Cardinal Fernández: The Catholic Church agrees with Coptic Orthodox statement condemning homosexual activity
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May 24, 2024
Two months after the Coptic Orthodox Church suspended theological dialogue with the Catholic Church over Fiducia Supplicans, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández traveled to Egypt to explain the declaration on the pastoral meaning of blessings to the church’s leader, Pope Tawadros II of Alexandria.
The prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith explained in his May 22 meeting with the Coptic Pope that “these blessings are not given to the union between individuals,” according to Vatican News. “If two people present themselves together, they can be blessed, making the sign of the cross over each and adding a short prayer. But this must happen briefly, spontaneously, without any rite, without liturgical vestments, and without any outward manifestation that might confuse this blessing with a marriage.”
Cardinal Fernández told the Coptic Pope that “the Catholic Church shares the teachings” of the Coptic Orthodox Church’s March 7 statement on homosexuality, according to Vatican News.
In “The Belief of the Coptic Orthodox Church on the Issue of Homosexuality,” the church’s Holy Synod stated that “the Bible in both Testaments condemns, warns, and forbids sexual practices between two people of the same sex. The synod cited Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, Romans 1:26-28, and 1 Corinthians 6:9-10.
“Accordingly, the Coptic Orthodox Church rejects what is called sexual perversion in its general and comprehensive understanding, and all types of sexual practices outside the sacred framework of marriage,” the statement continued.
Cardinal Fernández, according to Vatican News, also told the Coptic Pope that the Catholic Church “has a positive view” of the March 7 statement’s “pastoral approach.”
In its pastoral approach, the Holy Synod called on persons tempted to homosexual activity to engage in “warfares of thought, sight, and attractions, just like heterosexuals.”
“Whoever suffers from homosexual tendencies and controls themselves from sexual behaviors, the control is credited to them as a struggle,” the statement noted.
The synod continued:
As for someone who falls into homosexual behaviors, they are like the heterosexuals who fall into the sin of adultery/fornication, needing true repentance. Both need continuous spiritual and psychological follow-up. These follow-ups have proven effective with unwanted homosexual tendencies.
As for those who choose to reconcile with their homosexual tendencies, letting go of themselves to homosexual acts, rejecting spiritual and psychological treatment, and choosing of their own free will to break God’s commandment, their condition becomes worse than the one who lives in [struggle against] adultery/fornication. Therefore, they must be warned and cut off from communion until they repent.
St Paul had his own agenda. He was not a disciple. Above all, he did not and could not speak authoritatively on behalf of Jesus Christ. So stop pretending that he did.
ReplyDeleteChrist did not condemn anal sexual intercourse or homosexuality or fornication for that matter. You are as always pissing into the wind.
"The (Coptic) Church believes that the Holy Bible, is the good word of truth for all ages, and the Bible in both Testaments condemns, warns, and forbids sexual practices between two people of the same sex. For example, Saint Paul says: “For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise, also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting” (Romans 1:26-28). For additional references, see: 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, Leviticus 18:22, and Leviticus 20:13."
ReplyDeleteLooks like you are in a minority of one Detterling!
No Gene, I am not. No-one in their right senses takes the Old Testament rules for life seriously, as the following satirical letter from the internet shows:
Delete"When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odour for the Lord (Leviticus 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odour is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?
I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanness (Leviticus 15:19-24). The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offence.
Leviticus 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can’t I own Canadians?
I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?
A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Leviticus 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don’t agree. Can you settle this?
Leviticus 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?
h) Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Leviticus19:27. How should they die?
i) I know from Leviticus 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football with an old fashioned pigskin ball if I wear gloves?
j) My uncle has a farm. He violates Leviticus 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them (Leviticus 24:10-16)? Couldn’t we just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws (Leviticus 20:14)?"
Either all these laws, including those regarding sex, are valid and must be obeyed, or none of them need be. Stop bullshitting, Gene.
And Christ nowhere pronounces on sexuality and St Paul's teachings take no account of the teachings of Christ.
As always, you are bullshitting and hoping that no-one will notice.
"And Christ nowhere pronounces on sexuality"
ReplyDeleteHe certainly does: You must definitely be losing it Detterling.
And once again this madness of saying that because Jesus did not mention sodomy then we do not know what his views on this heinous sin would be is not something even the most intellectually challenged barroom theologian would spout.
If Jesus pronounces on sexuality, show us chapter and verse.
DeleteYou can't, because he doesn't, and simply saying that he is is in Einstein insanity territory.
"And once again this madness of saying that because Jesus did not mention sodomy then we do not know what his views on this heinous sin would be is not something even the most intellectually challenged barroom theologian would spout."
And once again you fail to recognise your total inconsistency in laying out an argument.
I had never mentioned the Paedophile Information Exchange, paedophilia or paedophiles - and you used this fact to prove your fantastically unpleasant smear that therefore I must support the Paedophile Information Exchange, paedophilia or paedophiles.
