The Catholic Church steps backwards

This article by the Boston Globe is just one of hundreds you'll read bemoaning the" archaic" selection of Cardinal Ratzinger as the new Pope. Look for additional adjectives such as antiquated, repressive, obsolescent, intolerant, ultra conservative and retro when describing the choice.

WITH THE election of Joseph Ratzinger to be Pope Benedict XVI, the Catholic Church is not joining the 21st century anytime soon. After all the speculation that it was time for a pope from a developing country and after the debate of whether the conclave of cardinals would pick someone who would build bridges toward the church's outcasts and second-class citizens, the church fled to yesteryear, hoping to avoid facing today.

The cardinals made a choice so cautious as to verge on the callous. If Ratzinger's past words guide his rule, his papacy has the potential to irritate and inflame religious and cultural tensions around the world.

Ratzinger was the late Pope John Paul II's enforcer of stark views on many issues that, for all the church's proclamations of love, fuel disdain. In 2003, Ratzinger issued a proclamation condemning government recognition of same-sex unions saying that instead it was the government's responsibility to ''avoid exposing young people to erroneous ideas about sexuality and marriage." Calling civil unions the ''legalization of evil," Ratzinger said politicians who vote for them are ''gravely immoral."

It's really comical to watch secularists try and write about people of faith and religion in general. They really have a fundamental misunderstanding of religious doctrine, it's origens and it's design and purpose in our lives.

As I stated in an earlier posting, "Divine law" on which a churches tenants are based is NOT a living and breathing thing to be modified with the wims of a fickle population. A church does not liberalize it's doctrines because society in general is liberalizing, on the contrary, that is the time a church should assert it's influence to bring an ever decadent populace back into the fold.

It's not about mans law, mans desires or mans view; It's about Gods law, Gods desires andGods view. Divine law is constant, ever vigilant and inviolate. If the church cannot reconcile a given behavior with Gods command, then the behavior must change. Any rationalization to do other wise is to break the communion between God and church and is therefor abhorrent.

The hardest thing for a secularist to understand is the difference between Gods law and mans law. Most believe that Gods law is secondary to mans law or at the very most equal and therefor must change as society changes. It is incomprehensible for these people to fathom a "law" that could be so rigid and inflexible, so nonresponsive to change. They just don't get it and as long as the secularist's cling to this mindset, you may as well be talking to someone fromVenus.