The National "Catholic" Reporter assures us that, "The priesthood of the future will include married and celibate, male and female, gay and straight." See
here.
In his book "Called to Communion: Understanding the Church Today," then Cardinal Ratzinger and now Pope Benedict XVI, writing about futile reform and the "naive arrogance of the self-appointed enlightener who is convinced that previous generations did not get it right, or else were too fearful and unilluminated," explains the thinking of such deluded souls: "It thus appears [for these adolescent Catholics] as the most normal thing in the world to make up for lost time, which means first establishing once and for all this basic patrimony of structures of freedom [elaborated by the Enlightenment].
We must move - it is maintained - from the paternalistic Church to the community Church; no one must any longer remain a passive receiver of the gift of Christian existence. Rather, all should be active agents of it. The Church must no longer be fitted over us from above like a ready-made garment; no, we 'make' the Church ourselves, and do so in constantly new ways. It thus finally becomes 'our' Church, for which we are actively responsible. The Church arises out of discussion, compromise and resolution. Debate brings out what can still be asked of people today, what can still be considered by common consent as faith or as ethical norms. New short formulas of faith are composed...
But questions immediately arise concerning this work of reform, which in place of all hierarchical tutelage will at long last introduce democratic self-determination into the Church. Who actually has the right to make decisions? What is the basis of the decision-making process? In a political democracy the answer to this question is the system of representation: individuals elect their representative, who makes decisions on their behalf. This commission has a time limit, its mainlines of policy are clearly defined by the party system, and it embraces only those spheres of political action that are assigned to representative bodies by the constitution.
Questions remain even in regard to representation: the minority must submit to the majority, and this minority can be quite large. Furthermore, there is no infallible guarantee that my elected representative actually does act and speak as I wish. Once again, the victorious majority, seen from close up, can in no case consider itself entirely as the active subject of political events but must accept the decisions of others, at least in order not to jeopardize the system as a whole.
But there is a general question that is more relevant to our problem. Everything that men can make can also be undone again by others. Everything that has its origin in human likes can be disliked by others. Everything that one majority decides upon can can be revoked by another majority. A church based on human resolutions becomes a merely human church. It is reduced to the level of the makeable, of the obvious, of opinion. Opinion replaces faith. And in fact, in the self-made formulas of faith with which I am acquainted, the meaning of the words 'I believe' never signifies anything beyond 'we opine.' Ultimately, the self-made church savors of the 'self,' which always has a bitter taste to the other self and just as soon reveals its petty insignificance. A self-made church is reduced to the empirical domain and thus, precisely as a dream, comes to nothing." (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Called to Communion: Understanding the Church Today, pp. 136, 138-140).
Pope Francis would have us believe that charity is at the heart of his papal mission. If this be true, then he must publically deal with the National "Catholic" Reporter in clear and unambiguous terms.
Pope John XXIII, in Ad Petri Cathedram- On Truth, Unity and Peace - had this to say:
"All the evils which poison men and nations and trouble so many hearts have a single cause and a single source: ignorance of the truth--and at times even more than ignorance, a contempt for truth and a reckless rejection of it. Thus arise all manner of errors, which enter the recesses of men's hearts and the bloodstream of human society as would a plague. These errors turn everything upside down: they menace individuals and society itself.
And yet, God gave each of us an intellect capable of attaining natural truth. If we adhere to this truth, we adhere to God Himself, the author of truth, the lawgiver and ruler of our lives. But if we reject this truth, whether out of foolishness, neglect, or malice, we turn our backs on the highest good itself and on the very norm for right living." (Nos. 6, 7).
