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Cardinal Keith O'Brien strikes again

For topics that are more about faith, religion and religious organisations than anything else.
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Lifelinking
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Re: Cardinal Keith O'Brien strikes again

#41 Post by Lifelinking » March 8th, 2012, 7:27 pm

Latest post of the previous page:

Nice blog Paolo
"Who thinks the law has anything to do with justice? It's what we have because we can't have justice."
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Tetenterre
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Re: Cardinal Keith O'Brien strikes again

#42 Post by Tetenterre » March 10th, 2012, 7:36 am

The Pope is getting in on the act, too. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-17320932 The RCs must be feeling that their privileged position is really threatened.
Steve

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Re: Cardinal Keith O'Brien strikes again

#43 Post by Lifelinking » March 10th, 2012, 11:29 am

Yes, this is not just individual senior clerics blowing off. It is a planned, orchestrated media strategy.
"Who thinks the law has anything to do with justice? It's what we have because we can't have justice."
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Dave B
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Re: Cardinal Keith O'Brien strikes again

#44 Post by Dave B » March 10th, 2012, 1:17 pm

You don't think old Popie is just grabbing another ride on the bandwagon as it trundles by then LL? There was a bit of a delay there. Orchestration is as important as strategy in these things and I would have thought the Vatican would have been armed and ready to shoot the following day at the latest for it to be part of a cunning plan.
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Re: Cardinal Keith O'Brien strikes again

#45 Post by Lifelinking » March 10th, 2012, 1:54 pm

I have no doubt that the Pope will be being 'briefed' and advised about what is happening in different countries and making statements designed to support his Cardinals and Bishops in a lot of different places, not just the yookay. It has been the Cardinals and Bishops in the UK who been grabbing the headlines with increasingly strident (intemperate? hysterical?) language, but if you look also at the work being done 'on the ground' about this subject by bodies such as the Catholic Parliamentary office and Catholic Voices, the fact that they are spending money on things such as commissioning their own polls, and the faithful being rallied from the pulpitI would say what we are seeing is indeed highly planned and orchestrated.
"Who thinks the law has anything to do with justice? It's what we have because we can't have justice."
William McIlvanney

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Re: Cardinal Keith O'Brien strikes again

#46 Post by david house » March 10th, 2012, 3:49 pm

There is no doubt this is co-ordinated. As a regular contributor to various RC blogs and forums so many of the posts contain identical wording. I debate with some of the "Catholic Voices". There must be briefing documents being sent out. They are determined to preserve their view that marriage is a union between a man and a woman for the purpose of pro-creation and nothing else. They claim that this is something that the state is powerless to change and if they try that it will not be valid and will be resisted. This is a really serious moment in the struggle to establish sense and secularism. There is talk of war and the need to spill blood, that is how worked up some of them are.

I believe it is essential this is countered and not ignored as being the death throws of an irrelevant organisation. They already have some MPs talking their talk

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Re: Cardinal Keith O'Brien strikes again

#47 Post by Lifelinking » March 10th, 2012, 3:52 pm

^^I agree^^
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Re: Cardinal Keith O'Brien strikes again

#48 Post by phalarope » March 10th, 2012, 4:11 pm

Aren't you getting a tad over-heated on this, David? It isn't really about the threat to marriage per se but about the Catholic cut of the marriage 'market'. That's what the management are worried about, and drag out the usual shibboleths and runes to excite the tribe. All churches are loosing trade to a secular surge. The RC's are feeling the pinch in, for instance, Scotland, where non-religious weddings are pushing them off their niche perch. If the institute of marriage and lucrative weddings are under pressure as a sub-set of religious involvement in people's lives (and then how rudimentary and symbolic), where will it end? Could the very institutional experience of religious belief by waning? Only in the educated West just now but how long before religious belief itself pushes the pedlars out of the market, leaving it free for do-it-yourself spiritualities. The Catholic Church in particular is an outdated industry in the UK. Consumers are looking for more modern brands. The CEO and Board of Directors in VC are directing their attention to the British market and falling sales. Maybe Cardinal Keithyboy feels that VC will change its distribution elsewhere to the well sourced markets of Central and South America, Asia, and the newer African franchises.

