You knew the Prada Pope had to make a statement after the California Supreme Court said OK to marriage equality.
One day after California overturned a ban on same-sex marriage, the Holy Father has firmly stated that only marriage between a man and a woman is moral.(Here are some wonderful photos from a celebration in West Hollywood after the California Supreme Court’s historic decision.)…While the Pope did not directly mention the ruling in California in his address to the Forum of Family Associations and the European Federation of Catholic Family Associations, Benedict XVI stressed the importance of the traditional family for the good of society.
“The union of love, based on matrimony between a man and a woman, which makes up the family, represents a good for all society that can not be substituted by, confused with, or compared to other types of unions,” he said.
He continued by speaking of the rights of the traditional family, “founded on matrimony between a man and a woman, the natural cradle of human life.” Mention of the need to defend the family is not uncharacteristic for Pope Benedict, but his statement takes on particular relevance following the California ruling.
Since Pope Benedict has showered love on the bonds of heterosexual marriage yet again, I thought I’d post this food for thought. A horror on Long Island, NY:
Two toddlers have been placed in the care of Suffolk County Child Protective Services after police arrested their parents on drug and endangerment charges.Suffolk police responded to a Shell Road home around 3 pm May 9 after receiving a tip of possible animal abuse, according to police reports. They discovered a dog locked with its own filth in a small cage, without water, and entered the home.
Inside, they found a 4-year-old boy naked and a 2-year-old boy wearing a dirty diaper. They also found Jeffrey Littlefield, 24, and Heather Littlefield, 23, the boys’ parents, apparently under the influence of drugs, along with more than 200 used and uncapped hypodermic needles and “at least one hypodermic needle loaded with drugs,” according to a police statement.
Needles were in “virtually every room in the house,” the statement added. Also confiscated were two rifles with ammunition, several knives, used glassine bags and other drug paraphernalia, police said.
When Jeffrey Littlefield approached officers, he stumbled to the floor; Heather Littlefield was found unconscious on the bathroom floor, police said.
48 Responses to “Papa Ratzi weighs in on marriage after CA ruling”
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that guy is total wingnut tool. in my tinfoil hat day, I would say he is being installed by Bush-Cheney via rigged election. (do you know german installed a pope during WWII?)
at least this guy is pretty old and won’t last another 10 years without turning senile. (I wonder who is the next strongest voice. )
vatican insider politics can be so intriguing sometimes.
If he does turn senile, who the fuck will notice?
My feelings on gay marriage can be summed up in one sentence:
If Lyle Menendez can get married while serving a life sentence for murdering his parents,without a whiff of protest from anybody, there’s really no excuse for saying gay couples can’t get married.
eeeeeek, but that photo is mega-creepy!
What skin is it off Ratzi’s back if LGB people want to be with each other? He would sentence them to being lonely for the rest of their lives. What does he gain (and the other bigots gain) by trying to make sure some segment of humanity is miserable?
He should stick to making hetero Catholics lives miserable and leave the others alone…
Still wondering what precisely is so damn important about mixed/gender couples. Is there some
magic’scuse me, holy magnetic polarity thing going on, with intersecting fields interacting with the wedding ring and creating some kind of radiation that children need to grow up healthy or something?Hey, they just admit the earth revolves around the sun. few years back. …lol
at he is not going back on theory of evolution like the rest of conservative (yeah, I want to see that, He’ll get kicked out of the church by way of academic wing revolts.)
Kyra, I think it’s some primal fear that the human species will disappear or something.
In general, I don’t think those who are so adamant about maintaining certain volumes of reproduction are really concerned with actual living people (many of them seem to more or less despise people other than themselves). Rather, it is the necessity of maintaining a constant flow of souls to god, which assures they will be rewarded for their “work” on god’s behalf.
Either that, or making sure there is some kind of mythical “balance” without which the universe will collapse or something. There is also a mindset that emphasizes obeying arbitrary rules, no matter what. If all the rules are followed, precisely, whether they make sense or not, you’ll get a bigger mansion in heaven or something.
