{"id":8589,"date":"2003-02-22T11:37:38","date_gmt":"2003-02-22T16:37:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/2003\/02\/22\/the-war-on-conscience\/"},"modified":"2003-02-22T11:37:38","modified_gmt":"2003-02-22T16:37:38","slug":"the-war-on-conscience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/2003\/02\/the-war-on-conscience\/","title":{"rendered":"The war on conscience"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000FF\">Top British Jesuit suppresses Web site which pictured<br \/>\nmales kissing LONDON (CNS) &#8212; The British provincial of the Society of Jesus<br \/>\nhas suppressed a Jesuit Web site that featured an image of two young men kissing.<br \/>\nThe Web site was set up by Jesuit Father David Birchall of St. Wilfrid&#8217;s Church,<br \/>\nPreston, to promote a weekend retreat for gay and lesbian Christians called<br \/>\n&#8220;Clear as Your Conscience.&#8221; Incorporated into the design of the site was the<br \/>\nimage of the two men locked in an embrace, juxtaposed with a picture of two<br \/>\nyoung women cuddling. Both images were under a single, superimposed cross. The<br \/>\nWeb site also had links to gay Web sites. The provincial, Father David Smolira,<br \/>\nshut down the Jesuit-run site when he was told of the contents by The Catholic<br \/>\nHerald, a London-based weekly newspaper that reported the story Feb. 21. Ged<br \/>\nClapson, province communications officer, told the paper: &#8220;It would appear that<br \/>\nthe material there had not been approved by the provincial. It has now been<br \/>\nwithdrawn until it achieves approval by the provincial.&#8221; <\/font><br \/>\n[<a href=\"http:\/\/www.catholicnews.com\/data\/briefs\/cns\/20030221.htm\">Source<\/a>]\n<\/p>\n<p>Clear as Your Conscience? Is the purpose now to transform our consciences into<br \/>\nthe proverbial &quot;yes man&quot; a brown nose faculty that echoes yes to every<br \/>\nwhim or temptation? Is a guilty conscience now a disorder to be eradicated at<br \/>\nall costs? Just the use of this title is interesting since if your conscience<br \/>\nis really so clear why is it that you even think of creating a retreat with<br \/>\nthat name. This might be a classic case of &quot;The retreat master doth protest<br \/>\ntoo much, methinks&quot; I like the irony of the Jesuits suppressing something,<br \/>\nbut that last line by the communications officer saying &quot;until it achieves<br \/>\napproval by the provincial&quot; is unbelievable (even for Jesuits). This isn&#8217;t<br \/>\nexactly a gray area in Catholic moral teaching that needs to be looked at before<br \/>\nit can be approved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Top British Jesuit suppresses Web site which pictured males kissing LONDON (CNS) &#8212; The British provincial of the Society of Jesus has suppressed a Jesuit Web site that featured an&hellip;<\/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-8589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-punditry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8589","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=8589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8589\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}