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Re: Cardinal Keith O'Brien strikes again

#49 Post by david house » March 11th, 2012, 5:57 am

phalarope

I don't believe I am over heating on this, but I do think the RC Church, together with some others who think as they do, are. Look at the current reports of what is being said in the USA., both by the Pope and others. This is no co-incidence. Complacency by those who don't want to see our progress interupted could end up seeing us go back quite a few years. In the USA the religious right are achieving the closure of abortion providers, changing the way sex education in schools is taught as well as opposing greater rights for homosexuals. They are not just making noise. They are winning and it is on its way to the UK.

I regularly debate these issues with these people. They firmly believe that the state of western democracy can be laid at the door of a decline in sexual morality and the turning away from God. Some seriously propose that only the religious should have the vote, as they are the only ones with enough intelligence to exercise it properly. Crazy I know and that extremism will never succeed but some of their stuff is taking root. We need to be on guard and respond.

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Re: Cardinal Keith O'Brien strikes again

#50 Post by phalarope » March 11th, 2012, 7:56 am

David, as you debate with Catholics you will be familiar with the decline in the West and the anxieties this falling away brings to some of the faithful, a tiny minority of diehards. O'Brien in his relatively remote corner in the Scottish enclave has a sort of missionary fervour about him born of this decline, and wants to feel less out of touch from VC, wants to be noticed in his older years. But moribund his church is and that's that, no matter how many shockings he gives to the body to get it kicking. This latest on the 'sanctity' and necessity of marriage is defined by its heterosexuality as the norm of the ages, as inalienable, like the Church itself. If one begins to weaken on this one then all is lost.

Should same sex marriages be legalised in the UK then it is the thin edge of the wedge, a stake that could pierce the very heart of the Church, its priesthood and monastics. Because if same sex marriage is allowed then what's to stop priests marrying, either women or other priests? Monks and nuns intermarrying? They can always argue from the law to justify their loves. But here is the real core of the matter, surely, for O'Brien et al. If marriages take place within the Church then offspring pose a threat of inheritance of the property of the Church, be it parish property and heritable priesthoods, or larger properties, such as heritable bishoprics and Sees, VC itself and hereditary Popes.

Maybe far-fetched yet there it is. Not that O'Brien sees it that way with his limited vision. But others could in the not too distant future. Remember, the Church is nothing but a franchise, a marketing device. To be sure the product since Vatican 2 has been redesigned and modernised somewhat but it still functions as the comfort food for a sizeable market out there.

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Re: Cardinal Keith O'Brien strikes again

#51 Post by Dave B » March 11th, 2012, 10:07 am

Because if same sex marriage is allowed then what's to stop priests marrying, either women or other priests?
Phalarope, can you expand on this - I do not see that one follows the other. I can see that the relaxing of things in one area may influence the actions of others fighting for similar rights - but surely the RCC is self contained?

Having said that: the RCC did "absorb" those Anglican priests who were anti-women priests and some of those were married. They are also still talking about re-uniting the Anglican and RC churches - I can see schizms and demands for equal rights for all priests boiling up if that happens.
"Look forward; yesterday was a lesson, if you did not learn from it you wasted it."
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phalarope
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Re: Cardinal Keith O'Brien strikes again

#52 Post by phalarope » March 11th, 2012, 1:10 pm

Thanks Dave. I guess it's something like unintended consequences or collateral damage. Same sex marriage calls into question, indirectly possibly but still there, the status and function of celibacy as a dogma. The celibacy of the RC priesthood was never an issue of restraint from sexuality so much as it was from marriage, which has always and uniquely shaped the Catholic priesthood. The hierarchy could live with sexuality as a private matter among its priests, hence the reluctance to castigate paedophile clergy, and even some of the Popes were fathers in both senses of the term. But when in the middle ages some offspring of these Popes themselves became Popes, well then the institutional cohesion of the Church qua monolith was under threat, in the longer term. The Reformation included marriage as part of the package but a breakaway concept ultra papism, with no hope of success within the Institution, the Firm, of the Church. To permit otherwise would be to allow a potential fragmentation even more damaging than the Reformation.

The key issue surely is the historical nature of the Church. The Apostolic claim is one of Absolute Oneness. Which is why the Church is a type of State, more than Vatican City. This Universal State cannot be privatised, or it falls because fragmented into many small, nationally based 'firms'. I think that the history of the monastic orders bears out this rationale, but that's another question. The Church has no owners, only controllers. The bureaucracy is self-perpetuating. No shareholders to bother with. Like all bureaucracies, e.g; the Indian Civil Service, the higher priesthood is a caste, not a class. Class is defined by ownership; a caste is not. In this case the necessity of a sacramental dogma about celibacy is also the sufficient reason for being unwed. Marriage too is about ownership of goods, chattels, above all property. Hence the edginess of some higher bureaucrats about threats to this caste system, which is also a managerial system. Allow same sex marriage without and you permit a contradiction within the Church, one of calling in to question the logic of priestly celibacy as unique AND simultaneously sacramental. If marriage is sacramental but also same sex then ergo priesthood which is same sex could become a married relationship. My syllogism here is probably weak but maybe not far from what could be argued by homosexual discontents within the lower ranks of the clericy. Either way the Papacy is trying to hedge its bets. O'Brien could be what you see as part of a fight back on the sacramental problem qua dogma but my instinct is more towards what lies beneath and within the institutional dynamic of the Church and the future. Maybe an example of the law of uneven and combined development.

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Re: Cardinal Keith O'Brien strikes again

#53 Post by Dave B » March 11th, 2012, 2:05 pm

Certainly, from what one hears in the news and rumour it does seem to be what you say, providing the RC priest dips his wick in a discrete manner the hierarchy seems to turn a blind eye. Here is another case of choosing one's definition of words - celibate originally meant "unmarried" rather than "not indulging in sexual acts." Are they still using that older meaning, since they are stuck, in most other aspects, in the past?

Increasingly though the Internet is opening up closets many would rather be kept closed and more people seem willing to challenge and accuse those who they once treated with something approaching fear and awe. Or, having read one book on 19thC Ireland, actual fear, where the local priest could beat the kids to the point of bleeding whilst the local policeman stood and watched.

Perhaps this is also part off the motives of the RCC to challenge the modern would - they see the cracks in their authority opening on all sides.
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Re: Cardinal Keith O'Brien strikes again

#54 Post by Alan H » March 11th, 2012, 11:06 pm

My first wife's brother is a Catholic priest. He studied in Rome and we went there when he was being made a Deacon - one of the steps to becoming a priest. I remember him telling us that he was told that, as he was about to become a Deacon, he now had to give up girls. Of course, this came as a complete surprise to him - he was unaware that that sort of thing was allowed up till then!
Alan Henness

There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:

1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?

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Re: Cardinal Keith O'Brien strikes again

#55 Post by david house » March 12th, 2012, 2:33 am

We are going off topic here but as an aside, and for interest only I spend half my life in the Philippines. I am there now. It is obviously a Catholic dominated country in which to speak openly against the Church is a dangerous thing to do. You don't just risk jail, you risk someone shooting you because of the offence you caused.

However the Catholicism here is not as we know it in the UK. Many priests openly have girl friends, or boy friends. Some have kids and some are even married. The hierarchy do a Nelson. Homosexuality is completely accepted and usual here. Many of the prettiest girls have something that girls back home don't have! Families and the Church accept homosexuality as completely normal. They would be amazed at the fuss being made in the UK.

There are many things that annoy. Shops stop serving twice a day for prayers to be given over the PA. No occasion, public or private starts without a prayer. There are more TV channels devoted to preaching than to sport. Such is life!

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Re: Cardinal Keith O'Brien strikes again

#56 Post by Dave B » March 12th, 2012, 9:27 am

And this is, no doubt, part of the reason why the Philipines are such a good example of contentment, peace and tranquillity to the rest of the world.
"Look forward; yesterday was a lesson, if you did not learn from it you wasted it."
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Re: Cardinal Keith O'Brien strikes again

#57 Post by Alan H » March 12th, 2012, 10:00 am

More from the Scottish Catholic media Office:
Sunday 11 March 2012

SNP plans to allow gay marriage would make Scots less likely to back independence, according to a new poll.

A survey of 1,004 Scots commissioned by the campaign group "Scotland For Marriage" has found that 11% of voters are less likely to vote to end the union if the controversial move to legalise same sex marriage goes ahead.

The poll by ORB Opinion Research Business found that only 2% of voters are more likely to back independence as a result.

Gordon Wilson, the former SNP leader, warned that the issue could prove a “disaster” for the nationalists at a time when they should be seeking to build consensus among voters.

The poll found that five times as many Scots are less likely rather than more likely to back independence as a result of the issue.

Gordon Wilson urged the Scottish government to reconsider its position. saying: “It’s a potential disaster. If the government presses ahead with this proposal against public opinion it will alienate people from voting for independence in the referendum.

“SNP governments should have only one main priority: the winning of independence for Scotland, everything else is much less important. “This is not so much handing out olive branches as beating people with them.

The SNP has to do everything in its power over the next two and a half years to persuade the population as a whole that independence is a good thing and this poll indicates that it is skating on very thin ice.”

Commenting on the proposal, Catholic Church spokesman Peter Kearney said; "The fact that five times as many voters are turned off independence by the Government's attitude to same sex marriage, as are attracted to it, shows that it is a massive vote loser which will only alienate many electors. Hopefully the fact that a redefinition of marriage would be inherently unjust as well as an electoral liability will convince the Government to change its position."
Alan Henness

There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:

1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?

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Re: Cardinal Keith O'Brien strikes again

#58 Post by Tetenterre » March 12th, 2012, 10:00 am

I am rarely moved to blog, but I just have:
Sex, Marriage and Religious Privilege http://bit.ly/zHYetX
Steve

Quantum Theory: The branch of science with which people who know absolutely sod all about quantum theory can explain anything.

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Re: Cardinal Keith O'Brien strikes again

#59 Post by Dave B » March 12th, 2012, 10:16 am

I like these polls. There was mention of a couple of contradictory polls on the radio yesterday. One was carried out by the Telegraph, the other by a Catholic website.

I am no pollster but, surely, the nature and "breadth" of the sample polled is critical in what the poll would indicate? Can one compare a national media poll with a specialised website? The person on the BBC seemed to think so.

Also, statements in articles like the above,
SNP plans to allow gay marriage would make Scots less likely to back independence, according to a new poll.
look more like attempts at seeding an idea rather than reporting anything. Wow! 1% of the sample was against the idea - therefore it is going to influence the whole nation!

So, 11% against and 2% for. Does that not indicate that 87% indicated no strong opinion one way nor the other, that the issue might not influence their vote at all? Did they ask the sample what their basic opinion of independence was at the start, then ask how this issue might affect that - which might give a better picture.

Why am I cynical about polls?
"Look forward; yesterday was a lesson, if you did not learn from it you wasted it."
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Re: Cardinal Keith O'Brien strikes again

#60 Post by david house » March 17th, 2012, 11:02 am

If you enjoy a bit of sarcastic humour with a bite under the surface, take a look at this:-

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/3f1df970 ... ab49a.html#

I think it's brilliant and so true.

Nick
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Re: Cardinal Keith O'Brien strikes again

#61 Post by Nick » March 17th, 2012, 3:45 pm

Truly excellent, David! :laughter:

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