Rainbow Sash Movement say the Catholic Hierarchy is the clueless leading the mindless

{jcomments off}Following recent debate over gay marriage the movement suggest Catholic Bishops are promoting hypocritical fear based morality.

The Rainbow Sash Movement finds the ongoing debate concerning gay marriage in both Scotland and the UK as a teaching moment for Catholic Bishops of both countries and indeed for the United States. They state “This is a case study of the clueless leading the mindless among the Catholic Hierarchy. The bishops have become a model for hypocrites, and homophobes when it comes to the issue of fear based moralizing on the issue of Gay Marriage.”

The movement note that Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster “in a sly move” is being accused of defying Vatican guidelines on homosexual civil partnerships. In response, he says he is simply trying to defend the “profound human good” of traditional marriage. So while the bishops of England and Wales “respect the existence of same-sex partnerships in law,” he said, “the point we are at now is to say that they are not the same as marriage.” Well at least the Archbishop agrees with many gay and lesbian activists that separate but not equal mentality does not work.

In Scotland Cardinal Keith O’Brien has denounced same-sex ‘marriage’ as a ‘grotesque subversion’ that, if legalised, would ‘shame Scotland in the eyes of the world.’ Speaking outside the Scottish Parliament on Wednesday, ahead of the closure of the Scottish Government’s consultation on Gay Marriage into the issue next week, the president of the Bishops’ Conference of Scotland warned that if the Scottish Government legalised same-sex ‘marriage’ they would have ‘forfeited the trust’ of the nation.

Cardinal O’Brien’s warning to politicians was supported by Archbishop Mario Conti of Glasgow in his St Andrew’s Day homily. Like their brother Bishops in the United States poll after poll shows these men do not represent the “Sense of the Faithful”.

“Internationally this is recognised as part of the Vatican shell game. The Bishops are trying to redefine Gay Marriage as being about sex, and not love. We see this shell game being echoed in the United States by such Church luminaries as Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, and the newly elected President of the US Council of Catholic Bishops (aka as the US Council of Catholic Homophobic Bishops) is our own in house homophobe jolly old Archbishop Dolan of New York. Both lack the skill level to engage in a public debate about Gay Marriage that is based on reason and not fundamentalism. Dolan’s incompetent leadership is seen as one the reasons why Gay Marriage passed in New York.” The movement adds.

“Archbishop John Nienstedt of St. Paul, Minnesota has a long track record of crudeness when it comes to reasonableness. Niensted like Dolan lacks the vision to understand that equality is not at odds with natural law.” They continue.

Nienstedt first landed on the Rainbow Sash Movement’s radar screen in 2006, while serving as the Bishop of New Ulm, he wrote a column in his diocesan newspaper urging his flock not to attend the movie “Brokeback Mountain.” Nienstedt wrote of the movie, “The story is about two lonely cowboys herding sheep up on a mountain range. One night after a drinking binge, one man makes a pass at the other and within seconds the latter mounts the former in an act of wanton anal sex.” This is indicative of the sexual gutter our Bishops roam in. His anti-gay marriage ballot initiative to be held next year will only deepen the divide the Catholic Community on this issue.

“The Bishop Conferences of all three western countries are increasingly becoming dismissed by the Catholic Laity as irrelevant. They are seen as out of touch with the world around them from the issues of abortion/birth control, through HIV/AIDS condom use to Gay Marriage through the issue of women’s equality and by extension the implication to the poor among us.” The Rainbow Sash Movement add.

With a final parting shot of “Increasingly they want to curse the darkness and not light a candle. They seem to be more comfortable with a fundamentalist mentality that feels more at home with Islamic extremist than reasoned based democracy. Overwhelmingly they appear to lack intellectually competency to engage in reason based debate. Rather they promote their agenda by fear based moralizing which is more comfortable in a radicalised theocracy than it is in a wholesome democracy. Seemingly their moralizing applies to everyone else, but not to them when it comes to the clergy sexual abuse scandal.

In any case the Church is not well served by these Bishops who obviously are above their skill levels.”