Discussion of religion in the context of LGBTQ+ rights is only allowed in this thread.
Discussion of religion in any other context is off topic in all of the "LGBTQ+ rights..." threads.
Attempting to bait others into bringing up religion is also not allowed.
Edited by Mrph1 on Dec 1st 2023 at 6:52:14 PM
The Mod with the Migraine
A group of wealthy - and extremely conservative - American Catholics are funding a private investigation into the Cardinals of the Catholic Church, aiming to control who becomes the next pope
, mainly by going to that old standby slander that everyone who concealed child abuse in the church did it because they're gay.
A group of wealthy American Roman Catholics have banded together to fund what they describe as a public investigation into every member of the church’s College of Cardinals. As the Catholic news site Crux reported on Monday, the group has assembled almost 100 academics, investigators, journalists, and former FBI agents to produce what it’s calling the “Red Hat Report.” The watchdog group plans to spend more than $1 million in its first year, with the goal of naming “those credibly accused in scandal, abuse, or cover-ups” and influencing the selection of the next pope.
The group is responding to an obvious crisis: The Catholic Church is in the throes of multiple overlapping clerical abuse scandals, including the resignation in disgrace of Cardinal Theodore Mc Carrick this summer. Meanwhile, a Pennsylvania grand jury found that more than 300 priests in the state had abused more than 1,000 children over the course of decades. By mid-September, eight other states had announced similar investigations. (That’s to say nothing of recent church scandals in other countries, including Chile and Germany.) And the Vatican, including the institution under Pope Francis, has been accused of ignoring or even covering up the rot.
The goal of the new Better Church Governance group, as Crux’s story makes clear, is to influence the selection of the next pope, who will be chosen by a subset of current cardinals. “What if we would have had someone else in 2013 who would have been more proactive in protecting the innocent and the young?” the group’s operations director, Jacob Imam, asked attendees at the event. In other words: What if we could have prevented the selection of Pope Francis?
An independent investigation might sound like a straightforwardly encouraging development. What could be wrong with an attempt by outraged lay Catholics to shed sunlight on an ongoing scandal that the church hierarchy has utterly failed to confront? The trouble is that the church’s abuse scandals have become a proxy in a much larger ecclesiastical battle. The wealthy Americans behind Better Church Governance are crusading not just against Pope Francis’ leadership, but against cardinals with insufficient theological adherence to “traditional values”—and particularly against homosexuality in the church.
The new group is sponsored by the Center for Evangelical Catholicism, and its leaders have affiliations with a wide array of conservative institutions, including Hillsdale College and Crisis magazine. Many conservative critics of Pope Francis view the current abuse crisis as springing from a “homosexual subculture” in the church, noting that boys make up a large majority of victims of underage clerical abuse. (A 2011 report found that gay priests were no more likely to abuse minors than straight priests; a rise in gay priests in the 1970s and 1980s was actually associated with a decrease in abuse.)
An attendee at the organization’s Sunday launch event in Washington asked if the report would include information about the cardinals’ sexuality. The report will follow the church’s moral law, Imam answered: “If there is a rumor of him being homosexual, it will be noted very carefully … but we need to be sure.” The Red Hat Report will also note whether each cardinal’s known views align with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the arm of the Vatican that defends the church from heresy and is in charge of investigating accusations of sexual abuse. (The body is seen as a defender of orthodoxy within the Vatican, though the pope replaced its powerful conservative head last year.)
Francis’s defenders and other non-conservatives in the church are wary of the new group’s motives. “At least they’re transparent about their hate,” tweeted the Rev. James Martin, an influential Jesuit priest who has criticized the church’s approach to homosexuality. “As in many far-right Catholic circles, simply being gay = being ‘corrupt.’ ” Another prominent priest and theologian called the group “self-appointed vigilante ideologues.”
There has been so much abuse and obfuscation in the Catholic Church that no political faction is free of the taint of scandal. The conservative Pope Benedict XVI was accused of covering it up, and now similar allegations have been weaponized by the former pope’s political allies against his replacement. The stench is so ubiquitous, touching church authorities in every era, from every jurisdiction, of every theological bent, that it can always be found wafting from the other side, no matter which side you’re on.
