Spain’s newspaper El Pais reports that the Bishop of Córdoba, Demetrio Fernández, gave a speech on Boxing Day (Dec. 26) in which he revealed an interesting belief:

[The bishop] said there was a conspiracy by the United Nations. “The Minister for Family of the Papal Government, Cardinal [Ennio] Antonelli, told me a few days ago in Zaragoza that UNESCO has a program for the next 20 years to make half the world population homosexual. To do this they have distinct programs, and will continue to implant the ideology that is already present in our schools.”

Wikipedia’s page on the Cardinal calls his views moderate and says he’s an advocate for social justice. A quick Google search doesn’t turn up any refutation of Fernández’ attribution of this view to him. I’ve contacted the Vatican Information Service to ask whether Cardinal Antonelli would verify this statement.

[h/t Box Turtle Bulletin]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Wayne Besen, Executive Director
Phone: 917-691-5118
E-Mail: wbesen@truthwinsout.org

TWO Calls Cardinal Francis George’s Apology to the LGBT Community a Positive Development

We Called for His Resignation But Remorse Is a Good Start, Says TWO

CHICAGO – Truth Wins Out commended Chicago Archbishop Cardinal Francis George today for apologizing to the LGBT community after he made intemperate remarks comparing the LGBT movement to the Ku Klux Klan.

“I am truly sorry for the hurt my remarks have caused,” George said in an interview with the Chicago Tribune. “Particularly because we all have friends or family members who are gay and lesbian. This has evidently wounded a good number of people.  I have family members myself who are gay and lesbian, so it’s part of our lives. So I’m sorry for the hurt. When I was talking I was speaking out of fear that I have for the church’s liberty and I was reaching for an analogy which was very inappropriate for which I’m sorry. I didn’t realize the impact of what I was saying. … Sometimes fear is a bad motivation.”

Truth Wins Out placed a full-page ad in last Sunday’s Chicago Tribune headlined “Hey, Cardinal Francis George, Gay is not like the KKK.” TWO also started an online Change.org petition calling on George to step down that reached more than 5,400 signatures. Pressure continued to build with the Gay Liberation Network and the Rainbow Sash Movement planning to protest the Cardinal this weekend.

“We called for Cardinal George’s resignation but we think remorse is a positive step in the right direction,” said TWO’s Executive Director Wayne Besen. “It is gratifying to see the Cardinal take personal responsibility for the hurt he has caused and we hope this incident leads to improving relations with the LGBT community.”

George’s offensive remarks first came during a dispute over the scheduled starting time of the annual gay pride parade in June. The event was originally set to begin at 10am, but a priest bitterly complained that the starting time would interfere with morning services. In an interview with Fox News in Chicago, Cardinal George said: “You know, you don’t want the Gay Liberation Movement to morph into something like the Ku Klux Klan, demonstrating in the streets against Catholicism.”

Truth Wins Out (TWO) is a nonprofit that fights anti-LGBT religious extremism. TWO specializes in turning information into action by organizing, advocating and fighting for LGBT equality.

I guess the Vatican figured they’d pick somebody who really knew the subject matter. I’d quote from the article itself, but the bullet headline and bullet points unfortunately suffice:

Roman Catholic church’s paedophile investigator jailed for possessing thousands of child porn images

• Church orders review of child protection across the South West of England
• Father-of-four was responsible for children’s safety at 120 churches and community groups for nine years
• Police found more than 4,000 child porn images on his church-supplied computer

DEAR GOD!

[h/t The Stranger]

(Weekly Column)

In recent years, the Roman Catholic Church has veered hard right and become politically active in opposing abortion rights and marriage equality in America. For example, they played a key role in thwarting marriage for same-sex couples in Maine and have refused to give communion to pro-choice politicians such as Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I) and Sen. John Kerry (D-MA).

Beginning under Pope John Paul II and accelerating under the reign of Pope Benedict XVI, the Catholic Church has inserted itself repeatedly into America’s “culture war.” In a doctrine called “co-belligerence,” the Catholic leadership has joined forces with the evangelical right to fight against the perceived threat of secularism. Bitter extremists who are quick to incense are overshadowing the sweet and peaceful aroma of church incense.

