Struggling Anglican leader in Rome for papal talks
(Rome) The Archbishop of Canterbury sought Thursday to downplay the implications of the Vatican’s unprecedented invitation for Anglicans to join the Catholic Church as he arrived in Rome for his first talks with the pope on the new policy.
Archbishop Rowan Williams’ three-day visit, which began Thursday with a lecture and …
Tags: Anglicans, Archbishop Of Canterbury, Archbishop Rowan Williams, Catholic Church, Invitation, Pope, Rome, VaticanNew website seeks to out gay priests
Joe.My.God. points to a new website seeking to out gay priests, as a response to Washington Archdiocese of the Catholic Church, which is actively working to stifle LGBT rightsin the District.
A press release on ChurchOuting.org says:
A new local Internet and social media campaign was launched today in response to increasing …
Yes to gay marriage means no social services, Catholic Church warns
The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington is threatening the district with suspending their social services programs if the city doesn’t change a proposed equal marriage law, the Washington Post reports.
The bill requires religious organizations to obey city laws forbidding discrimination against gay men and lesbians, though they would not have to …
Tags: Archdiocese Of Washington, Catholic Archdiocese, Catholic Church, City Laws, Discrimination, Equal Marriage, gay marriage, gay men, Lesbians, marriage, Marriage Law, Marriage Services, Religious Organizations, Social Services Programs, Washington PostVatican: pope to meet Anglican chief
(Vatcican City) The Vatican says Pope Benedict XVI will meet with the Archbishop of Canterbury next month in the leaders’ first encounter since the Catholic church moved to make it easier for disenchanted Anglicans to convert to Catholicism.
Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said in a telephone interview Friday evening …
Tags: Anglican, Anglicans, Archbishop Of Canterbury, Benedict Xvi, Catholic Church, Catholicism, Federico Lombardi, First Encounter, Friday Evening, Pope Benedict, Pope Benedict Xvi, Telephone Interview, Vatican, Vatican SpokesmanCatholic Church revs up for marriage fight
The Church is hold extra collections to raise money to fight same-sex marriage recognition in Maine.
Tags: Catholic Church, Catholic Marriage, Collections, Extra, Maine, marriage, Raise Money, same sex marriageCatholic Church revs up for marriage fight
The Church is hold extra collections to raise money to fight same-sex marriage recognition in Maine.
Tags: Catholic Church, Catholic Marriage, Collections, Extra, Maine, marriage, Raise Money, same sex marriageIn UK RC Church rejects gay parents claims
The Roman Catholic Church has reacted angrily to comments endorsing gay parenthood from a charity with strong links to the Church.
Terry Prendergast of Marriage Care, which is partly funded by the Church, said there was no evidence children were harmed by having same-sex parents.
But the organisation representing Catholic bishops said children need parental role models of both genders.
It said Mr Prendergast, a former priest who has since married, was wrong.
Mr Prendergast made his comments to a gathering of gay Roman Catholics in Leicester.
He told the audience at the Quest conference that same-sex families, along with single and cohabiting parents, suffered discrimination and denigration because they fell short of the Vatican’s definition of what constituted a real family.
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 The views expressed by Terry Prendergast about the definition of family and marriage are clearly not a reflection of the Church’s teaching, nor those of the Bishops’ Conference  Catholic Bishops’ Conference
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Instead, he said, they should be held up as role models and an advert for Catholicism.
Mr Prendergast also claimed that there was no evidence to show that children of same-sex parents suffered in any way, and that the elements that made for successful child-rearing were stable relationships.
But the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales has insisted that Mr Prendergast is wrong.
In a statement, the organisation acknowledged that although it was difficult to define what a family was, the Church still believed that stability for children came from having parents of opposite genders who could provide different role models.
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UK Roman Catholic church-funded marriage agency backs gay and unmaried parents
Terry Prendergast, the chief executive of Marriage Care, claimed there is “no evidence” that children do better if they are brought up in a traditional two-parent family.
