[Soft*Silver]

DG.....I am not wanting to defend Catholisiscm (sp?) in this thread. I do want to point out that the true debate is the rights of this lesbian couple to send their child to a school of their choice. Choice being the operative defining word.

As an empath, I find it very suffocating spiritually when people are not given choices.

And what message does the church's stance and decision send to those (and all, for that matter) children? That their parents have failed them...all by their lesbianism,

my mother was literally physically thrown out of church and told not to come back when she confessed she and my father were using birth control. Condoms. I was the last child and my birth almost killed my mother. She was TERRIFIED of getting pregnant again. She came to confession to be absolved of her sin, and would not budge when the priest insisted she had to stop using condoms. He got out of his confessional and went to her booth, grabbed her by the arm and put her out the main doors, and said she was no longer welcomed there but her children could come so that the church could at least try to redeem them.

I grew up with that shit in my head. I turned the church against my mother. If not for me, she would have been a good Catholic.

and I want to add one more personal thing here..

I attend mass every once in awhile now. My roots are definitly in pagan ways (my people in the old country were druids) As an adult I dont hold the church responsible for what that one priest did to my mother during that point in history. The priest we have now in that same church is the very reason I came back to going to mass at times. He welcomes my lesbian butt in those pews anytime I want to attend. He didnt flinch when my (now X) butch husband was pall bearer for both my mother and father...in a man's suit and tie. He shook my butch's hand and offered him sympathy for losing his mother in law. So, we also need to say, that not all priests and not all catholics follow doctrine to a T....

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

While I agree that the archdiocese is wrong in their decision, I think that ultimately they are doing this child a long-term favor. NOT going to a Catholic school they will not be exposed to a belief system that is anti-queer and anti-woman. They may learn to think rationally and to have the courage of their convictions to follow it all the way up and all the way down, no matter how uncomfortable that might be.

I was raised in the church (AME) and while I am glad that I learned the Bible as a piece of literature, almost nothing I learned in church that was specifically religious in nature has been of any real use to me as an adult except as a negative example of how NOT to treat other people and how NOT to think.

What's more the archdiocese is being entirely consistent with their beliefs. I understand that some queer people would like Christianity, in its current, American formulation, to be a different religion than what it is but it isn't. The Catholic church just is what it is. Part of what it is is homophobic.

Cheers
Aj