The fact that they often don’t seem to care in the least about how bad the conditions all these excess humans live under indicates to me just how little they concern themselves with the reality of other people’s existence, as opposed to the abstract idea.
In any case, they are really more concerned about themselves than they are about anyone else…
I don’t think it’s even anything that sophisticated. I think it’s just worship of the phallus and the hierarchy that goes with it. The “traditional” marriage of man and woman is a man getting free orgasms and a woman getting pregnant and doing the housework. You can’t map that model onto a same-sex couple without either thinking of a male person being subjugated or a female person being in power. And their reading of the bible says neither of those things is allowed to happen.
Has anyone ever gotten more coverage for less reason than the Pope? It’s not like we don’t know everything he’s going to say.
And squashed, the Germans didn’t exactly “install” a Pope during the war. They just lucked out with Pius XII, who kept his mouth shut all through the Holocaust and other atrocities. (Which is why I roll my eyes especially hard when a Catholic prelate denounces abortion as “a modern Holocaust.” You’re a little late to the party, bub.)
Ratzinger (I refuse to call him by his title) looks like pure, concentrated evil.
The only question is, between he and Cheney, who is the Sith Lord and who is merely the apprentice?
Personally I think the Roman Catholic Church should have to pay good money for all the free advertising they get. They get free publicity like no other Christian denomination does.
Seriously, whens the last time the Archbishop of Canterbury was covered like this? Or the Patriarch of Constantinople?
Thats why all the whining by Bill Donahue and the like about the treatment of the Roman Catholic Church in the media is such B.S.
Bitter Scribe May 18, 2008 at 10:59 am
the Germans didn’t exactly “install” a Pope during the war.
choosing pope is basically closed door caucus event, with very few cardinals. The church history is littered with various power influencing who gets to be the pope. At some point there was even two competing popes.
I think miserable people are more likely to turn to religion than happy people, thus the top of any religious hierarchy is concerned with increasing the misery of the world.
Okay, so it’s so cynical it’s dark like some really dark thing, but doesn’t that sort of thinking explain the Catholic Church’s stance on most issues? Keep those women unhappy and churning out unwanted kid after another and you’ve got the actual unsung backbone of the church for at least another generation. Tell those gays to stuff it and they have nowhere else to turn for a little human care and comfort than the Church… at least in the bad old days when people actually cared what the Church thought.
You know what? I love Pam and I love Pandagon and I’m glad California did the right thing (despite the fact that i’m sure they’ll reverse it in November, because the state’s real motto is “we want to look progressive and tolerant but the state government will ream you at the drop of a hat and leave you to clean up the resulting shitpile), but I’m a civil libertarian, and I think the Pope is right here.
Why? Because it is entirely the business of the Catholic church who the church will and will not marry. The Catholic church has refused to marry couples for centuries that the civil laws of America have had no trouble marrying (specifically, previously-divorced people who have not obtained a church annulment).
Freedom of religion means it’s their business who they will and won’t marry, and change for that must come from within the church’s own ranks. Separation of church and state means those of use who are not Catholic are not, and should not, be limited by Catholic theology.
So, yeah, I hope they stop treating millions of gay Catholics as second-class Christians, but it’s got no bearing on the rest of us. And if someone says it should, that’s the political discussion we need to have.
Why? Because it is entirely the business of the Catholic church who the church will and will not marry.
Agreed, but as a head of state, Benedict has declared gays as “disordered” and that same-sex marriage is a threat to society, not just Catholics, or Catholicism. He tried to interfere in Spain’s decision to open civil marriage to gays. He failed on that one, thankfully.
His church has tried to skirt civil law by allowing pedophile priests to run unchecked, harming innocent children and their families and trying to cover it up. He is the prime example of moral hypocrisy, and he is treated with the utmost respect by other heads of state.
When he stops trying to suppress the civil rights of LGBTs and cleans his house of hypocrisy and greed, then I’ll really have nothing to blog about.
