........I shared a few reflections and also a prayer I wrote for g@y and l@sbian adolescents, but really for any person of any race, s@x, creed or inclination, who feels bullied, marginalized, rejected or ashamed of who they are.
Link (here) to the post by Fr. James Martin, S.J.
20 comments:
I am all worn out. Scandal? Duties of the priest as Shephard. Forget about it. All of my posts were deleted. It seems somehow unmanly for Jesuits to delete all the girl comments that don't support their subscription to sin...
The Society of Jesus will go on sinking as long as its members will not find back the path of obedience to the Church and humility before God and men. What a sadness to read such lines composed by a brother Jesuit... Only prayer, comtemplation and self sacrifice will be able to correct such scandals.
While I sometimes wonder if Fr. Martin may inadvertently "encourage" homosexuality, this prayer seems fine to me.
What is the problem with this particular prayer?
Maria,
I don't post on "America" because I can't be heard unless I support everything I say with quotes from Aquinas, Aristotle, Diogenes, Augustine, or some other Catholic non-Prophet. And I can't post anonymously (or at least with just minimal identification.)
I can't help but notice that Christ himself would not be able to anonymously give advice directly from God on their web site. Ironic, isn't it?
Fr. Martin forgets that God didn't create sinners. He forgets that Jesus corrected sinners. He forgets that he should encourage sinners to stop sinning. But I didn't hear him doing that. I didn't here him saying: sin no more, like Jesus.
In addition, he doesn't address Jesus as God. Indeed, he goes out of his way to distinguish Jesus and God.
Anonymous,
Thanks for the help getting another perspective. I give Fr. Martin a bit more room for judgment (even judgment that may err on the side of sin.)
At the intellectual level, I can accept the argument that God created sinners and the structure that allows them to sin. And I can accept the argument that Jesus did things other than correct sinners and say “sin no more”. And I can accept the argument that the relationship of God and Christ is considered a mystery.
I do get less certain about the overall lack of “discouraging sin”. But I will leave such judgments to God. Humility comes in handy for all of us.
TonyD -- You are admittedly not a Catholic. So what is your point in continuing to post here? Is it to provide us with the perspective of the enemy? Don't you think it's adequately represented already?
Anonymous #2,
Some activities have multiple, distinct, consequences. Some problems are intractable. So, in general, people should see an issue in different ways – there are many ways to observe an issue and some of those ways are chosen by God for a particular observer. And that is why God must address the issue using the situation of the observer. It is tempting to say that there is a varying level of detail that can be observed – but that is too simple. We live in a complex existence of miracles.
Tony D - I'm not asking what you think God does. I'm asking why you post here. You are not a Catholic and have not demonstrated any serious interest in becoming one. So what exactly is it you want?
To educate us about your personal philosophy? To debate us? That is impossible, for you have previously expressed that there is no problem with two contradictory statements; that reality is contradictory, which apparently has lead you to believe that you can spam us with your endless nonsense.
Just say what you want, not what you think God wants, if you indeed even know.
Anonymous,
Since you don't understand my comments, just ignore them.
There are some people who do understand most of what I'm saying.
I know this because I've had many hours of conversations with such people -- including priests and theologians.
Please don't let your evaluation of my "conformance" to some definition of "Catholicism" obstruct them from hearing useful information.
And I do know that what I'm saying is useful.
Dear Padre Thomas and Anonymous: I am encouraged to know that I am, at least, not alone. What I read at America Magazine very nerly brings me to tears. At times, I cannot believe that I am reading what I am reading. Fr. Hardon SJ never stopped trumpeting the need for humility and obedience, nor the need for reparation ...
"There are some people who do understand most of what I'm saying."
Therefore, according to you, there are some people who understand that 2 contradictory statements can be true. Therefore, they are wrong and irrelevant that you make any reference to them.
As Nobel Prize winning Physicist Niels Bohr is said to once have said to another theoretical physicist, Wolfgang Pauli: "Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true."
So what is it you want from Catholics, TonyD? To help us understand what Jesus really meant according to those who meditate on their belly buttons and "mu"? To preach to God's Chosen People because you cannot that they live by faith?
You expect Catholics to sit back and watch you preach to the world in a Catholic website even after you've lied by misrepresenting yourself as one? Of course not.
