Hi gain Aga,

Thanks for these links. Have had a quick check. But the official pronouncements from the Vatican on the matter of the persecution of Galileo carry more weight, don't you think?

In 1992, the then Pope said:

"Thanks to his intuition as a brilliant physicist and by relying on different arguments, Galileo, who practically invented the experimental method, understood why only the sun could function as the centre of the world, as it was then known, that is to say, as a planetary system. The error of the theologians of the time, when they maintained the centrality of the Earth, was to think that our understanding of the physical world's structure was, in some way, imposed by the literal sense of Sacred Scripture."

In 2000, Pope John Paul II issued a formal apology for mistakes made in the last 2,000 years of the Catholic Church's history, including the trial of Galileo.

On the matter of "the Catholic Church accepting homosexual acts as valid", there are several responses:

The official teaching of the Church still regards them as "disordered". But there are different interpretations among theologians, bishops and others as to what this means.

Some claim "disordered" means "morally wrong"; others "complicated and difficult to understand"; others "different from the majority experience, but morally acceptable". There are yet other definitions of this vague term.

Certainly, the Church accepts privately that a majority of priests in most countries are practising homosexuals without whose ministry the Church could not operate.

The John Jay reports in the US seem to indicate that this private understanding is now coming into the open.

More importantly, Biblical scholars across the world in Catholic and Protestant traditions are confirming that Scripture does not in fact condemn all same-sex unions.

Awareness is gradually increasing that Scripture condemns abusive or offensive same-sex behaviour. But not faithful, monogamous unions.

For the biblical view of marriage, the clearest evidencel is from Christ’s teaching on marriage in Matt. 19:3–6. In this passage, he cited the Genesis creation account, in particular Gen. 1:27 and 2:24, saying ‘the two will become one flesh’, not more than two.

Another important biblical teaching is the parallel of husband and wife with Christ and the Church in Eph. 5:22–33, which makes sense only with monogamy—Jesus will not have multiple brides.

Polygamy is expressly forbidden for church elders (1 Tim. 3:2). And this is not just for elders, because Paul also wrote: ‘each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband.’ Paul goes on to explain marital duties in terms that make sense only with one husband to one wife.

The example of godly people is also important. Isaac and Rebekah were monogamous—they are often used as a model in Jewish weddings today. Other examples were Joseph and Asenath, and Moses and Zipporah. And the only survivors of the Flood were four monogamous couples.

An important point to remember is that not everything recorded in the Bible is approved in the Bible. Consider where polygamy originated—first in the line of the murderer Cain, not the line of Seth. The first recorded polygamist was the murderer Lamech (Gen. 4:23–24). Then Esau, who despised his birthright, also caused much grief to his parents by marrying two pagan wives (Gen. 26:34).

Abraham and Sarah would have been monogamous apart from a low point in their faith when Hagar became a second wife. We note how much strife this caused later.

The clear teaching is that marriage was a created ordinance of one man and one woman.
JS