Catholic Priest begs gays not to leave church over bishop's tweet… Democratic Gov. Gina Raimondo told reporters in Newport on Monday for an unrelated event that the bishop’s comments were “very unfortunate.”
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — A priest is asking parishioners not to leave his church over a tweet by Rhode Island’s bishop urging Roman Catholics to not support or attend LGBTQ Pride Month events. The Rev. Edward L. Pieroni begged gay and lesbian parishioners not to leave the church during Sunday services at St. Raymond’s Roman Catholic Church in Providence, The Boston Globe reported. “A lot of people have hung in there, but it’s like, ‘One more slap and we are done.’ I am here to beg you — and I will get on my hands and knees and beg you — not to leave,” Pieroni told the congregation.
Diocese of Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin sparked a backlash beginning Saturday when he tweeted, “A reminder that Catholics should not support or attend LGBTQ ‘Pride Month’ events held in June. They promote a culture and encourage activities that are contrary to Catholic faith and morals. They are especially harmful for children.”
Rhode Island is one of the most heavily Catholic states. More than 80,000 had people responded by Monday morning. Some replied to the tweet to support the bishop while others invoked the scandals of sexual abuse of children by clergy members. Actresses Mia Farrow and Patricia Arquette were among those who criticized Tobin. The LGBTQ group Rhode Island Pride held a rally outside the diocese’s headquarters in Providence on Sunday night. Democratic Gov. Gina Raimondo told reporters in Newport on Monday for an unrelated event that the bishop’s comments were “very unfortunate.” She said that she stands with the LGBTQ community and that Pride Month events are an expression of equality, love and tolerance. She told WPRO-AM she doesn’t think the bishop meant to hurt anyone, but his comments made a lot of people feel unsafe, unwanted and unloved. Tobin, a conservative bishop, said he didn’t mean to offend anyone, but he also defended the tweet. He said in a statement Sunday that it was his obligation to teach the faith “clearly and compassionately, even on very difficult and sensitive issues.”
And today is the feast day of Saint Charles Lwanga, a man who condemned homosexuality and refused to engage in sodomy, eventually being martyred for the faith. Charles Lwanga, pray for us that we may end the modernist scourge.
Landon Williams
Just how many gays does that church have exactly
Ethan Nguyen
The Reverend is desperate: if the unrepentant sodomites leave the Church, then that only leaves Baby Boomers (who are dropping like flies) and a handful of Gen X/Y cafeteria Catholics to undermine the Church… not very promising. Even in my blue state, the vast majority of practicing Catholics are very conservative. Yet, the sight of normal people leaving the Church over gay priests sodomizing boys no doubt causes him to rejoice. Why do these people think it's okay to support sin?
There is literally nothing wrong with enforcing morality. In fact, that's exactly what any worthwhile law ever is designed to do. If a law isn't designed for morality, then it's designed for illicit profit of some sort. That wasn't what I was talking about though.
Embracing God's moral law, even in your own personal life without any intervention from the state, is completely incompatible with radical individualism. Being a Christian means subjugating yourself to God. It means sacrificing your precious "freedoms" to do wrong for the glory of God. It means submitting to the authority of the prophets, saints, clergy, and most importantly God Himself. It means saying, "Not my will, Lord, but Yours be done." You must not attempt to claim independence from God, because independence from God is exactly what damnation is. That's why "muh freedoms" is an un-Christian sentiment, because it inevitably leads to people asking, "Well who's this God guy to tell me what to do?"
Grayson Myers
But you can still have freedom without being forced into it by the state
Adrian Wood
I'm assuming you meant to write "morality" instead of "freedom."
Yes, it's theoretically possible, even though there's not one single real life example of a liberal democracy where morality is respected. But that's not even the problem here. The problem here is that a bad priest is attempting to assert "muh freedoms" against God Himself. The personal ideology of "muh freedoms" is much more of a problem then even the legal system of "muh freedoms" is. Americanist-style individualism is completely incompatible with Christianity.
