Pope To Travel To Spain: Condemn Gay Marriage genre: Gaylingual & Hip-Gnosis & Uncivil Unions

Pope Benedict is scheduled to travel to Spain on Saturday and is expected to deliver a message condemning Spain's approval of gay marriage. Read the full article here.

Last month a hard-hitting Vatican document branded gay marriage, abortion, lesbians wanting to bear children and a host of other practices it sees threatening the traditional family as signs of "the eclipse of God" in today's society.

Traditional values will take center stage at the Church's Fifth World Meeting of Families when the Pope closes the gathering with an outdoor mass for up to a million people.

Family values are also likely to be a hot topic when the Pope meets Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who oversaw the gay marriage bill and whose Socialist government is pushing to cut Church funding and religious education in schools.

Spain, once ruled by the Catholic Kings, was the fourth country in the world to allow gay marriage -- a union the Pope has called an expression of "anarchic freedom".

"Marriage as an institution and an asset to humanity is not comparable to other forms of unions," Bishop Ricardo Blazquez, the chairman of the Spanish bishops conference, wrote in a blog to welcome pilgrims to the family meeting.

"We denounce the damage it has suffered and the attempts to change its nature ... There is a gaping divide between what family means to people and society and the treatment it gets from society and the State," he added.

Polls show that around two thirds of Spaniards support gay marriage, a sea change from the atmosphere during the dictatorship of 1939-1975, when Francisco Franco banned homosexuality and divorce.

Surveys also show that while 80 percent of Spaniards say they are Catholic, less than a fifth regularly attend church.

While the Church holds to long held positions on marriage, abortion, contraception, stem cell research, in-vitro fertilization, they continue to lose parishioners in many regions around the world. Europe has seen some of the largest declines. In my opinion, they are well on their way to irrelevance since many of their positions are no longer reasonable or practical. It will be interesting to see if the rigid institution will adapt its positions as Church attendance and participation continues to decline.

Daniel DiRito | July 7, 2006 | 10:35 AM
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Comments

1 On July 8, 2006 at 7:46 PM, Brian Malloy wrote —

Daniel,

It's so nice to be in agreement with you. The catholic church has become completely irrelevant to most people in the world. They are even becoming irrelevant to most Italians, who support, at least, cival unions if not full-blown marriage for gay people. The catholic church tried to prevent Spain from providing marriage benefits to gay people but the discriminatory practices of the vatican were obvious to the majority of fair-minded Spanish voters.

Let me even offer an opinion in answer to your final question, that the catholic church will never adapt their positions, even with dwindling numbers and obvious lack of support. They cannot because they have infallibly painted themselves into a theological corner. The demise of the catholic church is guaranteed by the Encyclical of Paul VI, HUMANAE VITAE, ON THE REGULATION OF BIRTH, where the catholic church declares, infallibly, that the only purpose of sex is procreation. Furthermore, sex for any purpose other than procreation is sinful. Obviously, use of birth control is a sin, the practice of gay sex is a sin, since all of these subvert the only purpose of sex.

Humanae Vitae is terrific news for gay people, because it shows that the catholic church opposes sex for love. The majority of catholics view sex as having two purposes: procreation and as an expression of love, and a majority of catholoics use birth control, except for a few fundies. Catholics who use birth control (heterosexuals) question humanae vitae, which means they question the ligitimacy of the papacy. If they suspect that the church is wrong about birth control then the next step is to question the vatican stand on gay marriage. If the pope is infallibly wrong about one thing then he's probably infallibly wrong on lots of things.

Thus, the vatican has lost all credibility with the majority of catholics. And they can never back down from their infallible position. Although, I've heard that one heretical vatican cardinal actually proposed the use of condoms for South African women who are in danger of contracting aids. But this cardinal will likely be excommunicated.

Thought Theater at Blogged

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