{"id":7347,"date":"2004-05-05T08:21:44","date_gmt":"2004-05-05T08:21:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/flexible.html"},"modified":"2004-05-05T08:21:44","modified_gmt":"2004-05-05T08:21:44","slug":"flexible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/flexible.html","title":{"rendered":"Flexible"},"content":{"rendered":"

Papal Envoy to Spain says times they are a’ changin’ <\/a><\/p>\n

\nMonsignor Manuel Monteiro de Castro told a conference of Spanish bishops at the weekend: “The new political situation in which we are living in Spain sets new challenges in the spreading of the gospel and we must meet those challenges in an appropriate manner.” <\/p>\n

Departing from his prepared speech, the papal nuncio added that although the law in Spain, and many other countries, defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman, “there are other forms of cohabitation and it is good that they be recognised”. <\/p>\n

The uncommonly outspoken remarks, reported in the Spanish press, will cause extreme annoyance within a papal circle desperate to stop the encroachment of what it sees as decadent sexual morality. <\/p>\n

Although he insisted that same-sex unions could not be regarded as marriages, the envoy implied that they were at least worthy of compassion. <\/p>\n

“They are not the same as marriage,” he said. “We will leave the term marriage for that which it has always referred to, and other arrangements should be given other names.” <\/p>\n

The nuncio said gay couples should be given access to certain civil rights, including those within the social security system. He added: “The church can also help them in their spiritual life.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, I hope the Church would help people with their spiritual lives. Sure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Papal Envoy to Spain says times they are a’ changin’ Monsignor Manuel Monteiro de Castro told a conference of Spanish bishops at the weekend: “The new political situation in which we are living in Spain sets new challenges in the spreading of the gospel and we must meet those challenges in an appropriate manner.” Departing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nFlexible - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/flexible.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Flexible - 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7347\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}