Saturday, January 5, 2008

The Solution for World Peace from Pope Benedict

I am going to interrupt my ponderings on the Fatherhood of God to make mention of a post that was in my mailbox this morning from a very scholarly Girardian list on Ecunet of which I am a member. It is not a very active list...and the members are very learned, well read professionals (college professors, published authors etc) so I have only piped up a few times and put my two cents into the conversation. (And both times, the list members were very gracious and affirming)

Today someone posted a link with the simple comment, "Is he kidding?" Part of the purpose of my blog is to talk about peace related topics...topics as far reaching as world wide peace or as close to home as "why can't I react peacefully when my husband pisses me off?"I thought this news bit would fit rather well into a discussion about peace. It seems that the Pope has come out and declared that homosexuality is a grave threat to world peace!!!

Wow...as simple as that, eh? Get rid of the gay people and world peace will follow? It seems he thinks it erodes the family unit and (as Pope Benedict proclaims) there is a "direct relationship that exists between the family and peace in the world" and that " if the world wanted to live in peace, it would need to recognize those universal values that all people share as part of a
single, "human family". Hmmm....aren't gays a part of that universal human family???

Not surprisingly, this has caused a wave of reaction on gay blogs (and probably evangelical blogs, too, but I don't have time to search that out this morning....perhaps tomorrow?)

On the blog called Proceed at Your Own Risk (and as a warning, the name of the blog sums its content up quite well. It is an outspoken pro-gay blog....so truly....if outspoken promotion of gay rights offends you then you do proceed at your own risk when you click the link) Anyway....this blog poses the question:

How can we think that civilization can progress in a positive and humane direction when the world's most influential Christian leader proclaims that love between two responsible and caring adults is a road map to chaos and war?

On Answer Bag from the UK the question was posed as follows:

Is this anti-gay rhetoric any different at its root than that of Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist church?

On the eclectic ( irreverent) blog, Of Course I Could Be Wrong, authored by "Jonathan," a priest at St. Francis, Anglican Church in Newcastle Upon Tyne. (who prefers to be referred to as "Mad Priest") there is short snippet about the sermon, followed by about 37 or so comments (also irreverent) This might be another one of those "proceed at your own risk" clicks.

In my opinion...when I ponder the things that threaten world peace, gay marriage is just not one of them.

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