National Conference of Roman Catholic Bishops

[Steven E. Webster]

Friends,

The Bishops at their annual meeting next month will be considering a document on "pastoral care of homosexuals." Here's the scoop:

http://whispersintheloggia.blogspot....-ministry.html

Some of what I find interesting about this is their apparent attempt to back the Vatican's "teachings" yet at the same time to try to deal with the reality that there are gay and lesbian Roman Catholics to whom they need to give effective pastoral care. They endorse the Vatican line that homosexuality is "disordered," and yet they seem to acknowledge that so-called "therapies" are not the answer (because, perhaps, they recognize such "therapies" are bogus?).

They also seem to recognize that there are lesbian and gay couples with children that those couples may want to have baptized--and they seem to allow for that.

Of course, this is all still a "draft"--who knows how it will come out after the meeting.

I'm not Roman Catholic, I'm a United Methodist who got a MA degree in Religious Studies at a liberal Roman Catholic College. I do, however, find doings in the Roman Catholic Church interesting in terms of its influence on my own denomination and on society as a whole.

Soulforce has taken on the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in the past. I hope we are up to challenging them in one way or another. The local Roman Catholic Bishop here in Madison has been very actively campaigning against LGBT marriage equality here in Wisconsin and has said some very ugly untruths not different at all from James Dobson.

Steven Webster