Burnt Orange Report

Nice letter--but let's face it the catholic church (and all churches/religions) are simply human constructs developed to manipulate various political agendas. I was a "go to church every sunday" catholic until about 10 years ago -- and since then have increasingly come to realize what a manipulation that christianity and all the other religions are. They all start the same: just look in recent history at Mormonism (are you kidding, tablets and fierce battles in the midwest for which no physical evidence can be found) and Scientology (Ron H: "Hey fellow sci-fi writers, I'm going to make up a religion and just watch how people will buy into it.")

But, whatever you need to justify your existence, I guess!

I think it's a matter of how much faith you place in the church -- the buildings and the institutions -- and the Church -- the people and communities. I'm happy to place my faith in the capacity of the human spirit, and feel I can easily do so without relying on the structure of the institution.

"Homosexual persons are to be treated with respect and compassion."

But what about equality under the law?

This is random observation, admittedly, but I wonder if Council Member Thomas feels like an idiot for ending up on the same side of this issue as the KKK? Strange bedfellows, and all that.

Whether someone is a Catholic or "Christian" claiming to oppose Proposition 2 for some off-the wall reason, they are still wrong and even more wrong for wrapping themselves around their "faith" to oppose the Proposition. If someone believes that the amendment is a bad idea, fine; that's their personal view. But to hide behind a label and make it look like there's some kind of "silent majority" within that particular faith that opposes a proposed law is outright blasphemous. That same person uses about as much logic as a college professor that would say "I teach college students, but there's really no reason for them to learn anything."

OK, well, it was the bishops that said that no person should discriminate against any person, regardless of sexuality. And they were taking that cue from the Bible.

Would you say that Prop 2 is in absolutely no way discriminatory?

I completely miss how the college prof example is analogous.

My own dense-ness aside, I think Trey's criticism misses a lot of the point of Phillip's post. Certainly, if all Phillip or the editorial authors did were to say something like "Catholicism says we should oppose the Proposition, and most Catholics really agree with that", then maybe Trey's point is valid.

But Phillip's post and the editorial does precisely the opposite. They recognize that the Proposition's implications for their faith are far from straightforward, and that there are no easy answers that follow simply from saying "I am a Christian" or "I am a Catholic."

Phillip and the authors engage in critical self-reflection, recognizing that their faith values both a certain definition of religious marriage AND compassion and respect in the treatment of others. How those imperatives interact is far from intuitive, and Phillip emphasizes that Catholicism gives followers the freedom to resolve these issues for themselves.

Claiming to speak for every Catholic or for Catholicism might be blasphemous in the way Trey indicates, but Phillip and the editorial make no such claim. There is nothing blasphemous about saying that we and other similar thinking Catholics believe that this is the correct approach demanded by our faith, and openly acknowledging how our faith affected that decision. Phillip eloquently explains the difficulty of the issue, and makes no pretensions to be deciding for anyone but himself, nor doing anything more than attempting to persuade other Catholics that they should arrive at the same conclusion.

There is nothing religiously problematic with the above unless Trey thinks that Phillip and the editorial authors are acting in bad faith. Without evidence to support that, I think we should assume their conviction is genuine. As for the "silent majority" charge, I think that's an empirical question.