What will those secularists say next?

national secular society (which does not capitalize its name at its website, so why should I?):

Title:
Italians Give The Pope A Kick In The Pants

First paragraph:
Pope Ratzinger spent most of last week hysterically berating the Italian government for bringing forward a new partnership law that gives legal rights to unmarried cohabiting heterosexual couples and to homosexual couples. Italy’s most senior cardinal, Camillo Ruini, then announced that he would issue an ‘official note’ to Catholics, asking them to make “a personal commitment to defend marriage and oppose de facto couples”. That was seen as a direct call on Catholic lawmakers to vote against the bill.

Second paragraph:
But a new poll shows that the Vatican is out of step with public opinion in Italy. [...]

Kick in the pants, hysterically berating... A good smile is needed before going into Lent. ;)

The Maltese situation

MaltaToday:

At a time when the Italian Episcopal Council was already at loggerheads with Italy’s centre-left over a proposed law on civil unions, Archbishop Pawlu Cremona’s recent declaration during Georg Sapiano’s discussion programme Doksa came as a genuine surprise to many.
In apparent dissonance with Rome, Archbishop Cremona replied with a resounding “yes” to Sapiano’s question concerning the necessity or desirability for the party in government to continue working to deliver on an electoral promise, made in 1998, to legislate on the rights and obligations of cohabiting couples.
Mgr Cremona said that the Church has already made it clear that the state must legislate to safeguard the rights and interests of those who live together, including, for example, brothers and sisters who share the same house.
[...]

Perhaps wary of treading on the Church’s traditional monopoly on family affairs – unaltered by 160 years of British rule, and only remotely tampered with by Dom Mintoff – the Maltese State has left cohabiting couples in a legal vacuum. Relegated to the status of second class citizens, they have no right of inheritance if their partner dies without leaving a will, no rights to the common home if abandoned by their partner, no say in any decisions affecting their partner’s health and not even a legal right to organise their partner’s funeral.

The first few paragraphs explain the basic situation along with the archbishop's interesting position on the issue. What I find most interesting though is the line that I bolded that gives away in my mind the true intent of the legislation. If all it takes is a will to make sure that person A cohabitating with person B have clear rights of inheritance to each other's property, that's easily remedied. But instead, more rights are demanded in the slippery slope down into the abyss.

Whatever Archbishop Cremona's thoughts are on 'pastoral statements' and the like, he ought to look over the cliff at what lies below before he takes the plunge. The Church's primary goal ought to be protecting the family, not facilitating the ease in which cohabitating couples can simulate family life with all the legal bells and whistles.

No legislation can change the law of the Creator

The Seven Founders of the Servite Order
Feria

AKI:

[...] Pope Benedict XVI on Monday slammed the planned legislation as weakening the family and harming society. "No legislation can change the law of the Creator without making the future of society precarious with laws which are in stark contrast with natural law," the pontiff said.

"A very concrete application of this principle can be found in relation to the family, which is the intimate communion of life as founded by the Creator, with its own rules," Benedict also said. The family "has its stability under divine laws. The good fortune of spouses and society does not depend on arbitrary acts."
[...]

The bill was approved last week for consideration in the parliament. It has proven to be highly divisive, even in Mr. Prodi's ruling coalition; if it fails, it could lead to the fall of the coalition and Mr. Prodi's government.

This guy is so obviously messed up

Saint John Bosco

All Headline News:

Rome, Italy (AHN) - Fashion designer Stefano Gabbana has said the Roman Catholic Church is responsible for "an enormous delay" in the process of legally recognizing civil unions in Italy. Gabbana said the Vatican "fights every day against those who in its opinion cast doubt on the traditional concept of the family."

Gabbana said in an interview with the daily La Stampa that was published Monday that "hobbling politicians who were afraid of losing Catholic votes" have also prolonged the process.
[...]

Bolding is mine.

BREAKING NEWS! CATHOLIC CHURCH DOES ITS JOB!

Adopting we will go, adopting we will go... Oh no!

Conversion of Saint Paul, Com. of St Peter
Conversion of Saint Paul, apostle

Bolding is mine throughout.

Ekklesia:

As government ministers last night (24 January 2007) made it clear that they would not bow to strong pressure from Catholic and Anglican leaders who wish to retain the right for church-sponsored adoption services to refuse lesbian and gay couples, Harriet Harman, Minister for Justice at the Department for Constitutional Affairs, has reminded churches that it is not possible to be “a bit opposed to discrimination”.

