Great Orators of the Order of Friars Preachers

"A man who governs his passions is master of the world. We must either rule them, or be ruled by them." Saint Dominic

"Homosexual Marriage": How Catholics lost or may lose this battle, in ten steps

In Italy, the change of the Catholic "mood" indicates that the redefinition of marriage to include counternatural unions may be a matter of time - it was exactly in such a climate that abortion was approved in the country under a DC (Democrazia Cristiana) prime-minister who was a "daily mass-goer" (!) and as close as possible to Paul VI. Montinian Church, Montinian consequences. It would hardly have happened so after one single decade of Wojtyla, but then it was too late.

Anyway, in this fine article published in October, Mario Palmaro explains how Catholics in Italy may lose this battle (as Catholics in many other places have already lost it) if they follow the ten steps to the "homosexual marriage" precipice.

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Mario Palmaro

With the laws on “homophobia” mankind is torn to pieces, a bit at a time, to the triumphant chorus of approval from the enemies of the Church.

Homophobia. The Italian Parliament is about to approve a law that will prosecute, with specific sanctions, behaviour that is part of this new conceptual categorization. But what does being a homophobe mean? In reality, no-one is able to define it with precision, because homophobia is an ideological invention. It is an idea from the Soviet penal-code, which will allow public ministers and judges to prosecute the most diverse behaviors, in the most grotesque victory of creative jurisprudence.

Homophobia as a category of the absurd

Homophobia presupposes that the world is made up of heterosexuals and homosexuals, along with other categories eventually definable, connected to the sexual sphere. But the concept of heterosexuality is already fake: in fact, when men and women have sexual relations, they are simply behaving like normal people. It is all the rest that is abnormal. Once the juridical category of homophobia is accepted, this statement will be impossible to make publically, without risking the prosecution of the law. The same can be said about a professor or teacher who teach their students that relationships between persons of the same sex are abnormal, or that having two fathers or two mothers is damaging to children. A penal denunciation will also hang like the Sword of Damocles over the head of any priest or catechist who defines homosexual acts as sins against nature, and therefore sins “that cry out to God for vengeance.”

Homophobia is a category of the absurd. If a person is attacked or insulted, the juridical order already provides sanctions applicable to everyone on the basic principle of equality. By inventing new penal laws in the case of a homosexual victim (or claims to be, since how can it be verified?) signifies inaugurating a potentially infinite proliferation of protected categories, reinforced by the penal code. You could hypothesize laws to punish severely “fat-phobia” in order to protect the obese from being mocked by colleagues and class-mates; or even “tobacco-phobia” to defend smokers against those who discriminate them for their smoking habits; or even “bald-phobia” to bring an end to the shameful discrimination of people who have hardly any hair. As you can see, there is no limit to this insane competition in the proliferation of civil rights.

Gender, Homo-marriage and Homosexual Adoptions

A nation that introduces the category of homophobia into its laws inevitably accepts the ideology of gender. What does this mean? According to the theory of gender, a person’s sex is not a fact that inexorably comes from nature i.e. one is born a man or a woman and tertium non datur – but each individual chooses, and not once and for all, whether they want to be a man or a woman with [total] disregard to their body and genetics. Homophobia certifies through jurisdiction, the destruction of natural sexual identity, transforming it into an individual and arbitrary choice. Being a man or woman will be like deciding whether to eat peach or cherry jam. Man literally “makes himself” which brings to fruition the devastating anthropological and social project initiated by the illuminist thinkers and revolutionaries like Rousseau. A project which is summed up in the total rebellion against God, and which culminates in rejecting the sexual constraints imposed by the body and its organs. It also makes a mockery of the Divine project for man “be fruitful and multiply.”

It must be made clear immediately that, once a law is passed on homophobia, whatever it is, the follow-up will automatically be a law on homosexual marriage. And consequently there will be the legalization of adoptions for homosexual couples and the access of the same to artificial insemination.

