so because we're the catholic church, we should be allowed to discriminate

[wannaBeWhateverIWannaBe]

or we'll close our

adoption agencies

just a few people in the church, some catholic, who helped Jews in the Second World War.

• Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Zante, who, when ordered by the Axis occupying forces to submit a list of all Jews on the island, submitted a document bearing just two names: his own and the Mayor's. Consequently all 275 Zante Jews were saved.
• Archbishop Damaskinos - Archbishop of Athens during the German occupation. He formally protested the deportation of Jews and quietly ordered churches under his jurisdiction to issue fake Christian baptismal certificates to Jews fleeing the Nazis. Thousands of Greek Jews in and around Athens were thus able to claim that they were Christian and were thus saved.
• Father Alfred Delp S.J., an agent who helped Jews escape to Switzerland while serving as a minister in suburban Munich; also involved with the Kreisau Circle.
• Maximilian Kolbe - Polish Conventual Franciscan friar. During the Second World War, in the friary, Kolbe provided shelter to people from Greater Poland, including 2,000 Jews. He was also active as a radio amateur, vilifying Nazi activities through his reports.
• Bernhard Lichtenberg - German Catholic priest at Berlin's Cathedral. Sent to Dachau because he prayed for Jews at Evening Prayer.
• Hugh O'Flaherty - an Irish Catholic priest who saved about 4,000 Allied soldiers and Jews; known as the "Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican". Retold in the film The Scarlet and the Black.
• Pope Pius XII - during the German occupation of Rome he organised that Italian Jews would be concealed in convents and monasteries. Up to 1,000 Jews were even concealed at the Pope's Summer Residence Castel Gandolfo.
• Andrey Sheptytsky - Metropolitan Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, harbored hundreds of Jews in his residence and in Greek Catholic monasteries. He also issued the pastoral letter, "Thou Shalt Not Kill," to protest Nazi atrocities.
• The Sisters of Social Service, who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews; included Sister Sara Salkahazi, recognized by Yad Vashem as well as beatified.
• Archbishop Stefan of Sofia - Bishop of Sofia and Exarch of Bulgaria.
• Andre Trocmé and Magda Trocmé - A French pastor and his wife who led the Le Chambon-sur-Lignon village movement that saved 3,000-5,000 Jews.

[edit]

DC, I think you need therapy. You have obviously suffered some great trauma and should really look at the individuals who did that rather than the organisation.

Seriously, all you bring to this argument is the sense that you yourself are bigoted against catholicism and refuse to see beyond your own blinkered view.

DC have you got a proper contribution to make to this discussion or just bigoted comments infering all catholics, all catholic priests .. do whatever.

my argument which you twisted ( no surprise there) was that as it stands the catholic adoption agencies can refer gay couples onto other agencies which could help them.

the new law will preclude this.

which is unfortunate. however i do not think religeous groups should be aloud to get round the issue by virtue of religeon alone.

DC, please get some help for your issues, the fact that you cannot see any good in people and never offer of yourself on mumsnet is now worrying me.

you never ask for help here, not even for a little thing. you never give of your self. You come accross as a conceited, angry and vitriolic man. Someone who professes to know much but really deserves some kindness for the wrongdoing he is obviously still trying to get over? was it a priest? get some help. your arguments are irrational and rarely ever related to the subject. A mumsnetter could post " my washing up liquid is £.49 how much is yours?" and somehow it would be the catholic child rapers fault.

i hope you gain some insight into your self soon

Rhubarb-I am also a practising catholic and would like to say I agree with most of what you have posted,I NEVER enter into any debate regarding religion or politics as it is too personel and ends often in tears-but you are a lone voice and doing very well in dealing with an awful lot of anti-catholic rhetoric.

Xenia, I agree utterly re women and the Church - we are on the move in the C of E finally though and I look forward to the day when we have our first woman Archbishop. Was also disgusted at the recent treatment of Jeffrey John, an outstandingly talented theologian and priest, taken off the shortlist for a bishopric on account of his sexuality .

agree Marina.

ROFL at the comment from DC that all the people the pope was apologising about in WWII were dead.

