A Little More For Alberta's Bishops To Stew On

Since Alberta's Roman Catholic Bishops seem to have something up their cassocks about transgender students, I thought it would be quite appropriate to post the following article that appeared in Huffington Post  in its entirety:

Two and a half years. That's the average wait time for a transgender child in my region to be seen and assessed by a psychiatrist who specializes in gender dysphoria. 

What can happen in two and a half years? 

I have a transgender child. My child was brave enough to tell me what was happening in his mind and body when he was 8 years old. He told me that nobody would ever love him, and nobody would ever marry him, because he wasn't really the girl he was born as.
He thought nobody would ever love him. He thought something was fundamentally wrong with him, that he was broken, that he was defective. At 8 years old, my child told me he felt he was worthless. No child should feel that way ever for any reason. 

What in the world does this have to do with LGBTQ support guidelines for educators?
Every teacher -- whether they knew what was going on with him or not -- that told him, "Oh, lots of girls go through a tomboy phase..." meant well. But what he heard is "Your brain is wrong. You're a girl." 

Every parent that said, "I'm just worried it will rub off on my child..." doesn't wish their child to go through hardship. But what my child heard is, "You are contagious."
Every time he was made to stand in the girls' line, he was told he was something he's not. Every time he was made to stand in the boy line, he was ostracized and taunted for being different and told loudly by the other boys, "You are not one of us." Every time he was allowed to choose which line to stand in, he was told, "You must show us all this very private thing you are coping with, this thing so huge and challenging half of us will never even attempt to understand it. Declare yourself. Male or female? Are you a weird, wannabe boy, or a freakish, failure of a girl?" 

Does that sound like a harsh interpretation?

What if we forced kids to identify by who had divorced or married parents? Or who had wet their pants beyond age 7? Or who still slept with stuffed animals? Or by financial status, or by who was adopted? 

Why in the world would we ever force children to publicly declare the thing that humiliates them the most, and then categorize and judge them based on those factors? 

Despite a staff full of teachers who meant well, who wanted to support my child's education but were unable to get enough support from their head office to help him the way he needed, I pulled my transgender child from public school. Because I was told that my child's ADHD was the only thing the division could actually help him with. Because it was not until a blog post of mine went viral that parents quit expressing their "concern" that my child was "too troubled" and "should stop calling so much attention to it." 

As if it was something I should just snap my fingers and fix. As if I wasn't doing everything in my power, alone, to try and get him some support, to comfort him when he came home sobbing, when he called me in the middle of the day to tell me he just couldn't take the anxiety anymore. When he was so distraught he couldn't even tell me what was wrong. 

Two and a half years means the difference between life and suicide for thousands of transgender children. If you woke up tomorrow with the wrong set of genitals -- and were then forced to publicly declare to your co-workers and boss that it had happened -- would that be humiliating? Would that impact your ability to do what you're there to do?

When you ask a transgender child to use a bathroom that doesn't coincide with their gender identity, that is exactly what you are doing.

I don't want school divisions to simply provide bathroom support for LGBTQ youth. I want every single staff member in contact with ALL children to be trained in compassionate care of LGBTQ youth. I want the education to be mandatory for staff, and I want parents of LGBTQ kids to have the opportunity to speak publicly and educate parents. No transgender child should ever be outed, publicly misgendered, belittled, dismissed or rejected based on his gender identity or how he presents himself to the world.

My child should never be categorized, labeled, judged and forced to identify based on his deepest, most private internal wars.

MY CHILD SHOULD BE SAFE AND PROTECTED AT SCHOOL.
My child's teachers only meant to help. But some of them lacked the training to reduce his anxiety and exposure as a person who was different. In the span of one school year, my child went from excited to show his true self to his peers -- in the form of a haircut and some new boyish clothes, not even a name change -- to telling me he wished he had never been born and it all could just stop. 

That isn't a far cry from a suicide wish. In just one school year. Now tell me what two and a half years can do. 

LGBTQ health must be prioritized in all areas of life. It is not a fad. It is not elective. If educators do not implement strong guidelines for supporting LGBTQ youth, teachers and parents in schools then children who already struggle to have the desire to keep living have even less hope to cling to. Passive attitudes in building these clear and inclusive guidelines contribute to youth suicide rates. And in ignoring the necessity of these guidelines, you will tell my child, in the absolute clearest terms, that he was right when he thought he didn't deserve the love and respect everyone else does. 

Things can change. LGBTQ kids can grow up with every comfort, safety and support as their cisgender heterosexual peers. The bathroom debate is about so much more than bathrooms. It's about proving to LGBTQ kids that they are as worthy of respect as every other child in each school. It's about proving that we love them, they are not broken and they are safe in school. The struggle won't end when we allow transgender kids to use bathrooms that match their gender, but it's certainly a solid place to start showing them from a very early age that we care, and we are listening and they are safe.

Let's be abundantly clear here.  This isn't about what Roman Catholic theology says about transgender people.  It isn't about what a bunch of adults who have decided to get all uncomfortable about the subject (the same adults who probably can't bring themselves to talk to their children about sex except in the most elliptical of terms, no doubt).  It isn't even about the Bishop's authority with respect to the Roman Catholic school system in Alberta.

This is about one thing, and one thing only:  ensuring that one of the most marginalized groups of students in our schools is able to attend school and learn in a safe, accommodating and welcoming environment.  An environment which singles them out for their "differences", or marks them to their peers as "lesser" beings for whatever reason is unacceptable.  No matter what the theology may say, these children are very real, very much a part of the schools, and they deserve to be treated with respect and dignity like EVERY OTHER MEMBER OF THE STUDENT BODY.

