UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism
Jerry Slevin
The Vatican’s official newspaper has said that Ireland’s passing of the same-sex marriage referendum constitutes a “defeat” that highlights a gap between the Catholic Church and modern society. While both Pope Francis and the Vatican have officially so far avoided addressing this disastrous Irish referendum result, the newspaper reported of “a challenge for the whole Church,” and of “the distance, in some areas, between society and the Church.” It said: “The margin between the ‘yes’ and the ‘no’ votes was too large not to be accepted as a defeat. It was the result of high voter turnout, notably among young people, … “.
On Saturday (5/23/15), Dublin’s Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said the marriage referendum results show that the Church has a huge task in front of it to get its message to young people.
A basic premise of the Vatican newspaper and Martin is flawed. They both, in effect, claim that the Yes vote won because of the young.
Polls, however, show the Yes vote won by landslide margins among all groups except the over-65 age group. The Church hierarchy’s current message is clearly falling on deaf ears among a lot more than just the young. The hierarchy, including Pope Francis evidently, yet again fail to appreciate that the priest child sex abuse scandals have reduced their moral authority severely. The pope apparently is still even standing up for disgraced Cardinal George Pell, who must be directed by the pope to return to Australia promptly to testify. Pell is becoming another repeat of the Cardinal Bernard Law/ Vatican cover-up script. The Royal Commission into child abuse has shown that victims from Ballarat Australia, which Pell once oversaw, still lack justice.
Cardinal Georges Cottier, a theologian, was cited by the newspaper as saying it was impossible to understand the Irish referendum result “without taking into account the paedophilia scandal which has rocked the Irish Church.” But that scandal is an obscenity to old, as well as young, Catholics in Ireland and everywhere else.
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