Was that his fault DC? Should he not have apologised because they were dead? And then you could complain that the catholic church hasn't apologised...

Dear me.

crikey, i never thought i'd end up defender of DC but....

the handling of the succession of sexual abuse scandals in Ireland and America by the Catholic church has been absolutely appalling, indicating (I would argue, strongly pointing to) an institution-wide cover up. Certainly the Catholic church has utterly closed ranks on this issue, and there are many many priests guilty of abusing children that have not even been reprimanded, and certainly not handed over to the police for investigation.

Many of the people responsible for this state of affairs hold positions of power in the Vatican and it does go all the way to the Ratzinger top.

I don't think that you can just bat this away by suggesting the DC was sexually abused by a priest and therefore is talking crap...he isn't on this issue. I wasn't abused by a priest but feel extremely strongly about it too.

Custardo, I take your point about referring on, but unfortunately that doesn't address the point of WHY the church is referring on does it. As Blu has eloquently pointed out, there is no sex going on between adoptive parents and their offspring, so why should church doctrine get in the way of said adoption (especially if the prospective parents are gay and Catholic). It is as if the Catholic church wants to maintain the right to private bigotry, and that this legislation gets in the way of them doing it.

Parents, like I have said, should be judged on many many criteria, sexuallity isn't one of them. The Catholic church should not be exempt from this, and although they have been doing it very politely, they have effectively been saying 'fuck off homos'.

Also, Rhubarb who is baying for blood? Me? By arguing against the church's demand for exemption, or by pointing out some of the bigoted comments on this thread.

I fully acknowledge the good and beauty in the Catholic faith, did so further down and am doing so again now.

Can you point out what is 'baying for blood'? Is it arguing a pov you don't agree with?

Actually if you look you will find me offering various bits of help to at least a dozen people.
I note the attacks on me sanity et al don't even attempt to refute the very bad way most Christian churches have behaved.
Given that we're talking of the way Christian churches want to be above the law because they have power over children, I see their past and present conduct as a valid issue.

If any other organisation with its record of not just "happening to have a few bad apples", but of officially helping in the rape of children applied even for a licence to run an adoption agency they would be laughed at.

As for history, yes, there are many good Christians, but let us not lose sight of the fact that in WWII Both Germany and Italy were very religious countries, even compared to Britain ,where centuries of literacy were by this point seriously undermining mass religious hysteria.
Ireland was of course a strongly Catholic country, oops.

Hitler couldn't have smashed one Jewish shop window if it were not for the fact that the vast bulk of his population were fully up for everything he wanted. Yes, a few churchmen did brave things, but nearly all did nothing, and it was their flocks who did the hard work of murdering people.
There are small villages in New Zealand thousands of miles from Germany who lost more people fighting Hitler than the entire Catholic church.

Try to imagine any model of Italy that your creativity inspires that allows anyone to run it in the 1930s who the Catholic church had a serious issue with.

DC, can't agree that 'bystander syndrome' can be put at the door of any church. There but for the grace of god tbh. Hitler could have happened anywhere where history had been played out in the way it had between the first and second world wars. You're straying into dangerously 'only the germans could have done the holocaust' territory imo.

agree sophable.

The church as in institution both Catholic and Protestant has a historically appalling record. But DC i really think you are glossing over a huge number of people who are a force for good in the church. Of course quite a few are gay.

I see your point about "bystander syndrome", but that's really not the same as signing treaties with Hitler, nor is it at all like telling soldiers that killing Nazis is immoral.

I guess you've never heard of Dietrich Bonhoffeur DC? He was a German Lutheran pastor and brilliant theologian, a
participant in the German resistance movement against Nazism and founding member of the Confessing Church. He was involved in plots planned by members of the Abwehr (the German Military Intelligence Office) to assassinate Adolf Hitler. He was arrested in March 1943, imprisoned and eventually hanged, just before the end of the Second World War in Europe. He was a close friend of George Bell.

In winter 1938/39 George Bell helped 90 persons, mainly Pastors' families, to emigrate from Germany to Great Britain who were in danger because they had Jewish ancestors or were opponents of the Nazi regime.

During World War II Bell repeatedly condemned the Allied practice of area bombing. He informed Anthony Eden of the German resistance movement and tried in vain to gain the British government's support for them.