Catholic.org Spouts Off On Transgender Issues

I've tripped over the website "catholic.org" a couple of times in the past.  Generally, I haven't paid them much attention because they seem to be slightly more off their rocker than LifeSiteNews.

However, they posted a particularly vile article today entitled "Gender Is Gift:  The Dangers Of The Gender Identity Movement Must Be Exposed".

Part I:  Who Is CatholicOnline.org?

The first thing I did was try to find out who, or what, is behind the website.  A quick whois dump was quite uninformative:

Domain ID:D129277-LROR

Domain Name:CATHOLIC.ORG

Created On:16-Nov-1994 05:00:00 UTC

Last Updated On:16-Nov-2012 18:39:42 UTC

Expiration Date:15-Nov-2015 05:00:00 UTC

Sponsoring Registrar:Network Solutions, LLC (R63-LROR)

Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED

Registrant ID:46032708-NSIV

Registrant Name:Catholic Online, LLC

Registrant Organization:Catholic Online, LLC

Registrant Street1:ATTN insert domain name here

Registrant Street2:care of Network Solutions

Registrant Street3:

Registrant City:Drums

Registrant State/Province:PA

Registrant Postal Code:18222

Registrant Country:US

Registrant Phone:+1.5707088780

Registrant Phone Ext.:

Registrant FAX:

Registrant FAX Ext.:

Registrant Email:ry62y8nt8zg@networksolutionsprivateregistration.com

About all it did was show a link to Catholic Online, LLC.  Which frankly tells us very little about who is behind this.  The first, and most important, question in my mind was whether or not this group was somehow affiliated with the Catholic Church itself.  A little bit of digging led me to the California Secretary of State website which has a nice little feature for looking up company names:

Results of search for " CATHOLIC ONLINE " returned 1 entity record.

Entity Number	Date Filed	Status	Entity Name	Agent for Service of Process
201003010162	01/28/2010	ACTIVE	CATHOLIC ONLINE, LLC	MICHAEL L GALLOWAY

It doesn't give much more than that, and I'm not surprised by that.  A little bit of digging around turns up a few articles about Mr. Galloway, but nothing particularly revealing beyond having been embroiled in a number of lawsuits over the years.

What it does tell me is enough to be fairly comfortable that any relationship between Catholic Online, LLC and the Catholic Church itself is arms length, and what is published there is reflective of the company and its ownership and is not directed out of Rome.

Part II:   The Article Itself:  Gender Is Gift:  The Dangers Of The Gender Identity Movement Must Be Exposed

Every single human cell contains chromosomes which identify whether we are male or female. That cannot be changed. It is a given. In fact, it is a gift.

Welcome to the opening line - the standard trope we've heard from various sources in the right wing when arguing against any kind of accommodation for transgender people.  Chromosomes determine sex, and sex determines gender ... or so the argument goes.  Of course, there are a plethora of intersex conditions which call that little bit of nonsense into question.

The Gender Identity Movement insists upon the recognition in the positive law of a newfound right to somehow choose one's gender. They insist upon laws which accommodate, fund, and enforce this newfound right. Those involved in the activist wing of the movement want to compel the rest of society to recognize their vision of a brave new world or face the Police Power of the State. In a culture where freedom is redefined as a right to choose anything and liberty has degenerated into license, the newspeak of the age calls the instrumental use of the body of another sexual freedom. Sadly, the same spirit of the age fails to recognize the integral unity of the human person, body, soul and spirit, and has turned the human body into a machine with parts which the revolutionaries think can simply be interchanged. 

The grammar nazi in me desperately wants to tear this paragraph apart.  It is appallingly poorly structured.

However, there are basically three prongs of attack that they are setting out:

1. That laws which prohibit discrimination against transgender people are somehow "creating" a right which did not exist before.
2. That transgender people, simply by existing in the public sphere, are somehow central to the degeneration of society into licentiousness.
3. That transgenderism is based on the notion of body parts being interchangeable. 

I have yet to fully understand what it is that people have against ensuring that all members of society are freely able to live and contribute equally, free from discrimination and marginalization.  Coming from an allegedly Christian source it is particularly disappointing.  One only has to spend a small amount of time reviewing the history of early Christianity to observe that the modern day church has its roots in a highly persecuted group.  That they should engage in the same kind of persecution today is testament to how far the faith has drifted from its roots.

LGBT people have long been pointed to as an example of society degenerating into licentiousness - mostly based on the mythology there is something inherently immoral about someone whose sexual preferences aren't aligned with the "majority".  Really, this is rooted in little more than social "othering" - a favourite tactic of bullies through the ages.

The last claim fails entirely to address the realities of what it means for someone to be transgender.  First of all, it makes the assumption that gender surgery is somehow a central feature of transition.  It is not.  Second, as with the pithy quote used as an introductory statement, it makes the false assumption that there is a direct relationship between gender and genitals.  Talk to anyone who has walked through a gender transition, and you will find that even if they have had Gender Reassignment Surgery (GRS), that there is an awareness that the physical only defines a limited subset of gendered experience.

Quoting former Pope Benedict XVI's address to the Curia in December 2012, the article's author makes the following claims:

"The profound falsehood of this theory and of the anthropological revolution contained within it is obvious. People dispute the idea that they have a nature, given by their bodily identity, which serves as a defining element of the human being. They deny their nature and decide that it is not something previously given to them, but that they make it for themselves. According to the biblical creation account, being created by God as male and female pertains to the essence of the human creature. This duality is an essential aspect of what being human is all about, as ordained by God." 

