{"id":270,"date":"2024-05-07T13:12:30","date_gmt":"2024-05-07T13:12:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deborah-ballard.com\/wp1\/?p=270"},"modified":"2024-05-07T13:13:19","modified_gmt":"2024-05-07T13:13:19","slug":"can-the-catholic-church-evolve-on-l-g-b-t-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/deborah-ballard.com\/wp1\/2024\/05\/07\/can-the-catholic-church-evolve-on-l-g-b-t-rights\/","title":{"rendered":"Can the Catholic Church \u2018Evolve\u2019 on L.G.B.T. Rights?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">From New York Times<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-the-new-york-times wp-block-embed-the-new-york-times\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" title=\"Can the Catholic Church \u2018Evolve\u2019 on L.G.B.T. Rights?\" src=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/svc\/oembed\/html\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2018%2F07%2F05%2Fopinion%2Fpope-francis-catholic-church-lgbt.html#?secret=j5jBO3oopN\" data-secret=\"j5jBO3oopN\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">A growing number of Americans now broadly support equal rights for gay, lesbian, and transgender people. It\u2019s tempting to view this as inevitable, but less than a decade ago, many Democrats, including Barack Obama, didn\u2019t even publicly support same-sex marriage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The speed at which L.G.B.T. rights became a mainstream issue, including for many religious denominations, represents nothing less than a dizzying cultural transformation.\u00a0 What does this revolution mean for the Catholic Church, an ancient institution that thinks in centuries and holds a view of human sexuality at odds with the shifting cultural winds?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We forget that about 40 years ago, the Catholic church held Vatican II, a conference that reversed dozens of long-held traditions, making the Catholic church more relevant to people&#8217;s lives. Major changes included mass in the local language instead of Latin and transfiguration as a spiritual phenomenon rather than a physical transformation into real human blood and flesh. Placing a greater emphasis on the teachings of Jesus and reducing the prominence of Paul. They even approved the New Jerusalem Bible as a translation that Catholics could read for themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">From 800 AD to around 1500 AD, Catholics believed that only the Pope could decide who was fit to be King. On a few occasions, Kings and nobility were stripped of power, usually as a political favor. The Inquisition tortured people into confessing to heresy, then tortured them into naming innocents as fellow heretics.\u00a0 Nearly 5 million, mostly women, were burned at the stake as witches, enabling their lands to be seized, often from the widows of landowners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Even 60 years ago, Catholics supported racist views.\u00a0 Even up until about 50 years ago, the church permitted only the missionary position for procreation only.\u00a0 Yet 1200 years ago, they encouraged &#8220;sex with spirits&#8221; (masturbation).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Even into the 1950s, many Catholic girls were sexually abused by their mothers to &#8220;harden their hymen&#8221; by rubbing it to make it thicken to the point of requiring surgical procedures to &#8220;break&#8221; it. Many of these women experienced extreme pain and trauma when attempting to have sex with their own husbands.\u00a0 The church once forbade the dissection of humans or even mammals. And when actual observations of animals refuted the writings of Thomas Aquinas, the church forbade such studies.\u00a0 Many of these horrible beliefs and practices were not officially reversed until Vatican II.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Many Catholic parishes have &#8220;Dignity&#8221; groups where gay Catholics and their families could worship together, usually in the evenings. Many of these groups have married couples who are significant donors to the parish.\u00a0 Perhaps it&#8217;s time for a Vatican III conference or at least a realistic review of the Church&#8217;s long-held traditions. Perhaps also some research into the Hebrew and Aramaic scriptures and the actual wording of long-held verses used to persecute gays, lesbians, and transgender people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Remember that Hagar was Sarah&#8217;s LOVER, not just a servant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In Esther &#8211; a Eunuch plays a critical role &#8211; a heroic role in saving the Jews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In Acts &#8211; the first Gentile ever baptized &#8211; was a Eunuch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In a time when there weren&#8217;t the surgical skills to perform Gender Confirmation Surgery, transgender boys would often request to be castrated, especially if they were born with undescended testes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Kings of Babylon and Greece used boys castrated before puberty as prophets, oracles, and seers &#8211; this would have included Daniel, Shadrak, Mishak, and Abednego. The Oracles of Delphi and other Greek and Roman cities were virgins, never to know men, and many were probably castrated boys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Most transgender girls know they are transgender by the time they are 3-4 years old. They often insist that their assigned gender is wrong. This probably happened in biblical times as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Transgender girls start their transition by taking blockers &#8211; chemical castration. The same medications are used to castrate sex offenders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Pope is probably looking at this issue from many viewpoints and struggling with trying to reconcile the biblical and spiritual foundations of homophobia and transphobia &#8211; realizing that they are contrary to scripture, against the political and economic realities and pressures of thousands of parishes all over the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From New York Times A growing number of Americans now broadly support equal rights for gay, lesbian, and transgender people. It\u2019s tempting to view this as inevitable, but less than a decade ago, many Democrats, including Barack Obama, didn\u2019t even publicly support same-sex marriage. The speed at which L.G.B.T. rights became a mainstream issue, including [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[27,23,25,24,28],"class_list":["post-270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lgbtq-issues","tag-christianity-lgbtq","tag-lgbt","tag-lgbt-rights","tag-lgbtq","tag-lgbtq-catholic-church"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/deborah-ballard.com\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/deborah-ballard.com\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/deborah-ballard.com\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deborah-ballard.com\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deborah-ballard.com\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/deborah-ballard.com\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":272,"href":"http:\/\/deborah-ballard.com\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270\/revisions\/272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/deborah-ballard.com\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deborah-ballard.com\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deborah-ballard.com\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}