Sat Feb 3rd

MUST-READ

Do read the Spiegel's feature on Pope Benedict (I've linked you to the English version) - an excellent commentary on this papacy. At last some of the media are getting beyond the Ratzinger-bashing to the real story.

A golden sunny day, and the crocuses are out in the garden - started as tiny purple spears this morning and are now open.

(Terrifying headines in all the press about global warming. Whatever the facts, this extraordinary winter-without-a-winter has made us all think there may be something in it).

I have been sent a copy of David Morrison's "Beyond Gay" (Our Sunday Visitor Publishing, USA) - an excellent read. It explains very well how old-fashioned and heavily condemnatory approaches to the subject from Christians played into homosexual-activists' hands. A debate in a college magazine about a plan to ban funding for the Gay and Lesbian Student Union:"I wrote from my recent, real-life experience of growing up with same-sex attraction in solation, loneliness and fear and the liberation I found as part of GLSU. The Christian wrote the homosexuality was a sin, an overturning of the moral order, and deserved to be condemned. When the measure came before the student government, student lawmakers voted it down overwhlemingly." In due time, Morrison found that "gay activism" and an accompanying lifestyle didn't make life bearable, didn't lead anywhere, caused only anguish, and found a wholly new and different way in Christ. His description of this journey, and of how this whole issue should be handled, are of extraordinary value in our current debates. He quotes the approach given in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC 2357, 2358, 2359) with approval, together with the 1986 letter from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith detailing pastoral approaches, and sees this as the way forward.This is an issue that isn't going to go away.