First of all, the expensive blood workup on my cat shows that she is not afflicted with a life-ending ailment (PHEW) so the plan is to laboriously nurse her back to health in the midst of all the Christmas rush. This, I’m sure, will be barely an inconvenience for me. After all, most of the kids are flat with the stomach bug so what’s the big deal? I will just pause writing this every few minutes to make the rounds, dispensing sips of water and sick cat formula. Who needs a clean house or time to wrap presents or finish shopping? God obviously doesn’t think I do.
This is probably not the blog you go to routinely for cat news and health updates, but I have to get my complaints out of the way in order to think about other matters. For my general feelings about pets, here’s a piece I did for CRJ a couple of years ago.
Anyway, back to the many—too many—other matters swirling through the inter-webs this morning. I stayed up far too late reading heaps of analysis about Pope Francis, not even being distracted by the demise of Disney, the political machinations surrounding Trump not being on the ballot in some state, and all that stuff about the President of Harvard plagiarizing parts of her dissertation.
On the subject of Pope Francis, I always think it’s interesting to see how people respond to these sorts of announcements. Calls for quiet consideration and careful examination of what’s really being said should always be balanced against posts like this one by Zach Lambert, progressive affirming pastor who recently tied a millstone around his own neck:
This has been a radical few months for LGBTQ+ equality in the church. In September, the most influential evangelical church in America (North Point Ministries) held a conference aimed at helping parents of LGBTQ+ folks affirm their children. Pastor Andy Stanley then preached that North Point will be “drawing circles not lines” in order to more fully include LGBTQ+ people and couples in the church. Now, Pope Francis is overturning a 2021 policy that forbade priests from blessing same-sex couples. This is especially important because that 2021 policy stated priests could not bless same-sex couples because “God cannot bless sin.” The overturning of this policy by the Pope today means the Catholic Church no longer requires priests to teach that same-sex couples are inherently sinful. This opens the door for full affirmation of LGBTQ+ people and marriages down the road. Also, just a few weeks ago, Pope Francis also declared that transgender folks can be baptized in the Catholic Church, be godparents to Catholic children, and be official witnesses at Catholic weddings. We still have a long way to go before our LGBTQ+ siblings have full equality and affirmation in Christian spaces, but all of this movement is a really big deal. I pray it keeps moving forward.
But, if you’d rather look to a Catholic person and what he thinks about what happened there’s this:
Does the smell of pine cover a multitude of sins? Why has James Martin been allowed to continue on unchastised for so many years?
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