Unfortunately, for the Church, one of its lead cultural warriors took it a bit too far when he ventured from co-belligerence to flat out belligerence. Dan Avila was forced to resign from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, where he served as Policy Advisor for Marriage and Family, after penning a column for The Boston Pilot that suggested Satan might cause people to become gay. According to Avila’s column:

“…the scientific evidence of how same-sex attraction most likely may be created provides a credible basis for a spiritual explanation that indicts the devil. Any time natural disasters occur, we as people of faith look back to Scripture’s account of those angels who rebelled and fell from grace. In their anger against God, these malcontents prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. They continue to do all they can to mar, distort and destroy God’s handiwork. Therefore, whenever natural causes disturb otherwise typical biological development, leading to the personally unchosen beginnings of same-sex attraction, the ultimate responsibility, on a theological level, is and should be imputed to the evil one, not God.”

Avila’s (pictured) demonizing words represented a major obstacle to the church’s questionable claim that it respects all people. It’s one thing for the Catholic Church to team up with Pat Robertson and quite another for its representatives to actually become Pat Robertson. While the actions of the church have become increasingly hostile and homophobic, up until this point their slick PR team had made an effort to appear reasonable. Avila’s screed lacked nuance and it appeared that the Church had gone full-blown Satan, like they were part of a Saturday Night Live skit with the Church Lady.

It seems that the Church has finally been pushed to its limit – at least for now. Prior to his resignation from the USCCB, Avila was forced to offer a weak retraction in the Boston Pilot, writing that his column “[does] not represent the position of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the column was not authorized for publication as is required policy for staff of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.”

Only weeks before the brouhaha, Avila appeared at the Voter Values Summit in Washington, DC. In a video that I filmed with my telephone camera, Avila spoke of a furtive Catholic plot to undermine marriage equality in Massachusetts. While pontificating on stage he said,  “a deliberate uprising has been put in motion, a careful tilling of the political soil has created a bumper crop of many new legislators dedicated to letting the people vote [on marriage equality].”

The more the Catholic Church plays political hardball, the more polarizing screwballs it seems to attract. In recent years we’ve seen the conversion to Catholicism of verbal flamethrowers such as Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback and presidential candidate Newt Gingrich. Exhibit A is the perpetually aggrieved Bill Donohue from the Catholic League, a blustery bulldog who is about the only person in the world who can make Pope Benedict XVI actually seem warm and sympathetic.

Donohue once had to be reined in after defending the Mel Gibson movie Passion of the Christ by saying, “Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. It’s not a secret, OK? And I’m not afraid to say it. That’s why they hate this movie. It’s about Jesus Christ, and it’s about truth. It’s about the Messiah.”

The ironic part of the Catholic Church’s recent posturing is that it is a morally challenged institution that has yet to recover from multiple and ongoing pedophile priest scandals. Even as it scrounges up dwindling funds to fight marriage equality, it closes down Catholic schools across the nation. This shows grossly misplaced priorities and an unnatural obsession with homosexuality that has been elevated above the wellbeing of children who are losing their schools.

To underscore the Catholic Church’s falling moral authority, once staunchly Catholic Ireland announced this week that it will close its embassy to the Vatican. This once unthinkable move is a major hit to the Vatican’s reputation and worldwide standing.

The Vatican should get back to basics and forgo the self-destructive path of co-belligerence. If not, we will see more extremists, such as Avila and Donohue, who are fast becoming the unappetizing public face of the Roman Catholic Church in America.

Amended legislation to permit civil unions in Rhode Island passed out of that state’s House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, according to The Providence Journal. A House floor vote is expected to occur Thursday.

This legislation represents a major setback for pro-equality activists, who had been assured earlier this year that full marriage equality was within reach. No organized group of LGBT persons in the state supports the civil-union legislation; Marriage Equality Rhode Island has consistently stated that civil unions — which lack recognition by the federal government and other states, and may be ignored by merchants and employers within the state — are an unacceptable alternative to marriage equality. The belief that civil unions represent a retreat to second-class citizenship has been bolstered by the fact that Rhode Island’s nearby neighbors — the states of Connecticut and Massachusetts — already enjoy marriage equality.

The Roman Catholic Church wields exceptional power in Rhode Island politics, and — despite polls which show a majority of state residents supporting marriage equality — the church opposes not only marriage equality but also the civil union legislation and any other recognition of same-sex relationships.

The Church’s ongoing political activity may be evident in the latest draft civil-union legislation, which appears to withdraw recognition of same-sex marriages performed in other states.

Here’s the new text which relates to unions performed in other states:

15-3.1-8. Reciprocity. — A civil union legally entered into in another jurisdiction, shall be recognized in Rhode Island as a civil union; provided, that the relationship meets the eligibility requirements of this chapter.

