Thursday, June 6, 2013

Arizona Jesuit Alumni, Men And Women For Others


Bishop Thomas Paprocki

Bishop Thomas Paprocki faced a hostile Jesuit alumni group during a May talk on the Church's teachings on homosexuality, reports LifeSiteNews
Two thousand members of the Jesuit Alumni in Arizona - graduates of 28 Jesuit universities and 47 Jesuit high schools, now living in Arizona - sponsored the event at Phoenix's Shadow Rock United Church of Christ. It featured talks by Bishop Paprocki and dissenting New Ways Ministry leader Sister Jeannine Gramick. Bishop Paprocki defended the Church's teachings on homosexuality before a hostile crowd, and shared that his own secretary had been murdered by a homosexual activist. 
During his talk, which argued in favor of traditional marriage, Bishop Paprocki received heckling and insults from the crowd. While the event was titled "Two Catholic Views on Marriage," Bishop Paprocki corrected that error. "There is only one authentic Catholic view," said Bishop Paprocki. "There are two views being presented here tonight by two people who are baptized Catholics, but only one of those views, the one I will present, is consistent with Catholic teaching, while the other view clearly dissents from Catholic teaching." Bishop Paprocki began by telling the crowd how his secretary, a mother of four, had been murdered by a homosexual man after she suggested that he change his lifestyle.
Said Bishop Paprocki:
A Google search on the Internet for the name 'Matthew Shepard' at one time produced 11,900,000 results. Matthew Shepard was a 21-year-old college student who was savagely beaten to death in 1998 in Wyoming. His murder has been called a hate crime because Shepard was gay. A similar search on the Internet for the name “Mary Stachowicz” yielded 26,800 results. In 2002, Mary Stachowicz was also brutally murdered, but the circumstances were quite different. Mary, the gentle, devout 51-year-old Catholic mother of four urged her co-worker, Nicholas Gutierrez, 19, to change his gay lifestyle. Infuriated by this, as he later told police, he allegedly beat, stabbed and strangled her to death and then stuffed her mangled body in a crawl space in his apartment, located above a Chicago funeral home, where they both worked. I know about Mary Stachowicz, not from the Internet, but personally, because Mary was my secretary at the parish where I was pastor before I was named a Bishop. She worked part time at the funeral home and part time at the parish. One afternoon, she didn’t show up at her usual starting time. This was unusual because she was always on time. A call to the funeral home disclosed that her car was still in their parking lot and her purse with her car keys was still at her desk, but there was no sign of Mary. As Mary’s family and friends prayed and worried about her disappearance, Gutierrez prayed with them. Three days later, her mutilated body was discovered in a crawl space in his apartment. Both murders were senseless and brutal, and I condemn them both unequivocally. However, the fact that there are over eleven and a half million more Internet stories about Matthew Shepard than Mary Stachowicz indicates where popular sentiment lies today on the question of same-sex relationships. Shepard’s story has received such widespread attention because his homosexuality was the chief motive for his murder. Mary’s murder was widely ignored by the media, despite the fact that she died as a martyr for her faith.
"The Church’s teaching on homosexuality and marriage is Catholic because it is true, not true because it is Catholic," said Bishop Paprocki. Bishop Paprocki’s full address is available here.
Link (here) to Catholic Education Daily

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