Saturday, March 24, 2012

Another Bishop Robinson speaks out on sexuality

The liberally oriented National Catholic Reporter tells us about retired Roman Catholic Bishop Geoffrey Robinson from Australia who advocates a complete overhaul of the RC church's teaching on sexuality.
At the Seventh National Symposium on Catholicism and Homosexuality, retired Australian Bishop Geoffrey Robinson called Friday for "a new study of everything to do with sexuality" -- a kind of study that he predicted "would have a profound influence on church teaching concerning all sexual relationships, both heterosexual and homosexual."

"If the starting point [as in current church teaching] is that every single sexual act must be both unitive and procreative, there is no possibility of approval of homosexual acts," Robinson said. 
He proceeded, however, to question that natural law argument, especially as laid out by recent popes, and to suggest that a more nuanced reading of divine commandments in scripture and of Jesus' teaching would lead to a different set of moral norms -- starting with a change in church teaching that every sexual act or thought that falls outside a loving conjugal act open to procreation is a mortal sin because it is a direct offense against God himself in his divine plan for human sexuality.
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"The teaching fostered a belief in an incredibly angry God," he added, "for this God would condemn a person to an eternity in hell for a single unrepented moment of deliberate pleasure arising from sexual desire. I simply do not believe in such a God. Indeed, I positively reject such a God."

More on Bp Robinson's work on issues of sexuality


1 comment:

Counterlight said...

I presume that he will be sharing a cell in the Papal Fortress with Hans Küng and Charles Curran.