First we should get some things clear:
- Catholics are not misogynistic.
- We’re not in favor of discrimination.
- We don’t “hate fags”
- We don’t think women are dumb and inferior
- We don’t judge homosexuals just because they’re homosexual.
Sure, there may be some Catholics who are female hating, gay bashing bigots. You’ll find people like that in all religions and walks of life.
The misguided views of a few people is not the view of the whole, nor is it the official teaching of the Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church is opposed to gay weddings and women priests for a very Catholic reason.
If you’re not a Catholic (or you are a Catholic who doesn’t comprehend your faith very well) you need to understand that the Catholic opinion on everything is not guided by political trends or cultural norms. It is determined by the whole body of Catholic teaching.
Catholic teaching is a unified, coherent and consistent body of thought that encompasses not only theology and what people do in church, but it includes history, anthropology, political and economic theory, sexuality, cosmology, and ecology.
In other words, what we believe about God and humanity touches everything.
At the core of this belief system is what we call the sacramental economy. We believe the primary way God works in the world today is through his church and through the sacraments of the church.
The sacraments of the church are seven ways that God touches individual human lives with his power and love. His power and love becomes active in their lives through the mechanism of the sacraments. When his power and love are active in our lives we not only secure our path to heaven, but we also put ourselves on the path that is most likely to bring us real happiness in this life.
Therefore the seven sacraments are vital for our interaction with God–for our progress towards heaven and our progress towards fulfillment and happiness as human beings.
The Catholic Church will therefore defend at all costs the seven sacred sacraments. Think of it like this: a country has something called a passport. The passport proves a person’s citizenship and provides a document for travel. The passport assures the person of certain privileges and rights of the citizen. A good country will make sure the system for issuing and controlling passports is secure, safe and reliable. If the world is flooded with fake passports the whole system falls apart.
So it is with the sacraments. The Catholic Church defends the sacraments which Jesus himself established. Furthermore, because Jesus established the sacraments the Catholic Church does not have the authority to change their content. She can change the form in which they are administered, but she cannot change the content. In other words, she can change the words of the baptism service, but she can’t declare that baptism now takes place by putting ashes on a person’s head instead of water.
Now we come to gay weddings and women priests. Continue Reading
