The pope's passing
Mood: busy
Music: Dave Matthews Band - "Digging a Ditch"
Posted on 2005-04-04 11:05:00
Words: 122
Pope John Paul II passed away this weekend (which, unless you were in a cave on Mars with your ears shut, you probably heard already...), may he rest in peace. There's a strong tendency to not want to speak ill of the dead, which made me hesitate to write this, but I think it's important to not whitewash history. This pope was very conservative (opposition to the war in Iraq and the death penalty notwithstanding), and not supportive of gay rights at all (the church has been supporting efforts to pass constitutional bans on gay marriage and such). There are some good articles at Daily Kos and The Advocate. Here is the document released by the Vatican in 1986 talking about gays.
4 comments
Comment from amorphousplasma:
2005-04-04T13:09:59+00:00
I went to Catholic school, and since then have had two catholic school friends come out of the closet with a vengence. I feel like all those years of religious oppression made it not only harder for them to come out but also more extreme when they did. I was sad to hear about the Pope, of course, but I think the bad part now is that the church is without leadership. Who knows what direction it will take. It has at least been consistent for awhile now, and I doubt that the next pontiff will be pro-gay rights (sorry), but who knows what he will stand for? I guess we'll find out soon enough...
Hey, I remember you said you work on the 8th floor. Do you work with IMAQ by any chance?
Comment from gregstoll:
2005-04-04T13:17:05+00:00
Yeah, I can understand. I guess when I came out I didn't take the church's view on gays too seriously, so I got lucky there. And I guess pro-gay rights is a bit much to hope for, given how slowly the church changes. But could we at least get rid of the prohibition on birth control? Yikes...
I do indeed! Did you interview with us or something?
Comment from amorphousplasma:
2005-04-04T14:05:17+00:00
I think IMAQ is the coolest part of NI!!! I hopefully paved the way, if I hopefully get hired there, to hopefully join IMAQ. (crosses all 10 fingers and frets).
Yeah, do you know how long it took for them to stop saying mass in Latin? Uhhh, I think it was sometime in the 1950s- 1960s. Amazing. Change comes slowly, especially in this church. By the way, you might find this interesting: http://www.stjosephschurch.net/jp2.htm Compared to SOME catholics, Pope JP wasn't half bad!
Comment from gregstoll:
2005-04-04T17:02:13+00:00
Good luck, again :-) IMAQ is indeed the best group at NI!
Yeah, considering we don't even have women priests (*rolls eyes*)...man. Anyway, yikes to your link - that's pretty out there. I do like their front page with the huuuge text - the HTML looks like:
<BIG><BIG><BIG><BIG><BIG><BIG><BIG><BIG>St.
Joseph's</BIG></BIG></BIG></BIG></BIG> </BIG>
This backup was done by LJBackup.