UOG and Tuckeroo,
Firstly Tuckeroo, in your first post you referred to the Popes xmas-eve message, have you got link to your information.

Secondly UOG, In one of your posts you refer to the Popes xmas day message. In that there was no mention of homosexuals. This may not be the message that Tuckeroo was referring to.

Can you both clarify which speech refers to homosexuality as it is important to get this right. I hate to see anyone condemned by a media misquote. I can think of a couple of clasic instances where the media got it wrong.

Good People,

This is the translation of the speech given by the Pope to the Roman curia. (Fancy name for a bunch of elders)

The Christmas message from the Vatican is another speech altogether.

It is laced with Catholic institutionalised homophobia. The text is comprised of superfluous language more suited to a waffle iron. Of course, this is a translation and it may not be totally accurate.

http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/213106?eng=y

David

CJ I had the exact same thought when I read Col's post.

I am not yet fully convinced that I've read it correctly so I'm going back to check. I would never have guessed that he and I would be in agreement on anything.

I am pretty interested in One Under God's post - it's very entertaining.

This website may also be of interest:

Times On Line -

"Pope Benedict on Homosexuality."

Dec. 23 2008.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article5388920.ece

I know what I observed CJ.
You must have been asleep during that period the gays were on the rise or a bit too young or maybe similarly inclined along 'that road' as well not to have noticed what had happened.
Many of you folk just dont look at what goes on in our world each day.

Did Benedict really say those nasty things about homosexuals? Or is the ruthless gay lobby inventing it all?

The answer is no, but yes. He spoke/wrote in Italian. The contemporary Italian word for all things sexually "unnatural" is "gender" which equates roughly with what Australians would call "gender-bending". The term includes homosexual bisexual, transgender and all such abominations. The Roman Catholic blogsites (see below) recognise that this was his precise meaning - he was talking about all of the "perverts" whose very existence, he believes, is a threat to the human race. So "no" he didn't use the word "homosexual" in his words to the Curia. But "yes" the word he used includes homosexuals and more.

See http://mysterium-fidei.blogspot.com/2008/12/popes-address-to-roman-curia.html

Dec 22, 2008
Pope's address to Roman Curia
[quoted verbatim from the Mysterium-fidei blogsite]

Pope Benedict took an unconventional approach today to stand up to what he sees as gender-bending, saying protecting heterosexuality was as important as saving the rainforest.

"(The Church) should also protect man from the destruction of himself. A sort of ecology of man is needed," the pontiff said.... "The tropical forests do deserve our protection. But man, as a creature, does not deserve any less."

The Pope stressed that the Church would defend the traditional roles of "a man and woman, and to ask that this order of creation be respected".

He turned his attention to those people who call themselves in Italian "gender" or "transgender" — a broad term that includes anyone who doesn't identify entirely with their assigned sex and can include homosexuals, bisexuals, pansexuals and others....

"What's often expressed and understood with the term 'gender', is summed up definitively in the self-emancipation of man from the created and the Creator … But in this way, he lives in opposition to truth, he lives in opposition to the Creator," the pope said.
[end of quote]