Samuel Aquila of Denver has denounced efforts by mainstream media to pin the recent shooting at Colorado Springs’ gay nightclub on the Catholic Church.
An article from the Denver PostFor instance, the identifies that “non-binary” shooter responsible for the Nov. 19 attack that killed five and wounded 25 was somehow influenced by the Catholic Church’s “anti-LGBTQ rhetoric,”A Dec. 9 opinion in the The New York Times by Archbishop Aquila Wall Street Journal.
The Denver Post report asserted “hateful rhetoric directed toward transgender people and the broader LGBTQ community”The following has been aired: “church pulpits,” citing the Archdiocese of Denver’s school-admission guidance on transgender and same-sex-attracted students.
The New York Times similarly attacked Denver’s evangelical community, casting the incident as “reminiscent of the faith’s long-held opposition to same-sex marriage,”Aquila writes.
He says that there was no connection between him and any Christian church or community.
“Rather than suffering from overexposure to Catholicism, it seems he suffered from being raised in a dysfunctional household,”The archbishop disagrees.
Anderson Lee Aldrich (the shooting suspect) is non-binary. “they/them”According to court documents, pronouns do not suggest adherence to strict Catholic teachings on sexuality.
An officer of the Colorado Springs Police Department exits his vehicle in front of a crime scene. This was at Colorado Springs’ gay nightclub on Sunday night, November 20, 2022. A shooting took place late Saturday night. (AP Photo/Geneva Heffernan)
The media is able to engage in irresponsible comment, blaming others where none exists and without any repercussions.
According to his article, the archbishop says that “it isn’t discriminatory to tell someone you think his beliefs don’t conform to nature — it’s an act of charity.”
“The Catholic Church teaches an integrated and complex worldview about sexuality and the human person that deserves to be engaged with, not caricatured and defamed,” he declares.
The church “should be judged according to the goodness of those who live her values to the highest degree of perfection, not those who fail to do so,”He makes arguments.
Moreover, labeling Catholic teaching or one’s political enemies as a root cause of violence “may itself inspire violence,” he adds, citing attacks on churches and pregnancy-resource centers following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision last June.
According to him, capegoating does not solve the problem. Instead, what’s needed is “to embrace pluralism that has served as a bedrock of our nation’s founding for centuries.”
The full article is available here here