The Red Hat Report’s results will be publicly available, and each cardinal’s “dossier” will include a rating indicating the strength of the evidence connecting each man to scandal. “Cardinals need to be held accountable publicly, so there has to be some sort of culture of shame,” Imam told attendees at the meeting Sunday. “They know if they vote for this person … the people that they shepherd, and their pastors, will know about it.” The Red Hat Report may end up doing much-needed work to investigate and illuminate sexual corruption. Along the way, it could splinter the American church along already-fragile ideological fault lines, and introduce the smear tactics of a political campaign to the selection of the next pope.
I wonder if there's a single prospective candidate for the next Pope who won't be tied in any fashion to the child abuse that's been happening in their church for decades.
Brenner's Wolves Fight Again
Well, thou shalt not lie, but loving thy neighbor is optional.
Where there's life, there's hope.
The Cardinal in Australia has been found guilty of rape.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
The plan to let each church decide whether or not to perform same-sex marriages has been preliminarily voted down. I'm fairly biased when it comes to religion, but I can only see this accelerating the exodus of tolerant young people from the denomination.
Edited by Grafite on Feb 26th 2019 at 8:22:00 PM
Life is unfair...
Especially when it comes to mainline Protestantism in the US. There are a lot of (more tolerant) churches with similar beliefs.
Yes, it's official now, instead of letting each congregation have the freedom to decide what's best for their worshippers, they're imposing their bigoted will on everyone. Between this, the Catholic Church confirming they destroyed records on sex abuse, I'm feeling burned out...
Hopefully the more moderate sub-groups break off, rather than be shackled to the reactionary wing. Looks like the international delegates (namely from Africa and Russia) team up with the American conservatives to get a small majority.
Edited by Rationalinsanity on Feb 26th 2019 at 9:05:24 AM
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
The more they tighten their grip, the more will slip through their fingers.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
Openly Gay, Openly Christian Buttigieg Challenges the Religious Right
The Episcopal Church of America accepts gay parishioners, priests, and bishops in churches that recite the Nicene Creed every Sunday and have as authentic a claim to “orthodoxy” as any other church and more than many.
And other churches have always been free to make up their own minds about how actually "orthodox" they consider a given church. There's no reason that the Episcopalians' stance on a given subject should impress anyone but the Episcopalians. I mean, just for example: one major world church has considered Henry VIII an adulterer for nearly half a millennium now, another major world church has held the contrary, and neither of those facts should (or does) guide any other church's take on the matter. So in short, the article's doing a bit of a reach.
Well.... why, exactly, should acceptance of gay people be given such a disproportionate amount of weight in determining whether or not a religion is orthodox?
If you're willing to accept a wide range of different theological opinions regarding... I don't know, the nature of sin, the nature of heaven, ethical frameworks, the role of the church, and so on... and still consider those other religions fairly 'orthodox'... but not excluding gay people is too much? Yeah, that sure is an interesting double standard, and I think that's more the point here.
Edited by LoniJay on Mar 26th 2019 at 9:03:59 PM
Be not afraid...
I think the reason for it is that the passages that are arguably against homosexuality are fairly directly stated. However, many of the things you mentioned are not directly stated but are derived from how one reads the Bible.
It is clearly stated that eating shellfish is as bad as wearing mixed fabrics is, as well.
Yet...
And, I don't see church splits over allowing menstruating women to enter the doors.
So... Fuck that noise.
Yes, because I don't think anyone disagrees about such things. The interpretations on those verses have been fairly settled for over a thousand years, almost two thousand. It's a matter that is settled and has been settled for a long time. The idea that the Bible isn't against homosexuality is in terms of the church, a new one and like all new ideas is contentious.
Edited by Soban on Mar 26th 2019 at 7:52:38 AM
Textual analysis has had a two-millennium run at this point. From Philo to Justin Martyr to Origen to Aquinas to the present, exegetes have spilled an uncommon amount of ink going over which Levitical proscriptions can be considered superseded ... and which are not only not apparently superseded, but re-emphasized forcefully in the NT. Now, we're all free not to care for the Bible's teachings, and we're free to reject its teachings as normative, but it won't do to act as if no one's thought carefully before about what it's saying.
Edited by Jhimmibhob on Mar 26th 2019 at 9:44:29 AM
A procrastination in of itself
I’d dispute that the passages about homosexuality are clearly stated.
We’re throwing out the Old Testament due to that being Jewish law (same reason we eat shellfish), so that leaves us with.
- Romans, which isn’t a condemnation of homosexuality, it’s a passage on how people by distancing themselves from god they became so consumed by lust that they broke the bonds of their orientation, it’s not about homosexuality being bad, it’s about how people becoming so consumed by lust that they’ll sleep with anyone (even people outside their orientation) is bad.
