Ratzinger's finest Christmas Message

24.12.8 by Dr. Ing. Patrick Attard
Published on Malta Today on 28.12.8: http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/2008/12/28/l3.html

It wasn't enough that The Vatican opposed the UN Resolution for the universal decriminalisation of gay relationships a few weeks ago, an outrageously obscene act. Now the Pope said that the world should be saved from homosexuality as urgently as we must save the rain-forests from destruction. If this is the finest Christmas Message Pope Ratzinger can deliver us, then things can only get better!

Dear Pope, What is your problem?

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See Pope's Speech here: http://patrickattard.blogspot.com/2009/01/vatican-discorso-del-santo-padre.html
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Join these Facebook Groups

- The Pope should apologise for his anti-gay remarks:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=41494616817

- Put a STOP to Pope Benedict XVI anti-homosexual behaviour:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=55451210567

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Related Articles [chronologically; most recent on top]:

Gay groups angry at Pope remarks

Pope Benedict made his remarks in an end-of-year speech

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7797269.stm
23.12.8

Gay groups and activists have reacted angrily after Pope Benedict XVI said that mankind needed to be saved from a destructive blurring of gender.

Speaking on Monday, Pope Benedict said that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behaviour was as important as protecting the environment.

The comments were "irresponsible and unacceptable", the UK's Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement (LGCM) said.

Vladimir Luxuria, a transgender former Italian MP, called his words "hurtful".

The row erupted as news emerged that the pontiff is to pay his first visit to the Holy Land in May next year.

'Self-destruction'

Pope Benedict made the comments in an end-of-year speech to senior Vatican staff.

Defending God's creation was not limited to saving the environment, he said, but also about protecting man from himself.

Rainforests deserve, yes, our protection, but the human being ... does not deserve it less Pope Benedict Papal address: Key extracts What Bible says about being gay

It was not "out-of-date metaphysics" to "speak of human nature as 'man' or woman'", he said. It came from the "language of creation, despising which would mean self-destruction for humans".

Gender theories, he said, led to man's "auto-emancipation" from creation and Creator.

"Rain forests deserve, yes, our protection but the human being... does not deserve it less," he said.

LGCM head Rev Sharon Ferguson said the Pope's remarks justified "gay bashing" and bullying.

Mark Dowd, strategist for Christian environmental group Operation Noah, said the comments betrayed "a lack of openness to the complexity of creation".

Derek Munn of the UK based gay rights group Stonewall criticises Pope Benedict XVI's comments

And Ms Luxuria, who recently lost her seat in the Italian parliament, said suggesting people like her were destructive was very hurtful.

"I'm someone who was born as male and has a spiritual and female soul, and it's contradictory that a Pope just thinks of people just made as flesh and not made of a spiritual aspect."

The Catholic Church opposes gay marriage. It teaches that while homosexuality is not sinful, homosexual acts are.

Earlier this month, the Vatican said that a proposed United Nations resolution decriminalising homosexuality went too far.

"Unjust discrimination" against gay people should be avoided, but the use of wording such as "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" in the text would "create serious uncertainty in the law", it said.

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Pope attacks blurring of gender

Pope Benedict has called for "an ecology of the human being"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7796663.stm
23.12.8

Pope Benedict XVI has said that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behaviour is just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction.

He explained that defending God's creation was not limited to saving the environment, but also about protecting man from self-destruction.

The Pope was delivering his end-of-year address to senior Vatican staff.

His words, later released to the media, emphasised his rejection of gender theory.

Speaking on Monday, Pope Benedict XVI warned that gender theory blurred the distinction between male and female and could thus lead to the "self-destruction" of the human race.

Gender theory

Gender theory explores sexual orientation, the roles assigned by society to individuals according to their gender, and how people perceive their biological identity.

Rainforests deserve, yes, our protection, but the human being ... does not deserve it less Pope Benedict Papal address: Key extracts What Bible says about being gay

Gay and transsexual groups, particularly in the United States, promote it as a key to understanding and tolerance, but the Pope disagreed.

When the Roman Catholic Church defends God's Creation, "it does not only defend the earth, water and the air... but (it) also protects man from his own destruction," he said.

"Rainforests deserve, yes, our protection, but the human being ... does not deserve it less," the pontiff said.

It is not "out-of-date metaphysics" to "speak of human nature as 'man' or woman'", he told scores of prelates gathered in the Vatican's sumptuous Clementine Hall.

"We need something like human ecology, meant in the right way."

The Catholic Church opposes gay marriage. It teaches that while homosexuality is not sinful, homosexual acts are.

Rev Sharon Ferguson, chief executive of Britain's Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement, described the Pope's remarks as "totally irresponsible and unacceptable".

"When you have religious leaders like that making that sort of statement then followers feel they are justified in behaving in an aggressive and violent way," she said.

'Rock festival'

The pope uses his traditional end-of-year speech to offer his Christmas greetings and say a few words about what he considers the important issues of the day.

This year, Pope Benedict also deplored the tendency to depict the Catholic church's World Youth Day, which he attended in Sydney earlier this year, as mere spectacle.

He stressed that the event should not be considered a "variant of modern youth culture, as a kind of ecclesiastical rock festival with the Pope as the star," but as the fruition of a "long exterior and interior path".

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Zenith: PONTIFF CALLS FOR "ECOLOGY OF MAN"; Warns Against New Theories of "Gender"

http://www.zenit.org/article-24652?l=english

22.12.8

VATICAN CITY, DEC. 22, 2008 (Zenit.org).- While protecting nature is an essential mission of the Church, it's no more important than protecting the nature of the person, says Benedict XVI.

The Pope spoke today of what he termed an "ecology of man" during his traditional exchange of Christmas greetings with prelates and members of the Roman Curia.

"Given that faith in the Creator is an essential element of the Christian creed, the Church can not and should not limit itself to transmitting to the faithful only the message of salvation," he affirmed. "It also has a responsibility with creation, and it has to fulfill this responsibility in public."

The Pontiff added that while the Church needs to "defend the earth, water, air, as gifts of the creation that belongs to all of us [... ], it must also protect the human being from his own destruction."

"It is necessary that there be something such as an ecology of man, understood in the proper manner," he said.

This human ecology, he affirmed, is based on respecting the nature of the person, and the two genders of masculine and feminine.

Always current

"It is not outmoded metaphysics," Benedict XVI affirmed, "when Church speaks of the nature of the human being as man and woman, and demands that this order of creation be respected."

He said it has more to do with "faith in the Creator and listening to the language of creation, the contempt of which will lead to the self destruction of humanity."

The Pope warned against the manipulation that takes place in national and international forums when the term "gender" is altered.

"What is often expressed and understood by the term 'gender,' is definitively resolved in the self-emancipation of the human being from creation and the Creator," he warned. "Man wants to create himself, and to decide always and exclusively on his own about what concerns him."

The Pontiff said this is man living "against truth, against the creating Spirit."

"The rain forests certainly deserve our protection, but man as creature indeed deserves no less," he added.

Benedict XVI explained that great theologians have "qualified marriage, that is to say, the link for life between man and woman, as a sacrament of creation, instituted by the Creator."

"This forms part of the announcement that the Church should offer," he concluded, "in favor of the creating Spirit present in all of nature, and in a special way in the nature of man created in the image of God."