As a member of the House of Lords, George Bell was a consistent parliamentary critic of area bombing along with Richard Stokes and Alfred Salter, Labour Party Members of Parliament in the House of Commons. In November 1939 he had published an article stating that the Church in wartime should not hesitate

In 1941 in a letter to The Times, Bell called the bombing of unarmed women and children "barbarian" which would destroy the just cause for the war.

So this terrible ArchBishop you talk about, was a pacifist. So was my uncle, who went to work in the mines instead of going to war. A support of Nazi Germany? No.
Get your facts straight.

No exemption Blair says

here

sorry, should not hesitate
..' to condemn the infliction of reprisals, or the bombing of civilian populations, by the military forces of its own nation.'
What an evil man eh, DC?

Bonhoeffer one of my big heroes ruty. A great man (along with Bell IMO)

I don't know why I'm getting dragged into this again. Sophable you seem to be very challenging today, why is that? Are you having an angry day? The "baying for blood" comment was directed at DC btw.

Here is a link to the Church's statement on this if any of you can be bothered to read it.

Here is a quote from the Catholic Adoption Agency in Yorkshire "Although we are particularly committed to recruiting Catholic adoptive parent(s) for Catholic children we are also approached to place children of other faiths, which we do, and so we welcome applications from all married couples and single people regardless of race or religion." - wow that sounds very biased and bigoted to me!

Here is some of the good work done by catholics worldwide; CAFOD says "CAFOD believes that all human beings have a right to dignity and respect, and that the world's resources are a gift to be shared equally by all men and women, whatever their race, nationality or religion."

The Catholic World Mission work in Brazil providing refuges that "will provide shelter for young pregnant street girls and their children, and abandoned children who live on the street or in orphanages." They also aim to build nurseries to take in these children.

Here is information about the Catholic Childrens' Rescue Society, it states "CCRS is a faith-based charity providing professional social care services to children and families of all faiths and of none."

In fact if you Google "catholic charities" the list is endless. There are priests and volunteers who risk their lives in places such as Brazil and Zimbabwe trying to help others. It was a catholic priest who confronted the IRA and helped bring about the Good Friday agreement.

So whilst you are all eager to tell us of the past misdeamenours of the church, I thought I would remind you of the future of the church - the humanity and charity of the church and the countless good and selfless people it has bred.

Rhubarb, I read the statement, thanks for the link. I think it was put extremely well and I don't have a problem with what he is saying.

Thank you.
Personally speaking I am on the fence with this one as I do believe that gay people can offer a loving home. But I also respect the church's point of view, even if it does differ from my own.

I agree with you stand on this on this rhubarb, I too am a fence sitter.

Don't agree with me too often - I'm not used to it!

one of mine too Marina.

rhubarb discrimination of this kind makes me very angry yes.

your list of things that catholic adoption agencies didn't discriminate against didn't seem to extend to same sex parents.

CAFOD frequently disagrees with the papacy by the way (bless them), especially on the issue of contraception in Africa.

your point is?

being in a same sex relationship is against our religeon.

thats the crux.

until the rules change and popey gets a dream from god - thats the way it will stay.

thats how it is.

now, you can argue that its wrong, bigoted, etcetc

but its how it is.

being that it is such and isnt going to change, the best catholic adoption agencies can do to same sex couples wishing to adopt, is to refer them to another agency to help them - not close the door on them, not look upon them with disgust, not admonish them, stone them, bully them, lecture them, try to make them hetrosexual.

but refer them to someone who can help them.

so i think two arguments are being mixed up.

1. is is right that many religeons ( not just catholics) frown on homosexuality?

2a)given that the church frowns on homosexuality, will the new law now unintentionally leave children without a family?

2b) is that a price society should be willing to pay to begin to redress its own inequalities.

my answers

1)somehow i reckon Jesus would have a different view - something along the lines of "people are people maaaan, love each other, help each other, be nice maaan"

2a) absolutley it's unfortunate
b) in the long run probably will be for the best hopefully with other agencies being set up to address the gap the church leaves behind. Something i am sure the church will be very activley involved in.