'CHUCKLES' AND 'COMO': +DRENNAN AND +COMENSOLI AT WORLD YOUTH DAY

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Archbishop Peter Comensoli of Melbourne reportedly held a 'Listening and Dialogue Encounter this week with Victoria's LGBTIQA+ Community' to 'discern what God is asking of Catholics in Australia 'at this time'.

Go to https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/melbourne-archbishop-enlists-gay-activists-to-remake-australian-church to get the whole awful story. And to get a pic of Archbishop Peter Comensoli. (A picture, as they say, tells a thousand words.)

If you're raising your eyebrows at the idea of asking active homosexuals what 'their vision' is for how the Church must change to correspond with the new times, you should know that Archbishop Comensoli and our very own Bishop Charles Drennan of the Palmerston North Diocese in little old NZ are 'mates'.

+Drennan was obviously pretty excited by his 'quick streetside catch  up' with 'Como', as he calls the archbishop, in Panama at World Youth Day. 

"Hey Chuckles!" was the greeting he heard, and 'there he was waving out'. Yes that's right, 'Chuckles' is what +Comensoli calls +Drennan. (But don't get ideas, don't get familiar, because 'only Peter calls me that'.)

Organisers of this 'LGBTIQA+ (are these people serious, will they keep on going to the end of the alphabet? ) Encounter' state that decisions made at the Plenary Council in 2021 which will conclude a series of such 'encounters' will become binding for the Catholic Church in Australia'.

This is where we stop laughing (or chuckling), people. This is where it gets very serious. And not just for Australia. +Chuckles and +Como sound like they're two hearts that beat as one. Watch out for LGBTIQA+ being asked for their 'vision for the Church' in Enzed, and RESIST.

+Drennan tells us on his blog that when a Jamaican girl at WYD claimed that 'the Church defines her as the result of fornication' he was silent. The best response he could make, apparently, was to seek her out later and give her a hug.

When you have no words, a hug is great. Of course. But +Drennan has the words of Jesus Christ. He's a priest. He's a Bishop of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. He knows that the Church defines no one as 'the result of fornication'. 

He could have explained the Church's teaching on chastity. He could have explained the Sixth Commandment and the reason God gave it and Jesus Christ affirmed it. Anyone can give a girl a hug (and hope that some day she won't come at him for harassment and sex abuse), but +Drennan is a priest and a bishop, and as such he could also have offered that poor kid the great grace of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. 

When did you last hear the word 'chastity' spoken from the pulpit?

It makes me angry that mothers of girls in Catholic schools in +Drennan's own diocese, the schools he's so happy to spend a morning in, have to deal with 17 year-old daughters who have sex with boys in Catholic schools. That they have to deal with pregnant daughters. 

"The dream for which Jesus gave his life on the cross", to quote +Drennan's blog, is the salvation of all souls, by loving one another as I have loved you - that is, by loving God first and loving one another for His sake. 

Next time +Drennan gets "the preside and preach nod"* could he please preach the doctrine and tradition of the Catholic Church, and explain to his young people that sex outside marriage is mortal sin, which if unrepented and unconfessed means eternity in Hell.

Or does he want the next generation to confront him, saying that 'the Church defines me as a result of fornication?


*+Drennan's expression, 'the preside and preach nod', used on his blog gives a lot away. The priest at Mass does not 'preside' (like he's president, say of the PTA), he celebrates Holy Mass.