Wednesday, March 17, 2021



Pope decrees that the Catholic Church cannot bless same-sex unions because God 'cannot bless sin'

Marvellous! The Pope has rediscovered Catholic doctrine

The Vatican decreed today that the Catholic Church cannot give its blessing to same-sex unions because God 'cannot bless sin'.

Pope Francis signed off the two-page ruling which was published in seven languages by the Vatican's orthodoxy office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

It called on Catholic clergy to treat gay people with 'respect and sensitivity' but ruled that blessing their unions would 'approve and encourage a choice and a way of life that cannot be recognised as objectively ordered to the revealed plans of God'.

Francis last year caused controversy among Catholics by giving his backing to civil unions, but has never come out in favour of religious unions.

Pope John Paul II spoke out repeatedly against same-sex marriage during his tenure, calling it an attack on the fabric of society.

He approved the 2003 document which said Catholic lawmakers had a 'moral duty' to vote against the legal recognition of same-sex unions.

'Attacks on marriage and the family, from an ideological and legal aspect, are becoming stronger and more radical every day,' he said in 2004.

'Anyone who destroys this fundamental fabric causes a profound injury to society and provokes often irreparable damage.'

He also criticised a gay pride parade through Rome in 2000 as an 'offence to Christian values' and reaffirmed that the Church considered homosexuality 'objectively disordered'.

Benedict made the battle against secularism a central part of his papacy and called gay marriage a threat to 'human dignity and the future of humanity itself'.

'A century ago, anyone would have thought it absurd to talk about homosexual marriage,' Benedict once said in an interview.

As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Benedict had led the Vatican's orthodoxy office when it issued the 2003 paper condemning same-sex unions.

As Pope, in a 2007 speech in Rome, he criticised efforts to give same-sex unions 'inappropriate legal recognition', saying they destabilised the 'legitimate family'.

On another occasion, Benedict said humanity needed to 'listen to the language of creation' to understand the intended roles of man and woman.

Monday's decree reiterated the Church's position that marriage between man and a woman is part of God's plan and is intended for the sake of creating new life.

It acknowledged that the wish to bless same-sex unions is 'not infrequently motivated by a sincere desire to welcome and accompany homosexual persons'.

But since their unions are not intended as part of God's plan, they cannot validly be blessed by the church, the document said.

'The presence in such relationships of positive elements, which are in themselves to be valued and appreciated, cannot justify these relationships and render them legitimate objects of an ecclesial blessing, since the positive elements exist within the context of a union not ordered to the Creator's plan,' the Vatican's ruling said.

God 'does not and cannot bless sin: He blesses sinful man, so that he may recognise that he is part of his plan of love and allow himself to be changed by him,' it said.

The document argued that the ruling is 'not intended to be a form of unjust discrimination, but rather a reminder of the truth of the liturgical rite and of the very nature of the sacramentals, as the Church understands them'.

The Vatican said Francis was 'informed and gave his assent' to the ruling, which gave a verdict of 'negative' to the question of whether such unions could be blessed.

Francis has always opposed gay marriage, but his 2019 comments that 'what we have to create is a civil union law' caused a sensation in the Catholic world.

The remarks emerged last year in a documentary in which he also said: 'Homosexual people have the right to be in a family... they are children of God'.

The Vatican played down Francis's remarks at the time, saying they were taken out of context and referred to his position while he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires.

But it did not confirm or deny reports that it had ordered the sensitive remarks to be cut from the Mexican TV interview in which they were initially made in 2019.

Francis's words were hailed by admirers at the time as a 'major step forward in the church's support for LGBT people'.

However, there was also a chorus of anger from conservative Catholics who said they 'clearly contradict what has been the long-standing teaching of the church'.

Catholic teaching holds that gay people should be treated with respect but that homosexual acts are 'intrinsically disordered'.

A 2003 document from the Vatican's doctrine office - bearing the stamp of Francis's two immediate predecessors - said legal approval would mean the 'approval of deviant behaviour'.

'The Church teaches that respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behaviour or to legal recognition of homosexual unions,' it said.

Francis has frequently said that gay people should be accepted in their parishes and urged parents not to reject their children.

On his first foreign trip as pope, to Brazil in 2013, he said of gay people trying to live a Christian life: 'Who am I to judge?'.

Since then, he has ministered to gay people and transgender prostitutes, and welcomed people in same-sex partnerships into his inner circle.

In 2014, the Vatican denied reports that Francis had endorsed civil unions, and he took a more conservative tone in a book called On Heaven And Earth.

'Every person needs a male father and a female mother that can help them shape their identity,' he said in criticism of adoption by gay couples.

He added that laws which equated same-sex relationships to marriages would be 'an anthropological regression'.