That’s true Matt, the Catholic church doesn’t have to marry people they don’t want to marry. But since that’s the case, why is he up in arms about what another country’s state’s government is allowing? Just because the state of CA allows gay marriages that won’t affect the Catholic church. If priests don’t want to marry them in church, they won’t have to it’s a government matter, not religious.
Ben D.
My catholic friend’s appellation “The Rat in the Hat” might work as well.
You laugh, but last night I came home late and I had a pamphlet from this organization: http://www.geocentricity.com
They’re out there!
Papa Ratzi, lol.
Bitter Scribe: The Germans didn’t exactly “install” a Pope during the war
Squashed: choosing pope is basically closed door caucus event, with very few cardinals.
Squashed, mon petit jobard, Pius XII was installed March 2 1939. WWII broke out in September. It’s also worth noting that the guy wasn’t exactly on Germany’s Most Favourite List prior to his election.
Seriously, whens the last time the Archbishop of Canterbury was covered like this? Or the Patriarch of Constantinople?
IIRC, Roman Catholics are still the single largest Christian denomination in the world, so we do have numbers on our side.
Nevertheless, I’m really not looking forward to the fulminations from the pulpit at my cousin’s Catholic wedding this summer. Like Matt said, the Catholic Church isn’t going to be forced to perform ceremonies for gay couples thanks to the First Amendment, so they need to STFU about how Gay Marriage Will Kill Us All. That’s what you said about divorce, and the total collapse of society is not upon us, so you don’t have a great track record making pronouncements about marriage, do you?
So … when is ratzie going to marry a woman, huh? It if is all so goddamn important for society and civiliation, why aren’t priests REQUIRED to have wives?
Marrying Ratface would only be a lateral move away from necrophilia.
Nah! Clergymen should be spared the excruciating indignity of being bound to a daughter of Eve. /snark
Peter O’Toole as Pope Paul III in The Tudors: “You and I Campeggio have done well to avoid the craft of women. Celibacy is an immense relief.”
Although the body-hating theology that props it up is evil and stupid, priestly celibacy makes a lot of sense for running an authoritarian theocracy (and yes, there are other kinds). Otherwise you get harem cults like FLDS, Koresh, various gurus blah blah blah, or at the very least some pretty serious local governance issues. By reducing the incentive for dictators to pass power to acknowledge sex partners and/or offspring, you mix things up a bit.
Of course, it would be better all round just not to be an authoritarian theocracy.
It if is all so goddamn important for society and civiliation, why aren’t priests REQUIRED to have wives?
And that would also provide easier access to children.
I’m with Pam on this one.
If the Catholic Church would just stick to their own secular business and keep their sky-daddy fantasies in-house, then I’d be totally impartial. I’d not like their beliefs in the slightest, but if bigotry and hate is their way, then have at it, have a big bigotry party. They can settle their own shit amongst themselves.
But the thing is, they AREN’T content to keep their shit in-house. They want to impose their hate on EVERYONE. They want to subjugate women across the world. They want to impose their will on every single human being on the planet.
They interfere with states, with political forces, and think they have the right to tell their followers who to vote for, and who not to. The thing is, their influence has pretty much been told to go fuck itself across Europe, aside from some decreasing hold-out corners. So, they are pushing out elsewhere to retain influence.
So, until they stop fucking with our rights, we’ll keep going after them.
Pam, I’m with you ideologically but I hate it when you follow up pro-gay-marriage posts (or rather, anti-heterosexist-bigotry posts) with anecdotes about abusive heterosexual parents. I’m having trouble putting my finger on exactly why (it’s late…), but I think it’s a shitty way to try to make a point.
Gaaah!That dressed-up monkey from Bavaria is giving us Germans a bad name yet again!Good thing none of the Catholics I know takes him remotely seriously.Some even suggest that Ratzfatz is a hardcore-repressed closet-case.That would explain sooo much…
squashed: that guy is total wingnut tool.
He’s the head of the Catholic church. What did you expect, the Spanish Inquisition?
(do you know german installed a pope during WWII?)
What for? Much better to have a tame pope than an antipope, and Pius XII was tame enough. (Also, he got elected with a solid majority which he would never have achieved on the German cardinals’ votes alone.)