Jesus Christ never mentioned anal sexual intercourse of any kind, let alone homosexuality or sheep-shagging - and from this you assert the complete opposite - that he condemned them all.
In maintaining this dazzling stupidity and hypocrisy you achieve the virtually impossible task of insulting your own intelligence - the achievement of a moronically stupid public lavatory theologian.
"St Paul's teachings take no account of the teachings of Christ."
ReplyDeleteSheer madness. You have totally lost it.
Again you are here in a minority of one.
" "St Paul's teachings take no account of the teachings of Christ." Sheer madness. You have totally lost it. Again you are here in a minority of one."
DeleteBollocks. Have a go at refuting the theologians and thinkers below, you pompous bellend.
St Paul was not "the teacher of the faith par excellence." He was, like you, a bigot unable to countenance disagreement and an overweening bully. He was also the archetypal sexual inadequate unable to live down his prurient fascination with the sexuality he had never dared to confront. And his opinions about homosexuality and homosexuality have absolutely no basis in the the gospels of Christ, as you have just demonstrated by your complete failure to evidence them. And I am not the only one who thinks that St Paul corrupted Christianity into a creed that could sit well with canting bigots like you. Read and learn, Gene:
Thomas Jefferson: "Paul was the first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus. He reduced Jesus's ministry to his death and resurrection, and sought to impose his own rules."
Soren Kierkegaard, in The Journals: "In the teachings of Christ, religion is completely present tense: Jesus is the prototype and our task is to imitate him, become a disciple. But then through Paul came a basic alteration. Paul draws attention away from imitating Christ and fixes attention on the death of Christ The Atoner. What Martin Luther, in his reformation, failed to realize is that even before Catholicism, Christianity had become degenerate at the hands of Paul. Paul made Christianity the religion of Paul, not of Christ. Paul threw the Christianity of Christ away, completely turning it upside down, making it just the opposite of the original proclamation of Christ"
Ernest Renan, in his book Saint Paul: "True Christianity, which will last forever, comes from the gospel words of Christ not from the epistles of Paul. The writings of Paul have been a danger and a hidden rock, the causes of the principal defects of Christian theology."
Will Durant, in his Caesar and Christ: "Paul created a theology of which none but the vaguest warrants can be found in the words of Christ. . . . Through these interpretations Paul could neglect the actual life and sayings of Jesus, which he had not directly known. . . . Paul replaced conduct with creed as the test of virtue. It was a tragic change."
Robert Frost: "Paul he's in the Bible too. He is the fellow who theologized Christ almost out of Christianity. Look out for him."
James Baldwin: "The real architect of the Christian church was not the disreputable, sun-baked Hebrew (Jesus Christ) who gave it its name but rather the mercilessly fanatical and self-righteous Paul."
Martin Buber: "The Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount is completely opposed to Paul."
Kahlil Gibran: "This Paul is indeed a strange man. His soul is not the soul of a free man. He speaks not of Jesus nor does he repeat His Words. He would strike with his own hammer upon the anvil in the Name of One whom he does not know."
Mahatma Gandhi: "I draw a great distinction between the Sermon on the Mount of Jesus and the Letters of Paul. Paul's Letters are a graft on Christ's teachings, Paul's own gloss apart from Christ's own experience."
Carl Jung: "Saul's fanatical resistance to Christianity. . . . was never entirely overcome. It is frankly disappointing to see how Paul hardly ever allows the real Jesus of Nazareth to get a word in."
George Bernard Shaw: "There is not one word of Pauline Christianity in the characteristic utterances of Jesus. . . . There has really never been a more monstrous imposition perpetrated than the imposition of Paul's soul upon the soul of Jesus. . . . It is now easy to understand how the Christianity of Jesus. . . . was suppressed by the police and the Church, while Paulinism overran the whole western civilized world, which was at that time the Roman Empire, and was adopted by it as its official faith."
"And Christ nowhere pronounces on sexuality"
ReplyDeleteIn Matthew 19, Jesus actually said, “At the beginning, the creator made them male and female and said, for this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife. And the two will become one flesh.”
QED
Come off it, Gene. That is not a pronouncement on sexuality; it is a pronouncement on the nature of human growth and development.
DeleteAnd note also that "the creator made them male and female" - and most of those males and females were heterosexual, but a significant number of them were homosexual, bisexual and asexual - all of which sexualities were created by God and hence God-given.
Let's hear the Uxbridge Public Lavatories' Theological Seminary try to get round that one. Oh, wait...
Detterling you are still in your Pelagian error heresy. Your mistaken theology takes no account of the Fall and Original Sin. Homosexuality, and so much else opposed to God's way, came about through Original Sin.
ReplyDeleteAnd as for those critics of Paul: for every critic there are millions upon millions of Christian followers like myself who regard Paul as one of the pillars of the Church and one of the great thinkers of all time. Read his letters and stand in awe.
I wonder why Jesus appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus? Paul is THE great teacher of Christianity.