I’ve blogged about this on my personal website but I thought it deserved an airing here as well:

Take a look at this page on the BBC website - it’s a list of quotes by Pope on a range of issues. Here are some of my favourites:

• ON CHURCH SEX ABUSE CASES
  In the Church, priests also are sinners. But I am personally convinced that the constant presence in the press of the sins of Catholic priests, especially in the United States, is a planned campaign, as the percentage of these offences among priests is not higher than in other categories, and perhaps it is even lower.
  Quoted in Zenit.org, December 2002
• ON HOMOSEXUALITY
  Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered to an intrinsic moral evil, and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder… It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the Church’s pastors wherever it occurs.
  Letter to the Bishops, 1986, quoted in National Catholic Reporter
• ON GAY MARRIAGE
  Above all, we must have great respect for these people who also suffer and who want to find their own way of correct living. On the other hand, to create a legal form of a kind of homosexual marriage, in reality, does not help these people.
  Interview with Italian newspaper La Repubblica, 2004
• ON ABORTION AND EUTHANASIA
  Manifest grave sin.
  Address to US bishops, 2004
• ON JEWS AND ISRAEL
  That the Jews are connected with God in a special way and that God does not allow that bond to fail is entirely obvious. We wait for the instant in which Israel will say yes to Christ, but we know that it has a special mission in history now…
  God and the World, 2000
• ON TURKEY AND THE EU
  Turkey has always represented a different continent… Making the two continents identical would be a mistake. It would mean a loss of richness, the disappearance of the cultural to the benefit of economics.
  Interview with Le Figaro magazine, 2004
• ON THE ORDINATION OF WOMEN
  The fact that the Church is convinced of not having the right to confer priestly ordination on women is now considered by some as irreconcilable with the European Constitution.
  Address at the Subaico Foundation for Life and the Family, April 2005 (reported by Zenit.org)
• ROCK MUSIC
  “Rock”… is the expression of the elemental passions, and at rock festivals it assumes a sometimes cultic character, a form of worship, in fact, in opposition to Christian worship.
  The Spirit of the Liturgy, 2000
  

It’s food for thought anyway - no matter what your perspective on religion / the Catholic Church / the Pope.

Jo
jo.salmon@nus.org.uk

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