"This very duality as something previously given is what is now disputed. The words of the creation account: "male and female he created them" (Gen 1:27) no longer apply. No, what applies now is this: it was not God who created them male and female - hitherto society did this, now we decide for ourselves. Man and woman as created realities, as the nature of the human being, no longer exist. Man calls his nature into question. From now on he is merely spirit and will."

Frankly, I do not expect any Pope to be terribly well versed in the subtleties of human experience when it comes to gender, sexuality and the accompanying social baggage.  My expectations where Benedict XVI (Ratzinger) are concerned are exceedingly low.

Ratzinger misses something that is critical in his analysis. He presupposes that the physical body defines the person entirely.  The one thing that psychology has demonstrated in its relatively short history is that mind and body are not guaranteed to be congruent.

Further, his attempt to interpret Genesis literally falls flat on its face when confronted with actual evidence.  Of particular note is the existence of people who have CAS and other intersex conditions.  These are naturally occurring conditions, and just as much part of "God's Creation" as anything else.  Frankly, the rest of the Genesis story is so riddled with statements that we know to be factually incorrect that it is difficult to take seriously any attempt to read it literally.

These articles reflect where this is headed unless we expose it and oppose it. The operative word in all of this is gender.  Cultural revolutionaries are intent on redefining the word. Then, using the Police Power of the State, they insist that people be guaranteed a right to choose their gender and change their mind at whim. 

Babette Francis mentioned a book in the gender identity movement, "Trans People in Love", co-edited by Katrina Fox, an Australian activist, who "wrote an emotive piece for the Australian Broadcasting Commission recently entitled "Marriage needs redefining." In it she insists that all the "gender boundaries" surrounding marriage must be removed. "A more inclusive option," she begins, "is to allow individuals to get married whatever their sex or gender, including those who identify as having no sex or gender or whose sex may be indeterminate."

Well, duh.  As much as the far right wing likes to continue to insist that the only kind of marriage that is valid is between a man and a woman, countries like Canada who have legalized Same Sex Marriage demonstrate clearly that there is absolutely no basis to the fear mongering that society will collapse as a result.  Further, existing marriage laws in so many places hang transgender and intersex people out to dry.

We also face an increase of what are wrongly referred to as Sex Change or Gender Reassignment surgeries. Though those who suffer from Gender Identity Disorder (GID) deserve empathy, the facts remain; no such surgery can accomplish a change of gender or sexual identity. In effect, they mutilate the body and destroy the bodily integrity of the person. 

Every single human cell contains chromosomes which identify whether we are male or female. That cannot be changed. It is a given. In fact, it is a gift.

As previously noted, chromosomes and DNA are far from the entire story when it comes to gender.  Even if you take the line that chromosomes = sex, you run smack into having to explain a variety of intersex conditions where chromosomes clearly do not equal sex.  I'm not at all certain that such simplistic aphorisms are ever going to be meaningful.

Most transsexuals will tell you that if their "birth sex" was a gift, it was given by someone with a particularly nasty sense of humour.

Removal of genitals and attachment of artificially constructed ones which are absolutely incapable of ovulation or conception, in the case of a transsexual male who tries to be a woman, or the generation of sperm, in the case of a transsexual woman trying to be a man, does not change the structure of reality. 

The removal constitutes mutilation and the construction of artificial organs with no reproductive function does not alter the gender or sex of the person. Medical science confirms that our identity as male or female affects even our brains. In addition, even the physical appearance must be sustained by massive doses of synthetic hormones.

The argument that GRS is somehow "mutilation" fails to appropriately examine the consequences of failing to provide that surgery for transsexuals.  Here is where the whole person arguments that the religious love to throw around are obliged face the fact that GRS is part of a protocol aimed at ensuring that the whole person is as congruent as possible.  No more, and no less.

In 2002 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of the Catholic Church issued a letter sent without public release to every Bishop. It clearly stated that such surgical procedures do not alter a person's gender and that in no circumstance are baptismal records of such individuals who have undergone them to be altered. Further, the document made clear that no one who has undergone such a surgery is eligible to marry, be ordained to the priesthood or enter the religious life. 

At the time the letter was received from Rome, Bishop Wilton D. Gregory of Belleville, Ill., was the President of the U.S. Bishops' conference. He sent a letter to all US Bishops in which he wrote "The altered condition of a member of the faithful under civil law does not change one's canonical condition, which is male or female as determined at the moment of birth." 

The Gender Identity Movement insists upon the recognition in the positive law of a newfound right to somehow choose one's gender. They insist upon laws which accommodate, fund, and enforce this newfound right. Those involved in the activist wing of the movement want to compel the rest of society to recognize their vision of a brave new world or face the Police Power of the State.

In short, when you distill the entirety of their argument down, it still reduces to preserving their religiously borne right to treat others as second class citizens.

If the great danger that transgender people pose to the Catholic Church is that their presence and existence will someday force the church to treat all people as equal members of society, then perhaps the Church needs to revisit its dogma and practices with an open heart and mind.  It is hard to argue that would be a bad thing.

It Won't Get Far ...

... but I have to give it points for creativity.

Crimes Against Humanity Charges Against Pope Benedict

There's a copy of the entire submission in the link - it's interesting reading ... but I don't think it has a snowball's chance in hell of going anywhere.

The Problem With Lies ...

... is that they come back to haunt you later.

As the Vatican is learning

A newly revealed 1997 letter from the Vatican warned Ireland's Catholic bishops not to report all suspected child-abuse cases to police – a disclosure that victims groups described as “the smoking gun” needed to show that the Vatican enforced a worldwide culture of coverup.

