Former Jesuit and Georgetown Prof Emerging as Same-Sex “Marriage” Crusader
Apparently he likes to play pocket pool.
A former Jesuit priest who still teaches at Georgetown University is emerging as one of the foremost leaders in the campaign to legalize same-sex “marriage” and as the outspoken director of an organization that is harshly critical of the Catholic bishops in their struggle against the HHS contraceptive mandate.
Former Jesuit priest Joseph Palacios, whose priestly status is unclear, is one of the founders and directors of the Catholics for Equality, which “works to educate American Catholics that supporting full freedom and equality for LGBT people is consistent with the best of Catholic social justice teaching and American values.”
The Cardinal Newman Society opposed the organization when it began to organize two years ago on the Jesuit campus. At the time, CNS quoted a supporter:
On his blog at Bilerico.com, founding board member Rev. Anthony Adams describes the mission of Catholics for Equality as “a bit like mutiny”: “It is laced with the strong conviction that the bishops no longer speak for the Catholic Church and that the voices of the bishops are no longer the voices of Jesus Christ.”
As this quote indicates, the organization doesn’t limit itself to LGBT issues. Attacking the activities of the U.S. bishops appears also to be an important part of its agenda.
Currently, the lead story on the organization’s website is a message to the bishops, saying, “Your antics are hurting the Church” with a picture of Timothy Cardinal Dolan of New York. Cardinal Dolan has taken the lead in opposing the Obama administration’s HHS contraceptive mandate, which U.S. bishops have decried as a threat to religious freedom.
Palacios is quoted in a Catholics for Equality press release blasting the bishops.
“The bishops no longer represent Catholics in the pews on so many social issues, from contraception to legal equality for LGBT people,” Palacios is quoted saying. “We also reject the bishops’ election year campaign that they are now somehow victims of religious liberty.”
Palacios’ priestly status is something of a mystery. Palacios told The Cardinal Newman Society that he left the Jesuit order and that he is now “a retired priest from Los Angeles” but wouldn’t elaborate on that. He is listed on the Catholics for Equality website as “Dr. Joseph Palacios, Foundation Director and Founding Board Member.” No reference is made to his being a priest.
[Father?] Palacios was formerly a member of the Georgetown University’s sociology department. According to an administrator in that department, however, Palacios is no longer a member of the department. He is listed on a Georgetown website, however, as teaching a course this summer in Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies. The course is entitled “Introduction to the Social Sciences,” according to the website.
The course, according to the prospectus on the website, will help students acquire a “social imagination” and “understand the place of structures and institutions in their lives.”
Sadly, a website for Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies notes the former Jesuit’s work as a member of the Board of Directors of The Center (DC Metro GLBT Community Center ) which advocates for same-sex “marriage.”
Palacios said in a 2010 interview that much of the Church’s teaching on sexuality is “scientifically unfounded.”
“So much of the natural-law teaching that the [C]hurch uses for sexual ethics is material that is scientifically unfounded. People know this” he reportedly said. “So they just bypass natural-law teaching regarding contraceptive use because it’s not the lived experience of people, and science knows that most of this has no reality to it.”
When asked about his responsibility to convey the Church’s teachings, he said, “We’re there to neither preach an ideology of the [C]church, nor are we to commit to set an agenda. We’re there to take the gospel on Sunday and interpret it in a good way, a scholarly way, present contextual situations, and let people form their own consciences regarding things.”
Palacios also said he would consider officiating a gay “marriage” in a civil ceremony.
Father Feeney warned in the 1950s that the Jesuit seminaries were beginning to bring in homosexuals
As I said in a reply to a similar comment on another thread (and to which I add: Based on a reading of print materials by various members of the original St. Benedict Center as well as conversations with the same and some of their close supporters), Fr. Feeney said nothing about homosexuals in Jesuit seminaries or colleges or in those of other religious orders or dioceses, but he did warn about the dangers of theological liberalism in those institutions especially from members of those orders or dioceses sent for advanced study to places such as Harvard where they imbibed the liberalism there. Also, he noted a link between loss of faith and loss of morals. Bishop Sheen noted the same link on one of his television programs.