He claimed that those who live together out of wedlock are trying to lead good lives but find themselves “consigned to the dustbin” by the church.
His comments – to be made this weekend to Quest, a group of homosexual Catholics – go directly against the church’s teaching, which holds that homosexuality is sinful and that families should be based on the marriage of a man and a woman.
Mr Prendergast said: “We see, for example, that statistically children do best in a family where the adult relationship is steady, stable and loving – you should note here perhaps that I stress adult, not married, since there is no evidence that suggests that children do best with heterosexual couples.”
He claimed that God was present in the relationships of married, homosexual and cohabiting heterosexual relationships where there was “commitment, consent and covenant”.
He went on: “They want to live good lives according to the precepts of the Gospels. They are an advert for the Church, an advert that the Church often ignores or consigns to the wastebin.”
See Catholic church-funded marriage agency backs gay and unmaried parents Telegraph.co.uk
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Vatican does U-turn to praise Oscar Wilde
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Oscar Wilde once said, ‘We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars’ and in a heavenly way the gay playwright found praise today from an unlikely source - the Vatican.
In its second U-turn in a week, the official mouthpiece of Pope Benedict XVI, L’Osservatore Romano, wrote that he was a man ‘always looking for the beautiful and the good but also for God’.
It also added that: ‘Wilde was a fortunate man, as more than 100 years after his death his works had not been forgotten and continue to fly off the shelves.’
The eulogy comes just days after the Vatican changed its stance to give its approval to JK Rowling’s Harry Potter - who it had once described as the ‘wrong kind of hero’.
Wilde, who converted to Roman Catholicism as he lay dying in a Paris hotel bed in 1900, served two years in prison for acts of gross indecency with men, and his behaviour shocked strait-laced Victorian England.
Given his homosexual tendencies and the Catholic Church’s strict view of homosexuality, the fact that it had now embraced him was all the more surprising.
The article praising the Irish-born writer was headlined ‘When Oscar Wilde met Pius IX’ and was a review of a new book on him called ‘A Portrait of Oscar Widle’ by Italian author Paolo Gulisano.
L’Osservatore Romano wrote: ‘Oscar Wilde was a man constantly looking for the beautiful and the good, but also for a God that he never challenged, respected and who he fully embraced after his dramatic experience of jail, concluding with his communion in the Catholic Church.’
Monda also noted how Dublin-born Wilde had said that ‘Catholicism was the only religion to die in’ and also recalled his little remembered audience with Pope Pius IX in 1877.
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Marriage fight looms IN mAINE
Opponents and supporters of gay marriage are laying the groundwork for a tough summer political campaign that experts say will put Maine in the national spotlight.
Organizers of an effort to overturn a new law legalizing same-sex marriage in Maine have hired the California public relations firm that ran the successful Proposition 8 campaign that overturned same-sex marriage there.
And supporters of same-sex marriage, who oppose the people’s veto effort, have hired a seasoned Maine political strategist who ran the successful Maine Won’t Discriminate campaign in 2005. That campaign fought a people’s veto of Maine’s gay rights law.
Maine became the fifth state to legalize gay marriage in May, when the Legislature passed a bill and Gov. John Baldacci signed it into law. Opponents, led by the Catholic church and other clergy, immediately began the campaign for a people’s veto, which would ask voters to overturn the law.
Organizers of the people’s veto are attempting to collect 55,087 signatures of registered Maine voters to put the question on the ballot. The same-sex marriage law would take effect 90 days after the Legislature’s June 13 adjournment. But if the veto effort collects enough signatures before then, the law’s implementation would be stayed.
At least five political action committees have been formed to help raise funds to support the people’s veto effort. Two have been formed to oppose a people’s veto.
According to the latest filings with the state Ethics Commission, most haven’t raised money. But one, StandForMarriageMaine.com, has raised $60,000 from the National Organization for Marriage. The next filing deadline is July 15.
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