We have written on these pages several times about the dissenting gay & lesbian organization founded in Rochester, NY called Fortunate Families. Our writers at Cleansing Fire have made it abundantly clear throughout the years that this organization disagrees with Roman Catholic teaching as it relates to homosexuality, homosexual acts, and the nature of marriage. We even went so far as to personally contact Diocese of Rochester priests who financially supported Fortunate Families, in signed written letters, to educate them about the organization’s un-Catholic positions. You’d think our priests would cease support when provided with evidence that Fortunate Families is not aligned with Church teaching. However…
Fr. Joseph Marcoux continues to send money to Fortunate Families.
The following appears in last weekend’s St. Catherine of Siena (Ithaca) bulletin:
We will repeat this until we’re blue in the face: Fortunate Families is not a Catholic organization. This group dissents from Church teachings on homosexuality. Do you still doubt us? Here is a scan of their October/November 2012 newsletter where Fortunate Families outlines their positions. I direct your attention to #7 and #3:
“7. We support civil same-sex marriage because we want our gay children to have the same support for their loving relationships as our straight children, along with all the legal rights and responsibilities that go along with that. We consider this a perfectly legitimate purpose for civil marriage, the inability to procreate not withstanding, as is the case with some of our straight children.”
3. Our gay children, just like our straight children, experience desire for friendship and companionship, and each hopes to fall in love and express that intimacy with the person with whom they wish to share their life.
Click above to enlarge
It’s right there, Father. Fortunate Families openly admits to supporting gay marriage. Yet, you feel it’s appropriate for your parish to endorse this organization and send them financial contributions?
Why not support a homosexual support organization better aligned with the Catholic Church, like Courage?
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Open and shut. The whole thing is a marvel of mendacious architecture, but #10 is particularly stupid. Imagine a cartel of drug dealers saying: “We believe that by our lived experience and/or academic study, we have greater knowledge and competence regarding this issue than the hierarchy and therefore have the right and duty to make our opinion known to the other Christian faithful (per Canon 212 §3)”
Before 1973, the American Psychiatric Association considered homosexuality a “mental defect”.
You can bet the farm that it was political pressure from homosexual activists, that forced these doctors to change their definition of homosexuality.
Imagine all of the children and teenagers who are being exposed to Father Marcoux.
We can’t blame Father Marcoux 100% because Bishop Clark promoted homosexuality for 33 years in the Diocese of Rochester. If Father Marcoux refuses to correct himself, would the Catholic Church be better off if he left the priesthood?
Your mistake, Dr. K, is your assumption that, upon being informed of Fortunate Families’ positions that are antithetical to the Church’s teachings, Father Marcoux might cease to support such an organization.
It is abundantly clear that Father Marcoux fully supports Fortunate Families’ positions and fully opposes what our Church teaches.
I suspect that he is quite aware of all that the Church teaches and yet fails/refuses to recognize that a same-sex “sexual” relationship can NEVER represent to the world the relationship of Christ and the Church for the very reason that such a relationship is, by its nature, sterile.
The people of Ithaca are no less entitled to a faithful pastor than are the people of Hamlin.
I love how they selectively read canon law, and misinterpret the code that they cite. Canon 212 reads as follows:
Can. 212 §1. Conscious of their own responsibility, the Christian faithful are bound to follow with Christian obedience those things which the sacred pastors, inasmuch as they represent Christ, declare as teachers of the faith or establish as rulers of the Church.
§2. The Christian faithful are free to make known to the pastors of the Church their needs, especially spiritual ones, and their desires.
§3. According to the knowledge, competence, and prestige which they possess, they have the right and even at times the duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church and to make their opinion known to the rest of the Christian faithful, without prejudice to the integrity of faith and morals, with reverence toward their pastors, and attentive to common advantage and the dignity of persons.
They are completely ignoring par. 1 which obliges them to disavow all of the positions they are advancing that are opposed to the Magisterial teachings. Then they claim some sort of “knowledge, competence and prestige” (simply on the basis of being the parents of same-sex-attracted children) and ignore that par. 3 pertains to “the good of the Church.” Apparently they must believe that it is for the good of the Church to embrace an disordered affect and objectively, gravely sinful behavior.
There is no higher parental love than to wish eternal life for one’s children – yet this organization wishes their children’s objectively sinful choices to be embraced, while the Church calls their children’s choices and orientation to be transcended. By the grace of Christ and the power of His Holy Cross.
WOE to the Catholic cleric who leads his flock into sin. He will have the greater sin to answer for.
Ah, another group of dissenters that elevates its “lived experience” above the Magisterium of the Church. What they’re really saying is that their children are so happy living in what the Church calls a state of sin that the Church’s teaching on homosexual acts just has to be wrong. The trouble with this argument, of course, is that it can be used to justify just about any immoral behavior: “If it feels good, do it”.
And as to their “personal and/or academic study,” I somehow doubt that study included much serious, prayerful consideration of scripture, the Fathers of the Church or the Catechism and I somehow suspect it relied heavily on the works of dissenters from the Magisterium on more than this particular issue. (Folks like Fr. Charles Curran come readily to mind.)
With respect to scripture, there is a lot of shoddy hermeneutics out their attempting to minimize or even negate St. Paul’s teaching on homosexual acts in Romans 1. One of the best online refutations of these “progressive” positions I have come across was presented by Dr. Robert Gagnon, a Presbyterian teaching New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. The talk is entitled “Paul and Homosexuality” and was given last year at an “It Takes a Family to Raise a Village” (ITAF) conference sponsored by the Ruth Institute. It runs just over an hour and may be found here.
Dan Riley,
I did a post on the APA’s decision in 2010; see here and especially my comment here.