When legislation in favour of the recognition of homosexual unions is proposed for the first time in a legislative assembly, the Catholic law-maker has a moral duty to express his opposition clearly and publicly and to vote against it. To vote in favour of a law so harmful to the common good is gravely immoral.

When legislation in favour of the recognition of homosexual unions is already in force, the Catholic politician must oppose it in the ways that are possible for him and make his opposition known...

Since this question relates to the natural moral law, the arguments that follow are addressed not only to those who believe in Christ, but to all persons committed to promoting and defending the common good of society.

Since this question relates to the natural moral law, the arguments that follow are addressed not only to those who believe in Christ, but to all persons committed to promoting and defending the common good of society.

... Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behaviour, with the consequence of making it a model in present-day society, but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity.

Those who would move from tolerance to the legitimization of specific rights for cohabiting homosexual persons need to be reminded that the approval or legalization of evil is something far different from the toleration of evil.

Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children, in the sense that their condition of dependency would be used to place them in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development

Critics of Vatican say girls forgotten: Ban on gay priests called off the mark
Boston Herald
by Robin Washington
Thursday, November 7, 2002

As the Vatican puts its finishing touches on a policy likely to blame gay priests for the pedophile scandal, victim advocates say the church has failed to acknowledge that a significant number of children abused by clergy were girls.

``Almost half the phone calls I get are from women. The Vatican's suggestion that this is a gay priest issue is utterly off the mark,'' said Anne Hagen Webb, a psychologist and New England co-director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

On Tuesday, the Vatican Press Office issued a statement on the new policy, prepared in response to the sex abuse scandal, after news media in Rome reported the initial draft asks seminaries to bar men with ``homosexual tendencies.''

But Webb, an alleged victim of a Rhode Island monsignor from kindergarten until the seventh grade, called the attempt to link pedophilia to homosexuality misguided, and said 40 percent of attendees at SNAP meetings and those calling the group for help are female.

http://www.poynter.org/dg.lts/id.46/aid.9443/column.htm

(The) claim that... pedophiles are gay stems from "a flawed assumption" that men who prey on young boys also are attracted to grown men, says Johns Hopkins University psychiatrist Frederick Berlin, an expert on sexual disorders.

(snip)

... clinical experience with pedophiles suggests "it's kind of a separate sexual orientation," says David Finkelhor, author of four books on child sexual abuse and director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. "Often they have no attraction to adults whatsoever."

Bancroft agrees. "They're men interested in children. They're more interested in boys than girls, but they're interested in kids, not adults."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/2002-07-15-church-gay_x.htm

Evil is a term describing that which is morally bad, corrupt, wantonly destructive, selfish, and wicked. In most Christian and Western cultures, and some Eastern ones, the word is used to describe acts, and sometimes thoughts and ideas, commonly known as sin, that are thought to originate with Satan and challenge the law or will of God.

Evil is one half of the duality of good and evil expressed, in some form or another, by many cultures. It describes a hierarchy of moral standards with regard to human behaviour; evil being the least desired, while love is usually the most praised. In essence "evil" is a term for those things which (either directly or causally) bring about withering and death - the opposite of life. In casual or derogatory use, the word "evil" can characterize people and behaviours that are hurtful, ruinous, or disastrous.

A similar term, malice (from the Latin mal meaning "bad") describes the deliberate human intent to harm and be harmful. "Evil," by contrast, tends to represent a more elemental concept; a disembodied spirit that is natural and yet abominable. Whereas "malice" belongs to the specific, "evil" is the foundation for malice.

In a number of religious traditions, "evil" is widely considered to be a mystery; that life and its rules are "governed" by an innate benevolence, and behavior that directly contradicts "good nature" is not understandable in moral and reasoning terms. "Evil" characterizes and describes aspects of human beings that deviate from the social, loving, righteous, natures within, which in contrast lead to social strength, and continuing survival, through love. In the forms of malice and selfishness, evil represents the socially weakening and destructive behaviors that lead directly to a fruitless life and death.

The Abrahamic religions, as well as others, are largely centered around the concepts of good and evil, and this has led to much religious debate. Many cultures and mythologies personify evil, such as with Satan in Christianity. Others describe evil spirits or demons as the inciters of acts.

In Christianity, young children are considered to be good, and free of evil, though not of original sin as defined in the Bible. As they grow older, however, they can develop evil characteristics. The three main characteristics of an evil person are:

Pride: "I am better than you are."
Hypocrisy: "I have higher standards for others than for self."
Indifference: "I do not care."

Note that "self" does not necessarily have to mean "one's self," but also to the various units, groups, and demographics to which one belongs (e.g. family, school, team, generation, nationality, race, religion, etc.) Indifference is what binds together the total contradiction of pride (superiority) and hypocrisy (lower standards). Without it, the person could not stand his or her own evil.

Western societies among others, often use the term evil as general label for particularly “bad” or morally corrupt people. Thus, those who engage in any of a number of crimes thought to be particular heinous or morally wrong are label evil, including rapists, child molesters, serial killers, terrorists, and genocidal dictators. Some people, especially for religious reasons, include perpetrators of controversial acts they view as wrong as such as homosexual behavior or abortions. Because of disagreements whether these acts are immoral there is little agreement that the perpetrators of these acts are evi

In following paragraphs he says that legally elected parliaments in formerly totalitarian countries were today allowing what he called new forms of evil and new exterminations.

"There is still, however a legal extermination of human beings who have been conceived but not yet born," he writes.

"And this time we are talking about an extermination which has been allowed by nothing less than democratically elected parliaments where one normally hears appeals for the civil progress of society and all humanity," he writes.

In Germany, a leader of the country's Central Council of Jews called the comparison unacceptable.

At a news conference presenting the book, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican's top doctrinal official, dismissed the Jewish charges.

Ratzinger said the Pope "was not trying to put the Holocaust and abortion on the same plane" but only warning that evil lurked everywhere, "even in liberal political systems."