Ms Harman, a QC, MP and former UK Solicitor General, made the comment in an interview which appears today (25 January 2007) in the News Statesman magazine. Ms Harman is bidding for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party, and she has been backed by US Catholic politician Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman to have run for national office in the USA as the nominee of a major party – the Democrats.
[...]

The article goes on, describing how critics think the Church is blackmailing and how the Archbishop of Westminster's efforts have backfired...

Guardian Unlimited:

Tony Blair today sought to quell the row over gay adoptions, insisting he was "committed to finding a way through this sensitive and difficult decision".

Proposals to resolve the dispute will be brought forward next week, the prime minister said in a statement.

Reports today suggested that Mr Blair had "caved in" to cabinet colleagues who do not want to see any exemption for Catholic adoption agencies from new regulations that will require them to offer children to same-sex couples.

Mr. Blair's comments from the same article:

Mr Blair said: "There is one last aspect within the new regulations to resolve and it concerns adoption.

"I have always personally been in favour of the right of gay couples to adopt. "Our priority will always be the welfare of the child."

He added: "Both gay couples and the Catholic agencies have a high level of success in adopting hard-to-place children. It is for that reason we have taken time to ensure we get these regulations right.

"How do we protect the principle of ending discrimination against gay people and at the same time protect those vulnerable children who at the present time are being placed through, and after-care provided by, Catholic agencies, who everyone accepts do a great job with some of the most disturbed youngsters?

"We will announce a decision next week and then vote, probably next month.

"I am committed to finding a way through this sensitive and difficult decision."

Oh ho! So it's about ending discrimination against gay couples versus the welfare of the child? I guess freedom of conscience doesn't weigh in there at all...

From the same article:

Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris (Oxford West and Abingdon), a member of the National Secular Society, told Today: "In my view, if people want to provide services, or engage in welfare work using state money, or under a system co-ordinated by the state, they have to accept they can't discriminate."

Dr Harris added that, at the same time, such people should not "proselytise" either.

Remember, readers, what other system of thought in the world does not like it when Christians 'proselytise'? An instructive thought, is it not?

EDIT: I forgot an article I wanted to which I wanted to link: the one at Gay.com. It's a great article.

After much spin, threats of blackmail and swirling rumours, it seems that for now, the Catholic church will have to accept gay adoptions. Despite the Anglicans joining the fray, the education secretary, Alan Johnson, today confirmed reports that the Catholic church has lost its battle for special treatment over gay adoption rules.

The no-frills statement brings to an end weeks of speculation over the issue, fuelled by the idea that Tony Blair and the communities secretary, Ruth Kelly - were sympathetic to the concerns of the Catholic church. It seems that the apparent Catholic fringe have been forced to back down at the prospect a full-blown cabinet revolt.

That is a powerful intro! Progressive journalism at its best!

Civil unions are counterproductive

AKI:

Vatican City, 11 Jan. (AKI) - Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday warned Italian lawmakers against the planned approval of legal rights to civil unions. "Projects aimed at granting improper legal recognition to forms of unions other (than marriage) appear dangerous and counterproductive as they inevitably weaken and destabilise the legitimate family based on matrimony," the pontiff told a gathering of local administrators with the city of Rome, led by mayor Walter Veltroni, the capital's province and the Lazio region.

The pope first stepped into a debate on highly controversial legislation proposed by Italy's progressive government on 22 December, when he condemned the legal recognition of civil unions, including gay couples. "I can't hide my concern about legislation on de facto couples," the pontiff said at the time in a Christmas speech to the Rome clergy.

Benedict moreover harshly criticised last month the possibility that gay couples could be given the same rights as a husband and wife.

The Italian government announced on 7 December it would draft legislation giving legal rights to civil unions including homosexual couples by the beginning of next year despite the opposition of some Catholic coalition members.

Family minister Rosy Bindi, a practising Catholic, shocked many in her coalition and in the conservative opposition when she announced in May, shortly after the new government was sworn in, that Italy had a duty to discuss some kind of recognition of civil unions - even in the face of warnings from the Roman Catholic Church that it opposed any move perceived as a threat to the traditional family.

Her coalition and the conservative opposition were shocked... Does that equal scandalized?

The measure was not part of the electoral programme of the broad eight-party progressive coalition of premier Romano Prodi whose members, including one prominent Catholic party, are deeply divided on the issue.

The Vatican warned Prodi before the vote it condemned civil unions and gay marriages.