Here is the previous draft text:

15-3.1-8. Reciprocity. — A civil union, or a substantially similar legal relationship, legally entered into a another jurisdiction, shall be recognized in Rhode Island as a civil union. ”

There are a lot of hurt feelings among LGBT activists in the nation’s smallest state, especially after an abrupt and mysterious change of leadership at Marriage Equality Rhode Island which coincided with the retreat from marriage equality by the state’s Democratic leadership. An article which accuses national organizations of carpetbagging and obstructing marriage equality in Rhode Island for strategic reasons has been published on the Edge network of LGBT newspapers. The article’s sources are anonymous; the article was previously published and then removed from the web site of The Rainbow Times due to its unsourced allegations.

In two recent articles, Box Turtle Bulletin has noted major changes at the Roman Catholic organization Courage.

Courage, founded by the recently deceased John Harvey, at one time encouraged gay men to seek a life of chastity and to channel their sex drives into asexual means of serving God.

In the past 10 years, however, the organization has been gradually been influenced by Christian Rightists who advocate scientifically disproven myths about the origin and changeability of sexual attraction. Its website is now peppered with ex-gay propaganda including a professionally repudiated 12-myth program patterned on 12-Step programs, false assumptions about whether one is born with a given orientation, pressure to “develop one’s heterosexual potential” in violation of church policy, and Exodus-style condemnation of sexual honesty (coming out).

It would seem that Courage has now followed Exodus International in reducing support for celibate gay men, in order to devote resources to antigay prejudice, discrimination, and ostracism.

The Catholic News Agency reported Jan. 6 that the organization’s board members will use Courage as supposed evidence against the civil rights and equalities of their Protestant, non-Christian, and liberal Catholic neighbors:

The new president of the U.S. Catholic bishops’ conference, Archbishop Timothy Dolan, announced Jan. 5 that he appointed Bishop Salvatore Cordileone of Oakland, California as chairman of the conference’s Ad Hoc Committee for the Defense of Marriage.

Dolan and Cordileone are board members of Courage, and Cordileone — Box Turtle Bulletin notes – is the father of California’s anti-marriage Proposition 8. Together, the pair have swiftly wedded Courage to the Vatican’s battle against marriage equality.

Gather ’round, children, and listen to a tale of the Good Old Days, as told by Pope Benedict nee Ratzinger. He’s a Man of God, so he obviously wouldn’t lie! You’ll remember that when we left off, he was about to tell us that

paedophilia wasn’t considered an “absolute evil” as recently as the 1970s.

Oh, you have got to be kidding me.

In his traditional Christmas address yesterday to cardinals and officials working in Rome, Pope Benedict XVI also claimed that child pornography was increasingly considered “normal” by society.

“In the 1970s, paedophilia was theorised as something fully in conformity with man and even with children,” the Pope said.

BY WHOM?

[By the way, it should tell you how stung the Catholic Church is over its loss of moral authority when the Pope is making excuses, in his Christmas address, for the fact that the corporation over which he is the CEO has become, in the words of Sara Benincasa, "the world’s oldest and largest child-fuckery concern."]

Moving on…

“It was maintained — even within the realm of Catholic theology — that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself. There is only a ‘better than’ and a ‘worse than’. Nothing is good or bad in itself.”

When, pray tell, was this taught in any orthodox corner of Christendom? Please, senile former Hitler Youth child-rapist protector man in flowing robes and pretty headdress, ‘splain some more how back in the good old days, child rape was simply ”not the best option,” but certainly not evil.

The Pope said abuse revelations in 2010 reached “an unimaginable dimension” which brought “humiliation” on the Church.

I know, I know, it’s so embarrassing when people find out about this huge child raping problem the Church has, I mean, it was such a surprise and all, not least of which to the Pope. Oh wait. My memory’s not failing me completely yet, so let’s all remember another story.

ONCE UPON A TIME there was a priest in Wisconsin named Lawrence Murphy!  He used his position of power to rape over 200 children, but there’s a twist!  These children were deaf.  When the abuse came to light, at least in the inner sancta of the Roman Catholic Church, they of course defrocked him immediately and made sure he was never near a child again.  HA HA, JUST KIDDING:

Top Vatican officials — including the future Pope Benedict XVI — did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church, according to church files newly unearthed as part of a lawsuit.

The internal correspondence from bishops in Wisconsin directly to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, shows that while church officials tussled over whether the priest should be dismissed, their highest priority was protecting the church from scandal.

The documents emerge as Pope Benedict is facing other accusations that he and direct subordinates often did not alert civilian authorities or discipline priests involved in sexual abuse when he served as an archbishop in Germany and as the Vatican’s chief doctrinal enforcer.

The Wisconsin case involved an American priest, the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, who worked at a renowned school for deaf children from 1950 to 1974. But it is only one of thousands of cases forwarded over decades by bishops to the Vatican office called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, led from 1981 to 2005 by Cardinal Ratzinger. It is still the office that decides whether accused priests should be given full canonical trials and defrocked.