I will consider ignoring your posts if you sign all of them with this warning: NOTE: I warn readers that I do not believe in Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church.
"There are some people who do understand most of what I'm saying."
Therefore, according to you, there are some people who understand that 2 contradictory statements can be true. Therefore, they are wrong and it's irrelevant that you make any reference to them.
As Nobel Prize winning Physicist Niels Bohr is said to once have said to another theoretical physicist, Wolfgang Pauli: "Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true."
So what is it you want from Catholics, TonyD? To help us understand what Jesus really meant according to those who meditate on their belly buttons and "mu"? To preach to God's Chosen People because you cannot accept that they live by faith?
You expect Catholics to sit back and watch you preach to the world in a Catholic website even after you've lied by misrepresenting yourself as one? Of course not.
I will consider ignoring your posts if you sign all of them with this warning: NOTE: I warn readers that I do not believe in Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church.
It is interesting that you chose physicists to disprove contradiction. Especially considering all the times that Physics has reversed itself – invisible force at a distance, Newtonian mechanics, Relativistic limitations, closed time-like curves (time travel), the Ether theory,…the list can go on for a long, long time.
One of the major reasons for the Hadron Collider now being built is to test time sequences – can the future really be known in advance.
When I’ve read some of Bohr’s presentations I’ve been surprised by how much pure conjecture they contained – with absolutely no proof or even attempt to prove the conjecture. Apparently, it is accepted that new understanding can be preceded by things that seem wrong, irrelevant, and even crazy.
I looked up that Bohr quote.
"...the famous sentence was said to Wolfgang Pauli himself, addressing Pauli’s idea of the spin of the electron. The idea turned out to be exactly crazy enough to be correct."
Theoretical physicists couch their statements in delimiting contexts such that they are true only there. Otherwise they would be contradictory. You should do that to avoid asserting that contradictory statements can be true.
Theoretical physicists must surely realize that they are not contending with divinely revealed knowledge but with human built conceptual models which presuppose that the language of mathematics accurately represents reality, something which has never been proven. That's as far as the faith of physicists, as natural scientists, goes. They are concerned only with the context of natural phenomenon.
Communing with the mystery of God (in the Holy Eucharist for example) is a supernatural event. It presupposes faith in His revelation and faith that God the Holy Spirit is guiding the Church's understanding of it.
I guess we can ignore light as wave and particle, quantum entanglement, time paradoxes in closed timelike curves...
Contradiction is only contradiction until it is understood.
Light can be OBSERVED as either wave or particle, but NOT BOTH at the same time. That is not a contradiction.
Physicists are not saying what light is but only how it is observed to behave by an observer in varying contexts.
They are not claiming it IS both a wave and particle, for that would be a contradiction, but that it can be observed as either one or the other, but not at the same time.
No contradiction there.
Time is also an observed phenomenon of the NATURAL world but it is not what it appears to be.
OK. So we “observe” contradiction and “it is not what it appears to be”. Stated another way, if God says that a circle is square, then the correct answer is “I will try to hold that belief”. And if he tells you that you’ve always known that, again the correct answer is “I will try to hold that belief”.
While this may seem “contradictory”, what we “observe” is “not be what it appears to be”. Logic is a construct.
While this may seem arbitrary, it is not. We are given the illusion of a “consistent logic” in order to facilitate lessons and provide “test scenarios” to guage our consistency with God’s values and judgments.
"So we “observe” contradiction ..."
No we don't. We observe different behavior under different circumstances.
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"...if God says that a circle is square, then the correct answer is..."
God would be wrong if he said that. A circle cannot be a square and a circle at the same time. God would therefore not say that. God is not irrational.
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"While this may seem “contradictory”, what we “observe” is “not be what it appears to be”."
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"Seem contradictory" and "contradictory" ate not the same thing. What appears evident in limited earthly space and time (one context) does not apply in astronomical distances (another context). Also read Xeno of Elea and A.N. Whitehead to understand that arithmetic operations are not accurate representations of reality. They are just part of a language and therefore abstract approximations.
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"Logic is a construct."
No it's not. Logic is the exercise of reason. Absent logic or reason there is no point in having a discussion.
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