- Corinthions, where it’s part of a list (much of which we ignore, idolators aren’t threatened with torture and expulsion from the church) and says “abusers of themselves with mankind”, what that phrase means is up to interpretation, it may specifically refer to the paedophilic homosexual ‘relationships” that Paul will have encountered in Greece and Rome at the time.
- Timothy, which is another list and again uses unclear wording as to if it’s focus is on the fact that a relationship is man-man or that it’s abusive in nature due to age and power differences.
- Jude, which has contested translation and is probably actually about angel rape.
Edited by Silasw on Mar 26th 2019 at 2:01:31 PM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
I didn't say that it was "clearly stated" to the point of being inarguable. But exegetes have certainly done their homework, drawn inferences that have inarguable work behind them, and come to conclusions different from yours on the epistles in question (rightly or not). Long story short: it simply isn't so that traditional churches' conclusions on the subject are necessarily lazy, or poorly thought out.
Edited by Jhimmibhob on Mar 26th 2019 at 11:06:46 AM
Those "well thought out" arguments have always stumbled over the lessons of the Good Samatian (don't do broad-brush bigotry against a whole group of people, especially when it hurts you to do so, just because it's traditional, folks) and the adulterous woman (the death penalty and shunning for a sexual oopsie is too harsh — she needs understanding and help, for all of us sin).
Edited by Euodiachloris on Mar 27th 2019 at 8:21:43 AM
Oh, bother.
I'm suddenly reminded that Brunei is about to make same-sex sexual acts punishable with death by stoning or whipping next week. Along with amputation of hands for robbery. Keep in mind that one can already be imprisoned for up to ten years for same-sex relations in Brunei.
This is something that started when Brunei first adopted strict sharia in 2014. The backlash against the stuff like stoning and whipping delayed it for a while, but it seems like the sultanate is ready to push forward with it.
Brunei will be following in the footsteps of several other Muslim-majority nations where same-sex relations are punishable with death by stoning, such as Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Mauritania.
This will make Brunei the first Asian country where same-sex relations are punishable by death.
Edited by M84 on Mar 27th 2019 at 4:37:06 PM
Disgusted, but not surprised
Not really, Euo. If those "lessons" are that loving one's neighbor and refraining from stoning him are inconsistent with identifying & calling out what one takes to be sin, then Christ Himself would have had some 'splaining to do.
A procrastination in of itself
Thing is the people making the interpretations have until very recently all been homophobes, they’re applying a human interpretation to a human interpretation of divine inspiration. The Bible has been used to justify all sorts of bigotry, hatred and violence over the years, I don’t see anything particularly different about this.
The day the church treats homosexual activity as a sin on the same level as idolatry, lying, excessive drinking and other sins literally listed alongside homosexual activity is the day it can claim to not be hypocritical.
Hell first the church would need to stop treating having homosexual attractions as a sin, if we’re going to get into the details than it’s sodomy amongst men that’s called a sin, a chaste gay relationship doesn’t break any rules in the New Testament.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
She/Her Pronouns
The various churches have been more than willing to agree that many things no longer count as sinful or never did...and yet its special adding gay acceptance to that list? I'm going to echo Euodiachloris and Silasw here, plenty of people can read this and not see an issue with accepting gay people. Having a tradition of hating gay people does not make it correct.
Now, Jhimmibhob, its kinda really a bad look to accuse everyone who argues with you as not caring for the Bible's teachings or having thrown it out, as if you have a monopoly on what is and is not considered a legitimate reading.
Edited by AzurePaladin on Mar 27th 2019 at 9:47:09 AM
The awful things he says and does are burned into our cultural consciousness like a CRT display left on the same picture too long. -Fighteer
That would be a very bad look indeed! And I wouldn't dream of assuming that sort of thing. However, it's nice when the favor goes both ways, and we don't just assume that religious people don't carefully analyze the Bible, or are overlooking hilariously glaring evidence for the other side's chosen point of view.
To be fair, Silas, I'm not sure anyone disagrees that lying, drinking, adultery, theft, contumely, wiping oneself with live kittensnote , etc., etc., are problems. At the very least, those things aren't widely considered morally unexceptionable, or something to be unembarrassed about. If any of them were, I suspect you'd see religious leaders having a lot more to say about them.
This article taks about how a lot of groups targeted by the Religious Right became targets.
And the reason?
Money.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.