'A senile ex-Hitler Youth bigot'

‘The world needs to be saved from senile ex-Hitler Youth Catholic bigots’. The particular ‘senile ex-Hitler Youth Catholic bigot’ referred to in a comment on World Have Your Say, a blog on the BBC Radio website. It’s topic for 23 December was Does the world need to be saved from homosexuality?

The first entry begins with these words: The Pope has said that saving humanity from homosexuality is just as important as saving the rainforest.

A couple of other comments: The Pope is promoting hatred.

That statement is one of the most intolerant public statements I have ever heard. If the pope had said that on radio or had a show on A&E he would have been cancelled…

Below is the relevant part of the Holy Father’s message to the members of the Curia, the Vatican administration, on 22 December. The translation is by Bishop Michael Campbell OSA, coadjutor bishop of Lancaster, England. Thanks to Jackie Parkes for sending me a copy.

Since faith in the Creator is an essential part of the Christian Credo, the Church cannot and should not confine itself to passing on the message of salvation alone. It has a responsibility for the created order and ought to make this responsibility prevail, even in public. And in so doing, it ought to safeguard not only the earth, water, and air as gifts of creation, belonging to everyone. It ought also to protect man against the destruction of himself.

What is necessary is a kind of ecology of man, understood in the correct sense. When the Church speaks of the nature of the human being as man and woman and asks that this order of creation be respected, it is not the result of an outdated metaphysic. It is a question here of faith in the Creator and of listening to the language of creation, the devaluation of which leads to the self-destruction of man and therefore to the destruction of the same work of God.

That which is often expressed and understood by the term “gender”, results finally in the self-emancipation of man from creation and from the Creator. Man wishes to act alone and to dispose ever and exclusively of that alone which concerns him. But in this way he is living contrary to the truth, he is living contrary to the Spirit Creator. The tropical forests are deserving, yes, of our protection, but man merits no less than the creature, in which there is written a message which does not mean a contradiction of our liberty, but its condition. The great Scholastic theologians have characterised matrimony, the life-long bond between man and woman, as a sacrament of creation, instituted by the Creator himself and which Christ – without modifying the message of creation – has incorporated into the history of his covenant with mankind.

This forms part of the message that the Church must recover the witness in favour of the Spirit Creator present in nature in its entirety and in a particular way in the nature of man, created in the image of God. Beginning from this perspective, it would be beneficial to read again the Encyclical Humanae Vitae: the intention of Pope Paul VI was to defend love against sexuality as a consumer entity, the future as opposed to the exclusive pretext of the present, and the nature of man against its manipulation.

If you can find any mention of homosexuals or homosexuality by the ‘senile, ex-Hitler Youth Catholic bigot’ in that long quotation you could also check out this story: Vatican U.N. delegation calls for end to unjust discrimination against homosexuals .

The Vatican itself is partly to blame for the misrepresentation of the Holy Father's message by much of the world's media. Although English is the major international language in today's world, its website still doesn't have an English translation of the Pope's message. Surely it should have every important message of the Pope ready in English to be disseminated immediately. But you can read the message in German and in Italian .