But, you see, it only became shocking, embarrassing and humiliating in 2010. Why? Because the child-rapists got caught, and Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope, is having to answer for the fact that he, in an official capacity, did everything in his power to protect what is apparently the holy right of priests to have sex with the kids in their parishes.

Here’s what the Church is doing in Wisconsin to make amends for distract local Catholics from the inconvenient facts about the 200 deaf children and the rape and whatnot:

Well, the Vatican has finally found it in its black (but gold-plated!) and shriveled husk of a heart to do something for Wisconsin: they’ve blessed a ghost sighting as genuine. Woo hoo! That’ll fix everything right up!

The church has declared that a sighting in 1859 of a blond Mary hovering between two trees was real and worthy, and the local Catholic church is now busily expanding their parking lot to cope with the expected influx of gullible suckers pilgrims who will flock to the site to imagine a floating cheerleader for Jesus.

No really. What had happened was:

…[O]n October 9, 1859, the Queen of Heaven manifested herself to Adele Brise in Champion (Robinsonville), Wisconsin, USA.

[...]

“As they approached the hallowed spot, Adele could see the beautiful lady, clothed in dazzling white, with a yellow sash around her waist. Her dress fell to her feet in graceful folds. She had a crown of stars around her head, and her long, golden, wavy hair fell loosely around her shoulders. Such a heavenly light shone around her that Adele could hardly look back at her sweet face. Overcome by this heavenly light and the beauty of her amiable visitor, Adele fell on her knees.

” ‘In God’s name, who are you and what do you want of me?’ asked Adele, as she had been directed.

“ ‘I am the Queen of Heaven, who prays for the conversion of sinners, and I wish you to do the same. You received Holy Communion this morning, and that is well. But you must do more. Make a general confession, and offer Communion for the conversion of sinners. If they do not convert and do penance, my Son will be obliged to punish them’

“ ‘Adele, who is it?” said one of the women. ‘O why can’t we see her as you do?’ said another weeping.

“ ‘Kneel,’ said Adele, ‘the Lady says she is the Queen of Heaven.’ Our Blessed Lady turned, looked kindly at them, and said, ‘Blessed are they that believe without seeing. What are you doing here in idleness…while your companions are working in the vineyard of my Son?’

Oh, for god’s sake. The woman was either hallucinating or lying. Or on drugs. She certainly wasn’t laying the foundations for the the Vatican to, 150 years later, distract all the faithful morons from the fact that 200 DEAF CHILDREN WERE RAPED BY A PRIEST. PZ Myers ties this little fairytale up with a bow:

That settles it. It must have been a magical manifestation if it was invisible. Invisible and blond, just like I always imagined a Middle Eastern Semitic peasant woman. And the statement that you’re blessed if you believe without seeing is pitch-perfect Catholicism.

Dear, dear Catholics: Stop. Just stop. I know many of you are fervent in your desires to change the Catholic Church from the inside out, but until and unless the entire patriarchal institution — the celibate priests, the secretive power structure, the lack of women in any positions of power, and all the rest — is changed, this will continue.

As it stands, the Church, for this and many other reasons, is one of the most evil forces on God’s Green Earth, and no one with a sense of morality or dignity should support it.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops have chosen Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York as president, the first to defeat a sitting vice president for the post. This is a horrible choice that will place the Catholic Church in the center of the Culture War.

Here is what the New York Times wrote:

He will become the face of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States.

When public policy issues like abortion, same-sex marriage or health care cross paths with church doctrine, his will be the voice heard addressing Congressional committees. His name will be added to the speed-dial list of a platoon of church officials who work on Catholic concerns like liturgical translations and the plight of Christians in Baghdad. And all of those officials will want face time with him starting Thursday.

That is when Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York begins his three-year term as president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

It is galling that a church overrun with pedophile priests is working to undermine my adult relationship. Given his church’s ghastly record of covering up child rape, I’m not sure what Dolan has to offer in terms of morality or family values. If the Roman Catholic Church wants to jump into the culture wars and be political, we must not be deferential and show them respect that they have not earned.

Each time they demean our relationships, they must be met with this refrain: “A church that covers-up child rape has no business attacking healthy relationships between consenting adults. Get out of politics and get back into parishes, where you can protect kids from pedophiles.”

The reason we must respond this way is to send the message that attacking the LGBT community and lying about our families will be a painful experience for the Catholic Church. We must fight back and remember that we have no obligation to be Timothy Dolan’s punching bag.

