'Arrogant lobbyists trying to silence Church': The Times

[emad]

From Richard Owen in Rome

A “NASTY new Inquisition” and “a prejudice against everything that is Christian” is spreading across Europe, a senior cardinal said yesterday as he rallied to the defence of Rocco Buttiglione, Italy’s embattled new EU commissioner.

Cardinal Renato Raffaele Martino told a news conference that “new holy Inquisitions full of money and arrogance” were trying to silence the voice of the Church and undermine Catholic influence in Europe.

“Powerful cultural, economic and political lobbies” were systematically attacking the Roman Catholic Church on issues of gender and marriage and creating a “cacophony” to drown out Christian views.

Cardinal Martino, who is head of the Vatican’s Justice and Peace Council and was formerly the Vatican representative at the United Nations, said that the “lobbies” — which he declined to identify — had systematically “mocked marriage between a man and a woman”.
More
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,171-1317596,00.html

Guess they're feeling pretty tense right now with Licio Gelli up for the murder of God's Banker Roberto Calvi, in Rome along with other chums in the P2 Lodge.....


Roberto Calvi


Licio Gelli


Poppy

[joeybee12]

1. The Gay Mafia is at it again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was raised a Catholic, went to Catholic schools, and even a Catholic University.

Then, suddenly one day, I decided to think for myself, and saw what a joke the Catholic Church is!

[Larkspur]

10. Me too!

I left the Church in 1990 because it's misogyny was too much to tolerate for this feminist, and in 1995 I completely rejected the Abrahamic god.

[shrike]

2. We haven't had enough Catholic posts lately

Was kinda wondering what happened. Now, two in one day. That's the DU I know.

[Dogmudgeon]

3. Say what you will about the "Management", but ...

... keep in mind that most Roman Catholics have nothing to do with the scandalous behavior of their church's little power elites.

In fact, they would be mortified to find out just how widespread it has become.

No, let me re-phrase that: They WILL BE mortified when they find out just how widespread it has become.

I am not one of the "faithful", but don't think for a minute that they won't feel besieged and paranoid before they are fully educated to the nature of the scum that has floated to the top.

In fact, if you're the praying kind, this might be the best time for it.

--bkl

[gatlingforme]

4. You said it perfectly..

[lil-petunia]

5. Just yesterday, the pope announced seeing "dark shadows"

he was referring to those who rely on technology and scientific research to solve humanity's problems.
the good guys were the ones who prayed instead. Or in the case of priests, preyed.


So, now I know why both the shrub and the pope get along so well. THey both see things that aren't there, and they both hear voices.

[mumon]

8. I gotta say this...

I don't mean to create anger in any way, but as long as they are supporting the guys in charge, say, financially, the guys in charge will continue to act like they're in charge.

[Dogmudgeon]

9. You're absolutely right

The term "The Church" has always been defined as the community of the faithful.

The Pope, formally, is the co-ordinator and the "bridge-builder" -- hence the term Pontiff (from Latin pontifex, bridge-maker). In many writings of the church, the Pope is charged with following the community as much as leading it, both a shepherd and symbolically, an infant (after the infant Jesus).

The faithful of the Roman Catholic church are "waking up". But it's going to be a slow, painful process. The clerisy of the church will have to relinquish their worldly power, or experience a schism even more destructive than the one in the 11th century that split the original Catholic Church into the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches.

--bkl

[mmonk]

6. Our Church (I'm Catholic),

Protestant Churches, etc. are all circling the wagons with the "we're under attack meme" lately. It's their way of leading a political attack to get what they want. They are not confident in themselves with their own abilities and message. They feel they must restrict others by law.

[oneighty]

7. A corporation is not a person

neither is a church a person.

There are good people and bad people to be found inside each place and they are only human, nothing more.

Often times.

180

[w4rma]

11. Liberal Catholics need to fight back against these right-wingers within

their church. Don't leave the church. Leaving is exactly what they want you to do. They want total control over the church's power structure as a means to power in secular organizations, such as governments.

Liberal Catholics who leave, instead of fighting are enablers, imho.

[Heidi]

12. Oh, good grief . . .

that's the goofiest and most self-pitying and self-serving thing I've read outside of GOP advertisements in a long while.

Here in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland, my two young goddaughters attend public schools and get state-sanctioned indoctrination from the local priest once a week, whether they and their pagan mother like it or not . . . where, because my deceased father-in-law was a "declared" Catholic on his tax form, my mother-in-law is still paying taxes to the church more than 15 years after his death.

Nobody's attacking Catholics where I live. Here, the church bell rings in our village every half hour, 24 hours a day. When I'm trying to sleep, the church is attacking me.