Tag Archives: Archbishop

Pope appoints anti-gay temporary successor to Cardinal Keith O’Brien

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Benedict XVI appoints Archbishop of Glasgow Philip Tartaglia to the position, who has previously connected premature deaths to homosexuality

Archbishop Philip Tartaglia

27 FEBRUARY 2013 | BY JOE MORGAN

Pope Benedict XVI has appointed a temporary successor to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh.

Archbishop of Glasgow Reverend Philip Tartaglia will govern the vacant diocese until a permanent appointment is made.

It follows Cardinal Keith O’Brien, who has previously compared gay marriage to slavery, resigned after allegations he initiated inappropriate acts with his male priests.

Archbishop Tartaglia said: ‘These are painful and distressing times for the archdiocese, I also feel pained and distressed.

‘With the grace of God, I will do my very best to oversee and govern the archdiocese until the appointment of a new archbishop. I ask for your prayers.’

But with Tartaglia’s appointment, it shows the pope is not planning on putting a pro-gay Catholic in charge as Scotland works towards marriage equality.

When he was made an archbishop last year, Tartaglia was criticized for connecting former minister David Cairns’ death, who passed away from pancreatic cancer, to his sexuality.

He said: ‘Recently in Scotland there was a gay Catholic MP who died at the age of 44 or so, and nobody said anything, and why his body should just shut down at that age?

‘Obviously he could have had a disease that would have killed anybody. But you seem to hear so many stories about this kind of thing, but society won’t address it.’

On 25 February, Benedict XVI agreed to O’Brien’s resignation and accepted it should take effect immediately.

The four priests who have made the claims against the cardinal filed them with the Pope’s ambassador in the week before Benedict’s own resignation on 11 February.

Speaking to Gay Star News, Tim Hopkins from the Scottish LGBT rights charity Equality Network said: ‘We hope that Archbishop Tartaglia’s future contributions on equal marriage will be considerate and measured, and will contribute to a mutually respectful discussion of the proposed [marriage equality] legislation here in Scotland.’

–  Gay Star News.

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SMPC Chair, on the Future of “Soho Masses”

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FORUM: ‘Radically Christian attempt’ to meet the spiritual hunger of London’s LGBT Roman Catholics – but what’s really going on with the Soho Masses?

Published: 18 January, 2013

by JOE STANLEY

IT’S been an interesting fortnight – on January 2 the Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols announced that the Soho Masses which,­ for the past six years have been the Roman Catholic Church in London’s official outreach to the LGBT Catholic community, were moving from a church in Warwick Street near Piccadilly.

They were asked to integrate into the parish of the Jesuit church in Farm Street; and the Soho Masses Pastoral Council, the group of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Catholics who, elected by the congregation, organise the Masses, would no longer do that, but were asked to focus on pastoral care instead.

Ho hum, so far, so good – who could have imagined the torrent of bilge that this banal announcement would produce, both in the gay and the Catholic press?

The gay press, infuriated by the Archbishop’s recent criticism of the government’s process in deciding to legislate for equal marriage, presented it as yet another homophobic attack on the LGBT community.

The prurient end of the Catholic press, which titillates readers with salacious and entirely imaginary stories about a gay dating agency after Mass (anybody want to shack up with a lesbian granny?) decided to spin it as a Machiavellian move by the Archbishop. Conveniently forgetting that there already is a Cardinal alive and well in London, their conspiracy theory was that by “abolishing” the Masses, Archbishop Nichols would ingratiate himself with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly the Inquisition), and Archbishop Antonio Mennini, the Wimbledon-based Apostolic Nuncio (Papal ambassador) and ensure his own Cardinal’s hat.

Even the usually sensible Tablet opined that there was a danger of this – perhaps the most inclusive church-service in Europe – becoming a ghetto.

Strikingly, both sides were equally patronising, the gay press treating us as pawns of an evil organisation who collude in our own oppression, the prurient Catholic press as a mix of screaming queen and sexed-up, theologically illiterate, mental defective. Even more striking was that the gay press saw it had got it wrong, rang up to check the facts and published corrections, while the Catholic editors persisted in presenting wild imaginings. Proof yet again that it’s harder to be Catholic than L,G,B or T these days.

Most striking of all was the deluge of messages of support from straight and gay Catholics all over the world, many of them priests and nuns, as well as from other Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, atheists and even anarchists.
The whole world is watching Westminster Diocese’s radically Christian attempt to meet the spiritual hunger of London’s LGBT Catholic community and by golly it approves.

So, here’s my take on the Soho Masses and what is happening to us. We started in 1999 when a small “grass-roots” group of LGBT Catholics met on the weekend of the Admiral Duncan pub bombing to celebrate Mass. It is the universal communal prayer of the Church, the act where we, as the very diverse body of Christ, come together to commune in a mindful way with each other and God. A lot of its power comes because it exists in the four major dimensions of space-time, having been celebrated for two millennia – the real reason why so many Catholics find it hard to leave the Church. For all its universality, however, individual instances of Mass vary and adapt to time and place. The group who organised that 1999 Mass aimed to celebrate it in a way that met the spiritual hunger, and confronted the challenges, which LGBT Catholics experience – mostly because Mass elsewhere just did not, and most parish clergy were unable to deal with their “issues”.

-more at  West End Extra.

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Catholics Plan Ads to Oppose Bishop’s Anti-Gay Political Campaign

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Seattle Catholics have raised thousands of dollars for an election-season campaign and plan to run ads showing that patrons of the nation’s largest church do, in fact, support marriage equality for gay couples. It’s a direct affront to their superior, Seattle Archbishop J. Peter Sartain, who has been trying to force local Catholics to comply with his anti-gay-rights agenda since January.

Catholics for Marriage Equality Washington State, a group run by parishioners in Sartain’s own archdiocese, issued a statement today lamenting that signatures were submitted to put Washington State’s same-sex-marriage law on the ballot for a possible repeal. The group says it intends to publish the names of over 1,000 Catholics who support marriage equality and run newspaper ads during election season.

“We are saddened that the Seattle bishops and the Washington State Catholic Conference have publicly opposed civil marriage for citizens who wish to join together in civil marriage,” says spokeswoman Barbara Guzzo in a statement today. “This is contrary to Catholic values of human dignity and inclusion of all God’s children in the life of our communities.”

– more at Slog

Among his tactics, Sartain has forced priests in Western Washington to print anti-gay-marriage statements in their bulletins, invited anti-gay activists to petition for Referendum 74 inside local churches, and he’s used the platform of the state’s Catholic Conference (featuring the logo for Catholic Community Services, a nonprofit charity) to oppose the same-sex marriage law.

Archbishop Sartain has vowed to commit resources of the Archdiocese of Seattle into the fall effort to overturn the state’s marriage-equality law. Meanwhile, he’s at the center of another national controversy: Sartain is the leading a campaign designed to force thousands of US nuns to rewrite their bylaws—which allegedly contain “radical feminist themes”—and make them stop focusing on poverty andstart working to ban contraception and gay rights.

In response to Sartain, the new political action committee has raised $3,672, according records held by the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission. Further, vigils have protested near Sartain’s office once a week for the past month.

Put simply: Archbishop Sartain is the biggest right-wing threat in Seattle.And thank God, his own church is trying to put him in check. They’re trying to raise $100,000. You can donate right here.

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