The letter, obtained by Irish broadcasters RTE and provided to The Associated Press, documents the Vatican's rejection of a 1996 Irish church initiative to begin helping police identify pedophile priests following Ireland's first wave of publicly disclosed lawsuits.

The letter undermines persistent Vatican claims, particularly when seeking to defend itself in U.S. lawsuits, that the church in Rome never instructed local bishops to withhold evidence or suspicion of crimes from police. It instead emphasizes the church's right to handle all child-abuse allegations, and determine punishments, in house rather than hand that power to civil authorities.

Please, Vatican, try to explain that one away as "an exception" or "a rogue priest". The fact is that the more that these things become visible to the public, the more set in the public's mind will be the image of the priesthood as a refuge for pedophiles, and the Church as their primary enabler.

Really, the best thing the Catholic Church could do right now for itself - and its victims - is issue a very lengthy "Mea Culpa", along with every last document related to their appalling handling of child molestation since the 1950s - and start negotiating settlements with their victims. Anything less shows the organization to be no better than those it covered up for so long.

Papal Misogyny is Alive And Well

Who is it that comes up with these things? In the same breath that the Catholic Church made the first steps to rehabilitate itself in light of the Pedophile Priest scandal, they turn around and do this.

The Vatican's reclassification of attempted female ordination was part of a revision of a 2001 decree, the main purpose of which was to tighten up the rules on sex abuse by priests in reaction to the scandals that have been sweeping through the church since January. The most important change is to extend the period during which a clergyman can be tried by a church court from 10 to 20 years, dating from the 18th birthday of his victim.

The new rules introduce speedier procedures for dealing with the most urgent and serious cases; allowed for lay people to form part of church tribunals that judge such cases; put abuse of the mentally disabled on a level with that of minors, and introduced a new crime of paedophile pornography.

Really? The idea that ordaining women is a "crime" on the same level as child molesting priests commit tells us a great deal about how far the Catholic Church has stepped backwards in time.

It seems to me that the current pope is doing a great job of showing the world just how desperately broken the Church is today. There's no way you will ever convince me that someone who has attempted to ordain a female priest has done something as damaging to the lives of others as a priest who molests young children. That the Church is so clueless as to announce these changes along with changes that are related to the pedophile priest situation is a sad, sad testament indeed.

And The Catholic Church Tries To Dodge Accountability

...Again...

The pope’s personal preacher, Father Raniero Cantalamessa, in a Friday sermon in St Peter’s Basilica, said attacks on the Catholic Church and the pope over a sexual abuse scandal were comparable to “collective violence” against Jews.

Yes, the mass extermination of Jews in Europe over imagined collective crimes is entirely analogous to demands the Catholic Church hierarchy be held accountable and liable for very real crimes and very real cover-ups of those crimes.

Today, we see the Church trying to backpedal from such an obvious blunder.

Talk about out of touch with reality.

That Would Be A Start

While the Vatican's official mouthpieces gnash their teeth and angrily deny anything that implies that Pope Benedict XVI ever had anything to do with covering up the tracks of pedophile priests, someone in the Vatican makes a comment that makes sense:

"We need a culture of alertness and bravery, to do the housework," Cardinal Kasper said.
"There is no turning back on the path we are now on and that is good."

If the Vatican actually undertakes such a housecleaning, it could be very fruitful indeed.

However, that said, we have to also recognize that the church has tried to place itself above the law in many countries - and in doing so has failed utterly to do justice to either the victims of its most perverse clergy, but has stained itself twice over by actively allowing the abusers to go on.

This time, while a house cleaning might be a good thing, I think that housecleaning has to be seen to be done in an open, transparent manner, possibly with the church itself taking criminal and civil responsibility not just for its actions, but those of its clergy who were protected by policies that enabled the abuse.

Unfortunately for the Pope and his defenders, the allegations that he directly or indirectly was involved are serious, and must be addressed. To do anything less would call into question any 'housecleaning' exercise that might be undertaken by the Vatican ... and since the Vatican is clearly a biased party, the entire case - all of it - should be turned over to the legal authorities that operate in the region of the diocese/archdiocese that Ratzinger was in charge of.

I doubt very much that the Vatican will be anywhere near as open about all this as is truly needed.

It's About Accountability and Responsibility

Ironically, in spite of the headline, I'm not going to be talking about Stephen Harper and his band of twits. This is about the seemingly endless sex abuse scandal that continues to rock the Roman Catholic Church ... and Michael Coren's utter misunderstanding of the situation.

It’s Saturday, so it must be time for yet another attack on the Roman Catholic Church — this time involving lies about the Pope, his brother and, before long, his auntie Freda and his pet cat Hans.

Logical thinking and balanced thought were eliminated from this subject long ago. It’s church-bashing time and why bother about poverty and war when you can pretend that Catholicism is to blame for everything.

Of course - the nitwit picks up on the role that the current Pope has apparently played in one diocese, and conveniently ignores the fact that what's coming out now shows us a picture of an organization that has actively and systemically enabled pedophiles in its midst.

Yet if we are to believe the media, abuse is almost exclusively Catholic and — here we go again — all because of celibacy and an all-male clergy.

Complete trash-talk of course. A failed priest says no more about Catholicism than a failed Canadian says about Canada.

Nice straw man argument there, Michael. Care to try again? I don't think people really care what vows a priest takes. While personally I find the notion of a celibate priesthood a bit ridiculous, that's really an internal matter as it has little or no effect on the parishoners whether the priest is married or not.

