The Catholic chuch considering a different point of view?

[starbelly]

I grew up Catholic and I have to say that by and large most Catholics are pretty lax about sexual matters. They're ten times more reasonable and understanding than your average nondenominational Christian, and about fifty times more than psychotic Evangelicals.

The only real beef that the Catholic church has with homosexuality comes down to the fact that sex between two men or two women cannot result in procreation. That's really it. Straight Catholics are supposed to follow the same rule, which means no sexual acts that don't potentially result in a child. How many of them actually follow that? Probably 10%, if that. Gay people are totally welcome in the church, but they are supposed to refrain from having sexual relationships due to their inability to result in children (which is ridiculous, I know).

There are obviously some super sexually moralistic Catholics and some homophobes, but in general, I've always had the impression that your everyday modern Catholic has a fairly "live and let live" attitude. The Vatican is a whole different entity from the everyday congregation, and there were a lot of people who went crazy over the Vatican II, but those were mostly old school Catholics who have since died. It's a generational thing I think, just like with everything else.

[MisterLove]

I'm not Catholic, not religious at all in fact but the recent news that Catholics have been asked to fill out a questionnaire regarding certain moral issues, is interesting. [...]

Definitely interesting but I'm not feeling very optimistic about this. In fact, the results of the enquiry are probably going to be very depressing and conservative.

It's the elites that make changes and evolution happen not the majorities.

[nfisher1226]

Personally I feel that they are taking a few small steps because they basically have no choice, not out of the goodness of their hearts or any type of enlightened thinking. If they don't adapt to the times they will just become irrelevant, and I think some are beginning to understand this on some level.

I have a fundamental beef with the reasons they cite for declaring certain types of sex sinful. The notion of sex for any purpose other than procreation being sinful is a problematic and dangerous view for such a large and powerful organization to be teaching it's followers. It's bad for gays, but I personally think it's way worse for their straight members who are taught about the evils of contraception. And since they also lobby very hard against anything that smacks of making contraception more readily available, they are doing a real disservice to those not even of their church.

Frankly, working to persuade the young and the poor to not use contraception is a nuisance to society at large. Working to stop or slow education about condoms is socially irresponsible and promotes the spread of deadly diseases. Those are things that I cannot tolerate from the Catholic church, and until they actually change their stance on reproductive issues and issue an apology about how wrong and stupid they were, I have no use for the church.

For anyone here who may be catholic I hope I haven't offended you overmuch, but I'm tool old to not speak my mind and the issues I brought up strike really close to home in my life.

[MisterLove]

[...] This just shows how low everyone's expectations are for this criminal, evil, despicable organization. [...]

Welcome to the human race.

It's true that the Catholic Church has committed crimes, promoted intolerance and pampered dictators and pedophiles.

BUT if you really want to make a serious argument, you have to speak the whole truth, not just part of it:

a) I don't know any other HUMAN organization or nation that is free from sin (e.g. Western countries have exploited and colonized entire nations throughout History, should we ban and destroy those countries, as well?)

b) The History of the Catholic Church is also full of admirable cases of generosity, heroism and compassion such as this one:

http://allthingscatholic.tumblr.com/post...ez-pascual

(The true story of Martin Martinez Pascual)

c) The vast majority of charities and NGOs in the world are Catholic

d) Spirituality plays an important part in peoples' lives, human beings do need guidance - Catholic, protestant, muslim, whatever, as long as it promotes some justice and common sense.