A Love Letter from the Roman Catholic Bishops of the USA from tony adams on Vimeo.

Transcript:

I want to talk to you today about a pastoral letter that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is going to release in November and this pastoral letter is a sort of like a love letter, really, to the American Catholics and in part they, they say herein, you know, that this will not just be useful not just for Catholics but to people everywhere. So I think it's important and I've read the entire letter; it's 57 pages long. It's about 1,100 lines (it won't be appearing on Twitter). And it basically gives you a beautifully clear picture of what the American bishops, the American Roman Catholic bishops are thinking and to all of you out there who want to understand Catholicism or to all of you Catholics who want to understand why your church is positioning itself against equal rights for marriage really have to read this letter. Needless to say, I found some of it - a lot of it - it's just disgusting is what it is. But I want to take some time and take it apart piece by piece and go over it. There are two major sections and an introduction, so what we're going to do right now is just go through the introduction, which is reasonably brief. The letter is called "Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan: A Pastoral Letter of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops". Now, please keep in mind that this is the draft that was leaked. The final version that comes out next month will probably look something like this, but might have a couple of variations. So we begin right away in the introduction, they - and I'm pulling out certain sections here - the introduction is "The Blessing and Gift of Marriage". There's a line - it's line 31 and 32 in which the bishops say that "among the many blessings that God has showered upon us in Christ is the blessing of marriage, a gift bestowed by the Creator from the beginning of the world". Okay, that's nice. "His hand has inscribed the vocation of marriage in the very nature of man and woman."
Whoa.
So the bishops are saying God has put the vocation, the call to marriage, in the very nature of man and woman. In other words, it's in your DNA, folks, this call to marriage. Not a call to sex, with either the opposite sex or same sex, not a call to friendship, not a call to love, not a call to relationships, but a call, a vocation, to marriage. It's inscribed in you. That's what they're saying, you know, throughout this entire letter you're going to see the flowery church-y language and they're gonna play fast and loose with a lot of words, but right off the bat, you've got a very clear statement about where they're going. Of course, I can't quite imagine how they're going to justify the fact that if God put the call to marriage in everybody's DNA from the beginning of time, they feel that by being celibates, they are in line with the blessing and the vocation and the gift from the Creator from the beginning of the world, but somehow they're gonna get there.
What is interesting is that also the premises set here in the introduction that they are going to use the Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament, the Genesis account of creation as a major element in their justification for their understanding of marriage and especially in their understanding and their abhorrence for the possibility of same-sex marriage. Stay tuned for that.
Okay, so that's line 32 where we get that it's inscribed in our very beings, in the very nature of man and woman. And yet, by line 64, we see them say that "at the same time, we are troubled by the fact that far too many people do not understand what it means to say that marriage, as both a natural institution and a Christian sacrament is a blessing and a gift from God". Okay, so in the beginning of, in line 32, it's part of your DNA, but here, it's a blessing and a gift from God. And as we know, not everybody gets a blessing. Otherwise, if everyone got it, we wouldn't have the phrase "may God bless you", because when you say "may God bless you", it presumes that God might not bless you. So right off the bat, we have this problem with the bishops playing loose and fast with words. If they're saying that everybody has it inscribed in their being, then how is it that marriage can be a blessing and a gift from God that some people get and some people don't get?
I'm just saying.
Okay. So, that was troubling to me, but it's gonna continue and get worse. Okay. Down in line 78 of the introduction, we see the line "we" - meaning the Catholic Bishops - "note a disturbing trend today to view marriage as a mostly private matter". Now, actually, I agree with them on this. Relationships are personal, private matters, but marriage is a public contract governing the disposition of assets and it comes with public responsibilities. That is why I think the Catholic church ought to get out of the marriage business and instead concentrate on guiding its people in authentic relationships and the formation of good, solid families. You know? See, but they don't - they're gonna play with this, the terminology about marriage and relationships and friendship and sex and they're gonna talk about the church and the church is the Bride of Christ and somehow relates that way and everything. And then they're - wait 'til you get to the end of this letter where they say that, pretty much, that in heaven, all of us will be united in this great communal marriage that is exemplified by Christ and his Church. And basically what they are saying is, folks, you may be married to one person today, but ultimately, no way is that gonna happen for all eternity. In all eternity, we're all married as one big "borg". Honestly, that's what they say in here toward the end, so, you know, those of you who are planning on seeing your deceased spouse get in the next life, forget about it.