CATHOLICS: How to lose in ten steps

In short, the effects of this law on homophobia are apocalyptic. In Italy, a strong reaction from the Catholic world i.e. the Church, the Conference of Bishops, ecclesial associations and the main Catholic newspapers, would have been completely normal. Instead – they are all silent. The only Catholic entities that have not been, are: ‘Alleanza Cattolica’ who having been fighting non-stop with a a clear and very lucid manifesto of opposition; the ‘Nuova Bussola’ on-line, with an intense and tenacious campaign; the weekly ‘Tempi’, by supporting the campaign against the law, plus there are other sites or organized groups which are combative but small.

How can this lapse in neglecting the truth be explained? I would suggest three causes:

a. The habit of compromise: for years now the Catholic world has become used to pursuing the lesser evil instead of the good and the true: a law on bad homophobia rather than a worse one.

b. The existence of a homosexual lobby in the Catholic world which paralyzes it on this and other battles.

c. Fear of clashing with the world and of losing a political battle.

When all is said and done, this “surrender” explains how homosexuality, judged as a harmful abnormality by the greater part of public opinion until not so long ago, has become not only licit conduct but worthy of special juridical protection; making it become even more meritorious than the traditional man-woman relationship. It is clear that it is the work by the homosexual lobby and the favourable ground created by the mass-media which have contributed to this situation. Nonetheless, it needs to be added, that Catholicism, you might say, “has dug its own grave”, through ten earth-shatteringly erroneous moves:

1. Christianity’s judgment on homosexual conduct has been undoubtedly very severe for two thousand years: the first losing move consists in progressively softening this judgment of truth, which anyway does not take away the message of forgiveness and redemption for the sinner, as the same for every other sin.

2. Being silent about the fact that homosexual behaviour is a sin. Out of human respect and because of the complexity of the causes, it is deduced that this behavior cannot be substantially judged. If you notice, even the most rigorous Catholics feel the need to state beforehand “that they do not have anything against homosexuals”. On the other hand, when speaking about the ninth commandment, they would never say as a premise “I have nothing against adulterers.”

3. The subsequent step is to deny explicitly that it is about sin: there are those who are born like that and so nothing can be done to change things.

4. The term “against nature” is abolished from language use in sermons, conferences and books, liquidating also the idea of nature in the philosophical sense. What remains is merely the “nature” that you find in Piero Angela’s TV documentaries.

5. Every pretension at conserving a distinction in judgment with regard to the homosexual in the juridical order, is abandoned. For centuries, laws considered this phenomenon tolerable, or as totally irrelevant on a juridical level, but they always maintained an implicit negative valuation towards this condition, which can have problematic aspects of public relevance. For example, the possibility of the role as educator, or of being part of a community organized in a specific way, such as the military or a religious order. Specific and motivated distinctions that came from recognition of the pathological character of this condition, were recognized world-wide until 1973.

6. At this point the effect of “the lay state” spreads: since the law cannot give ethical judgment, everyone must be treated in the same way; ergo every emotional relationship is of the same moral and social value; therefore, the laws will treat homosexuals and heterosexuals, and eventual ulterior categories, in exactly the same way.

7. Now, at this point, the person who tries to say homosexuality goes against nature, and that they would not want a homosexual teacher, becomes an outlaw, first at the level of the mass-media (pilloried by TV and newspaper journalists) and then at the juridical level (laws on homophobia); and here, the Catholic world abandons to their fate, all those who run into the executioner’s axe which has been set up by the new “homo-cracy”, liquidating them as “imprudent” or “integralists.”

8. So then the law on “homosexual unions” is passed, and here the Catholic loser displays satisfaction because “they have not been defined as marriages”.

9. “Homosexual marriages” obviously then are passed and here the Catholic loser displays optimism, because “adoptions by homosexuals are not foreseen.”

10. Adoptions by homosexuals are passed and here the Catholic loser concludes, with satisfaction, that anyway “the idea of the family still exists.”

[Source: Il Timone October 2013 (n.126). Translation: Francesca Romana]

So, how's that "dialogue with the world" working out for you?

Yesterday, five students of the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires (the oldest high school in the city, originally founded as a Jesuit school, but that become a public school following the expulsion of the Jesuits in the 18th century) entered the nearby parish church of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the oldest standing religious building in the Argentine Capital. According to Clarín, they "burned the armchair on which the priest sits during mass, one of the 18th-century carved wood altars, they urinated on the altar, and they wrote insulting sentences with white paint on the floor and on the pews."

