Gays 'will never go to heaven': cardinal

(AFP) – 8 hours ago

VATICAN CITY — Homosexuals and transsexuals "will never enter the kingdom of heaven", a leading Roman Catholic cardinal said on Wednesday.

Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan said that while the Church regarded homosexuality as an "insult to God", this did not justify discrimination against gay and transsexual people.

"Transsexuals and homosexuals will never enter the kingdom of heaven and it is not me who says this, but Saint Paul," the cardinal said, in comments reported by the Ansa news agency.

"People are not born homosexual, they become homosexual, for different reasons: education issues or because they did not develop their own identity during adolescence. It may not be their fault, but acting against nature and the dignity of the human body is an insult to God," he said.

Barragan, the retired head of the Vatican's Council for Pastoral Assistance to Health Care Workers, quoted a passage from Paul's epistle to the Romans which speaks of "men committing indecent acts with other men".

"Homosexuality is therefore a sin, but this does not justify any form of discrimination. God alone has the right to judge," the cardinal said.

"We on earth cannot condemn, and as human beings we all have the same rights."

Sarah Vowell was on the Daily Show talking to Jon Stewart about her book The Wordy Shipmates, and she said something kind of along these lines. Talking about one of the Puritans (I forget his name), she said he was exactly her kind of religious extremist: certain that his enemies would burn forever in hell, but determined to live and let live while here on earth. Amen.

It's encouraging to hear an influential Cardinal saying this stuff. I couldn't disagree more with the content of what he's saying, but for framing it as a religious transgression as opposed to a criminal one, and making that distinction explicit, I think he deserves some credit. It's a distinction that some religious leaders seem incapable of making.

By Katie Scott | 26 November 2009

There are Catholic churches in Second Life, the first Vatican-approved iPhone app appeared last year and now a software developer has created the Digital Rosary.

This is an application for smartphones including the iPhone, some Nokia models and BlackBerrys, which allows you to connect to a "social network of prayer".

Vincenzo Coccoli is the CEO of More Technologies – the company behind the launch. The app itself guides users through the rosary by speaking the words, which they can say at the same time.

Coccoli says that the more important aspect of the Digital Rosary is access to the Prex Communion website, where users can contact other believers, enter discussion groups and get information on prayer and the Shrine of the Holy House of Loreto, where the application was launched. "It’s a religious Facebook", he says.

This is the company’s second rosary-related release. Last year, More launched the Electronic Rosary, which is a small device that recites the rosary and other prayers for believers to respond to or repeat. Coccoli says that the company has sold 50,000 of these devices worldwide to date. He says he's hopeful that the Digital Rosary will have a similar impact, especially as it has the approval of the Vatican.

Father Paolo Padrini, who launched the iBreviary iPhone app, says the Catholic Church is working hard to master new media. "I believe that these instruments provide places for encounters between peoples, places for dialogue and friendship," he says.

"The Church has always wanted to offer the gospel to people, and has always invested in bringing the word to all men," he adds. "The internet is a great opportunity from this point of view."

He does, however, suggest that religious apps need to be priced sensitively. However, he warns that the Church monitor how much companies charge for devices and applications. "I think it's also fair to charge for selling a quality product because this allows future developments, but there must be some caution," he says.

Proceeds from the iBreviary go towards a voluntary project, he says.

Inquiry into child abuse at Irish Catholic institutions condemns systemic 'perversion of power and trust'

• Associated Press
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 26 November 2009 15.24 GMT
• Article history

The Roman Catholic church in Ireland hid decades of child abuse by its leaders to protect the church's reputation, an inquiry found. Photograph: Danilo Krstanovic/Reuters

The Roman Catholic church in Dublin covered up decades of child abuse committed by priests because bishops wanted to protect the church's reputation at the expense of victims, an expert commission reported today after a three-year inquiry into previously secret church records.

Abuse victims said they welcomed publication of the investigation into the mishandling of child abuse cases from 1975 to 2004 in the Dublin archdiocese, home to a quarter of Ireland's 4 million Catholics. But they said government and church leaders had not compensated for past wrongs.

The government said the investigation "shows clearly that a systemic, calculated perversion of power and trust was visited on helpless and innocent children in the archdiocese".

"The perpetrators must continue to be brought to justice, and the people of Ireland must know that this can never happen again," said the government, which apologised for the state's failure to hold church authorities accountable to the law.

This is the second major government-ordered report this year exploring how and why Irish authorities permitted widespread abuse of boys and girls at the hands of the Catholic church throughout most of the 20th century, the gravest scandal in the history of independent Ireland.

The 720-page report, delivered to the government in July, analyses the cases of 46 priests against whom 320 complaints were filed. The men were selected from more than 150 Dublin priests implicated in molesting or raping boys and girls since 1940.

The report named 11 priests because they all were convicted of child abuse. But 33 others were referred to only by one-name aliases, and two others had their names blanked out after the Dublin high court ruled that publication would prejudice their chances of receiving a fair criminal trial.

Investigators spent three years poring over 60,000 previously secret Dublin church files. They were handed over by the Dublin archbishop, Diarmuid Martin, a veteran Vatican diplomat appointed to the Irish capital in 2004 with a brief to confront the scandal. Among the files were more than 5,500 Martin's predecessor, the retired cardinal Desmond Connell, tried to keep locked in the archbishop's private vault.

