Father Wojciech Giertych, who reviews the speeches of Pope Francis for theological accuracy, was interviewed by LifeSiteNews.com, a Canadian pro-life news website.

Asked about the incursion of homosexuality and gay marriage on religious freedom, Father Giertych said "this is not an issue which is reacting against the Church's teaching — this is a fundamental anthropological change".

He described this as "a distortion of humanity which is being proposed as an ideology, which is being supported, financed, promoted by those who are powerful in the world in many, many, countries simultaneously".

"The Church," he added, "is the only institution in the world which has the courage to stand up to this ideology."

The 61-year-old priest of Polish background saidÚ "I've seen the Communist ideology, which seemed to be so powerful, and it's gone! Ideologies come and go, and they have the idea of changing humanity, of changing human nature.

"Human nature cannot be changed; it can be distorted. But the elevation of perversion to the level of a fundamental value that has to be nurtured and nourished and promoted — this is absolutely sick."

Speaking of practising homosexuals Father Giertych said "of course they have to be treated with dignity, everybody has to be treated with dignity, even sinners have to be treated with dignity, but the best way of treating people with dignity is to tell them the truth.

"And if we escape from the truth we're not treating them with dignity."

Drawing an analogy to smoking cigarettes, he said this is also unnatural.

"You can live with the addiction to tobacco, you can die of it, but there are people who are addicted to tobacco, yet they live and we meet with them and we deal with them and we don't deny their dignity," he said.

"So certainly people with the homosexual difficulty have to be respected .… And so the important thing is how to pastorally help such people to return to an emotional and moral integrity."

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It seems that, as a result of our growing understanding of the unrealized potential we possess, there is a perception that human beings are infinitely plastic and that we can mold ourselves into any form we choose. This attitude the latest manifestation of an age-old human tendency to overweening pride - hubris; we think we can become as God is. It is the contemporary version of the story of Adam and Eve.

I am no Usain Bolt; no matter how much I tried, even in my younger days, I could never have covered 100 metres in less than ten seconds unassisted on a horizontal surface, even if I was being pursued by a fierce mountain lion. The only way I could manage such a feat would be by being rolled on my side down a very steep hill, or jumping from an airplane.

I am neither a materialist nor a duelist - (I hope). I do not think I am just a body. My visible being is just the surface of an unknowable multi-faceted mystery. But I am a body, and because I am a body, a particular, unique body, there are some things I cannot do.

Who I am and what I can become does depend a lot on my attitude to life, but there are limits. These limits are set my genetic inheritance - the 46 chromosomes that ensure I am a human being and not a fruit fly, and the particular arrangement of genes lined up on those chromosomes that ensure a I am white, short, balding, male human being. These possessions gave me the potential, should I have had the passion earlier in life, of aspiring at least, to being an All Black front rower but never a twinkle-toed ballerina.

There are some things I cannot do. I cannot fly.... never been able to. I cannot be nourished by the sun, like plants can. And although cloning is now a possibility, I cannot, as some primitive animals can, split down the middle and become two people. Imagine if we could! Because I am a man I cannot give birth to a baby. Because I am not as young as I was, I cannot climb the stairs five at a time.

I wonder if some people are uncomfortable about being animals. Animals are such messy, smelly, unpredictable, swishy things aren't they? We burp - and worse! We wear out with use; we start to sag wrinkle and stretch. Hair stops growing where is should and starts growing where it shouldn't. The mind plays Russian roulette with our memories. We get hungry, tired and weary. We die.

But I like being an animal, with all its limitations. Being an animal is what makes living such fun. It would be so boring to be an angel or a pure spirit of any kind. I love the heat of the sun on my body earth under my feet. The taste of food, the coolness of water, the wild untamed instincts that may my body fizz and bubble... even if some of them seem longer very useful and can sometimes get me into trouble.

The human species is evolving of course, and it is possible that one day we will be genderless beings giving birth by parthenogenesis. Maybe, as described in Aldous Huxley's "A Brave New World", human beings will be brewed in batches of 88 identical beings all colour coded depending on their designated task in life, and spontaneous baby making will be criminalised. If this happens it will take a lot of the fun out of life but everything will be much tidier.

We may in centuries to come be able to fly, to absorb energy directly from the sun and to pass instantaneously from one place to another. But for the time being we would do well to just accept our limitations and enjoy our animal pleasures and endure the limitations.

Denis O'Hagan is a Marist priest, the editor of CathNews New Zealand, and among many other things, a former teacher of biology.

Listening to a programme on the radio about restorative justice a few years ago, I was reduced to sudden and copious tears by an exchange between a grieving mother and her daughter's imprisoned killer. The mother, though well aware she would never get over the loss of her child, was prepared, after long and painful self-examination, to offer the killer her forgiveness.

He, though well aware that he could not undo what he had done, felt he had been given, through the forgiveness of the person to whom he had caused the most appalling suffering, a chance for redemption.

His contrition and recognition of the hurt he had inflicted, a demonstration of the compassion so lacking in the commission of the crime, was an essential part of what had made the mother able to forgive.

The granting of forgiveness, especially in circumstances like this, is such a powerful and moving thing - such an essentially human thing - it's small wonder that virtually all religions have annexed it, as they have love, spirituality and the notion of truth itself, as a way to bind human beings to themselves.

Some have made redemption, the seeking of or granting of forgiveness, the very core of their belief and practice.

It should hardly need saying, but then again perhaps it does, that forgiveness and redemption are no more the creations or possessions of any religion than soul music is an invention of Adele.

True, religious traditions have produced some of the most beautiful meditations on forgiveness, and served as a way of reminding societies of its importance, but it does not belong to them.

Continue reading "To forgive isn't divine, it's deeply human."

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But people living in cities in highly developed countries were less likely to hold religious beliefs than those living a more rural way of life, the researchers found.

The project involved 57 academics in 20 countries around the world, and spanned disciplines including anthropology, psychology, and philosophy.

It set out to establish whether belief in divine beings and an afterlife were ideas simply learned from society or integral to human nature.

One of the studies, from Oxford, concluded that children below the age of five found it easier to believe in some "superhuman" properties than to understand human limitations.

Children were asked whether their mother would know the contents of a closed box. Three-year-olds believed that their mother and God would always know the contents, but by the age of four, children start to understand that their mothers were not omniscient.

Separate research from China suggested that people across different cultures instinctively believed that some part of their mind, soul or spirit lived on after death.

Continue reading more of the Oxford Study: Belief in God is part of human nature

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• Image: Changemakers