When one has broad coalitions, it's wise not to rock the boat on divisive issues, no matter how progressive the coalition parties may be. Prodi doesn't have absolute control like the Socialists in Spain. Of course, floating the issue like this could simply be a ploy to see how it will do. If it goes down in flames, no harm no foul. I ought to find the numbers for the coalition and the opposition as far as seats. That would be instructive. (I looked, 348 to 281. Prodi's majority, if stable enough, has a chance.)

The press goes Wilde!

The Vatican goes Wilde - Belfast Telegraph

What is going on? After all, this is the Church that brands as an "intrinsic moral evil" the homosexual acts for which Wilde's catamite, Lord Alfred Douglas, coined the phrase "the love that dare not speak its name". Wilde was, after all, a byword for the decadence upon which the Victorian values of the age showered ignominy.

Yet it is only the latest such rapprochement. Six years ago, on the centenary of Wilde's death, the Vatican-backed Jesuit quarterly La Civilta Cattolica praised the homosexualist author of such cynical aphorisms such as "there is no sin except stupidity", and "a thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it".

Wilde's writings, said Fr Antonio Spadaro, in the years that followed his two-year sentence of hard labour in Reading jail for "acts of gross indecency with other male persons", demonstrated spiritual values and an "understanding of God's love" that revealed he had seen into the depths of his own soul after a lifetime of "degradation, vanity and frivolity".

Vatican comes out of the closet and embraces Oscar - Times Online

Vatican embraces gay icon - pinknews.co.uk

Oscar Wilde, long claimed by the gay community as the ultimate bitchy queen, has been embraced by one of Pope Benedict’s closest advisers.
[...]

The book is designed to "stimulate a reawakening in certain Catholic circles," Fr Sapienza told Italian paper La Repubblica.

"Our role [as Christians] is to be a thorn in the flesh, to move people’s consciences and to tackle what today is the number one enemy of religion — indifference."

While no-one would argue that the present Pontiff has indeed been a thorn in the flesh of liberal-minded Christians across the world, the inclusion of Wilde in a Catholic-endorsed book has puzzled many Vatican watchers. [Why? Just because he was gay? Tsk.]

Included in the inspirational book are some of Wilde’s best known sayings.

Although his remarks were designed to appear spontaneous, Wilde in fact spend many hours honing his bon mots, in much the same way that today’s homosexuals spend time at the gym perfecting a 'natural' physique.

While Wilde has been claimed as a gay icon, the famous playwright would never have recognised himself as such, being married with children.

He did, however, coin the phrase, "the love that dare not speak its name" in his meditation on desire and punishment, The Ballad of Reading Gaol.

Father Sapienza claims that Wilde will be remembered not for his fall from grace, convicted and imprisoned for gross indecency in 1895 and sentenced to two years hard labour, but rather for his powerful body of work.

Wilde himself flirted with Catholicism during his lifetime, but once said, "To go over to Rome would be to sacrifice and give up my two great Gods: money and ambition."

In the end Wilde opted for that most convenient way to hedge one’s bets - a deathbed conversion.

As I said yesterday, there is no reason why this book should be a shock. Unless the good Father's book is full of indecent and lewd comments (which I'm assuming it's not), then I don't get it. Clever, thoughtful sayings are to be engaged and thought about, not ignored. By engaging them on their own level and considering them and what they mean, Christians can better engage the world at large that has embraced such words that lend so much credence to our instant gratification society.

Assumptions and presumptions

Michael Paulson wrote this article for the Bostom Globe. It covers the usual ground. Its phrasing is what I find interesting.

The Catholic bishops of the United States, faced with ongoing controversy over the church's posture toward homosexuality, next month will vote on a proposal that would condemn ``scorn and hatred" of gays and lesbians but would also declare that gay couples should not be allowed to marry or adopt children, that baptizing the children of same-sex couples presents ``a pastoral concern," and that the church has the right to deny ``roles of service" to gays and lesbians who are not celibate.
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The proposal, which is to be voted on in Baltimore at the next semi annual meeting of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, is sure to ratchet up the debate over gays and lesbians in the Catholic Church, which teaches that men and women who are attracted to people of the same sex should be celibate, as should unmarried heterosexuals. In recent years, the Catholic Church, in Rome and in Boston, has been outspoken in its opposition to same-sex marriage, and, in the wake of widespread presumptions that there is a disproportionately high number of gay men in the Catholic priesthood, the Vatican has undertaken a review of American seminaries that asks students and teachers about the presence of gay men.

The bolding is my own. According to Mr. Paulson, the Church is debating even though its teaching is clear cut. Perhaps what he should say is that different people are wringing their hands and deciding whether or not they can follow the teaching or find some way to undermine it in their favor.