The investigators, led by a judge and two lawyers, said they had no doubt that the 46 priests were responsible for abusing many more than 320 children.

"One priest admitted to sexually abusing over 100 children, while another accepted that he had abused on a fortnightly basis during the currency of his ministry which lasted for over 25 years," they wrote. They said it was not their job to confirm the scale of abuse cases, but "it is abundantly clear … child sexual abuse by clerics was widespread throughout the period."

The commission found that three archbishops of Dublin – John Charles McQuaid (1940-72), Dermot Ryan (1972-84) and Kevin McNamara (1985-87) – did not tell police about clerical abuse cases, instead opting to avoid public scandals by shuttling offenders from parish to parish.

It was not until 1995, seven years into his reign, that then-archbishop Connell allowed police to see church files on 17 clerical abuse cases. The documents were kept in a secret, locked vault in the archbishop's Dublin residence. Records show Connell had records of complaints against at least 29 priests at the time.

The report rejected the bishops' key claim that they were ignorant of the scale and criminality of priests' abuse of children. It dug up a documentary trail showing that the Dublin archdiocese negotiated a 1987 insurance policy for future legal costs of defending lawsuits and compensation claims.

The investigators said McNamara, Ryan and McQuaid knew about at least 17 priests linked to child abuse in their archdiocese when that policy went into effect.

"The taking out of insurance was an act proving knowledge of child sexual abuse as a potential major cost to the archdiocese and is inconsistent with the view that archdiocesan officials were still 'on a learning curve' at a much later date, or were lacking in appreciation of the phenomenon of clerical child sex abuse," the report said.

In May the government published an investigation into decades of child abuse in Catholic-run schools, workhouses and orphanages. That investigation also found that thousands of boys and girls suffered rape, beatings and mental abuse by members of Catholic religious orders. More than 12,000 of those victims have received compensation payments from a government panel exceeding €800m (£730m).

Vatican conference on ETs

We've posted before about the Pope's chief astronomer Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes and his statements on possible extraterrestrial life. (ETs "don't contradict our faith," he has said.) The Vatican recently hosted a conference on the topic of astrobiology -- the study of life in the universe -- where a group of international scientists from a variety of fields discussed the possibility of alien life. From the Associated Press:

Funes said the possibility of alien life raises "many philosophical and theological implications" but added that the gathering was mainly focused on the scientific perspective and how different disciplines can be used to explore the issue.

Chris Impey, an astronomy professor at the University of Arizona, said it was appropriate that the Vatican would host such a meeting.

"Both science and religion posit life as a special outcome of a vast and mostly inhospitable universe," he told a news conference Tuesday. "There is a rich middle ground for dialogue between the practitioners of astrobiology and those who seek to understand the meaning of our existence in a biological universe..."

The Church of Rome's views have shifted radically through the centuries since Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake as a heretic in 1600 for speculating, among other ideas, that other worlds could be inhabited.

"Vatican looks to heavens for signs of alien life"

Catholic churches in Italy have installed automatic holy water dispensers to help reduce the spread of swine flu. 

Published: 12:59AM GMT 12 Nov 2009

Fear of contracting the H1N1 virus has led many in Italy not to dip their hands in the communal water font. Photo: REUTERS

Many churches had suspended the tradition of keeping holy water in open fonts into which people dipped their hands following the outbreak of the H1N1 virus.

But an Italian inventor has combined faith and ingenuity to create the electronic terracotta dispenser, which is now being used in the northern town of Fornaci di Briosco. It functions like an automatic soap dispenser in public lavatories - a churchgoer waves his or her hand under a sensor and the machine spurts out holy water.

"It has been a bit of a novelty. People initially were a bit shocked by this technological innovation but then they welcomed it with great enthusiasm and joy," said Father Pierangelo Motta.

Catholics entering and leaving churches usually dip their hands into fonts full of holy water - which has been blessed by a priest - and make the sign of the cross.

But fear of contracting the H1N1 virus has led many in Italy - where some 15 people have died of swine flu - not to dip their hands in the communal water font.

Luciano Marabese, who invented the dispenser, said he did so out of concern that fear of swine flu was eroding traditions.

And he is now blessing himself all the way to the bank.

"After all the news that some churches, like Milan's cathedral, were suspending the use of holy water fonts as a measure against swine flu, demands for my invention shot to the stars. I have received orders from all over the world," he said.

The Catholic Church in Poland is investigating claims of a miracle after a piece of communion wafer was reported to have been transformed into human heart tissue after falling into water during a mass.

By Matthew Day in Warsaw
Published: 3:14PM GMT 29 Oct 2009

In an incident that has generated a storm of publicity in devout Poland, Professor Maria Sobaniec-Lotowaska, of the medical university in Bialystok, has dumbfounded sceptics by saying she considered the material found in the container as heart tissue.

But her findings have already been dismissed by other scientists. "The professor saw what she wanted to see.

She is very religious," said Prof Lech Chyczewski, a blood specialist. "In order to rule out any doubts, it would have been necessary to carry out molecular and genetic testing."

Pawel Grzesiowskia, a leading biologist from the National Medical Institute, has attributed the miracle to nothing more than bacteria growing on the small piece of wafer, which fell into a water container during a mass in the eastern village of Sokolka.

But this has failed to quell many believing that something miraculous took place. The Catholic Church said already ruled out the possibility of a hoax, and local police have said that there is no evidence of fraud.

Could be very useful for the NHS!