Priest Running For Canadian Parliament To Abstain On Gay Marriage Vote

[struggle4progress]

by The Canadian Press
Posted: November 21, 2006 7:00 pm ET

(Repentigny, Quebec) A controversial priest running for the Bloc Quebecois in a byelection says he will abstain from voting in the Commons on social issues that clash with Roman Catholic ideology.

Unlike the church, Rev. Raymond Gravel favors same-sex marriage and opposes the recriminalization of abortion ...

``If the question was directly asked: `Are you for or against same-sex marriage,' as a Catholic priest I would simply abstain,'' he told a news conference as he campaigned with Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe on Monday ...

Gravel said his controversial past, which involved working as a male prostitute and working in leather bars in Montreal's gay village, has not been raised during weeks of campaigning ...

http://www.365gay.com/Newscon06/11/112106priest.htm

[mitchtv]

1. I wonder why

Aren't priests not supposed to serve in gov't?. At least not here. Maybe the power mad nazi pope has changed that.

[struggle4progress]

2. "In 1971, the Jesuit Robert Drinan became the first Catholic priest elected to the U.S. Congress --

only to reject the emerging pro-life movement as 'the powers of darkness' and denounce his fellow Catholics for 'seeking to impose' their pro-life views 'on the rest of the nation.'"

When the Swallows Come
Back to Capistrano
Catholic Culture in America
Joseph Bottum
Copyright (c) 2006 First Things 166 (October 2006): 27-40.
http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0608/articles/bottum.html

[mitchtv]

5. Fr. Drinan was ordered to quit

As I remember, and he did, and it has continued as church policy.

[struggle4progress]

6. You seem to be right. Drinan was certainly ordered to quit, after a

decade in elected office that had not offended his immediate superiors -- until John Paul II, two years into his papacy in 1980, ordered him to step down. It also seems that the Code of Canon Law was rewritten in 1983 to enshrine such a prohibition:


Book II, Part I, Title III, Chapter III
Can. 287 §1. Most especially, clerics are always to foster the peace and harmony based on justice which are to be observed among people.
§2. They are not to have an active part in political parties and in governing labor unions unless, in the judgment of competent ecclesiastical authority, the protection of the rights of the Church or the promotion of the common good requires it ...

Can. 285 §1. Clerics are to refrain completely from all those things which are unbecoming to their state, according to the prescripts of particular law.
§2. Clerics are to avoid those things which, although not unbecoming, are nevertheless foreign to the clerical state.
§3. Clerics are forbidden to assume public offices which entail a participation in the exercise of civil power ...

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG1104/__PY.HTM

[kenny blankenship]

3. "has not been raised during weeks of campaigning "

Clearly Canadians are an entirely different species of hominid from those found south of the 49th parallel of latitude. I wonder if there's a way to purchase an upgrade? Do I get the Canadian improvement just by crossing the border and gaining citizenship, or is something like an injection or gene therapy required?

[Evoman]

4. I don't get why he would abstain...if he favors same-sex marriage, then he should vote for it.