QUOTE TO NOTE: Gay Catholic Says Church’s Language on Homosexuality is “Vile”
Ursula Halligan
Yesterday, Bondings 2.0 reported on Irish Archbishop Eamon Martin of Armagh’s admission that the institutional Church “struggles to find a language” through which it can relate to LGBT people. In response to his remarks, former political journalist and gay Catholic Ursula Halligan wrote a sharp letter in The Irish Times. She said the archbishop “misses the point,” and continued:
“Could it be that the hierarchical church is struggling to find a language to relate to gay people because its theology of human sexuality is deeply flawed?
“Is it any wonder that the church struggles to find a language to relate to us when the language it already uses is so vile?
“The hypocrisy of this while preaching a Gospel message of love and justice is breathtaking.”
Halligan also expressed concern in her letter that the upcoming World Meeting of Families in Dublin would exclude LGBT Catholics and their families. Claiming that “all are welcome” to the event without actions behind that statement is “a hollow welcome,” she said.
Halligan is onto something. Catholics in the pews are entirely capable of relating to and speaking about LGBT identities in respectful, human terms. Church leaders seem almost entirely incapable of doing so. Even the more pastoral statements and actions are hindered by an obsessive focus on gender complementarity and understandings of human sexuality and gender identity wholly separated from contemporary science, human experience, and the lens of spirituality. Halligan is right to join the growing chorus of Catholics, including several bishops, who know that, if nothing else, harmful language like “intrinsically disordered” must be jettisoned in favor of respectful and humanizing language.
—Robert Shine, New Ways Ministry, April 21, 2018
Hi,
One of today’s single most important issues, Roman Catholic wise, is to see GLBTIOO, (Gay Lesbian, Bisexual,Transgendered Intersexed, Outcasts and Others), as nurses or Doctors of the Church.
Gays have gor years gor their Salvation poured over Biblical Texts (Our Catechism is Primarily Biblical only, and Jesus told us that not only is He talked about in The Old Testsment, but that the old Testament Scriptures can never be changed), to convict themselves, and finding no such conviction by ‘God in context’ ever, about them and their condition.
Growing I even believed, that Sodom and Gamorrah was about homosexuals. That is not true. 90% then were not homosexuals, just like it occirs in todays society. What was their error with God? Maybe we should ask the Bible, meaning god? Gos says it was their inhospitality, in that book.
The church wants yo know what to do? Well it is to follow Science as they were told to do, by God.
God really said, observe, experiment, test for accuracy, then use that to subdue the earth.
Use that set of techniques(only developed by Galileo Galilei, in 1630 or so), to also support all the people, that I commanded you to fill the earth with.
God also said, later, “You Christians, All of you Christians, you are to follow the science as it appears in Government Laws. Do you not know that I make the laws for them, the non Christians? I do. ”
LOVE,
Bravo Ursula Halligan! I think she has identified the problem inherent in almost all the official comments about homosexuality by the hierarchy. As long as “inherently disordered” is still allowed as a description for this sexual orientation, we have not come any further as a Church toward understanding ourselves than I thought we had in 1978 when the document came out from Rome containing that description. Surely in 40 years the official policymakers should have heeded the medical and psychological advances which present a more clear picture now than then of the sexual continuum human beings find themselves on. I cannot help but wonder what the Creator, Who set all this in motion, makes of such a continuing controversy involving so many of His creatures.
This woman is so right. The Catholic Church is so blind to how it harms others. Just imagine a church where people or specifically, women like Ursula Halligan were replacing the vile, blind, and exclusionary Bishops and Cardinals. How wonderful it would be to live in a society inspired by the Love, Respect and Welcome for all People and extent this to plants, animals and the earth it self. I think Jesus would dance a JIG!
Indeed, as I’ve said many times before, in different situational contexts: we’ve got cloistered, presumably celibate, politically and socially right-wing conservative priests and bishops, proclaiming that they have a sovereign authority — by virtue of their ordinations — to tell lay Catholics what they may or may not do to express their intimate feelings for one another. You tell me: what’s radically wrong — indeed what’s socially and psychologically crazy — about this situation? It’s something like a chapter out of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice In Wonderland”!
Here’s the problem in a nutshell…too many politically and socially extreme right conservative over 60 types in the hierarchy. Add in the closeted homosexual priests, bishops and cardinals who have a sick idea that persecuting LGBT will keep them closeted.
Unless the aforementioned men are called out and thrown out of their thrones, nothing will ever change for LGBT Catholics.