Francis has always voiced opposition to gay marriage, saying that marriage should only be between a man and woman.

'Marriage is a historic word,' he told French sociologist Dominique Wolton in a 2017 book of interviews. 'Always among human beings, and not only in the Church, it has been between a man and a woman. You can't just change that like that.'

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The Media's Assault on Young Men

America witnessed what was supposed to be an adorable conversation with Michelle Obama and Zaya, the son-turned-daughter of basketball star Dwayne Wade. Instead, many God-fearing Christians witnessed the peak of a gender-dysphoria agenda that has been pushed on our youth for the past few years. As the former first lady snapped her fingers, parents like myself woke up to the reality that our society has officially left our boys behind.

Many young people look to Hollywood stars to map out their lives. This is nothing new. What’s sad is that many of these celebrities are adopting a trend that permits “gender fluidity” in their own children. Girls wearing boys’ jerseys have gone beyond just being “tomboyish.” These famous parents claim that choosing a gender is their child’s choice. Unfortunately, people with great influence will convince others to do the same.

Today’s parents say to me, “My son is choosing to be a girl,” only to learn that a mother encouraged and enabled this frame of mind. I find it strange that children aren’t old enough to do things like vote, get married, rent a car, etc., because they aren’t wise enough to do any of these things without great risk. But by today’s progressive parent logic, a toddler understands what gender is and which one he or she wants to be. But where does this lead? What becomes of a life that starts with such profound confusion?

Disappointment comes first, and then hatred for a society that allowed these abominations to occur. Because once a child becomes a young adult and learns the truth about himself, he will only resent his parents while bringing chaos wherever he goes. Resentment will pour into his future relationships, just like I have seen in counseling young people raised in single-parent and abusive households. In fact, a house that doesn’t honor God’s template for humanity — male and female — is abusive, too. This will only lead to more “feminine males” with no one to be the heads of the women and children. If you want to know how to bring down a nation, this is how it’s done. Parents have the power to prevent a collapse such as this, if only they would turn their faces toward God’s perfect design, once known as science.

What does a future look like without masculine men at the helm? The Bible warned about past societies that allowed the inexperienced and the women to rule over them (Isaiah 3:12). The Lord had specific rules but instead wives were allowed to influence their ruler husbands only to open up their nation to despair and misdirection as we saw even with the fall of the Roman Empire. As for Americans today who accept and embrace the transgender cultural shift, they are about to find out why the Bible is called The Living Word

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Rational debate killed in the sewer of social media

CHRIS KENNY

In a selfless and courageous act, researching this column on Thursday night, I typed my name into the search bar of Twitter and hit enter. In the first 20 mentions, the terms directed at me included: “predictable idiocy”; “c#nt”; “joke”; “professional f#ckwit”; “give a flying f#ck”; “propagandist”; “hard right”; “dog-shagging best”; and the only imaginative phrase, “ambidextrous nose-picker” (I did not realise they had been watching).

Still, there was not one entry that was supportive, and to be frank it was a pretty tame sample because I am often labelled a lying, racist, misogynist on that platform. We are talking about a social media world where ­knowledge, insights and manners are pre-Neanderthal — and defamation laws, in the main, are ­impotent.

Twitter digitises and broadcasts the public debate equivalent of a teenage graffiti and vandalism rampage. And yet it shapes debate; our mainstream media and politicians look to the digital world for instant opinion polling and guidance about where to take their narratives and policies (the ABC has audiences tweet responses to be broadcast immediately live to air).

In intellectual terms, this is the opposite of natural selection. It is amplifying and weaponising the crudest and most inane elements of society and inviting them to dumb down our public square.

There is no political issue in most countries where Twitter is not habitually wrong — so that whatever is popular on that medium will be rejected by most of the population.

The situation is different in the US because that is the one liberal democracy where, for now, it verges on acceptable for young people to identify as being right of centre; so social media is still ugly and brutal but at least it hosts a contest of ideas.

Imagine Tutankhamun’s wonder if we could bring him back to life (as the ancient Egyptians intended) and he could see the vast and instant online knowledge we can share through our digital hieroglyphics. Then ponder his confusion and dismay at seeing the junk we share on it.

Our battered and impoverished public debate will not improve unless we learn to talk to each other. For a civil society to exist and political debate to be useful, people need to be able to hear ­alternative arguments, avail themselves of all relevant facts, and learn to deal politely with people who do not agree with them.

In this century, we are blessed with instant access to infinite amounts of information, often from primary sources, as well as endless analysis and commentary from every corner of the globe. Far too many people waste their time shouting digital abuse at each other, or regurgitating views they agree with from accounts chosen by the faceless match­makers of the Facebook algorithms, instead of reading, discussing or learning.