Okay. So. They say - and then they say in line 81, "Finally, we bishops feel compelled to speak out against all attempts to redefine marriage so that it would no longer be exclusively the union of a man and a woman as God established and blessed it". Okay. They just let that phrase drop here in the introduction. They don't talk about how they're going to or why they feel this compulsion and when they say "we bishops feel compelled to speak out", they might as well uncloak it and say, we bishops have a compulsion about this. We are, we really do feel, we are just so eaten with the concept and so driven by the concept of "speaking out against any attempt to redefine marriage as anything except a man and a woman" that, you know, that's what we're gonna, we're gonna make that clear in this letter. And they do. God bless them, they do make it clear.
See, my question is why. Why do the bishops have this compulsion? Why are they, what are they so afraid of? But, you know, this compulsion is not the province of just the American Catholic bishops. All of the people who rail against the possibility of marriage equality feel this compulsion and none of them understand it. And a lot of - hardly anyone understands what is at the root of this compulsion to be so afraid of same-sex marriage. But it is a compulsion. It is a horror that they feel from the depth of their being and they're going to follow through on it. So when you argue with a bishop, you have to understand that they are totally overrun and overridden by this compulsion and it clouds their ability to think logically. What will follow will be a string of biblical citations and what-have-you that they think supports their compulsion. Now, most of you who read this will be like-minded with me and won't buy those, those associations any more than you would a fifth-rate lawyer's attempt to justify, you know, some sort of crime that was obviously . . . Anyway, I'll give you the - I'll present the quotations just as they do and then you can make up your own mind.
Let me go on. There's one more section in this introduction, I believe, in line - yeah, actually, two more - in line 98. "We intend this pastoral letter to be a theological and doctrinal foundation." So take note of this, Catholics, this letter is not to be taken lightly. You know, it's a read-it-and-weep love letter to you Catholics. Line 102 says this - 102 through 104: "Our pastoral letter presents those beliefs and teachings of the Catholic church informed by human reason and enlightened by divine revelation that summarize and express God's plan for marriage". Did you get that, folks? The bishops are saying that what their teachings consist of have been informed by human reason - in other words, anybody with a brain would come to these conclusions - plus divine revelation. Now I wanna talk a little bit about divine revelation in this context, because those of you who would like to call yourselves Catholic, you gotta know this. This in a nutshell - no pun intended - is the basic deal with Catholicism: the bishops blatantly claim that God has spoken or revealed these things to them. So, they must be true and we must believe them. If you disagree and claim that God has revealed the opposite to you, the bishops could claim that you are wrong because, after all, they have the pointy hats, they've been ordained bishops, they know best, you don't. God cannot reveal things to you that are revealed through them. They got the franchise on the voice of God. It's from God's lips to their ears, not to yours. You can't declare a revelation. You can't declare that because you have no control over your sexual identity that you think it is something that God loves and would permit you to act on. They say no. God has not revealed that to you. God has revealed it to us the opposite. We are the bishops. We have the revelation. This harks back to, like, ancient Greece or ancient Rome when the temple priests would come forth from the temple and say God has spoken to us, Zeus has spoken to us, Jupiter has spoken to us, Apollo has spoken to us and they have said that the emperor's desire to go into battle will result in a great victory for our city. And by the way, all of your folks who seek augers from us, you can just leave the monetary offerings and the food over there because Apollo will pick it up after you're gone and the gates to the temple are locked. Nothing has changed since then. The holding the franchise on divine revelation as they do, these bishops speaking this way, they are claiming to understand the mind of God in a way that you cannot. So, you guys, if you want to be Catholic, you have to understand and buy that premise. Okay? If you don't buy that premise, don't be Roman Catholic.
All right. It goes on and on and we're going to be instructed in the basics of not only divine revelation but human reason, which they also feel they have the franchise on. God save us from these bishops.