Reactionary cardinal elected Pope

Ratzinger's 2003 strategy document, entitled Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons, falsely asserts that:

• 'homosexuality is a troubling moral and social phenomenon';

• 'homosexual acts go against the natural moral law', 'do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity', and are 'intrinsically disordered';

• 'Scripture condemns homosexual acts as a serious depravity' (it most assuredly does not);

• governments have a duty to 'contain the phenomenon' of homosexuality, and that extending civil and legal rights equivalent to marriage to gay couples consitutes state 'legalization of evil';

• all Catholics have a moral duty to 'conscientiously object' to and 'emphatically oppose' the granting of legal status and rights to gay relationships (although the church countenances no such conscientious objection when it comes to its own teachings);

• the Catholic politician or lawmaker is obliged to 'oppose the legal recognition of homosexual unions', 'has a moral duty to express his opposition clearly and publicly and to vote against it', and is required to work to repeal any such laws already in existence;

• 'homosexual unions are totally lacking in the biological and anthropological elements of marriage and family', 'are not able to contribute in a proper way to the procreation and survival of the human race', and 'such unions are harmful to the proper development of human society';

• gay families 'create obstacles in the normal development of children', and gay adoption of children does 'violence' to them and is 'gravely immoral';

• 'justice requires' discrimination against gay relationships by the state;

This restatement of ideological balderdash was timed to deflect attention from the very real intrinsic evil of the child abuse scandals hammering the church in the US and Europe. Ratzinger of course issued no such condemnation of bishops and priests who failed to protect vulnerable children from physical and mental anguish at the hands of sadistic clergy.

Apparently the Catholic church (and the Pope) believe it is morally correct to hold and propagate outlandish lies concerning millions of God's own children, and yet can at the same time believe that these homophobic lies are compatible with the church's much ignored teaching that 'unjust discrimination against homosexual persons' should be avoided. Inciting hatred and destroying lives, families and careers must represent just discrimination. I wonder what it would take, in the good Cardinal's mind, to constitute unjust discrimination?

The elevation to supreme Roman pontiff of someone who has demonstrated 'unrelenting, venomous hatred for gay people' reminds me of these words of Jesus:

"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men's faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.

"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You devour widows' houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. Therefore you will be punished more severely.

"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are."

Matthew 23:13-15

Read about one silenced nun's reaction to the Ratzinger's election.