In the image above, the most revealing words: "The only church that enlightens is the one that BURNS."

Animists in the Cathedral: a look at interreligious "services" in the Benedictine age

We have to thank one of our most diligent South American readers for this piece of news from the largest city in South America, Sao Paulo (home to a man considered a "papabile" in the last conclave, Cardinal Hummes -- it seems the cities named after Saint Paul have some remarkable archbishops!).

Last week, an "ecumenical [actually, interreligious] service" was held at the Metropolitan Cathedral, one of the largest Neo-gothic structures in the Western Hemisphere, as a homage to the remains of a Marxist guerrilla leader killed by the Brazilian military régime in the 1970s.

We will not comment upon the political aspects of the episode, which are not clear, but purely on some religious curiosities of the ceremony. The report (in Portuguese) linked by our reader includes this passage:

"An atheist by conviction, as a Communist militant, 'Comandante Crioulo' [his alias] received the homage of religious [leaders] of African persuasion, such as Pai Francisco de Oxum, Pai Persio and the ogans [some kind of 'divinized' drum players, see here] of the orishas Ogum and Oxossi [African gods, see here] and ebomi Conceição Reis de Ogum, vice-president of the National Institute of African-Brazilian Tradition and Culture (Intecab). Tata Nkisi Taua, president of the Confederation of Angola Kongo Traditions in Brazil (Cobantu) also took part in the ceremony, with his mametus and makotas [as far as we can tell, other kinds of followers of African gods]. They sang chants from the altar of the Cathedral to the dead militant. ... Representatives of the Jewish and of the Muslim communities of Sao Paulo also took part in the celebration."

The article also says that "the solemn service... was presided by Father Julio Lancelotti" and that, in the end, the "Internationale" [the international Socialist-Communist anthem] was played.

Our reader, who was present at the service, tells us that, during the performance of the African-Brazilian priests and priestesses, a dead black chicken was placed on the altar, though he could not ascertain if it had been sacrificed beforehand.

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P.S. The warnings of Pope Benedict regarding what should be avoided in interreligious meetings are somewhat clear -- yet, it does not seem that his words are truly heard.

First Things, Quo Vadis?

As we have noted before, First Things seems to be "turning and turning in the widening gyre...".

Now they have this Villanova law professor defending (scroll down to the August 29 commentary) the FDA's decision to allow the over the counter sale of the "Morning After" abortion pill and exempting the Bush Administration of any culpability.

The professor's argument goes somewhat like this: since the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act offers no legal basis for denying the approval, the Bush Administration has its hands tied, and, therefore, has to allow for the over-the-counter sale of that drug.

First, if the problem is the statute, why can't Bush propose new legislation that would take care of it?

Second, the Family Research Council, and every other pro-life organization, has given a series of legal and scientific reasons why the "Morning After" pill should not be sold over the counter. Therefore, one cannot simply say that there is no basis to deny the approval.

Third, the professor appears to not to be telling the whole truth when he suggests that President Bush did not like the decision, but merely tolerated it, since the President said the exact opposite:

"I believe that Plan B ought to be -- ought to require a prescription for minors. That's what I believe," he said, adding that he supports "Andy's decisions."

But what is really aggravating, is the professor's implication that St. Thomas More would have understood, and approved of, the Administration allowing for the sale of an abortion drug.

The only parallel between these events and More, "The Man for All Seasons", is the fact that the professor's subservience to the Administration is the stuff that gives life to Richard Rich.

Please, Fr. Neuhaus, get out of the "Public Square"!

"The Church has NO INTENTION of adapting herself" to the times

Such strong words have not been heard in Italy for many decades: and the semi-official news daily of the Italian Episcopal Conference, Avvenire, was the one to publish them in an editorial.

The time for this surprising affirmation was set by last week's succession of speeches (two in three days) in which Pope Benedict forcefully reminded the faithful of their duty in the protection of the legal definition of family and marriage, first in a speech we have already mentioned here (AsiaNews has translated its most important passages):

"Authentic love transforms itself into a light that guides one's life to fullness, generating a society that man can live within. The communion of life and love that is marriage thus configures as an authentic good for society. Avoiding confusion with other types of union based on a weak love is of special urgency today. Only the rock of total and irrevocable love between man and woman is capable of founding the construction of a society that becomes a home for all mankind."

