Religious liberty should not be used as a cover for homophobia. Do Catholic adoption agencies also seek to exclude couples who are Jewish or Protestant? They too are not "following church teaching," in one case by not believing in Jesus. Why focus only on same-sex couples?...
To be clear: Catholic institutions and agencies have the right to require their employees to follow church teachings, and the right to decide whom they serve and under what conditions. But increasingly "religious liberty" exemptions are focused only on LGBT people...
...and the only "church teaching" that seems to matter has to do with same-sex marriage. There are many other important church teachings that adoptive couples are probably not following, and there is no exemption sought by Catholic social service agencies.
The same selectivity applies when LGBT employees are fired for not "supporting or conveying church teaching" (in the words of one archdiocese). Yet many church employees do not "support or convey church teaching," in other areas, and are not similarly targeted or fired.
As a thought exercise: When it comes to adoptions, why don't Catholic agencies seek a legal exemption so as not to be required to place children with Jewish couples? I am not arguing for that at all, just pointing out the inconsistency in the application of "church teaching."
It raises the question: Is believing in Jesus Christ not as an important a value for families? No, increasingly the only "religious liberty" issue in these cases seems to be the freedom to target, exclude and discriminate against LGBT people, whether in employment or adoption.
This selectivity of application of "church teaching" seems clearly discriminatory.

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More from @JamesMartinSJ

2 Nov
Gospel: On #AllSoulsDay we are reminded that those who believe in Christ will enjoy everlasting life (Jn 6). They also help us with their prayers. As Nancy Dallavalle writes in @GiveUsThisDayLP, "The generations that go before us live anew in the fragile moments of our lives..." Image
...We may long for the clean slate, the fresh start, to be self-made--to cast off the weight of despair, to leave the bitterness behind forever. Instead our beloved dead gather round. In Christ we see them fully, as we cannot in the flesh. Their faces press close...
...but their hands urge us forward. Their hands are God's mercy: saturating all creation, rolling the loss and the graced into a single river of love poured into our hearts, coursing through the rivers of all time, carrying us home...
Read 4 tweets
1 Nov
Dear friends: Last night I was finally able to watch the lovely new film "Fatima," which I highly recommend. It's a faithful version of the appearances of Our Lady of #Fatima, in Portugal in 1917 to three young children....
It has a stellar cast and high production values and a fine script. The film reminded me a great deal of "The Song of Bernadette" (1943), about St. Bernadette's visions in Lourdes, especially in its refusal to sugarcoat the initial opposition faced by the young visionaries....
(Both the Fatima visionaries and Bernadette were originally disbelieved by both their parents and the local priest, who later came to support them.) The device of the elderly Sister Lucia (Sonia Braga) being interviewed by a journalist (Harvey Keitel) was a great way to frame...
Read 5 tweets
24 Oct
Attempts to deny that @Pontifex said what he said (or that it was edited to make him say something different) are amazing. Because he's said all these things before, though either privately or not as widely known. Let's look at what he said about #LGBT people in the new film....
1. "Homosexuals have a right to be a part of the family."

During an in-flight press conference on the way back from Dublin, in 2018, the Pope said:

"Because that son and daughter has a right to family, and their family is this family, just as it is."

vatican.va/content/france…
2. "They're children of God and have a right to a family."

In "Amoris Laetitia," on LGBT people and their place in the family in 2016:

"We would like before all else to reaffirm that every person, regardless of sexual orientation, ought to be respected in his or her dignity...
Read 9 tweets
22 Oct
Much important and necessary analysis of the Pope's surprising comments yesterday: the origin, timing and context of clips from "Francesco." (And Francis had said similar things before.) But good to remember: 1) The Pope is clearly telling families not to reject #LGBT members...
2) Francis is expressing his support for (depending on the translation) some sort of legal protections for same-sex couples in civil law. 3.) Almost totally overlooked, the documentary "Francesco" looks at his warm relationships with LGBT individuals, like @jccruzchellew.
This may be the first time that many people are hearing about this pastoral outreach. It has been expressed by the Pope before in other ways (interviews, homilies, books, press conferences, etc.), but not broadcast or known as widely as yesterday's comments. So that's new.
Read 4 tweets
16 Oct
I hope not! Bill Bryson can really *write.* For the uninitiated, try "A Walk in the Woods," "Notes from a Small Island" and, my favorite, "In a Sunburned Country."

Also, "The Lost Continent" includes one my all-time favorite passages of writing....

theguardian.com/books/booksblo…
Bryson, touring the US in the 1980s, is talking about Cleveland's "Renaissance," which did not overly impress (The city has obviously improved since then, so don't be upset if you're from Cleveland, just enjoy the prose).

He writes:
"What I can say is that the view up the Cuyahoga as I crossed it on the freeway was a stew of smoking factories that didn't look any too clean or handsome. And I can't say that the rest of the town looked such a knockout either. It may be improved, but all this talk...
Read 5 tweets
16 Oct
Gospel: One of the best books on Jesus for contemporary Christians is Amy-Jill Levine's "The Misunderstood Jew," which looks at the lazy stereotypes about first-century Judaism that have been passed along by well-meaning Christians. E.g., the Pharisees were all hypocrites...
In her book, Prof. Levine points out that what little most Christians know about 1C Judaism comes from the Gospels, which were concerned painting Jesus in a favorable light, not his opponents. So we end up with a skewed (and limited) view of Jewish practice at the time....
As she writes: “In New Testament classes, many students get a single lecture, or half a lecture, on the four major parties of Jews mentioned by the Jewish historian Josephus: Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes and Zealots"....
Read 8 tweets

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