In one shot, Pope Francis lays his heavy hand on discipline and sexuality.
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Pope Francis weighed in on the controversial issue of corporal punishment during a recent weekly audience at the Vatican focusing on the topic of fatherhood. He asserted that parents need to be firm but reasonable when disciplining young people.
“One time, I heard a father in a meeting with married couples say, ‘I sometimes have to smack my children a bit, but never in the face so as to not humiliate them’,” Francis said. He added that the man’s remark was “beautiful.” “He knows the sense of dignity,” Francis continued. “He has to punish them but does it justly and moves on.”
“Children have the right to grow up in a family with a father and mother capable of creating a suitable environment for the child’s development and emotional maturity.”
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So I take from the Pope’s remarks that his intent was merely to smack LGBTQ people on the rump rather than punch us in the face when he stated at a Vatican conference on traditional marriage in November 2014 that marriage is between a man and a women and that “[t]his complementarity is at the root of marriage and family.” He added that this union between a man and a woman is “an anthropological fact…that cannot be qualified based on ideological notions or concepts important only at one time in history.”
He also asserted: “Children have the right to grow up in a family with a father and mother capable of creating a suitable environment for the child’s development and emotional maturity.”
These forces, he said, are attempting the “ideological colonization of the family.”
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He amplified his message in front of more than 1,000 families in the Philippines during a recent trip when he warned that “[t]he family is threatened by growing efforts on the part of some to redefine the very institution of marriage, by relativism, by the culture of the ephemeral, by a lack of openness to life.” These forces, he said, are attempting the “ideological colonization of the family.” Among other forces, this was also a reference to same-sex marriage.
The Pope took an additional swipe at our butts at another recent weekly Vatican audience when he gave his unqualified blessing to a Slovakian referendum outlawing same-sex unions and adoption rights for same-sex couples. He proclaimed: “I greet the pilgrims from Slovakia and, through them, I wish to express my appreciation to the entire Slovak church, encouraging everyone to continue their efforts in defense of the family, the vital cell of society.”
Well, at least I take it that the Pontiff won’t be smacking any gay priests on the behind any time soon, unless he has changed his initial position on the matter. As new Pope, at an impromptu news conference aboard his papal jet on July 29, 2013 while returning to the Vatican from Brazil after completing his first international trip where he spoke to millions celebrating “World Youth Day,” he told reporters: “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?”
So El Papa considers denying LGBTQ people (his children) the rights of marriage and adoption; denying us the benefits, privileges, and responsibilities of legalized partnerships and families; this to him represents a smack on the behind saving us the indignity of a blow to the face. I can only imagine what he considers a Vatican action that may bloody our faces.
Well, I would say to Francis that corporal punishment of any kind represents an indignity to the target of the attack. No person has the right to hit another person literally or figuratively. Bullies hit others. Tyrants violate people’s bodily and emotional spaces. Oppressive regimes disrespect their citizens’ human and civil rights. Terrorists unjustifiably invade other countries’ territories.
Francis and the Church have indeed hit us. They have violated our bodily and emotional spaces. They have disrespected our human and civil rights, and they have unjustifiably invaded the territories of our lives and our families.
They have violated our bodily and emotional spaces.
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Many of us had real hopes with Pope Francis’s ascension to the highest position in the Catholic Church. He showed some signs of softening Church policies on the position of LGBTQ people in the Church. But unfortunately, the initial smoke and mirrors he erected, through his words and deeds, he as blown away and smashed.
I find it disappointing since Francis showed us some indication that he could take the Church out of the 17thCentury where it has remained stuck for some time and carry it on the wings of a dove to at least the 19th if not the 20th or 21st century regarding the concerns of LGBTQ people. But alas, the dove has died as has the hope. All we have to look forward to from the Catholic Church are some very sore buttocks for at least the next millennium or so. But by then, humanity will overpopulate itself to extinction through the Church’s ban on contraception and denial of women’s reproductive freedoms.
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Photo: Flickr/European Parliament
Don’t become a Catholic … pretty simple solution.
“………humanity will over populate itself”
Here’s the list of the countries with negative natural increase or zero negative increase in population…
Ukraine: 0.8% natural decrease annually; 28% total population decrease by 2050
Russia: -0.6%; -22%
Belarus -0.6%; -12%
Bulgaria -0.5%; -34%
Latvia -0.5%; -23%
Lithuania -0.4%; -15%
Hungary -0.3%; -11%
Romania -0.2%; -29%
Estonia -0.2%; -23%
Moldova -0.2%; -21%
Croatia -0.2%; -14%
Germany -0.2%; -9%
Czech Republic -0.1%; -8%
Japan 0%; -21%
Poland 0%; -17%
Slovakia 0%; -12%
Austria 0%; 8% increase
Italy 0%; -5%
Slovenia 0%; -5%
Greece 0%; -4%
This is such an obviously biased and bitter article. Do better. Really who cares what any one individual thinks. He’s not your leader. You’re just looking for social change where it will never happen: RELIGION. God didn’t say make religion. Jesus never made religion. They just said listen to how I tell you to live: in Love.