The Great Debate UK
from FaithWorld:
Lively debate among Catholics interpreting pope’s condom remarks
Pope Benedict's surprising view that condoms can sometimes be used to fight AIDS has kindled a lively debate among Roman Catholic theologians and commentators about whether this amounts to a change in Church thinking.
His comments and a Vatican clarification that expanded on them seem to leave no doubt that Benedict has spoken with unprecedented frankness for a pontiff and shifted the focus a bit from the Church's rejection of condoms to avoid disease. (Photo: Pope Benedict at his weekly audience 24 November 2010/Alessia Pierdomenico)
But the format of his remarks -- in a book of interviews with a German journalist rather than an official Vatican document -- and some confusion over translations have opened a gap allowing divergent interpretations.
Conservative Catholic bloggers have reacted with dismay -- one put the book title "Light of the World" over a cartoon of Pandora opening her box and letting the world's evils escape.
from FaithWorld:
Pope says gay marriage threat to creation
Argentinans exchange rings in Ushuaia, 28 Dec 2009
Pope Benedict on Tuesday linked the Roman Catholic Church's opposition to gay marriage to concern about the environment, suggesting that laws undermining the differences between the sexes were threats to creation.
Creatures differ from one another and can be protected, or endangered, in different ways, as we know from daily experience. One such attack comes from laws or proposals which, in the name of fighting discrimination, strike at the biological basis of the difference between the sexes," he said at his annual meeting at the Vatican with ambassadors to the Holy See.
from FaithWorld:
Pope says saving heterosexuality like saving the rainforest
Pope Benedict took an unconventional approach today to stand up to what he sees as gender-bending, saying protecting heterosexuality was as important as saving the rainforest.
(Photo: Pope Benedict addresses the Curia, 22 Dec 2008/Max Rossi)
"(The Church) should also protect man from the destruction of himself. A sort of ecology of man is needed," the pontiff said in a holiday address to the Curia, the Vatican's central administration."The tropical forests do deserve our protection. But man, as a creature, does not deserve any less."
