WWJD?

Oh those wacky Catholics are at it again.

Washington, DC just approved same sex marriage and in response, the Catholic Diocese has announced it will no longer provide benefits to spouses of new employees of Catholic Charities.

Starting Tuesday, Catholic Charities will not offer benefits to spouses of new employees or to spouses of current employees who are not already enrolled in the plan. A letter describing the change in health benefits was e-mailed to employees Monday, two days before same-sex marriage will become legal in the District.

"We looked at all the options and implications," said the charity's president, Edward J. Orzechowski. "This allows us to continue providing services, comply with the city's new requirements and remain faithful to the church's teaching." ...

"For decades, the church has been at the forefront of worker benefits, so this move cuts against their understanding of social justice and health benefits to all possible," [Robert] Tuttle [a George Washington University law professor] said. "But obviously, you can see they felt there was a real conflict between those values. They feel they weren't left with much of a choice."

Staff members at the charity were not given advance notice of the new policy and will not be able to add a spouse now because the most recent open enrollment period ended in November.

--The Washington Post

In their zeal not to give benefits to gay spouses, they are willing to punish ALL spouses.

Swell. Very Christian attitude.

In Colorado, a preschool child was recently expelled from a Catholic school because his mothers are lesbians.

It is not about punishing the child for the sins of his or her parents. It is simply that the lesbian couple is saying that their relationship is a good one that should be accepted by everyone; and the Church cannot agree to that.

the school explained. The archdiocese added

students in Catholic schools are expected to have parents who abide by policies of the school and church. The Archdiocese said students with gay parents in Catholic schools would become "confused."

Once again, the church is being duplicitous and trying to find a reason to punish gay people. Unless, of course, we are going to see a country-wide expelling of kids with divorced parents, or kids whose parents are not Catholic, or kids whose fathers are caught at the store buying condoms, none of whom are "abiding by the policies of the school and church" either.

They had no problem "confusing" me in the 1950 by telling me that my wonderful non-Catholic mother could never get to heaven, while my emotionally abusive Catholic father could.

The Church is so hung-up on sex that you'd think its primary message was about sex, not love. You find all sorts of "proof" that homosexual love is an abomination and that sexual relations are reserved only for married couples, because the purpose of marriage is procreation, but if you have more children than you can handle and it has become a danger to your mental health to have another one, you are told that your only choice is to have no sex at all, because using artificial birth control is against the teaching of the church (some people would even argue that ending sexual relations is also against the teaching of the church).

Don't you just love it that all rules about who can have sex and when they can have sex and even how they can have sex are made by men who are supposedly celibate?

I have a friend who is zealous in her determination to bring me back into the folds of the Catholic Church. But there is no way to reconcile my disgust at the behavior of the church against homosexuals, and the way it whitewashed its own dirty laundry for so many years.

My mother is one who feels that the sacraments provide her with so much spiritual energy that she can pick and choose from among which teachings of the church she believes. I can't do that. If I'm going to be a practicing Catholic, that means that I accept all the teachings of the Catholic church, and there is absolutely no way that I do.

When I look at the teachings of Jesus, the people he associated with, his message of love and inclusion ... the fact that he said nothing about homosexuality, but only exorted us to "love one another as I have loved you," I have to ask myself what Jesus would do when faced with the notion of refusing the sacraments to gay people, taking away benefits from straight people to avoid having to give them to gay people, or telling a child that she cannot come to school because her mothers are gay.

Somehow I don't think that the Catholic Church is carrying out the strict letter of Jesus' intents when he baptized disciples and sent them out into bring his word of love to the masses.