Blair to Pope: UR wrong on homosexuality

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Registered: 03-18-2000
Blair to Pope: UR wrong on homosexuality
9
Thu, 04-09-2009 - 10:20am
Tony Blair tells the Pope: you're wrong on homosexuality

Complete article at link.....


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6055696.ece


Tony Blair has challenged the “entrenched” attitudes of the Pope on homosexuality, and argued that it is time for him to “rethink” his views.


Speaking to the gay magazine Attitude, the former Prime Minister, himself now a Roman Catholic, said that he wanted to urge religious figures everywhere to reinterpret their religious texts to see them as metaphorical, not literal, and suggested that in time this would make all religious groups accept gay people as equals.


Asked about the Pope’s stance, Mr Blair blamed generational differences and said: “We need an attitude of mind where rethinking and the concept of evolving attitudes becomes part of the discipline with which you approach your religious faith.”


The Pope, who is 82, remains firmly opposed to any relaxation of the Church’s traditional stance on homosexuality, contraception or any other area of human sexuality. He has described homosexuality as a “tendency” towards an “intrinsic moral evil”.


Mr Blair, who now travels the world on behalf of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, which aims to promote understanding of the main religions, left the Church of England for Rome soon after leaving office in 2007.


In the interview Mr Blair spoke of a “quiet revolution in thinking” and implied that he believed the Pope to be out of step with the public.


“There are many good and great things the Catholic Church does, and there are many fantastic things this Pope stands for, but I think what is interesting is that if you went into any Catholic Church, particularly a wellattended one, on any Sunday here and did a poll of the congregation, you’d be surprised at how liberal-minded people were.” The faith of ordinary Catholics is rarely found “in those types of entrenched attitudes”, he said.


He also thought that in Islam there would eventually be a change of heart. “I believe that, ultimately, people will find their way to a sensible reformation of attitudes.”


People’s thinking had changed fundamentally, he added. “Now, that doesn’t mean to say there’s not still a lot of homophobia and a lot of things to be done. But the fact that it is unacceptable for any mainstream political party to be anything other than on the side of equality and respect is, in a way, the biggest change. The items of individual legislation matter a lot, but I think it’s the general shift in climate that is perhaps the most important point.”


He said: “When people quote the passages in Leviticus condemning homosexuality, I say to them — if you read the whole of the Old Testament and took everything that was there in a literal way, as being what God and religion is about, you’d have some pretty tough policies across the whole of the piece.”


He continued: “What people often forget about, for example, Jesus or, indeed, the Prophet Muhammad, is that their whole raison d’être was to change the way that people thought traditionally.”


No change in the Catholic Church’s stance is likely under the present leadership. The Church in England and Wales, which has been more liberal, is expected to move rightwards under the new Archbishop of Westminster, the Most Rev Vincent Nichols, who has become increasingly conservative since becoming a bishop and archbishop.


While some converts become more conservative than those born to Roman Catholicism, the interview with Attitude’s Johann Hari shows that Mr Blair has allied himself firmly with the Church’s liberal wing.


Conventional wisdom was not necessarily wise, he said. “It can be wrong and it can be just a form of conservatism that hides behind a consensus. If you look back in time, through the suffragette movement, the fight against slavery, it’s amazing how the same arguments in favour of prejudice crop up again and again and again.”


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iVillage Member
Registered: 05-23-2008
Thu, 04-09-2009 - 6:29pm

I can only speak for myself and my experience in life.


A child needs a father and a mother.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-24-2009
Thu, 04-09-2009 - 6:43pm

I may have mentioned this before, but my children did have the influence of very special men in their lives and it worked out great.

Kate

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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-23-2003
Thu, 04-09-2009 - 8:42pm

No, one does not need a male & a female parent to grow up to be a well-adjusted adult.


iVillage Member
Registered: 08-30-2002
Thu, 04-09-2009 - 11:59pm
I was a single parent to my foster son. He was taken from a two parent home where he witnessed drug abuse, chauvenism, misogeny


iVillage Member
Registered: 06-14-2006
Mon, 04-13-2009 - 5:14pm

How lucky for you, that you had a grandfather around to help you grow up, we didn't.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-24-2009
Mon, 04-13-2009 - 7:57pm





Edited 4/14/2009 1:30 am ET by fairly.damsely

Kate

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iVillage Member
Registered: 05-01-2007
Tue, 04-14-2009 - 7:59am

Good for Tony Blair! Its about time people starting challenging the old, pompous, all-male, chaste windbags of the Catholic church, and I hope the more compassionate Catholics everywhere speak up. I was raised Catholic and left the faith for precisely this reason and many others. How can someone who is a sheltered celibate older man possible realize anything about normal life?


And as mentioned previously, churches are under no

~Heather~

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-23-2003
Tue, 04-14-2009 - 2:39pm

Yes, I was lucky in that respect - I still compare all men to him...however, he lived 1700 miles away & I only saw him once a year.


iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
Wed, 04-15-2009 - 12:10pm

"...then why bother believing in Jesus at all? I was taught that he was a loving and compassionate person who embraced the people everyone feared, because everyone is intrinsically valuable as a human."<


Exactly!


 


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