Another priest has broken ranks with California’s bishops on the Protect Marriage initiative, telling his parishioners in the church’s weekly bulletin, “I cannot in conscience unequivocally support Proposition 8.”<\/p>\n
The remarks came in a “dear parishioners” letter published Oct. 5. by Claretian Fr. Steve Niskanen, pastor of San Gabriel Mission in the Los Angeles archdiocese.<\/p>\n
The same day that Fr. Niskanen expressed his opinion in San Gabriel, Fr. Geoffrey Farrow told parishioners at the St. Paul Newman Center in Fresno following his Sunday morning homily that he opposed the marriage initiative – and admitted during a television interview before the Mass that he was a homosexual.<\/p>\n
In his “dear parishioners” letter at San Gabriel Mission, Fr. Niskanen went through each of the ballot measures endorsed by the Catholic bishops of California one by one. He said he supports Proposition 4 – the family notification before a minor’s abortion initiative, and that he opposes Proposition 6 – the “Safe Neighborhoods Act,” which would add new crimes and tougher penalties to state law. Fr. Niskanen’s positions on Props 4 and 6 are in line with the recommendations of the bishops.<\/p>\n
But when it came to Proposition 8, which would amend the state constitution to outlaw same-sex marriages, Fr. Niskanen disagreed. After reprinting a portion of the bishops’ arguments in favor of the proposition, he wrote: “I deeply respect and submit to the authority of our bishops and the force of traditional Catholic teaching limiting sexual relations to the love and life-giving commitment of heterosexual marriage. But I cannot in conscience unequivocally support Proposition 8 because I cannot in my heart of hearts say with certainty, at this time, that God would not call His gay and lesbian children into a faithful and life-long covenant with one another.” [article<\/a>]<\/p>\n Plus there are all those examples of same-sex couples in the Old and New Testament living a life-long covenant with one another. Oh wait, funny how the Holy Spirit inspired no one to mention this if homosexual relations are approved by God. Apologists for homosexuality constantly say 5 to 10 percent of the population has same-sex attraction, so it is rather strange for scripture to not even mention that “faithful” homosexual relations were always part of God’s plan. Go forth and be fruitful except this segment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Another priest has broken ranks with California’s bishops on the Protect Marriage initiative, telling his parishioners in the church’s weekly bulletin, “I cannot in conscience unequivocally support Proposition 8.” The…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-punditry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2598\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}