Pam, I’m with you ideologically but I hate it when you follow up pro-gay-marriage posts (or rather, anti-heterosexist-bigotry posts) with anecdotes about abusive heterosexual parents. I’m having trouble putting my finger on exactly why (it’s late…), but I think it’s a shitty way to try to make a point.
And I dislike it when the right wing endlessly promotes heterosexuality as the sole ideal model for parenthood, regardless of the obvious fact that not all heterosexuals can or should procreate or adopt or foster children, as we see in story after story.
Declaring all LGBTs by their mere orientation status as unqualified, even dangerous, to raise children — and thus it’s necessary to legislate a ban — is offensive to me.
The fact is that Jeffrey and Heather Littlefield may or may not lose custody of their children because of the horrifying abuse, but they could never lose their children because the couple was heterosexual.
Pam, He tried to interfere in Spain’s decision to open civil marriage to gays.
The church staging or supporting a coup d’état wouldn’t be unheard-off. There’s a reason why e.g. France is kind of rabid about the seperation of church and state…
Alana:
No, I gotta say I’m with Pam on this one. Anything that breaks down the absolutist either/or worldview constructed by the forces of patriarchal domination is a step in the right direction. See, what Ratzi says isn’t just about hating gays. The relentless homobigotry expressed by the Christian Right carries with it an implicit assertion that heterosexual couples are axiomatically incapable of doing wrong by their children. The special pleading on the part of heterosexuality is a necessary part of the anti-gay ideology, without which it wouldn’t be able to function. Far too many people believe in this absolutely regardless of any and all evidence to the contrary, and the fact that it is demonstrably and spectacularly false cannot possibly be stressed enough.
According to the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church–
Yes. To all of it.
This is what they call universal moral reason.
In recent years (approximately since the beginning of the 20th century) the Church has suddenly discovered that sex–within marriage of course–is also supposed to be good, something their keen schoarship had hitherto overlooked. And so we have recent believers in what I’ve come to call Catholic Tantra, who affirm that somehow or other, if done just right, married Catholics (or, sonce this is supposed to apply to anyone who stumbles on the correct moral practices, which are after all supposed to be universal and eternal and grounded in the nature of Creation) are supposed to have way better sex when not practicing contraception or otherwise bucking the natural order.
They promise–it’s supposed to be really good.
Thanks to those interacting fields or whatever.
Not that the Pope is supposed to be able to testify to this based on personal experience. It would have to be one of those infallible revalations as far as any of them were concerened.
Unless we had a Pope who had been married and then was widowed, became a priest, etc.
I don’t think we’ve had one of those in a millenium, if ever.
PS–it felt particularly appropriate to be pushing a “Blasphem!” button there.
Now I’m going back to work.
Pray for me…
Alana: I agree with your comment. The post would be strong and can stand alone without bringing abusive hetero parents into it. Bringing up shitty het parents doesn’t really strengthen the argument against the church’s “one man and one woman” rheteric. It kind of sounds like, “Hey, at least gay couples are that bad”, which I know is not the message intended.
And yeah, the pope needs to shut it. Most catholics I know, including currant and former priests and nuns (my husband studied to be a Jesuit for a time so he knows lots) find the official doctrines regarding marriage/family planning to be irrelavant.
“including currant” Should be current. Geez, I’m not talking about jelly.
I actually think Pam’s argument is strengthened quite a bit by bringing in the example of the abusive heterosexual parents.
For one thing, Ratzi has been quite solidly been positioning straight parents as inherently better than gay parents, and second, as Pam pointed out above, that regardless of how abusive they are as parents, they will never have their children taken away from them solely because of their sexualities.
It’s an excellent technique for pointing out the absurdity of the argument being made.
The things straight people do to their kids are just unbelievable. I have a friend who’s a cop—where, I will not say—and one of her guys arrested a couple who were driving down the highway with their kids locked in the back of a U-haul. Then they found the videotapes. The parents had been renting the kids out for porn and raping them themselves. The kids had scars from beatings, damage from sexual abuse and sodomy, and begged the cops to kill their parents. But, you know, gay people are depraved.