While sexual abuse is obviously grotesque, the number of occurrences in the Catholic Church is neither higher nor lower than any other denomination or religion and the same as those in education, sports and any other institution that involves a power dynamic between adults and youth.

Again, Coren completely misses the boat. In those other "institutions", the abuser and their enablers are subject to criminal prosecution, and rightly so. The issue here is that the Catholic Church has tried to not only set itself apart from the laws in so many lands, but has actively attempted to protect its clergy from prosecution - not just once, but repeatedly.

Worse, from an optics point of view, is that the current Pope's name appears repeatedly in this history - including renewing or re-approving the original protocol the church came up with to conceal child molesters in its midst.

People are looking for something here - it's called accountability. The rot in the clergy has been percolating to the top, and today the people who are implicated are very highly placed in the church hierarchy. These are people whose acts and actions attempted to protect the abusers, but coerced the abused into 'vows of silence' and generally tried to place the clergy outside the laws of the land.

If a hockey coach abuses his players, he goes to trial. If his leadership moves him around to conceal his tracks, they too are culpable for their acts. Why should a member of the clergy be any different simply because they are part of the Catholic Church?

Yet More Child Molesting Clergy

In the last few days, it has become very apparent that the phenomenon of Roman Catholic clergy molesting children was not just an oddity that took place in a few North American parishes.

I see now that the Pope is saying "sorry" to his flock in Ireland with a Pastoral Letter.

This has been bubbling about for close to twenty years in North America, and the incidents that are being described go back as far as the 1950s. Entire generations of the faithful have been lied to and deceived by the church hierarchy which is known to have actively covered up the tracks of its pedophiles and protected them from the legal prosecution that would have befallen them had the law caught up to them.

At this point, anything like an investigation that originates in the Vatican will have no credibility whatsoever. It is already clear that the Vatican hierarchy has moved in the past to protect its own from the consequences of their actions, after so many decades, one can only imagine the degree of organizational rot that must pervade the entire structure. Coverups, deceit and lies all in the name of protecting the "reputation" of the Church are guaranteed to be corrosive to the organization itself.

Instead, If the Pope truly wants to make a clean break of things, and re-establish his Church's moral authority, he should open the doors of the Vatican's archives (all of them!), as well as those of every diocese of the church to a public, legal investigation by a third party such as Scotland Yard or Interpol.

The goal of such an investigation? To describe the activities not only of the Church's pedophiles, but also the actions of the church hierarchy with respect to those abuses. Further, the perpetrators must be brought to account for their actions - in both the courts of secular law and the Church itself. The results of that investigation must be fully public, and the consequences for those identified must also be public - anything less would smack of further coverup and protectionism. This may be a massive bloodletting within the Vatican hierarchy, potentially going all the way to the top, but it must happen in order for the Catholic Church to reclaim any sense of moral validity in the years to come.

At this point, the reputation of the Church is so besmirched with the taint of sexual abuse and coverup that it is hard to take any of its moral teachings seriously. To rail against civil rights for GLBT people whose actions are about living in society in peace with those whom they love when your entire organization seems to have become the world's largest pedophile ring seems more than just a little hypocritical.

The Poor, Persecuted Christian ... and Reality

Over at No Apologies, we find them desperately trying to spin things into a case of "persecuted christianity" because Washington, D.C. might pass a law legalizing SSM.

In Washington, D.C., the Catholic archdiocese has threatened to end its charitable work in the city – the work of Catholic Charities – if homosexual “marriage” rights are passed and the state tries to force Catholic Charities to extend employee benefits to homosexual “married” couples. If this happens, homosexualists will be to blame for terminating important charitable aid to the needy.

Then there is reality - The Catholic Church is the one threatening to shut down it's charitable works in D.C. if the bill is passed.

What soup kitchens for the poor have to do with SSM is a bit of a puzzle, isn't it?

But officials from the archdiocese said they feared the law might require them to extend employee benefits to same-sex married couples. As a result, they said, the archdiocese would have to abandon its contracts with the city if the law were passed.

Oh, now I see. The Church is afraid it might have to treat gay employees as actual equals with respect to subjects such as benefits plans.

The reality here is that the Church is offended that it might have to treat all of its employees as equals for subjects such as paid benefits plans. In other words, the Church is about to lose yet another area where it can discriminate and treat gay people as second class citizens.

It's important to note that the law in question does not impinge upon the Church's autonomy with respect to deciding who it will or will not marry:

Under the bill, which has the mayor's support and is expected to pass next month, religious organizations would not be required to perform same-sex weddings or make space available for them.

In order to get its way, the Church is effectively making the clients of its charitable operations the victims. The denizens of No Apologies, are, of course, trying to spin this hostage taking as being the fault of those who back gay marriage. In effect, they are saying that the Church's actions are the direct result of the law changing, instead of recognizing that the Church has choices it can make. It could choose to simply extend benefits to same sex couples that are legally married - and there would be no issue. Instead, they choose to try using their charitable operations as a political lever.

Hardly something that one can blame the backers of the gay marriage bill in D.C. for.

Trick Or Trout!

You know that the Vatican's lost their marbles when they start echoing the fundamentalist nutballs:

What millions around the world consider a harmless tradition bound by unconvincing costumes and mountains of teeth-rotting sweets is, according to the Catholic Church, riddled with a dark undercurrent of occultism and is "absolutely anti-Christian".

But the Church's hypocrisy gets even richer - as they descend into the depths of stupidity:

Earlier this week, the Catholic Church in Spain also condemned the growing popularity of Halloween, saying it threatened to overshadow the Christian festival of All Saints' Day.