The student paper at Benilde-St. Margaret’s, a Catholic high school in Minnesota, published an editorial speaking out against the Catholic archdiocese’s opposition to same sex marriage and their subsequent mailing of thousands of anti-gay DVDs to Catholic families in the state.  Then they pulled the piece, because if there’s one thing that’s like Kryptonite to a religious institution like the Roman Catholic Church, it’s reasoned dissent. Hamilton Nolan at Gawker explains:

Yes, the Catholic school’s administration played their role perfectly by pulling the students’ editorial (and an accompanying piece titled “Life as a Gay Teenager”) and replacing it with a statement explaining that “The online comments regarding the editorial and the opinion piece in question were creating a disrespectful environment as well as confusion about the teachings of the Catholic Church; therefore, the administration exercised its prerogative to have the material removed from the website.”

The DVD in question manipulated Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words to make it appear as if anti-gay bigots are somehow continuing King’s legacy, and the student editorial in question laid that out for the BS it was. Hamilton continues:

Using Martin Luther King, Jr’s words to support an assertion that same-sex marriage leaves men “fundamentally dehumanized”: fine. Pointing out that that is bullshit, in a remarkably eloquent and fair editorial: unfair. Even more brilliant: use the fact that assholes were leaving disrespectful comments on a story as an excuse to pull the entire story! Good work, zealous Catholics! This’ll teach those gay-accepters to speak out of turn, or ever!

Since we on the side of fairness, justice, love and equality are no fans of censorship, here’s the student editorial in its entirety, via a commenter at the above Gawker link:

“Staff finds DVD unsubstantiated
November 11, 2010

The Catholic Church has been a long-standing opponent of gay marriage both in civil law and the Church itself. In keeping with this teaching, Archbishop Nienstedt produced and mailed a DVD in which he explicitly endorses an amendment to our state constitution that would bar homosexuals from the right to marry under civil law.

We as a staff believe the Church has both the right to have a teaching on this issue and to deny homosexuals the right to get married within the Church itself. However, we also feel that the DVD many of our families received is inappropriate due to the civil nature of the issue, and the content is nothing more than simple, emotional propaganda.

Archbishop Nienstedt states in the DVD that gay marriage poses a threat not only to the children taken out of the foster care system and adopted by married gay couples, but to children everywhere. He warns us that if we were to legalize gay marriage, the government would start teaching children in public schools that gay marriage is okay––something that is not consistent with Catholic teachings. The DVD further equates the effects of growing up in a household with two moms or two dads to growing up in a polygamous household, or an impoverished, financially struggling, single parent home.

The DVD tells us that the legalization of same-sex marriage will result in a world that no longer cares about a one-man one-woman vision of marriage, which will in turn result in a society that is, “callous and indifferent to the suffering it imposes on its own children, and on women who are left to carry the burden of parenting, and on men who are fundamentally dehumanized.”

How gay marriage results in heterosexual divorce and poverty, the DVD fails to address. How gay marriage leads to the acceptance of polygamy, the DVD makes no mention of either.

In the end, the DVD simply tries to equate gay marriage (an institution that would actually bring families together through the adoption of children) to broken homes and polygamy, without providing any facts to back it up. And, while the struggles of raising a child without a mother or father as support are certainly real, this stems from the fact that single parents are doing the job of two people and is not a reason to deny homosexuals the right to marry under civil law.

The DVD also aimed to reject the notion that the issue of gay marriage is an issue of civil rights. They did this in the most subtle way imaginable: by having a black man quote Martin Luther King Jr. The quote in question was from “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” and stated that for a law to be just it must be in line with natural law.

What the speaker fails to address is the very next line of the letter that states, “Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statues are unjust because segregation distorts the soul.” Clearly this omitted line proves that MLK would not have supported discriminatory policies against any group, including homosexuals. The fact that the Church would go as far as to evoke MLK in an issue which he clearly wouldn’t have supported speaks volumes to the argument which the DVD presents.

To close its argument, the DVD states that the civil recognition of same-sex marriage would be an attack on our religious liberties as Catholics; however, no law that would be passed for gay marriage would have any impact on the Church’s ability to control its own definition of marriage. The legislature is discussing granting civil liberties to homosexuals in a legal way, not a religious one.

We have been told through this DVD to defend the historical definition of marriage through our votes. Well, up until 1967 it was a historical precedent not to let two people of different races get married in 17 states. In previous centuries, married women were considered their husband’s properties. But these things have changed, and it’s time for the civil definition of marriage to change again to account for our gay brothers and sisters, not in the Church, but at least in the civil arena.”

Smart kids.