Part of my problem with this particular rhetorical trick (an anecdote isn’t an argument) is that I don’t think it works. Even if you cited data empirically showing that a lot of hetero couples make shitty parents (rather than a story that just kind of suggests it), that data would suggest what? That heterosexual couples shouldn’t be parents? It’s certainly not much of an argument for same-sex marriage.
The implication of right-wing arguments that hetero union is “the natural cradle of human life” isn’t that ALL opposite-sex couples are wonderful parents (in fact, these are generally the same fundies who say most parents are criminally permissive/ungodly/whatever), but that same-sex marriage is NOT “the cradle of human life.” A much more effective tactic, then, would be to juxtapose this kind of prating with anecdotes about nurturing and devoted same-sex parents.
I’m not trying to be the argument police here. I’m just pointing out that if this particular rhetorical tactic - which I’ve seen you use before - strikes me as smug and suggestive of fallacy, it’s probably not going to win many points with anyone who doesn’t already strongly agree with you. (Hmm… maybe that makes me a concern troll instead. Oh well.)
Way to take offense at what is very much a mild quote of what has been the church’s position for quite some time. What were you expecting, a drastic change overnight? That simply isn’t going to happen no matter who the pope is. He could have been much more specific to the ruling and gays if he was truly the monstrous horror the bulk of you jokers make him out to be.
A…papal apologist? Wow, now I’ve seen everything. Bill Donahue, is that you?
gin, Andrew is just worried that our discussion will make Papa Ratzi cry. Besides, he’s hoping to score some heaven points he can cash in for a better mansion, when the time comes…
A much more effective tactic, then, would be to juxtapose this kind of prating with anecdotes about nurturing and devoted same-sex parents.
That’s the problem, Alana. We have actual research on our side showing that gay parents and straight parents are pretty much the same and, despite all the fearmongering, the simple fact of having a gay parent (or a pair of gay parents) does not scar a child for life.
And yet you have people like James Dobson and, yes, the Pope, who speak as though having a gay parent is the worst possible thing that could happen to a child, and that any hetero parent is automatically superior to a gay one. Even an abusive hetero parent.
That, I think, is the point that Pam is trying to make: parenting skills are not tied to one’s sexual orientation, and being gay does not automatically make you an unfit parent.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a heterosexual custody battle where the judge demanded that the custodial parent’s non-abusive partner move out of the house before the child could live there, but it happened in Maryland.
Way to take offense at what is very much a mild quote of what has been the church’s position for quite some time.
It’s also the Church’s position that it’s immoral for divorced people to remarry but, funny, I don’t see them pouring money into getting California law to ban the re-marriage of divorced people. I guess only gay couples are so especially immoral that gay marriage has to be banned by secular law in addition to being banned by Church law.
Well, good to know we shouldn’t get all het up about Ratzi advocating in totally in general that nowhere should give us equality, rather than focusing specifically on California.
I mean, because bigotry and hate being in general makes it all okay!
/sarcasm
Margaret Cho had the perfect response for anytime Nazinger decides to make pronouncements like this:
“Queen, Please!”
gin, Andrew is just worried that our discussion will make Papa Ratzi cry. Besides, he’s hoping to score some heaven points he can cash in for a better mansion, when the time comes…
Yeah, judging by the way the Church acts in Massachusetts and how Civil institutions behave in Catholic enclaves herein, you don’t go to heaven by following the rules. Rules are for suckers, and consequences are just too unfair to impose when rules are broken. No. You get in good by sucking up to the heirarchy above you, and attacking and being nasty at people who expect that civil servants actually, you know, should be qualified and competent and actually work for the public and not just exist to suck up to the next level. Then you attack those who point out that they are not following the stated rules on behalf of those patronage patriarchs, because questioning the competence of those “above you” is uppity and very very rude.
Amazing how badly the Catholic Church has damaged democracy in the Cradles of Liberty with its patronage bullshit!