Wednesday, September 12, 2007
SPEAKING OF THOSE DOUBLE STANDARDS...
A bishop can be forced out of his chancery for adultery in Africa, but a Catholic priest who uses "bidding prayers" to solemnize "civil partnerships" during LGBT masses held in an Anglican church across the pond has been moved into a Catholic church venue courtesy of the cardinal who has been labeled "Cardinal Compromise" Levada in a "New Oxford Review" editorial in the September issue.
When you've picked your chin up off the floor, go over to sohomasses.googlepages.com to see what I'm talking about. Soho Masses is the website of Soho Masses Pastoral Council. The announcement of the change of venue can be seen here on their website.
The following quote from NOR explains the move:
In an article titled "Selling Out to Sodom" in the traditional Catholic"Christian Order", published in England (May 2007), Michael McGrade details the strange ascendancy of the "radical homosexual movement Roman Catholic Church Caucus of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement (RCC)," which sponsored biweekly "Masses" for the London LGBT...community at St. Anne's Anglican Church in Soho, beginning in 1999. Writes McGrade: "After several years of complaints from Catholics about this grave sacrilege, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor [Archbishop of Westminster] did the absolute bare minimum and asked the RCC to desist from celebrating these Masses and to stop using the title 'Roman Catholic.' RCC responded by forming a sub-committee, titled Soho Masses Pastoral Council (SMPC) and simply continued celebrating the Masses under the SMPC aegis." A clear flaunting of Cardinal Murphy O'Connor's authority. ...
Amid this malestrom of dissent,
SMPC Convenor Mike Egan, mentions McGrade, in the SMPC's Spring 2006 newsletter, "stated that the group 'view with optimism' the appointment of Cardinal William Levada as Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith."
Cardinal Levada didn't disappoint.
After receiving "scores of complaints that the Soho Masses were used to campaign against Church teaching about sexual morality",
...Cardinal Compromise swooped in and went to work. Cardinal Levada, says[Simon] Caldwell [in an article in London's "Catholic Herald"], "personally authorized the services in Soho in an attempt to end a dispute which has raged since "irregular' Masses began at St. Anne's Anglican Church in Soho...Cardinal Levada found a way through the impasse by moving the Masses to Our Lady of the Assumption [Catholic] Church on Warwick Street and insisting that they must conform to Church doctrine.
We can see from the Civil Partnerships webpage just how well that has worked out.
No wonder I no longer feel as though I belong to the same Church as the people I'm worshipping with on Sunday morning. If this is any indication, I don't.
