Lest you be Like Children
You cannot enter the Kingdom. Suffer the little children come to me-for to such belong the Kingdom of heaven.
If you be like children put yourself in the position of one. Try to imagine you are one on the street living homeless and hungry, or in an orphanage without attention of any one loving parent but superficially tended to without a room of your own.
Would you rather have any parent? Should you rather have any parent- one or two? Some single people are adopting children and providing lives for them. I know a single woman who raised two girls she adopted from India who otherwise would have lived in orphanages until they were sold to prostitution in all likelihood. Would you rather these children not be adopted if a stable employed
loving gay couple of the same gender adopted them.
The Archdiocese in Washingotn, DC got so repulsed at the suggestion that they cancelled ALL adoptions just because they found the later prospect immoral from a doctrinal standpoint. If you are a child in an indian orphanage who will have a life of bare subsistence poverty tended to by orphanage workers and had an opportunity to be adopted by someone through Catholic Charities, you don't any longer have that opportunity because Catholic Charities in DC doesn't do adoptions any more. The DC government made them not discriminate against gays so they said- we'll show them. We won't do ANY adoptions any more. So there. Because they don't want gays adopting. If you are a child would you rather be that child in india in an orphanage or someone adopted into a home in America with loving parents of the same gender? Two of opposite genders might be ideal but any two is better than homeless on the street or living with an abusive drunk or drug addict who is neglectful and subjecting a child to starvation or danger. Kids are put into the foster care system then adoption scenarios from court adjudicated neglect situations sometimes. A home with no neglect is better than no home or one where there is neglect- no matter the gender or sexual orientation of the parent. It is appallingly absurd, stupid and morally irresponsible to suggest that
because the family is run by a gay person or two that this is 'child abuse' as some weird theories go. A gay person can clothe and feed a child and drive them to the dentist and piano lessons as well as a straight one. Given the choice of starvation on the street and a home with a gay person the Archdiocese apparently says 'night night' don't let the rats bite.
They did the same thing for insurance of spouses if you can imagine. Because they don't want gays to give their spouses medical insurance they just cancelled all spousal insurance. (In the name of the great healer Jesus) It didn't matter if a spouse might be a diabetic needing insulin or whether a spouse of an archdiocese worker who might have worked there a decade needed life saving medical treatments. They cancelled all of it. This is morally indefensible. It's a terrible witness to Christ.
It is estimated that 750-1000 priests have died of AIDS. It is reported that catholic priests are three to four times the national average carriers of the HIV/AIDS virus- because about a third of them are suspected to be struggling with their homosexuality.
Do you think they might have benefitted from free condoms on campus? How about people on campus they may be dealing with?
The Archdiocese should remember the Pharisees who thought Jesus immoral because he cured on the Sabbath. It violated a law- no working on the Sabbath, but for a higher good- to heal. Sometimes they lose the trees and the forrest. And its insane. If forced to comply with the HHS mandate they are likely to do the same thing. In the name of Jesus the healer, we'll show them- just shut the whole hospital mess down. This is republican Ego, not Jesus.
And by the way, if 750-1000 priests have died of AIDS, that means that the government has a legitimate compelling interest in regulating health prevention on catholic campuses where priests teach when one third of them are latent or practicing homosexuals. Google it boys.
This is a church trying way too hard to be pretty and preppy and not enough to be Jesus. It is a scandal that they have lost the moral vision they were entrusted with. There is really no excuse for it. It's plainly immoral. The leadership of the Washington, DC Archdiocese needs to go back to Seminary and the
Chancellor- don't get me started. Do they believe in property and asset preservation more than Jesus? They would rather pay lawyer friends of the Chancellor than pay expanded insurance for its employees and students while they pay millions in not so secret scandal settlements--FROM INSURANCE? Any cursory scan of the on line DC Superior Court docket shows that the Archdiocese of Washington, DC has been sued over 20 times- that doesn't mention the cases that settled before they got there and I haven't even checked the federal docket yet. Something is foul and should be seriously investigated.
Should the Archdiocese of Washington, DC be actually two Archdiocese now? The numbers are huge and suggest it might be time to create another diocese in DC and let the Maryland suburbs run with the leadership in place now who focus most predominantly on elementary schools in the suburbs.
The needs in the District are overwhelmingly for housing, full employment, and issues of justice, not just elementary education which is the maryland suburban focus. Justice compels things like you don't let kids rot on the street- you find them homes and you don't care what the parents do with their private sexuality. That is the law in the District. In Maryland they play a different game.
With all this misdirected indignation, furor and resources I have to ask- is Wuerl gay? Me thinks he doth protest too much. The people who are loudest against gayness are often those conflicted by their own homosexual desires and reactions or fighting their own demons. If someone devotes an entire pastoral letter on gay bashing you should ask yourself- is your pastor gay?
