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Wednesday, January 02, 2013

The Chicago archdiocese's Gang of Seven promotes panic in the parishes

Cardinal George, ringleader of the Chicago Gang of Seven

by Ken

When the lame-duck session of the Illinois State Senate resumes this afternoon, one piece of legislation scheduled to receive consideration, and possibly a Thursday vote, is same-sex marriage. And so predictably, the Archdiocese of Chicago is on the job. As Kate Sosin reported for Windy City Times:
Chicago's Archbishop wants Catholics to oppose efforts to pass same-sex marriage in Illinois.

With a vote on marriage equality possibly days away, Cardinal Francis George has issued a letter against same-sex marriage to parishes across the city, the Chicago Tribune is reporting.

The letter has not yet been made publicly available, but the Chicago Tribune obtained and published a copy of it. Parishes are expected to publish it this Sunday.

The letter argues that the state cannot regulate what nature dictates to be impossible. "Civil laws that establish 'same sex marriage' create a legal fiction," the letter states.
You can read the complete letter here. Here is the Chicago bishops' rationale for intervening.
Marriage comes to us from nature. The human species comes in two complementary sexes, male and female. Their sexual union is called marital. It not only creates a place of love for two adults but also a home for loving and raising their children. It provides the biological basis for personal identity.

It is physically impossible for two men or two women to consummate a marriage, even when they share a deep friendship or love. Does this mean nature is cruel or that God is unfair? No, but it does mean that marriage is what nature tells us it is and that the State cannot change natural marriage. Civil laws that establish “same-sex marriage” create a legal fiction. The State has no power to create something that nature itself tells us is impossible.

Neither did the Church create marriage. . . .
You'll notice that the Windy City chapter of the demagogues of Rome -- the letter is signed by Cardinal Francis George and six other bishops, which I assume represents the archdiocese's full completement -- are learning to back off the old language that stated baldly that the purpose of marriage is procreation. Doubtless it finally penetrated the Church grandpas' granite skulls that this delegitimizes all marraiges in which the partners aren't actively attempting to procreate -- or, realistically, ever engage in sexual relations for any other purpose. In fact, as I've ventured before, an excellent case can be made that Catholic couples attempting to perpetrate such fraudulent relationships under the rubric of "marriage" should be excommunicated.

With this fancier new language, the Chicago Seven sort of leave the procreative compulsion in the background. Unfortuntately, they also reduce their argument to gibberish. What we have here are arguments from nature by numbskulls who know next to nothing about nature. And they haven't even accomplished what they set out to: establish an actual distinction between the one kind of pair bonding they accept and the others.

Because in announcing that the "complementary sexes" union "not only creates a place of love for two adults but also a home for loving and raising their children," it describes a configuration that absolutely and unambiguously, beyond any possibility of distinction (or at least none that the Seven make any attempt to make), includes pairs of adults of any possible gender combination.

I think it would be only fair of the beetle-brained bishops to tell us whether they're speaking from the authority of their unbounded ignorance or of their profound dishonesty. To some Catholics it may make a difference whether they're chuch is run by mental defectives or pathological liars.

YOU'D THINK THE CHURCH WOULD HAVE ITS HANDS FULL . . .

. . . dealing with the sociopathologies of its own families. I'm not going to say that Catholic families are any worse than any others, but I am going to say that the family has shown itself to be far too pervasively a breeding ground for psychological and all too often actual physical mayhem. This is the dark far-from-secret that's never discussed by phony-baloney mongers of ignorance and hate like the National Organization for Marriage. A genuine effort to improve the state of mental health in the family unit, not to mention to promote a higher level of economic stability, would be genuinely worthwhile. But what these rampaging sociopaths really want to do is disseminate its favored brands of human contmaination.

Again, the Chicago Seven show not the slightest recognition of or interest in the real problems with marriage. Not their problem apparently. Their only concern is enforcing ignorance and hate. It's a mission they're apparently well trained for.

But no, instead of dealing with actual problems, the Chicago Seven, while sitting on their fat idle asses, are busily promoting panic among their parishioners:
Should the lame duck legislature or the new Assembly take up the passage of a "same-sex marriage" law, it will be acting against the common good of society. We will all have to pretend to accept something that is contrary to the common sense of the human race.

Those who continue to distinguish between genuine marital union and same sex arrangements will be regarded in law as discriminatory, the equivalent of bigots. This proposed legislation will have long term consequences because laws teach; they tell us what is socially acceptable and what is not, and most people conform to the dictates of their respective society, at least in the short run.

What happens next? If we ignore in law the natural complementary of man and woman in creation, then the natural family is undermined. Our individual lives become artificial constructs protected by civil “rights” that destroy natural rights. Human dignity and human rights are then reduced to the whims of political majorities. When the ways of nature and nature's God conflict with civil law, society is in danger. It is to that danger that we direct your attention.
There's one good prediciton here: "Those who continue to distinguish between genuine marital union and same sex arrangements will be regarded in law as discriminatory, the equivalent of bigots." My only quibble is that the Windy City Seven are being too modest. They aren't "the equivalent of bigots"; they're the genuine article.

Nobody is suggesting that the Catholic Church has to allow same-sex marriages. If it wants to remain a cult of bigots, it has that right. The right it doesn't have is to enforce its lies and delusions on non-Catholics.

The irony, as is being pointed out more and more often, but still not often enough, is that Cathollics and other Christians who scream that they're being discriminated against, or even persecuted, are in fact at the opposite end of the discrimination and persecution hammer -- wielding it freely and fully against anyone who disagrees with them. But then, when you've transformed your religion into a cult of crackpottery, based on nothing but ignorance, delusions, and lies, it's hardly surprising that your defenders, or rather enforcers, are ignorant, delusional liars.
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2 comments:

  1. Mental defectives? pathological liars? I'm afraid these men are true believers, which is worse. And they're doing everything they can to turn back the clock to the Dark Ages, when men like them ruled the known world. "Nature" of course is code for "God". Like their Evangelical counterparts, they're trying to repeal the modern world.

    What appalls and amuses me is that these zealous defenders of God's Way of Marriage is that they themselves are sworn to lifelong celibacy. They aren't even allowed to fornicate, much less procreate. Is it any wonder that (other than the hierarchy's scandalous persistence in protecting child rapists of the cloth) the "Catholic" Church is in decline?

    (Note: I put "Catholic" in scare quotes because "catholic" is Greek for "universal". Not quite so descriptive of a religious organization so willing to shrink itself and become, well, less than universal in the name of doctrinal purity...)

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  2. Good points, Dennis, but I guess I'm going to disagree about the depth of belief of those "true believers." I think most if not all of the U.S. bishops know perfectly well that they're lying their fool heads off. Their "true belief" comes in with the belief that God has authorized them to lie their fool heads off. (I don't suggest that they know they're mental defectives because mental defectives don't usually know.)

    If, for example, they really believed that marriage is solely for the purpose of procreation, they would be doing something to rid the Church of all those scummy Catholics who for whatever reason are betraying the institution by not trying to procreate.

    Cheers,
    Ken

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