We don't need to spend too much time reflecting on the fact that much of the modern Christian calendar is based on conveniently placing holy celebrations at times which conveniently coincided with various pagan counterparts ... in a deliberate effort to overshadow the pagan celebrations.

Coming from an organization that claims the Pope has some kind of ultimate holy conduit to God that the rest of us can never possibly hope to share in, it seem particularly ironic that they worry about "occultism" - as little could be more occult than claiming to be in direct communication with the supernatural.

In The Department of Not Getting It

We have the Catholic Church and Michael Coren.

First up is the following news brief from Zenit: Vatican Official Asks Security Group for Genuine Respect:

He pointed out that "incidents of hatred, discrimination, violence and intolerance against Christians and members of other religions continue to occur too frequently in the OSCE region and are symptomatic of the lack of peace in the world."

Monsignor Frontiero suggested that the OSCE's commitment to combat intolerance aims to promote genuine respect of "the differences among us."

The Holy See representative explained that "an absence of convictions is not synonymous with tolerance."

And, he contended, only skepticism and relativism remain if there is an absence of some "convincing notions of truth which require that we be tolerant with one who has a different idea of the truth of things."

On a first glance, there's not much to disagree with in Monsignor Frontiero's comments. Discrimination against someone on the basis of their faith is wrong, and should be challenged at every turn.

However, given the church hierarchy's involvement in firing someone for being transsexual, it starts to smell of hypocrisy to me.

Then we have Michael Coren's most recent contribution to the National Post in which he adopts a stance towards criticism of the Vatican that is very similar to the "support Israel at all costs" mentality we regularly see out of the hard right wing.

Today secularism is the ideology of fashion but Catholicbashing, the last acceptable prejudice in polite society, is the toxin the runs through the contemporary bloodstream of Western liberal society.

What Bishop Raymond Lahey is accused of doing is unspeakably awful, but an abuser no more represents the Church than a criminal politician represents democracy. But no, we are told, it's inherent to Catholicism because the Roman Catholics won't change with the times.

Right - I've heard this before - and explained why Coren is wrong.

But Coren goes even further down the rabbit hole of trying to justify the inaction of the Catholic Church towards the pedophiles in the priesthood:

On a clinically practical level, celibacy has nothing to do with sexual exploitation. The abuse rates inside the Catholic Church are almost precisely the same as those in other Christian denominations, non-Christian religions, education, public service and virtually all institutions.

That doesn't make it right, nor does it justify the Church actively protecting these predators by concealing them and moving them about - or just blatantly ignoring their activities.

The issue is not the presence of pedophiles in the priesthood, it is the rank hypocrisy of a church organization that seems to think that on one hand it can justify enabling these people while actively engaging in discrimination, persecution and marginalization of those they deem "immoral".

Among thinking people, it's hard to accept the Church's "teachings" when the odor of corruption and hypocrisy wafts from the Vatican on a seemingly weekly basis.

As an aside, Mr. Coren might want to consider the fact that unlike a lot of faiths, the Catholic Church is also a political institution which regularly tries to inject itself into the political dialogue of the world - this is all the more offensive when their pronouncements on subjects are so often at odds with their own actions.

As an aside - my beef is not with the Catholic Faith per se, but rather the political structure and its denizens who claim to be the speakers and keepers of the faith - somewhere along the way in the last 2000 years, they lost sight of the real value the Church is capable of bringing to the world

Let's Talk About "Spiritual Toxic Waste", Shall We?

Since the Vatican seems to be so willing to bleat about the evils of humanism, it's time to consider the toxicity of the Vatican's own actions in history.

Canada's own history with the church is speckled and mixed - hardly filled with the acts of a Church that is universally, and always, good. Whether it is the Church's operation of Mount Cashel Orphanage, participation in the Indian Residental Schools, or the numerous and seemingly repeating scandals of pedophile priests being caught out time and again, it seems as though the church has a pretty good legacy of lecturing people on the evils of their sexuality, while quietly covering up their own indiscretions.

Talk to the survivors of sexual abuse, and ask them how toxic it has been in their lives. Talk to the survivors of the residential schools about how well that little exercise worked, or the horrors they lived through. It's some of the darkest parts of Canada's history which have the Catholic Church right smack in the middle of it all.

I think particularly appalling has been the fact that the Church hierarchy had active policies in place in the 1960s which basically concealed any of the clergy who were known to be up to no good by moving them around to other parishes ... often one step ahead of the law it seems. In the most recent case, the Church was fully aware of what was happening, and did nothing about it.

So, it is with some askance that I regard statements like this from the Vatican:

"For example," the cardinal explained, "equality of people no longer just means equal dignity and access to fundamental human rights; but also the irrelevance of the natural differences between men and women, the uniformity of all individuals, as though they were sexually undifferentiated, and therefore the equality of all sexual orientations and behavior: heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, transsexual, polymorphous. Each individual has the right to freely practice -- and change, should they wish -- their choices in line with their drives, desires and preferences."

Goodness - the idea that we might treat people with respect and dignity - even when they are different from one another just seems so shockingly toxic compared to child abuse and actively facilitating it.

Really, coming from an organization that continues to advocate for the subjugation of women (preferably relegating them to the role of pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen under the current Pope it seems), enables pedophiles and shelters them from the law, and has participated actively in some of the most egregious moments in history, it's hard to take any of these utterances seriously. In fact, the first thought that springs to mind is "and just what is this Cardinal trying to hide?".

It has taken the better part of the last half century for Canada to begin confronting some of the darker chapters in its own short history. I can only imagine what is really going on behind closed doors in various African "missions" - no matter how noble their cause may sound - and in the silence of the moral shadows they cast, just how many innocent tears are being shed as a result of the "moral toxicity" of the church's own "Spiritual Toxic Waste".