These words had already deeply irritated the Italian left. Then, on Saturday, in a speech (Italian) to the Pontifical Council for the Family, the Holy Father was even more forceful regarding the direct responsibility of the competent authorities:

"Family, established on marriage, is a 'heritage of mankind', a fundamental social institution; it is the vital cell and the pillar of society, and that is of interest to believers and non-believers. This is the reality which all States must hold in utmost consideration. ...

"In the modern world, in which some equivocal conceptions of men, of liberty, of human love are being spread, we must not prevent ourselves anymore from the portrayal of the truth of the familial institution, as it was willed by God since Creation.

"The historical moment we are living demands Christian families to witness with courageous coherence that procreation is the fruit of love. A similar testimony shall not be lacking so that politicians and legislators may be inspired to safeguard the rights of the family. It is well known, in fact, how legal solutions for the so-called 'civil unions' are being discussed, rejecting the duties of matrimony while intending to enjoy similar rights."

The Italian political mood, which is already feverish in regular days, is reaching boiling point regarding the strong words which the Pope has dedicated to the most important "social issue" currently before the Italian parliament: a bill, which has the support of a large number of deputies from the center-left alliance, the Unione, would establish the PACS, the "Civil Pact of Solidarity", that is, the civil union between any two adults of any sex.

The secretary of the secular "Rose in hand" (Rosa nel Pugno) party, indispensable for Prodi's majority in Parliament, had the following answer to the Pope's second warning already on Saturday: "It is a grave act from a foreign Head of State who wishes to write the calendar of parliamentary works and who treats the Italian Republic as the courtyard of his house."

Then, on Tuesday, the new Speaker of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, Fausto Bertinotti, a member of the Communist Refoundation party, had even stronger words regarding Pope Ratzinger:

"The reaction of the Pontiff is erroneous because it is restorational. He does not see that a couple of homosexuals who are together and who have loved each other for five years represent a value of solidarity; it is a recognition of the other..."

Which is why Avvenire, in an editorial piece (reported by La Stampa), rejects those "laymen far away from the Church"and explains: "The Church has no intention of adapting herself" to the times.
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[We first made a reference to the issues which the new Italian government may try to force through in our analysis of the Martini interview and Italian politics.]

Cardinal no muy Amigo: When a man is not a man and a woman is not a woman.

Amidst the maddest succession of anti-family legislation proposed by any single government in Europe (probably ever), Zapatero's Socialists' latest proposal, likely to be introduced before the next general elections, would establish a "Gender Identity Act" (Ley de Identidad de Género).

As it often happens in such circumstances, the media picked the friendly cleric, Cardinal Amigo of Seville, to hear his opinion. From El País (Caution: some may find the Cardinal's words offensive):

The future approval of a Gender Identity Act to regulate the change of the sex and of the name of transsexuals is a "legal matter" which is not at all "frivolous", the Cardinal-Archbishop of Seville, Carlos Amigo, affirmed yesterday. A person's sex, "simply determined by an external inspection of the genital organs" may not be one's identity, he added. Amigo directed the regulation of such matters to "the experts".

A person's sex is "simply determined by an external inspection of the genital organs", and such identification may not be the most accurate, opined the Archbishop. In this, he concurs with the essence of the complaints of transsexual persons, who feel [they belong to] a sex which is not the one their genitalia portray. "Sex determination is made simply by an external inspection of the genital organs and one sex or the other is determined, but there may be a person whose only feature as a woman or as a man is this external appearance and that is not the identity of that person", he remarked.

Amigo was questioned after, in the past week, several groups of transsexuals began a campaign so that the Government fulfills its electoral pledge to regulate the change of name and sex in the Civil Registry with no need of complete surgery for the re-determination of sex.

The reporter transcribed the same sentence by the Cardinal three times, which may mean the Cardinal actually spoke it thrice or that the reporter was just surprised...

The Pope will visit Spain (Valencia) next July to take part in the World Meeting of Families (are the friendly Cardinal's words a coincidence?).

Tip: Radio Cristiandad (sidebar)

No God, no Christ, no Faith

The Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences published today the conclusions of its last meeting on the Bollettino, in English and Italian. One may search in vain for the words "God", "Jesus", "Christ", "Faith", or "divine" in these conclusions... That is a sure way to understand the crisis young people face these days!