The digital revolution was going to democratise the media, personalise democracy and mobilise the truth, but instead it has polarised and emaciated the media, dragged politics into the mire of anonymous bullying, and fostered deceptive memes, fake news and pile-ons. And we wonder why young adults know more about Meghan Markle’s gratuitous gripes than they do about the separation of powers.

This is not a throwaway whinge. The digital degeneration of our public square and political processes is not just an easy target for columnists and conversationalists — it has serious consequences. Aggressive outsider Donald Trump took the Republican nomination and won the presidency in 2016 largely based on his use of social media to subvert the curation and homogenisation of the mainstream media.

Social media played an influential role in the ascension and demise of Kevin Rudd. It was at the vanguard of the asymmetric war against Tony Abbott. And it is the standard-bearer in the unconscionable media/political assault against Christian Porter.

For good or ill, social media played a role in the Arab Spring and the Brexit campaign. If you doubt its effectiveness, ask yourself why Beijing geo-blocks a wide variety of content, censors digital media and publicly punishes citizens for dissenting views published online.



To comprehend how insidious this policing of cyberspace infractions has become, just think of Zoe Lee Buhler, a 28-year-old pregnant woman who was arrested and handcuffed in her Ballarat home last September for posting about anti-lockdown protests on Facebook. This was not in some future dystopian state imagined by Aldous Huxley or George Orwell, it was in the town of Australia’s Eureka Stockade.

So, what is it that makes social media such a sewer? And how does this coarsen our discourse?

At its core is a lack of accountability. The enticement of being able to post widely and often about anything — without submitting to editors, curators, lawyers or peers — encourages bravado and aggression, and it fosters an impetuousness that ­values gut feelings over facts, and devalues the time and effort required to get across the facts.

The lure of virtue signalling, along with ever-present peer group pressure, are further forces for conformity. Emotionalism triumphs over rational thought.

In short, all the usual flaws of human conversation and debate are at play, but they are exacerbated by the instantaneous nature, wide audience, and lack of responsibility inherent in the platforms. Judgments are made and allegations thrown around, without regard for facts, by people ­ignorant of or untroubled by the laws of defamation and contempt.

This freedom could liberate debate; but instead of letting a thousand flowers bloom, it shares the scrawls of a thousand dunny doors. People are unthinking enough about what they post without the added shield of anonymity — requiring people to post under their real names, with proof of identity, would not eradicate the problems but it would improve the situation.

We live in an age where social media criticism and abuse will rage against an article and its author in this newspaper when most, if not all, of those joining the fray have not read the article. The headline or the topic is enough for these people to slur or condemn; often egged on by hysterical opinion leaders such as Kevin Rudd or Quentin Dempster, who at least might have sprung for a subscription in order to generate grist for their ideological mills.

Bill Leak was a target of this mentality. Thousands of ignorant onlookers, oblivious to deeper arguments running in these pages about how the sharp end of the juvenile justice system deals with the consequences of community and family dysfunction, piled on to him about a telling cartoon they saw completely out of context in their deliberately ignorant world. This past week, people have wondered on Twitter about how there could be any argument against an additional, extrajudicial inquiry into allegations against Christian Porter. Well, you will not find these rational ­arguments on Twitter or the ABC — so people stuck in those silos might never understand the rule of law.

Not only audiences, but facts, disappear into silos. ABC viewers are told Bill Shorten was “cleared” by police and Porter was not. And in social media, such misinformation, or fake news, is not in­terrogated or corrected; it is embedded and entrenched.

Two years ago, former ABC and Fairfax journalist Mike Carlton tweeted about Liberal MP ­Nicolle Flint when she appeared on Q&A. Carlton wondered why fellow panellist Jimmy Barnes did not “leap from his seat and strangle the Liberal shill”.

Fancy harbouring such a thought, let alone sharing it. Yet when this was recounted on another ABC program last month, Carlton showed his courage runs as deep as his chivalry, extracting an apology from the ABC which clarified that he did not say Flint “should” be strangled, only that he questioned how Barnes could ­restrain himself from doing so.

How pathetic. I guess he has the courage of his feeble convictions. Carlton still tweets profanities regularly, while Flint will leave politics at the next election, with Carlton’s old, white, hateful, male barbs just one minor memory in a long string of vandalism attacks and threats.

This is what happens more often, thanks to social media; more conservatives are forced underground. Like most of these factors, it existed before — the shy Tory factor was observed long ­before social media — but social media has weaponised the assault against anyone right of centre.

Taxpayer-funded media and other leftist journalists are led by the affirmation from this digital diatribe to deepen their own anti-conservative jaundice. The woke love the following and adulation of social media — it is performance art for them — until they cross a line, make the mistake of speaking sense or asking a salient question, then they experience the rule of the leftist lynch mob.

