Neo-Cardinal on Kissing: "He [!] Approaches You, and You Embrace Him. You Kiss Him."
- After the Synod last October, there were protests that not much had been accomplished. After all the hullabaloo, the final document, the Synthesis Report, declared that the issue of women deacons needed to be "studied" - for the third time! The document also seemed to back away from the preparatory document on openness to LGBT people [= militant homosexuals]. The word is not even mentioned there. Many saw this as a failure.
- The synod had anticipated this misunderstanding. When seeds fall into the ground, not much seems to happen. They germinate quietly until spring.
- "Recently I had a serious cancer problem, for the second time. As I came to terms with my mortal essence, I began to write notes about my life, realizing that I am the fruit of all the friendships and loves I have created, and sometimes even my failure to love.” [Frequent use of the first personal pronoun to say who shaped him].
- Being open to friendship requires that we do not care too much about our own identity. As Iris Murdoch said, "The main requirement for a good life is to live without a self-image." [The quoted Iris Murdoch, 1919-1999, was a British novelist known for stories about sexual relationships. She was strongly influenced by Sigmund Freud and Jean-Paul Sartre.]
- Our [= Radcliffe's] society is obsessed with identity. Identity of gender, ethnic, or class, sexual, political. Identity must be chosen and constructed. [true: received, accepted and lived upon].
- On a trip to Australia, I had the opportunity to see the movie Barbie.
- Francis asks us to open the Church to everyone, whoever they are. Todos, todos, todos (everyone, everyone, everyone): the divorced and remarried, the gay, the transgender [but not the Catholics].
- In some parts of the world, the acceptance of homosexuals is considered scandalous. Many Catholic bishops in Africa see it as an attempt to impose a decadent Western ideology on the rest of the world.
- Never before have all the bishops of a continent rejected a Vatican document [Fiducia supplicans].
- The African bishops are under heavy pressure from the Evangelicals, with American money; from the Russian Orthodox, with Russian money; and from the Muslims, with money from rich Gulf countries.
- "...when you kiss a person: You see someone at the other end of a room. You see him in his entirety. He [male pronoun] approaches you, and you embrace him. And he disappears, except for his face. You kiss him and he becomes invisible, not because he is gone, but because a new intimacy has been created. This is what happens with God. From time to time we seem to lose God, to enter a dark night, but only because we can get close."
Picture: © Mazur, CC BY-NC-ND, #newsTrgrsbrqac