Joshua Gutierrez
submission to god is the most important free choice people have. we now live in a time where the nation and god are being erased while the state is being elevated to godhood.
Adam Gonzalez
Reminder that freemasons were not evil at the time, only became satanists after the Illuminati took them over
Andrew Ward
There is a large LGBTQ community in the Catholic church, overt and covert. Some people understand that, others sadly don't.
Hudson Garcia
maybe they should, you know, identify as Catholic first and foremost, and - maybe - obey Church doctrine?
Yes, freemasonry was originally a craft initiation to fulfil a specific vocation that evolved into a fraternity, even then it wasn't wholly sinister, for example de Maistre a catholic and arch conservative who was anti-enlightenment was a freemason before it was papally banned which was essentially the death knell for it. Then eventually got subverted and deteriorated into what we know today.
Samuel Ortiz
Legit makes me angry. Not because they sin, but because they intimidate clergymen into lying that they aren't sinning. They're going to be in for a surprise when they try to intimidate God.
Levi Lopez
I'm not sure but from Wikipedia it looks like a lot of the founding fathers believed in deism, which seems like a step from agnosticism which is itself a step from atheism.
Anybody knows if that's really the case?
Jack Reyes
Imagine theres a local no-kill animal shelter that takes volunteers for running day-to-day operations. Most of the volunteers are animal lovers, but one guy is a real creep. During the day he goes to the shelter and performs menial tasks, but in the evening he goes home and captures local cats and dogs and slowly tortures them to death. Why he does it is anyone’s guess, but slowly over time it has gone from a carefully guarded secret to shameful rumors to nervous jokes to timid admittance to borderline boastful pride. Recently, volunteers at the shelter have stopped coming in to work because they no longer feel comfortable there anymore. This doesn’t reflect on the original mission of the shelter, the volunteers still want to help local strays, but the presence of the creep has certainly muddied things up a bit. One day word gets around to the shelter administration that the creep is getting fed up with this near constant rhetoric he hears at work about caring for animals with dignity. Frankly he finds it a bit offensive given his personal lifestyle. Some of the other volunteers angrily question why he continues to work for a no-kill shelter with such a disdain for animals, but the shelter administration interrupts. The volunteer lists have been drying up lately, you see, and workers are spread thin as it is. Losing another worker is really out of the question at this time. It might just be better if the other workers talked less about their love of animals… at least for the time being. And so it goes, until only the truly passionate volunteers show up because their love of the animals outweighs their disgust with the monster lurking nearby. And every day they show up and ask themselves again and again why he won’t just leave if he hates it so much, and how everything would go back to being good again if only the shelter administration would do something about it….
Oh wait, this is a thread about gays in the church. Sorry, wrong thread.
Aiden Bennett
I live in Providence, RI
There are a lot of homos here because of Brown and RISD
American culture. That being, there is no culture here, no unity, no mutual identity, just cliques of people living or working closely with one another and looking down on others. It's a cultural cesspool that results in two kinds of people: wusses that won't stand up for what they believe in, and arrogant jerks that treat everyone like garbage. Pile on several generations of participation awards, stop bullying campaigns, "free love", internet pornography, and social media, and you've got generations of people afraid of being judged by the world, even though our faith in Christ will make us hated by the world.
This is the unfortunate state of Christianity in the United States. We're dying, because it's not easy to be Christian here anymore. When my grandparents were born, the culture was Christian, but now, it's not. Now, it's hard to be a Christian. And many, many people in the Americas have been deceived by the Enemy. We must pray that the Lord have mercy on us all, because we are living in dark times, and it's only going to get worse from here. There was a bishop in Chicago, who's name I forget, that said he would die peacefully in his bed, his successor would die in in prison, his successor will die a martyr, killed in a public square. But, his successor will pick up the pieces of a destroyed society and help rebuild, as the Church so often does in history.