Public debate becomes coarser, more out of touch from the mainstream, and less tolerant of differing points of view. Soon the stage is vacated by all but the screaming green left, and those who will appease them.

The only outlet remaining for real, analogue people is the secret ballot. And there the media and the Twitter mob have met their match — so far.

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World’s media reacts to Australia’s big protests about sexual abuse of women


Grace Tame, As a troubled teenager she was abused by a male teacher

The protests are very understandable. Attacks on women enrage me too and cause me to regard the men concerned as worthless excreta who should ideally be burned at the stake.

But what on earth can the government be expected to do about it? It is a justice issue but I cannot see that it is a political issue. Words are just about the only tool governments have to change attitudes but we all know how ineffective words can be.

By all means prosecute the guilty but what can be done in that connection that is not already being done? Changing the criteria for prosecuting rape would endanger the innocent. There have been all too many cases of women making false rape accusations. Heavily penalizing such women is probably the only thing one could do to make sure rape accusations are more believable

These protests undoubtedly make the women concerned feel good but it is highly unlikely that they do more than that


Time Magazine, Al Jazeera, The Washington Post and the BBC reacted to Australia’s “furious reckoning” and the brave women behind it.

Australian women and the allies who marched with them during a “furious reckoning” about sexism and rape culture on Monday have made headlines around the world.

Tens of thousands joined March For Justice rallies in cities around the country and outside Parliament House in Canberra demanding cultural change.

Former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins, who claimed she was raped inside a parliamentary office and sexual assault survivor and Australian of the Year Grace Tame delivered powerful speeches in Canberra and Hobart respectively.

It was a significant moment in Australian history that did not go unnoticed by the world’s media. Time Magazine, the BBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Irish Times and Al Jazeera each dedicated significant coverage to the events.

Time Magazine’s headline read:‘We’ve Had Enough.’ Furious Australian Women Force a Reckoning on Sexism After a Rape Allegation in the Government.

The publication’s story touched on how deeply ingrained the culture of sexism and sexual harassment has become.

“Furious women across Australia are now opening up with their own experiences of sexism, sexual harassment and sexual abuse,” it read. “And it’s begun conversations about inherent discrimination and mistreatment of women — both within the halls of Australian government, and across the wider society.”

Al Jazeera made note of the historic rape allegation against Attorney-General Christian Porter and the allegations of inappropriate behaviour against Craig Kelly’s political advisor, Frank Zumbo.

“Allegations have been laid by six women against a senior parliamentary aide Frank Zumbo, drawing attention to what many critics say is a toxic culture of masculinity within the nation’s federal parliament,” Al Jazeera wrote.

“Prime Minister Scott Morrison continues to refuse to hold an independent inquiry into the allegations against Porter, and on Monday also refused to meet protesters on the parliament’s lawn in Canberra.”

The New York Times made mention of the longstanding issues Australia has failed to address.

“Wearing black and holding signs reading; enough is enough’, thousands took to the streets across Australia on Monday to protest violence and discrimination against women, as a reckoning in the country’s halls of power sparked by multiple accusations of rape continued to grow,” the Times wrote.

“The marches in at least 40 cities represented an outpouring of anger from women about a problem that has gone unaddressed for too long, said the organisers, who estimated that 110,000 people attended the demonstrations nationwide.

“With the next national election potentially coming as early as August, experts say it is something that the conservative government, which has come under stinging criticism for the way it has handled the accusations, ignores at its own peril.

The Washington Post celebrated those who took to the streets with messages denouncing the ongoing poor treatment of women.

“(Protesters) carried placards decrying misogyny, victim-blaming, abuse and rape,” the newspaper wrote.

“In Melbourne, a banner listed 900 women who have lost their lives at the hands of men since 2008. The rallies follow a wave of allegations of sexual assault, abuse and misconduct in some of the highest offices of Australian politics.

“They come amid a growing global movement demanding officials do more to protect women and to hold perpetrators of harassment and assaults accountable.

“The reckoning over assault allegations has reached the highest ranks of government. On Monday, the country’s top law official filed a defamation suit against the state broadcaster over an article that reported a letter had been sent to the prime minister containing a historic rape allegation.”

The BBC wrote that Monday’s rallies “could be the biggest uprising of women that Australia’s seen. And the Irish Times wrote that “public anger over the government’s handling of the alleged incidents mirrors the sentiment on display at protests in London over the weekend following the killing of 33-year-old Sarah Everard, who disappeared while walking home at night-time”.

“Mr Morrison said Australia had made big strides toward gender equality over the years, though he acknowledged the job was ‘far from done’ and he shared the concerns of the protesters.

However, he raised some hackles by expressing pride in the right to peaceful protest when he said ‘Not far from here, such marches, even now, are being met with bullets, but not in this country.’”

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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