World Youth Day to exlcude homsexual youth in Australia

[CatholicEdHead]

The coolness of the institutional Church continues to shun homosexuals left and right. A neo-traditional movement will be shown, yet with JPII, each WYD is not as effective.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/religionreport/stories/2008/2298806.htm#transcript

But the emphasis on inclusivity only goes so far. It doesn't include young gay Catholics. The Jesuits have been ordered to withdraw their plan to host a forum with the gay Catholic group Acceptance and PFlag, the organisation for parents and friends of young gays and lesbians.

One of the presenters of that forum was to have been Father Donald Godfrey, SJ, who runs a youth ministry at the University of San Francisco. I asked him why the church would cancel such an event.
....
Donald Godfrey: It's either a mistake that they misunderstand what this was about, because many dioceses, at least in the United States where I live, sponsor just such a conversation. Los Angeles diocese for example has designated certain parishes for gay and lesbian Catholics, explicitly to provide a safe space for Catholics who are gay, to have a conversation, to feel part and included in the church's ministry. As the Catholic bishops of the United States have said again and again, gay and lesbian Catholics must be included and it has to mean an explicit outreach, such as this one, that MAGiS is willing to sponsor. I hope it was a mistake because if it wasn't a mistake, it's just homophobic, and that would be unfortunate if the organisers of World Youth Day are homophobic, that's a great pity.
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Judy Brown: A couple of weeks go the Australian Bishops Conference had sent out a pastoral letter to all the parishes, and in our particular parish, I happened to be chatting to our parish priest because he had advertised the Sexuality Forum that we had planned, and I had to go and tell him that unfortunately it had been cancelled.
....


http://www.abc.net.au/rn/religionreport/stories/2008/2298432.htm#transcript

Meanwhile last Friday a number of schools and parishes who had been preparing to host overseas pilgrims, were told their facilities and their hospitality will no longer be needed. Plans to accommodate pilgrims in many public schools have apparently also been dropped. As one source in the Catholic system told The Religion Report this week: "the amount of wasted infrastructure is overwhelming, there is no getting that money back".
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Stephen Crittenden: A few months before Pope John Paul II died, I interviewed Hans Küng, the great Liberal Catholic theologian who said something in the interview that has stayed with me. That what John Paul II was on about was a church of the façade, that he failed to address any of the deep problems confronting the church but he spent all his time and energy creating the illusion of reinvigoration and success. In other words, the Catholic church under John Paul II fits squarely into the bread and circuses scenario that we all know we've been living through in politics. Is that what World Youth Day began as part of?
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Paul Collins: Who comes and why, and what happens after. Richard had done quite a bit of work with the ones from Australia who went to Cologne, and he makes a number of interesting observations. One of the observations is that certainly if they travel from overseas, they're already committed, and what it does is, it brings them from a committed Catholicism into a much more involved Catholicism. They actually begin to work within the context of the church. But his guess is, and I hope I'm quoting him correctly here, but certainly I've heard this from other people as well, that their observation is that young people love being together, they love hearing the Pope articulate ideals, love hearing the Pope say the ideal of premarital chastity. They love the idea of a commitment to social justice, a commitment to the environment, all of those things that are now kind of popular causes for Popes to talk about. But young people love to hear the ideals. But that doesn't mean - and this is where the disconnect is - that doesn't mean that they're going to do anything necessarily about that in their own lives. That doesn't mean that they're not going to be engaged in intimate activity with their girlfriend or their boyfriend. They think it's a good thing to hear it, but then they're just like older people.
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[TomInTib]

1. "down under" what?

That's one hell of a header.

[CatholicEdHead]

2. Down under as in Australia

[TomInTib]

3. I know, but I just got a kick out of your subject line.

And I certainly meant no offense.