Yet Another Coverup

So ... the Church knew that Lahey was into porn 20 years ago.

At the time, Lahey was the bishop for St. George's diocese in western Newfoundland. In 2003 he moved to Nova Scotia to head the diocese of Antigonish.

"I asked him what he did with [that information], and Father Molloy mentioned that he had taken it to the appropriate authorities. In this case, it would have been Archbishop [Alphonsus] Penney," Currie said.

Penney was not available for an interview Monday, but CBC News reached Molloy in Florida where he is now a priest. Molloy confirmed what Currie told CBC News.

In short ... once again, the church hierarchy quietly hushed it up ... until 20 years later when his laptop is checked and found to be full of child porn. This is precisely what I was talking about when I excoriated Michael Coren for his naive defense of the church.

Coren Doesn't Get It ...

As if it should come as any surprise, but Michael Coren is trying to defend the Catholic Church in light of a former Archbishop facing child porn accusations.

It says a great deal about the man who is accused but, and this is important, it says little if anything about the organization to which he belongs.

If, for example, a leading Tory, Liberal or New Democrat were caught with child pornography, would we then assume the Tory, Liberal or New Democrat parties were somehow culpable? Of course not.

No, Michael - once again you have got it wrong - very wrong. The issue of the Catholic Church and its ranks of pedophiles in the priesthood is not just about a small percentage of the clergy engaging in sexual predation from a position of trust in the community.

It's about the Catholic Church having in place a hush-hush plan to cover up the misdeeds of their clergy starting in the 1960s - a tacit approval of their behaviour from the Vatican. The church didn't want them to face justice, and took steps to ensure that they did NOT face justice.

It's also about an organization which spends its time condemning everybody it can for having an active sex life; for using contraception, for being GLBT and so on. In a context where they have actively protected and nurtured the worst kind of sexual predators out there - pedophiles.

The church has, at no time, either taken responsibility for its role in these situations, nor has it ever done what it constantly demands of others - repented for its misdeeds. The Pope issued a flaccid apology of sorts recently, but then turned around and has tried blame it all on "homosexual priests" - ignoring the Vatican's own complicity in the situation. Further, the Vatican has gone out of its way to leave the affected parishes twisting in the breeze, while the coffers of the Vatican continue to house an astonishing amount of wealth.

Until the Catholic Church takes responsibility for what happened, and its role in the whole sordid mess, every time another clergyman shows up with his hands dirty, you can expect it to reflect not just upon the individual cleric, but upon the church itself as well. Taking responsibility for what happened is the first step; repentance is the next.

When the Catholic Church starts dealing with its own sexual issues in a realistic and meaningful way, then, and only then, will they be in a position to talk about sexuality with the rest of us. Dealing with things realistically will help - and coming up with bogus tests to determine if a seminary candidate has "homosexual tendencies" isn't realistic! Until then, the church hierarchy continues to look like a bunch of hypocrites.

Horsefeathers and Mumbo Jumbo

Oh dear. I see that the religious crowd in Australia is getting their knickers in a twist over the prospect of same gender marriage.

We've heard all of the arguments in that article in Canada - and every last one of them is specious because they fail to recognize one fundamental point: Nobody is talking about the religious notion of marriage, but rather the secular and legal notion of marriage.

They can blather on all they like about the "uniqueness of love between a man and woman", or how sex between a man and a woman is "designed to create life" and they still miss the point entirely.

There are a couple of gems in the midst of their fear-riddled tirade against allowing gay couples to marry.

But, as hard and painful as it is for those who suffer
from same‐sex attraction, real love demands chastity – the integration of sexual desires into unselfish love for the other person. This means abstaining from sex that is not marital and open to life. Unfulfilled sexual desires can be a painful cross to carry. But a chaste life brings us true inner peace and joy, because we are living in harmony with the way our bodies have been designed and we are treating the person we love as a gift – loving him or her for their own sake, and not for the sexual pleasure they can give us.

Oh yes, the classic Catholic dogma - tut tut tut ... no sex outside of marriage; and anything within marriage had better be about making more babies.

Then it invokes the "nobility of suffering" line while advocating that homosexuals should have no sex lives whatsoever.

What this theology fails to recognize is the importance of sexual activity as part of a social bonding process between individuals. Whether the sexual activity is heterosexual or homosexual, it has a unique effect in bringing the partners closer together over time. It isn't trivial and should not be ignored. It is, in some ways significant that when a marriage gets into trouble (and they do), one of the first things to be withdrawn by one of the partners is sex. I do not think that is any accident, since it is a very common pattern. Conversely, a healthy marriage has an active and ongoing amount of sexual activity in it - and this pattern doesn't appear to differ substantially whether we are talking about a heterosexual or homosexual couple.

Allowing two men or two women to ‘marry’ would involve a fundamental
change in the definition of marriage, from a life‐giving and sexually complementary union to a personal, romantic relationship with no true communion or connection to procreation. It will entrench, in a public way, the separation of sex from babies and marriage from children. It will move marriage from a children‐centred institution to an adult‐centred one. It will trivialize the meaning and dignity of motherhood and fatherhood. This will deeply affect children and young people’s aspirations for their own marriage.

Nice try. You missed again. There isn't a shred of evidence to back this claim up. This is a restatement of the "marriage = sex = babies" routine. I hate to point this out, but it's hardly news that there are lots of marriages without children; and lots of children born out of wedlock (go back to when clergy acknowledged their offspring, we used to call them bastards - remember?) To claim that there is some magical connection between marriage, sex and raising children is arguably false - and I dare say that most single parents would agree.

