Omar Mateen was a Muslim .
Omar Mateen even took time from his shooting spree in Orlando's Pulse gay nightclub to call 911, pledging his allegiance to the Muslim ISIS/Islamic State.
But the Catholic bishop of St. Petersburg, Florida, does not blame Mateen the Muslim or Islam, but instead blames Catholics .
In a June 13 post titled " Orlando, Orlando We Love You " on his blog, For His Friends, Bishop Robert Lynch writes:
"sadly it is religion, including our own, which targets, mostly verbally, and also often breeds contempt for gays, lesbians and transgender people . Attacks today on LGBT men and women often plant the seed of contempt, then hatred, which can ultimately lead to violence. [...] Without yet knowing who perpetrated the PULSE mass murders, [...] I knew that somewhere in the story there would be a search to find religious roots. While deranged people do senseless things, all of us observe, judge and act from some kind of religious background. Singling out people for victimization because of their religion, their sexual orientation, their nationality must be offensive to God's ears. It has to stop also."
So without even knowing the identity of the shooter(s), Bishop Lynch already put the finger of blame on Catholicism and Catholics! Amazing . . . .
Then Lynch presumes to know what America's Founding Fathers, whom he politically-correctly, gender-neutrally calls "founding parents," really meant by the Second Amendment - that they never meant the American people to have the right to own assault weapons:
" Our founding parents had no knowledge of assault rifles which are intended to be weapons of mass destruction. In crafting the second amendment to the Constitution which I affirm, they thought only of the most awkward of pistols and heavy shotguns . I suspect they are turning in their graves if they can but glimpse at what their words now protect. It is long past time to ban the sale of all assault weapons whose use should be available only to the armed forces. If one is truly pro-life, then embrace this issue also and work for the elimination of sales to those who would turn them on innocents."
Lynch ends his blog post with a swipe at Donald Trump, but without having the courage or honesty of naming Trump. Lynch decries that "barring people of Muslim only faith from entering the country solely because of their stated faith until they can be checked out is un-American, even in these most challenging of times and situations."
Hey, Bishop Lynch, when you blame Catholicism for the Orlando gay-club shooting, are you referring to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Section 2, Chapter 2, Article 6? -
2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,141 tradition has always declared that " homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered ."142 They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.
In other words, Bishop Lynch, you, a bishop of the Catholic Church, take issue with the Catechism of the Catholic Church. And your parishioners are supposed to obey and submit to your authority? How laughable.
Furthermore, Bishop Lynch, if you're looking for a religion that not only "verbally targets" and "breeds hatred for," but undertakes "violence" against homosexuals, you really should look to Islam instead of Catholicism or Christianity. From :
The traditional schools of Islamic law based on Quranic verses and hadith consider homosexual acts a punishable crime and a sin. [...] Extreme prejudice remains, both socially and legally, in much of the Islamic world against people who engage in homosexual acts. In Afghanistan, Brunei, Iran, Mauritania, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates and Yemen, homosexual activity carries the death penalty. In others, such as Algeria, Maldives, Malaysia, Qatar, Somalia and Syria, it is illegal.
I expect this kind of nonsense from the LGBT publication, The Advocate, but not from a Catholic bishop. No wonder respect for the Catholic clergy plummets by the day.
See also:
