No doubt lack of action there should be seen as a blot on Pope Francis' time at the top so far .. no excuses if he is not working at something on it behind the scenes, and if he does not move up to the mark sooner than later on that one .. and if he doesn't reconsider his position on other matters ..
Pope Francis has, in some ways, been a welcome change from previous pontiffs, and seems genuinely concerned about the plight of the world’s poor .. http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/pope-francis-decries-idolatry-money , a demographic growing ever larger as Big Business drives a global economy that exploits the working class in what the Pope has called ‘idolatry of money over man.’
Yet in other ways, he continues to support a decaying, archaic, and inequitable bias toward roughly half the human race – women.
While with his right hand he’s busy smacking errant nuns back into line, with his left he’s also promoting those in the Church who are busily stamping out ‘feminine machismo,’ such as Archbishop Gerhard Mueller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Worse, Mueller isn’t just concerned with cowing disobedient nuns, he’s consistently obstructed lobbying that would have the Vatican and other church hierarchy held accountable for paedophile priests rather than protecting them via the usual practice of shuffling them around from parish to parish whenever complaints arise and sweeping it all under the carpet.
Nor has Pope Francis shown much tolerance for anyone in the Church expressing the unorthodox views supporting women priests and gays, as dissident priest Greg Reynolds .. http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/church-dumps-rebel-priest-20130920-2u5jp.html#ixzz2ffbnVlF4 .. in Melbourne, Australia recently discovered. While child molesting priests are, occasionally if it becomes too big a scandal to hide, defrocked, Father Reynolds was not only laicised, but actually excommunicated – on direct orders from the Vatican, not at the request of his archbishop. Father Reynolds's heinous transgression is that he’s the founder of Inclusive Catholics, which promotes a more merciful and welcoming church rather than focusing on divisive issues as abortion, gay marriage and contraception... wait, who said that’s what Catholic priests should be doing? Oh, yeah. That would be Pope Francis. Riiiiiight.
It’s extremely rare, but Father Reynolds isn’t the first Australian Catholic to be excommunicated, and for all the wrong reasons; Sister Mary MacKillop .. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-09-25/mackillop-banished-after-uncovering-sex-abuse/2273940 .. was excommunicated by her local bishop in 1871 after she blew the whistle on a priest in Adelaide who had been sexually molesting children. The paedophile cleric was speedily packed off to another parish in Ireland – where he continued on as a priest – while his friends plotted revenge against MacKillop, managing to get her excommunicated and tossed out on the street penniless. She was later canonized in 2010 as a Catholic saint. Go figure.
So when Pope Francis says, ‘The feminine genius is needed wherever we make important decisions. The church cannot be herself without the woman and her role. ... We have to work harder to develop a profound theology of the woman,’ I have to wonder exactly what sort of ‘role’ women and their ‘feminine genius’ he envisions. I rather doubt it’s quite the same as the one Sister Teresa Forcades .. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24079227 .. envisions.
This outspoken leftwing intellectual Spanish nun from Catalonia is also a medical doctor specializing in internal medicine, a graduate of Harvard University and Cambridge University, with a dual PhD in public health and theology, as well as being an immensely popular guest on television talk shows, with a huge following on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
She has no interest in running for political office, but has founded a movement, Proces Constituent, and co-authored the ‘Manifest for the Convening of a Constituent Process in Catalonia’ with economist Arcadi Oliveres, promoting Catalonian independence and heading an anti-capitalist movement that so far, 50,000 Catalonians – and here’s the kicker, most of them non-believers – have signed up.
She’s campaigning for the government takeover of all banks and measures to curb financial speculation, fairer wages and pensions, shorter working hours and payments to parents who stay at home and an end to job cuts, a genuine ‘participatory democracy’ with steps to curb political corruption, decent housing for all, and an end to all foreclosures, and a reversal of public spending cuts, and renationalisation of all public services.
She’s a champion of ‘green’ economic policies and the nationalisation of energy companies, wants public media placed under democratic control, including the internet, want a free and independent Catalonia to leave Nato and to abolish its armed forces, and an end to xenophobia and a repeal of immigration laws. She admires Gandhi, Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales.
It doesn’t get much more progressively leftwing than that.
She’s adamant that everything she does is from a deep Christian faith and devotion, yet she’s one of the strongest critics of the Catholic Church and the men who control it. Sister Teresa believes women priests should be welcomed by the Catholic Church and that gay people should be allowed to serve openly in the church in every capacity. She’s criticized Pope Francis, saying he should be judged on how religious women are treated by the Vatican. She has been outspoken about a woman’s right to control her own body, including the right to decide over abortion.
The three dozen nuns at the monastery of Saint Benet, atop the mountain of Montserrat, love her unconditionally, and regard her as a ‘gift from God,’ who is paving the way for a feminist future in the Catholic Church. She acts as an ambassador between their Benedictine life of quiet prayer and the chaotic political and secular world. Wherever she goes to speak, she packs in the crowds, riveting them with radical ideas that not only alarm many Spanish mainstream politicians, but has made the Vatican very uneasy, bishops unsympathetic to her radical stances on everything from women in the priesthood and abortion to – what is probably nearer and dearer to their celibate hearts – banking and capitalism.
If the Catholic Church is to remain relevant in a rapidly changing world, and ever does evolve from its antiquated authoritarian, misogynistic, and hypocritical views to a Church truly devoted to human welfare and compassion, it won’t be because of popes like Francis, no matter how ‘progressive’ he seems compared to his predecessors. It will be feminist geniuses like Sister Teresa Forcades that drag it kicking and screaming into the 21st century. I don’t have to be a Catholic, or even religious, to wish her every success.
.. is it a failure to look for the best in any individual? .. and at the same time to ignore more important failures of him? .. over time, in his circumstance and on major issues such as excommunicating child molesters, opening the institution to a fairer level of female involvement and opening the church to criminal law as most every other organization is/and or should be .. yes, it would be .. personally i couldn't, however difficult it could be for him to get over any block of church mechanisms/rules/dogma which may or may not exist, give him a pass on it forever .. not if there is no evidence that he isn't trying to make some significant moves ..
Brazilian priest excommunicated for ‘heresy’ for denying Catholic teaching on homosexuality
by Matthew Hoffman, Latin America Correspondent
Wed May 01, 2013 17:16 EST
May 1, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A Catholic priest from the Diocese of Bauru, in the state of Sao Paulo, Brazil, has been excommunicated for “heresy” and “schism,” in the words of his diocese, for attacking the Catholic Church’s teachings on the immorality of homosexual acts.
According to a communique issued by the diocese issued two days ago, “the pronouncements and attitudes of the Reverend Fr. Robert Francisco Daniel, which in the name of ‘freedom of expression’ have betrayed the commitment to fidelity to the Church which he swore to serve on the day of his priestly ordination, are a matter of public knowledge.”
Robert Francisco Daniel
“These acts have created great scandal and injured the communion of the Church,” the diocese of Bauru adds. “His attitude is incompatible with the obligations of the priestly state which he should love, because it was he who asked from the Church the Grace of Ordination.”
The priest’s statements are “gravely against the dogmas of the Catholic Faith, [and] against morality,” and represent “a deliberate refusal of obedience to his pastor,” said the statement from the diocese. Therefore he “has committed the most grave crime of heresy and schism whose penalty, prescribed in canon 1364, first paragraph of the Code of Canon Law, is excommunication,” it continued.
Fr. Robert Francisco Daniel, better known as “Padre Beto,” provoked outrage among the Catholic faithful of Brazil for statements made in a recent video interview denying the Church’s condemnation of homosexual behavior. Catholics were encouraged by blogs such as the traditionalist “Fratres in Unum” .. http://fratresinunum.com/2013/04/22/nova-evangelizacao-com-padre-beto/ .. to contact Daniel’s diocese as well as the Vatican.
In the video Daniel claimed that modern science has disproven the teachings contained in the Bible regarding homosexuality, asserting that “today it will no longer do to categorize a human being as homosexual, bisexual or heterosexual,” adding that “love can arise from any one of those levels.”
The Catholic Church, continued Daniel, “is going to have to change, but not because the society has changed, but because science and human knowledge have evolved. We can’t throw out 2,000 years of culture of human knowledge and continue to affirm things that, yes, are in the Bible, phrases that are in the Bible, but are fruits of what? Not of the Holy Spirit. Phrases that are fruits of the culture of the time. That’s what we can’t do.”
The Catholic Church, through the Bible and through its doctrinal declarations, teaches that homosexual acts are “intrinsically evil,” alongside all sexual acts outside of marriage, which is understood as a perpetual union between one man and one woman.
Following the outcry against his latest remarks, Daniel expressed defiance on his Facebook page, stating, “I’m not going to withdraw any material posted by my authority on social networks, on my site or in any space on the Internet.” He said that “the Church needs to be a dialogical space” so people can “become true sons of God in our contemporary world.” In the same message he renounced his priestly ministry.
In an interview with the newspaper O Globo following the excommunication, Daniel accused the Catholic Church of being “homophobic.”
“Today, sexual diversity exists, and there are many texts in the Bible that we can no longer consider words of God,” he told the publication. “Sadly, the Catholic Church is still homophobic despite having many homosexuals within it. It has become closed to the world of today and not open to dialogue.”
The diocese notes that Bishop Frei Caetano Ferrar sought to resolve the matter with Daniel, but to no avail. The bishop, “with the patience and charity of a pastor, has long sought a dialogue to overcome and resolve this situation in a fraternal and Christian way,” the diocese notes. However, after “all the initiatives were exhausted” and the wayward priest “reacted aggressively” and “refused all dialogue” with a diocesan canon lawyer who was apparently assigned to judge the case, the diocese proceeded with the excommunication.
The case follows that of Fr. Jose Nicolas Alessio, whose defrocking by the Diocese of Cordoba in Argentina was announced in April of this year following his remarks in 2010 defending homosexual “marriage.”
.. one question i haven't checked on, yet .. is it possible for any Pope to excommunicate any individual on his own? .. should be easy to find the answer to that one .. i just haven't done it .. yet ..
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