Church and Loggia

From the blog of L'Espresso's Vaticanist, Sandro Magister:

At the annual "Lodge meeting" of the Grand Lodge of Italy, assembled at the Palacongressi [Convention Hall] of Rimini, from March 31 to April 2, a distinguished presence among the orators was that of the South-Tyrolese [altoatesino] priest Paul Renner, director of the Institute of Religious Sciences of the Diocese of Bolzano since 1984.

During the occasion, the Grand Lodge edited and published a CD with music of Freemason Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. And, in the website of the Grand Lodge, the presentation of the CD is written and signed by Giovanni Carli Ballola, a well-known music critic, but who also is a deacon incardinated in the Diocese of Rome, in [actual] service to a Parish.

Not only that. In the April issue of the "Jesus" magazine, Carli Ballola publishes a Letter to the Editor in which, "as an observant Catholic", he expresses his "conviction that reciprocal incomprehensions and prejudices between the Catholic world and the Masonic environment shall, sooner or later, arrive at honest clarifications".

Carli Ballola writes that he has "very dear friends, estimable in every level" among Masons. And he defines the rituals of the Grand Lodge as "deeply touching for the expressions of inner peace, efforts for moral and material assistence, fraternal love which is expressed in tangible signs such as the triple embrace".

According to him, the God worshipped by the Freemasons "is not deistic or theistic, but rooted upon the Judeo-Christian faith, as it is noticed by the open Bible in the center of the Lodge, left open on the beginning on the Gospel of John".

This is not all, though. In the April 14 issue of Avvenire [the semi-official daily of the Italian Episcopal Conference], among the Letters to the Editor, there is a "signed letter" which, while criticizing the secularism of the current Great Master [of the Grand Lodge of Italy], Gustavo Raffi, affirms that "a considerable amount of Masons live in suffering this separation from the Church." As a comforting [example], he mentions "the precious words by don Renner at his Rimini intervention". And he adds that "Freemasonry works under the light of the Gospel of Saint John, Masons were for centuries exclusively Catholic and many still are."

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Declaration on Masonic Associations (1983)

It has been asked whether there has been any change in the Church's decision in regard to Masonic associations since the new Code of Canon Law does not mention them expressly, unlike the previous code.

This sacred congregation is in a position to reply that this circumstance is due to an editorial criterion which was followed also in the case of other associations likewise unmentioned inasmuch as they are contained in wider categories.

Therefore, the Church's negative judgment in regard to Masonic associations remains unchanged since their principles have always been considered irreconcilable with the doctrine of the Church and, therefore, membership in them remains forbidden. The faithful, who enroll in Masonic associations are in a state of grave sin and may not receive Holy Communion.

It is not within the competence of local ecclesiastical authorities to give a judgment on the nature of Masonic associations which would imply a derogation from what has been decided above, and this in line with the declaration of this sacred congregation issued Feb. 17,1981.

In an audience granted to the undersigned cardinal prefect, the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II approved and ordered the publication of this declaration which had been decided in an ordinary meeting of this sacred congregation.

Rome, from the Office of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, November 26, 1983

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect
Father Jerome Hamer, O.P. Titular Archbishop of Lorium, Secretary

NEWS ANALYSIS: Italian politics and the Martini challenge to Pope Benedict XVI

At first sight, the intervention of Cardinal Martini weighing in on the wrong side of some of the most important moral discussions of this age would seem irrelevant. It is true that he was the President (Rettore) of the most prestigious Pontifical University, the Gregoriana; and archbishop of the largest Italian diocese, Milan - from which the world received Popes Ratti and Montini in the 20th century - for more than 20 years. But he has been retired since 2002, and, according to most rumors, he was in an extremely weak position in the last conclave.

Therefore, to understand the relevance of the interview Martini gave to the most important Italian newsweekly, L'Espresso, one needs to consider the current political and religious circumstances in Italy.

First, though formatted to look like a "discussion" between a "man of science" (Doctor Ignazio Marino) and a "man of faith" (Cardinal Martini), it is actually an interview: Marino presents his philosophy and questions Martini, who virtually always agrees with him. It is all about Martini's answers, not about Marino's "parallel ideas".