Further, I don't think that the fraction of same gender marriages that will be created will ever be big enough to meaningfully affect how most heterosexual couples live. The fact is that homosexual couples have been a part of society for at least as long as we have had recorded history - not once have those couples ever changed the behaviour of their heterosexual counterparts.

As for the qualitative arguments about the "uniqueness of love between a man and a woman", those are pure conjecture. Nobody that I know of has ever been able to substantiate that love in that context is different between heterosexual and homosexual couples. The religious crowd likes to assert it ... let them prove it.

Yet Another Celibate In A Cassock On Sexuality

I see Calgary's Bishop Henry is dutifully parroting his masters in the Vatican:

In a letter to the editor, Henry said the Christian virtues of chastity, abstinence and fidelity are "the most effective means of primary HIV prevention," and should not be pushed aside as valid prevention options in favour of passing out condoms.

When asked about his opposition to the Stephen Lewis Foundation, Henry said teachers do have other options in supporting AIDS charity efforts in Africa.

"If you have two businesses or organizations, one that doesn't support your values and mission statement and an-other that does, which one are you going to support? I think that the answer is obvious," Henry told the Herald in an e-mail.

Glad to see you are such an obedient scribe for your masters, Henry...now, perhaps you might do something useful and start actually thinking for yourself and looking at the reality of the world. Perhaps you might figure out that people have sex all the time - regardless of what moralizing stance the Catholic Church puts forward.

Shorter Vatican: The Guy At The Top Is Clueless

Apparently a few people in the Vatican are starting to awaken to the reality that the current Pope is somewhat less than beneficial to the Catholic Church's image.

Another Vatican insider described Pope Benedict's four-year-old papacy as "a disaster", recalling the pontiff's previous inflammatory remarks on Islam and homosexuality.

"He's out of touch with the real world," the Italian insider said. "On the condom issue, for example, there are priests and bishops in Africa who accept that condoms are a key part of the fight against Aids, and yet the pope adheres to this very conservative line that they encourage promiscuity. The Vatican is far removed from the reality on the ground."

No kidding. The rest of us who live with reality on a daily basis figured that out ages ago. Before Benedict ascended to the papacy, really, but we also recognize that the Church has backslid an enormous distance since Pope Benedict took over.

The pope's spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, also wears two other hats – he is also the head of Vatican radio and of its television service. Observers question whether he can effectively handle such an onerous workload.

"He's got too many jobs. There's talk that he is going to go," said a third Vatican source. "You have people around the pope who seem to be out of their depth. There needs to be a major re-think of the operation, not the structure necessarily but the people."

The Vatican's press office works to a timetable from a gentler era, closing each day at 3pm, and familiarity with the internet appears barely to have penetrated the Vatican's cloistered confines.

No kidding. This is a pope whose fossilized thinking is still aware (and barely) of the wire services, much less the speed with which stories get around on the Internet.

"I think there's a good story to be told about this pope but it just doesn't get out because of the colossal ineptitude of the Vatican in terms of communications," said John Allen, a veteran Vatican analyst with National Catholic Reporter who is travelling with the pope in Africa.

It's hard to imagine what that 'good story' might be, when the pope consistently opens his mouth and demonstrates to the world how amazingly out of touch with reality he is.

This is a pope who might be a good man, but he is not a man of the times by any stretch of the imagination ... and he repeatedly demonstrates it.

Bishop: Diversity Is Fine ...

Unless it conflicts with church dogma.

Following Misericordia University's decision to host a homosexualist speaker, Bishop Martino has called on the school to dissolve the "Diversity Institute" that sponsored the event.

I don't even know where to begin with this class of stupidity. A group that exists on Campus to explore the issues of diversity brings in a speaker from a community that the Roman Catholic church disagrees with, so now they should be disbanded?

So much for the concept of University as a place of intellectual discourse and reasoned investigation.

"The Bishop's rationale is that students should learn respect for all races and cultures, but that viewpoints that are in direct opposition to Catholic teaching should not be presented under the guise of 'diversity.' Doing so within a formal structure sanctioned by the institution gives the impression that these viewpoints are acceptable, or that all morality is relative."

How about a revolutionary idea, Bishop. If the school is truly a university, let it be. If someone wants their worldview blinkered the way you describe, they can attend a seminary.

Frankly, if bringing in a GLBT speaker is that threatening to the Bishop, I think he would benefit from precisely the kind of program that the Diversity Institute represents.

Nobody Expects The Inquisition

Least of all a Seminary.

Apparently the Catholic Church thinks they have solved the problem of pedophilia in the priesthood - by trying to filter out homosexual candidates.

The authors said screening would help avoid "tragic situations" caused by what they termed psychological defects.

The guidance says the voluntary tests should also aim to vet for those with "deep-seated homosexual tendencies".

Among other traits that might make a candidate unsuitable for the priesthood, the advice lists "uncertain sexual identity," "excessive rigidity of character" and "strong affective dependencies".

Ummm...yeah...good luck with that. I imagine that the usual techniques involving hot pokers and the like will extract the "truth" from candidates too.

Utterly laughable is the idea that there is some kind of knowable and predictable test of someone's sexual identity. (There is, but it depends entirely upon the individual's desire to be open about their sexuality)

Tests for sexual identity, like any other personality attribute, are fairly hard to assess. I suspect the Church's hunt for homosexuals attempting to enter the clergy will be only marginally more successful than past attempts to unearth "witches".