UNITED STATES
The Open Tabernacle: Here Comes Everybody
Posted on February 21, 2016 by Betty Clermont
If anyone needs an example of how the corporate media can manipulate and pervert public opinion, they could look no further than how the in-flight interview with Pope Francis has been reported. Indeed, they should study the U.S. media’s misrepresentation of this pontiff since the day he was elected.
Zika virus
Pope: “Abortion is to throw someone out in order to save another. That’s what the Mafia does … You kill one person to save another, in the best case scenario. Or to live comfortably, no? On the other hand, avoiding pregnancy is not an absolute evil. In certain cases, as in this one, or in the one I mentioned of Blessed Paul VI, it was clear. I would also urge doctors to do their utmost to find vaccines against these two mosquitoes that carry this disease. This needs to be worked on.”
While saving a woman’s life is condemned as “what the Mafia does,” the pope reiterated the position of the Catholic Church that birth control is acceptable.
When talking about avoiding pregnancy in connection with the Zika virus, the pope may not necessarily have been implying artificial contraceptive use, but may have been referencing Natural Family Planning, Dr. Melissa Moschella, a philosophy professor at The Catholic University of America, said. …
Moschella also explained that in the Africa case referenced by Pope Francis, the dispensation for the nuns was “not really an exception if you understand the rule.”
The case in question took place in the early 1960s, when the Vatican granted a dispensation to religious sisters living in the Belgian Congo who were in grave danger of rape due to civil unrest to use oral contraceptives.
“In the case of rape, the person who’s raped – from the moral perspective – has not engaged in a sexual act,” Moschella said. Rather, rape is an act of violence and a “violation of the woman’s body without any free choice or acceptance on her part.”
The larger question is whether the pope’s off-the-cuff remarks will be persuasive in Latin American countries where “women are seen mainly as child-bearers and mothers. Such discriminatory stereotypes remain deeply rooted in a conservative and patriarchal culture which still relegates women to the sphere of social reproduction – a culture widely promoted … by conservative forces including the Catholic Church hierarchy,” according to an Amnesty International report.
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Same-sex unions
“Pope Francis has not failed to speak out against the law on civil unions , in the midst of this struggle in the Italian Parliament.” In a speech in Mexico, he made his “umpteenth his jab against ‘ideological colonization,’” pope-speak for his opposition to same sex marriage.
While Pope Francis has not spoken directly about the Italian legislation, “Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has told the Catholic Church to butt out of the debate on providing gay couples with legal recognition and limited adoption rights,” specifically the Italian bishops’ conference.
However, in this on-flight interview Pope Francis did say:
“Every Catholic parliamentarian must vote according their well-formed conscience. … I
remember when matrimony for persons of the same sex was voted on in Buenos Aires and the votes were tied. … And, the other said: ‘I prefer to give it to Kirchner and not Bergoglio.’ This is not a well formed conscience.
On people of the same sex, I repeat what I said on the trip to Rio di Janeiro. It’s in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.”
The Catechism states that homosexual acts are a “grave depravity.” Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger – then head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, later Pope Benedict XVI – added in 1997 that even the homosexual “inclination” is “objectively disordered.”
So, unlike the Church’s position on abortion and contraception, this is something Pope Francis CAN change anytime he wants, but he won’t.
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Question to the pope: “The subject of pedophilia … Did you at any moment consider meeting with the victims? And, in general, this idea that when the priests are detected in cases of this nature, what is done is that they are moved to another parish, nothing more?”
The pope didn’t answer the question of why he refused to meet with victims in Mexico. Instead he said: “A bishop who moves a priest to another parish when a case of pedophilia is discovered is a reckless man and the best thing he can do is to present his resignation. Is that clear?”
Again through his words and lack of action, the pope is giving the green light to prelates around the world that they will not be removed from office for aiding and abetting sexual assaults against children. Rather, the pope said he is strengthening procedures against priests: “I decided to name a third secretary adjunct for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to take charge solely of these cases [and forming] an appeals tribunal.”
Pope: “Another thing that is working very well is the commission for the protection of minors.” Yes, because the only member who was an outspoken critic of the pope was booted off earlier this month.
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