Second, Ignazio Marino is not just any physician: he is a member of the Democratici di Sinistra-DS (the "Leftist Democrats"), the post-Cold War name of the largest Communist Party in the West, the Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI). The Communists are the main leftist components of the "center-left" coalition, the Unione, led by Romano Prodi which has recently won the Italian parliamentary elections. Marino has just been elected to one of the Communist seats in the Senate for the Latium region (Lazio).

So this interview by Marino, who presents himself as a "Catholic" (in the style of the Dossettian "Bologna School" of "Progressive Catholicism"), has the following meaning: the left asks the Church for its opinion, and Martini is chosen as the official spokesman by the Italian "progressive elite", represented by L'Espresso magazine and by the Unione.

It is clear that if Marino were to interview Cardinal Ruini, the Cardinal Vicar of Rome and President of the Italian Episcopal Conference, or Pope Benedict, he would not receive the answers he wants. So the progressive manipulation technique involves picking a specific person who will provide the desired answers; the second step is to wait for an official response by the Church, which will probably not come. Then, the preposterous answers provided by the favored churchman become, if not official opinions, at least acceptable positions in the "rainbow of opinions" which shape the Church.

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Now, why is this "semi-official Church position" by a man like Martini so important at this moment? It is far from a coincidence that this interview has been released right after the official results of the elections were announced. Despite the great deterioration in its position in the post-Conciliar age, the Church is still an important player in Italian politics.

A center-left coalition which has barely won its majority in Parliament will force its leader, Romano Prodi, willingly or not, to give in to the most extremist forces inside his coalition if he wishes to remain in power. Ironically, Marino's DS (the "former" Communists) are among the most moderate forces in the Prodi coalition. However, among Italian leftwing politicians, the rage against the Church, against public funds given to the Church, against crucifixes in classrooms and courtrooms, against the Church's opposition to abortion, embryonic manipulation, "fast-track divorce" laws, homosexual civil unions is considerable -- especially as an angry response to a wrong perception of the Church (embodied in its most visible face in Italian politics, Ruini) as the "conservative anchor" of the leaving prime-minister, Silvio Berlusconi.

As prime-minister Rodríguez Zapatero in Spain, Prodi (though in many ways a much more moderate man than the Spaniard) will probably have to feed anti-clericalism to the extremists of his coalition. And this is where Martini's opinions are relevant, and it is why this ecclesiastical has-been is in the cover of this week's L'Espresso.

If the Italian public opinion may be persuaded, by Martini's words and by the official silence from the Vatican and from Ruini regarding those words, that opposition to the Magisterium is an acceptable position for Catholics, then the probable extreme measures which the center-left governing coalition will defend in moral matters will become more palatable to the population at large. And this is why this apparently unimportant intervention may mark a turning point in the Ratzinger pontificate.

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See the first post on the supernatural aspects of the "Martini intervention" here.
-Sunday Update.

-Monday: S. Magister has published a translation of the full intervention here; readers will notice that the "prophylactic" discussion was not the main topic of Martini's remarks, which were an attack on the edifice of Catholic Moral Doctrine on issues of life and death; and, as Magister notes, and as we had noticed in this analysis, they are "the first great act of opposition to this pontificate from the upper levels of the Church".

Great Orators of the Order of Friars Preachers

"A man who governs his passions is master of the world. We must either rule them, or be ruled by them."

Saint Dominic

"How ... strongly should we be drawn to Christ if we find our pleasure in truth, happiness, justice, eternal life: all of which Christ is!"

Saint Thomas Aquinas

"Regard yourself as more vile and miserable in the sight of God because of your faults than any sinner whatsoever, no matter what his sins."

Saint Vincent Ferrer

"The Glorious Virgin Mary...by the blessed fruit of her womb has saved a world condemned by the fall of our first parents."

Pope Saint Pius V

"God is the proper name of Truth, as Truth is the abstract name of God."

Lacordaire

"We must accompany [gay people] as they discern what this means, letting our images be stretched open... This means watching 'Brokeback Mountain,' reading gay novels, living with our gay friends and listening with them as they listen to the Lord."

Timothy Radcliffe