I had a recent experience that has made me stop to think, I monitor for a
gay chat house, gay com. (A monitor kicks bashers off, helps new users,
and keeps the underage out of places they shouldn't be.)  

Anyway, one of my fellow monitors, who I had never met was on line and in
the monitors room, watching a conversation between a friend of mine who is
a monitor. My friend asked me how my studies were going and if I had been
made a Bishop yet. At this point, the guy jumps in and informs me that I
am the enemy of all gays, because of what the church has done to gays over
the centery. Now I do no what the church has done, and I am one of the few
Catholic priests who want to change that, I belong to the ICA, which is an
off shoot of the main roman church, and we ordain gay and women, something
the main church does not. But this fellow monitor didn't want to hear any
of that, if you are a priest in his opinion you are the enemy. 

Is this a common opinion? Does anyone agree with this? Or Do you disagree
with this? 

One of tha main reasons I have worked so hard to become a bishop and a
priest, was that so the gay youth, could look and see a positive role
modle, that could show them that it was ok. In my mind if I can stop one
gay teenage from suiciding, then I have done my job. 

Anyway I was just wondering what the opinon is, Are all clregy seen as 
the enemy? What do you think?

12 responses total.

When a company has a policy I don't agree with, I don't blame the employees,
I blame the company.
While the Pope is certainly inimical to gays, the priests (who have little
say over church policy) aren't.

Clergy are individual human beings, just like everybody else.  Each one has
his or her own ideas, opinions, and experience, and each changes with time,
reflection, and experience.

(My impression is that clergy tend to be - privately - more liberal and
enlightened than their congregations or denominational doctrine, but are
limited in what they can say publicly by "rock the boat" considerations.
Like all statistical statements, applying this to individuals is a risky
business.) 

Certainly there are plenty of bigots (lay and ordained) who loudly proclaim
that God and all of their Church are united in knowing that all homo-/bi-/
trans-sexual individuals are evil/enemies of God/condemned to Hell/etc.
And nasty individuals who claim to or are seen to represent a group are
the most powerful possible teachers of bigotry against that group.  (How
many prejudiced & abusive white police officers does it take to teach a
black youth that whites and the police are evil enemies?  How many Arab
terrorists proclaiming Jihad and spraying bullets did it take to make
most Westerners feel that the billion-plus Islamic people in this world
are violent and dangerous?)

Your fellow monitor who thinks all priests evil and doesn't want to hear
about the facts has a prejudice little different from that of a closed-
minded Bible-thumping gay-basher.  What can be done to help him? 

        It only makes me wonder why you didn't boot him as a basher.

I, for one, commend you on attempting to bring the love of an all-loving 
god to those whom his priests have spurned (or something like that.) :)

Re #3 6 Other monitors that were on line that night, along with my self filed
complaints and got this monitor revoked. 

re #1 I agree and would like to get the policy changed, and that
is going to be one hell of a fight, but Its not a giht I 
have to do alone, I know a dozen gay bishops who are trying to change 
things. Its a start. 

I had to go back and re read the other responces before I replied.
#2 I agree. I just want 5 minutes alone with the pope, and I'll rock the 
boat. :) 

re #4 Thank you. 

What exactly is the ICA? I don't think I've heard of it before, and I'd be
interested to know more about them than "like Catholics, only different" :)

From what I've seen, the problem isn't really that clergy are seen as the
enemy, it's that religious people (maybe especially Christians) are seen as
the enemy. A lot of people I've met seem to have the attitude that believers
of any sort just aren't rational (or openminded, or reasonable, or what have
you) people, Christianity also has points against it in people's eyes for
being an Evil Mainstream Patriarchal Religion.

Whether one feels that Clergy, Religious People, Christians, or Churches
are the ENEMY, it's the same situation - a (very vocal) few are, a (far
less well known) few are very friendly, and the big majority in the middle
are probably somewhere around undecided/uncomfortable.  How many whites
are hard-core bigots intent on keeping blacks trampled down in the gutter?
How different does the answer to this question look to the average white
compared to the average black? 

"Christianity" was diverse enough hundreds of years ago that they were
burning each other at the stake for heresy.  It's gotten much more
diverse since then (though the stake thing is less popular) - trying
to treat Christians as a group is a really murky business at best. 

re #7 if you have www acess check the ica pages out for mor info there
at ica_church.conk.com

re #2: I'd agree-- clergy generally stick to a conservative statement so as
to keep the masses to a fairly uniform and stable opinion.  Things are so
often misinterpreted, so they try to keep their story ..no pun intended..
straight.  When you push for change, you risk splintering the group.

        It's pretty normal for a group to choose another, smaller and less
powerful, group to blame for their problems (if the first group lacks
sufficient cohesiveness and identity) - it's much easier than blaming the
monoculture, which everyone has to interact with on a daily basis, or another
group which might actually be at fault but is not visible or holds too much
power in a situation.  Introduce robotics at a factory, for instance, and
watch workers divide along racial lines ...

Yeah, sometimes, but not always.

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