Word: newmans
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...Newman, whose ideas on conscience and faith have influenced Christian theology to the present day, is expected to be beatified next year, following the Vatican's recent certification of a Newman miracle - when a Boston man's cure from a crippling spinal disease could not be explained medically. The final step of canonization - full sainthood - will require proof of an additional miracle achieved through the intercession of Newman's spirit. The Vatican announced plans this month to move Newman's remains from a small grave site in the central English town of Rednal to a specially built sarcophagus...
...British gay-rights activist Peter Tatchell sees ulterior motives in exhuming the Cardinal: "embarrassment" because of his relationship with St. John. "They were inseparable. They lived together for half a century, effectively like husband and wife," says Tatchell. "There were repeated allegations during [Newman's] lifetime about his circle of homosexual friends. It is uncertain whether their relationship involved sex. It is quite likely that both men had a gay orientation but chose to abstain from sexual relations. But abstinence does not alter a person's sexual orientation." Tatchell says that the two men's bond, and Newman's abiding...
...Father Paul Chavasse of Birmingham, who has led the cause for Cardinal Newman's beatification, said moving the remains has nothing to do with St. John. "Part of the established procedure prior to a beatification requires that, if the body of the new 'Beatus' exists, then it must be exhumed, inspected and transferred to a place of honor befitting the person's new status," Chavasse told the Vatican-sponsored Zenit news agency. "As a great man of the Church and devoted to the saints himself, Cardinal Newman would have been the first to insist on obeying a request...
...sure, there is no evidence that Newman ever broke his vow of celibacy. British-based Catholic-affairs writer Melanie McDonagh noted in the Times of London this week that Newman "would have regarded gay sex as an abomination...
...brouhaha over Newman's burial place can also be seen as fallout from an increasingly hard line against homosexuality taken by traditionalist Catholic Church leaders. Before rising to the papacy, the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger signed a Vatican document that said gay people have a "disordered sexual inclination which is essentially self-indulgent." Since his election, Pope Benedict XVI has repeatedly condemned gay marriage and said that no one should be admitted to the seminary who has deep-rooted homosexual tendencies...