a fundamental departure from the faith and teaching” of the majority of Anglicans. As a result, Episcopalians “no longer represent us on ecumenical and interfaith bodies,” and could not vote or fully participate in Anglican committees, the leaders said.

The statement also included a condemnation of “homophobic prejudice and violence” and rejected criminalization of homosexuality, which has become common in African countries.

“For me, it is a constant source of deep sadness that people are persecuted for their sexuality,” Welby said at a news conference in Canterbury Cathedral, at the end of the meeting. He expressed “how sorry I am for the hurt and pain in the past and present that the church has caused and the love sometimes that we have completely failed to show.”

Outside, gay rights demonstrators, many from Africa, waved signs and sang. “We are here talking about human beings, real people who are having their lives torn apart,” said Jayne Ozanne, a leading gay rights activist in the church.

Anglicans, who trace their roots to the Church of England, are the third-largest grouping of Christians in the world, behind Roman Catholics and Orthodox.

The Anglican Church of Canada is scheduled to vote in July on a proposal that would change church law to allow same-sex marriage. If the change is approved, it would have to be reaffirmed at the church’s next legislative meeting, or General Synod, in three years. Archbishop Fred Hiltz, who attended the Canterbury gathering, said the penalty for the Episcopal Church will be a major consideration.

“Obviously, this whole thing will weigh pretty heavily on the minds of people going into the General Synod,” Hiltz said in an interview. “If we vote for a change in the canon on marriage there will be some consequence.”

At the news conference, Welby underscored that the meeting had averted any break and that the Anglican leaders “unanimously indicated that they wanted the churches of the Anglican Communion to walk together.” He announced the next once-a-decade meeting of all Anglican bishops, called the Lambeth Conference, would take place in 2020, an announcement he had delayed as he worked to keep the communion together.

Both Welby and Curry said there had been no discussion of the specifics of this process or what would have to happen over the next three years for the Episcopalians to be restored to full participation in the global fellowship. Anglican conservatives, who have affiliated as the Global Anglican Future Conference, said they were pleased with the penalty against the Episcopal Church, but were concerned that the sanctions didn’t go far enough and that Anglican leaders did not clearly state what the consequences would be if the Episcopal Church failed to change its position on gay marriage.

 

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A ‘gay lobby’ at the Vatican? One cardinal says it’s real, and Pope Francis is responding

Extraordinary_Assembly_of_Synod_of_the_Bishops_on_the_Family_1_Oct_2014
Extraordinary Assembly of Synod of the Bishops on the Family 1, Oct. 2014.

The influential Cardinal Oscar Maradiaga has acknowledged the presence of a “gay lobby” in the Vatican. In a new interview, he says that Pope Francis has adopted a gradual approach to address it – and that Catholic teaching won’t change.

The Honduran newspaper El Heraldo asked the cardinal whether there actually was an attempted or successful “infiltration of the gay community in the Vatican.”

Cardinal Maradiaga responded: “Not only that, also the Pope said: there was even a ‘lobby’ in this sense.”

“Little by little the Pope is trying to purify it,” he continued. “One can understand them, and there is pastoral legislation to attend to them, but what is wrong cannot be truth.”

Cardinal Maradiaga is the Archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras and the coordinator of the Council of Cardinals who advise Pope Francis on the reform of the Curia.

HIs interview, published Jan. 12, also touched on some perceptions about Pope Francis.

The newspaper said some people have interpreted Pope Francis’ other remarks to think there was a possibility the Church would support same-sex marriage.

The cardinal rejected this possibility.

“No, we must understand that there are things that can be reformed and others cannot,” he said. “The natural law cannot be reformed. We can see how God has designed the human body, the body of the man and the body of a woman to complement each other and transmit life. The contrary is not the plan of creation. There are things that cannot be changed.”

A previous report about the Pope working to counter the “gay lobby” was widely read, but its accuracy was uncertain.

In June 2013 the left-leaning Chilean Catholic website “Reflexión y liberación” claimed that Pope Francis had told a meeting of the Latin American Confederation of Men and Women Religious that there is a “gay lobby” in the Church and “we have to see what we can do (about it).”

However, the Latin American Confederation of Men and Women said that this report rested on a summary account that relied on the memory of participants, not a recording. This summary was intended for meeting participants and was not intended for publication. The confederation said the reported assertion “cannot be attributed with certainty to the Holy Father.”

Pope Francis in a July 28, 2013 in-flight interview returning to Italy from Brazil briefly discussed this alleged lobby in the context of penitence, confession and God’s forgiveness.

“So much is written about the gay lobby. I have yet to find anyone who can give me a Vatican identity card with ‘gay’ [written on it]. They say they are there,” the Pope said.

He said that all lobbies are bad and “the gravest problem for me.” Citing the Catechism’s teaching against marginalizing homosexual persons, he said, “If a person is gay and seeks the Lord and has good will, well who am I to judge them?”

Cardinal Maradiaga also spoke to El Heraldo about reform and changes to the Church.

“We should not expect there will be major reforms in the doctrine of the Church,” he said. “The reform is the organization of the Curia.”

He acknowledged resistance to Curia reform, saying there are people who “resist any changes” precisely because “they do not know the life of the Church.”

The Church is “not merely a human institution,” he explained. Rather, it is “humane-divine” and “natural and supernatural.” This means “there are things that do not really depend on what is human.”

The cardinal’s remarks on a “gay lobby” follow years of increasingly prominent agitation for doctrinal change from non-Catholics and some Catholics.

As CNA has reported previously, LGBT activists have backed conferences and advocacy events to counter the narrative of the Catholic Church, especially during its synods on the family. These actions include the formation of a coalition called the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics and an advocacy campaign that targeted synod attendees in hopes of countering the influence of bishops from West Africa.

Complete Article HERE!