On the Church's Pastoral Responsibility to Obdurate Sinners

I wrote my heart out yesterday.

So I will give readers (and myself) a breather today.

But for a bit of fun (and without sufficient modesty on my part, perhaps), I'd like to draw your attention to a posting of mine that has just appeared on the conversation cafe of the National Catholic Reporter at http://ncrcafe.org/node/1935.

The posting is entitled "On the Church's Pastoral Responsibility to Obdurate Sinners." For anyone familiar with some of the more bizarre features of current Catholic theology--especially insofar as it tries to build an anti-gay ethic on very shaky scriptural, traditional, and natural law foundations--this little tongue-in-cheek reflection on the grave moral dangers of dancing may be amusing.

Yes, there are many Catholics who do try to argue today--and apparently with a straight face--that the total silence of Jesus about homosexuality is an indicator that he considered it so obviously sinful, he didn't need to condemn it. And these "thinkers" apparently don't seem to realize that in arguing this way, they open the door to arguments that Jesus approved or condemned anything we anything we want to propose, simply by being silent about that issue.

And yes, the Catholic magisterium, to which so many of these Catholics claim to be absolutely, fanatically, forever and ever loyal, did tell American and Canadian Catholics in 1916 not to hold Catholic-sponsored dances, because modern dance is horribly immoral.

Enjoy