Father Jonathan Morris (Fox News)
Fox News priest: How can we baptize kids in same-sex families if parents are sinners?
DAVID EDWARDS
19 OCT 2014 AT 09:49 ET
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Fox News contributor Father Jonathan Morris on Sunday suggested that baptizing the children of same-sex couple would be difficult because the parents would be raising them in sin.
Fox News Dug Up This Priest to Put Down Gays
Ross Douthat, conservative columnist and practicing Catholic, clarifies, it least from his conservative viewpoint, the tension in the last council in Rome that Father Morris talks about in his interview. Like everywhere else, there exist a real schism in the Church between the progressives and conservative traditionalists, and Douthat's piece does an excellent job at describing this tension. More so, it's a good demonstration on why the Church, despite the efforts of Church progressives coupled with a forward-thinking Pope, will always be mired in beliefs that are so out of time with the rest of society. Read: bigoted, hateful, and very hurtful.
This one quote from Douthat so pisses me off: "Those adherents are, yes, a minority — sometimes a small minority — among self-identified Catholics in the West. But they are the people who have done the most to keep the church vital in an age of institutional decline: who have given their energy and time and money in an era when the church is stained by scandal, who have struggled to raise families and live up to demanding teachings, who have joined the priesthood and religious life in an age when those vocations are not honored as they once were. They have kept the faith amid moral betrayals by their leaders; they do not deserve a theological betrayal."
With Douthat's logic, the perpetuation of bigotry and hate is small stuff and rather than causing theological betrayal to the few that have adhered to Church dogma, the Church should put the feelings of the faithful above taking a moral stance that's contrary to the faithful's convictions. It's a disheartening op-ed piece. :(
Typical religion!
Isn't that how Fox News likes its women?
More on topic: I wouldn't expect a big rush of gay couples to the Catholic Church. There are many other denominations that are MUCH more accommodating, and one *somewhat* more friendly pope isn't going to completely wash away decades of bad memories and discrimination.
Here's the link with the video and interview. I think RAW story and Fox played with the headline to make a story out of nothing. The priest, Father Morris, pointed out that by reaching out to the gay community that there is going to be inherent conflicts with the church's doctrine. How the church is going to reconcile the conflicts --e.g., a gay couple baptizing their child-- is point that Morris is trying to make. Morris, it least in my interpretation listening to him, sounds genuinely excited at the prospects of reaching out to communities that the Church is ignoring.
The weird part of the interview was when Fox host Anna Kooiman "wondered if the pope went “even further to say let’s try to pray the gay away?”". You can sense in Morris' response how exacerbated he was -- Morris must have been thinking---"I can't believe I'm stuck talking to this idiot". Kooiman was physically there but mentally clueless as to what Morris was trying to state.