DC’s Cardinal Wuerl continues campaign against gay marriage and sex [video]
“You have to put that into context about what the Church would be concerned about. When we’re dealing the question about military readiness or morale, those are issues where we really have to hear from others on.
”What the Church is concerned about, and what it brings to this debate — this discussion — are two realities. One, the understanding — the long, long teaching of the Church that every human being is worthy of respect. Every person must be embraced and respected, and treated with fairness. But then you also have to take the rest of the gospel message, the rest of Jesus’ message, that human sexuality has purpose, and this is not simply for personal satisfaction. Human sexuality has to be seen in the context of the great gift of love, of marriage, of family.
”And so, when the Church addresses any of these issues that touch on sexuality, that’s our starting point. And that’s why, we often times are viewed, I think, as an opposition voice — because this is a highly, highly focused socieity on the pleasures of life. And the Church is also saying, that’s true, but there’s also responsible sexuality….
”There isn’t a specific Catholic Church position, but whatever happens, it has to be seen in terms of the Church’s teaching position. And that is human sexuality is something that is supposed to be exercised responsibly and within the context of marriage….
”We had to [end our 80-year foster care program]. One of the things that the Archdiocese spoke about, and the Catholic Charities spoke about during that whole debate was, we want to be able to work with everybody and to continue to serve as we do, everybody. If you force us to change the definition of marriage — there’s a definition of marriage that the whole world has accepted. If you change that definition, and then insist that we now follow a new definition, we’re going to be limited. And that’s what happened. We were simply limited in what we were able to do.
”I have said, and I think this is something the Church has said very clearly: The Catholic Church, in her social service ministry serves everyone — no matter what their race, religion, sexual orientation, background — whatever that is, we serve everyone.
”But there’s some things we won’t do. There’s somethings we can’t do. Abortion would be one of them. We simply can’t do that.
”And when we’re asked to redefine marriage, we can’t do that. But we can serve everyone who comes to us with need.”
Donald Wuerl, the head of the Archdiocese of Washington, who was recently elevated to Cardinal status by the Catholic Church’s Pope. Here he’s asked by Chris Wallace of Fox News to discuss the Church’s position on the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the US military’s gay-excluding policy. (Fox News)
Wuerl, along with other heads of the Archdiocese and Catholic Charities, have shared their so-called “fairness” and “respect” many times over the last couple of years. They waged a political campaign against gay marriage, trying to use their miniscule adoption and foster services as leverage, and also threatened to pull their other services for the needy. These are services that were paid for, in large part, by the tax payers of the District of Columbia. Catholic Charities requested millions of dollars from the District and was granted the money in return for a contractural agreement that they would abide by the District’s laws. However, as the legalization of same-sex marriage came into being (here in DC, in other US states and in other world countries), the political attack force of the Church came forward.
Wuerl and others in the Church have claimed to serve all people without question to sexual orientation, yet they halted all of their child placement services in DC and Massachusetts because they would not place kids with lesbian and gay families. They also stopped giving health care benefits to new spouses of employees at Catholic Charities this year, because they refused to recognize same-sex marriages. And then they claim (as Wuerl does here) that they “had to” or were “forced to” stop these services. The fact is that it was their choice — no one forced them to ask for the money, and nothing in DC’s marriage law threatened their religious freedoms — quite the contrary. It is the Church which has exhibited a desire to stop gay people from achieving full equality and the freedom to enter into legally recognized family units.
Church officials have called for fairness and love, yet the Pope and his close representatives said that gay marriage is a threat to Creation, that gay people are not allowed to be married, that sex is reserved only for married heterosexual couples, and that gay relationships should not ever go beyond “platonic friendship.” And then they blamed their wide-spread child sex scandals on a “problem of homosexuality.”
Also, in the first part of Wuerl’s Fox interview, he says that bloggers go too far in their opinions and statements, which seems hypocritical coming from an Archdiocese that claimed on their offical blog that Jesus is against gay marriage because it is similar to incest and bestiality.
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