Pastor in Puyallup charged with child molesting

TACOMA, Wash. -- A pastor in Puyallup has pleaded innocent to four counts of child molesting involving two sisters whose family attends his church. The Rev. Forrest Lee Hudson, 65, pastor of Pleasant Hill Missionary Baptist Church, was arrested Friday, posted $100,000 bail and remained free after his arraignment Tuesday in Pierce County Superior Court on first-degree child molestation and three counts of second-degree child molestation.

Judge Vicki L. Hogan ordered Hudson to avoid any contact with anyone under 18 but did not bar him from ministering to his congregation. According to documents filed by prosecutors in court, Hudson inappropriately touched and kissed the two girls, ages 12 and 13. Defense lawyer Michael E. Schwartz said outside the courtroom he will "vigorously fight" the charges.

Sheriff's detectives began investigating Hudson last week after receiving a report that he was sexually abusing the two sisters, both of whom told a forensic child interviewer he had been molesting them since they were 11 and 12, respectively, and had given them money, jewelry and shoes.

Hudson told Detectives Elizabeth A. Lindt and Mark W. Merod on Friday he worked as a public school teacher in Seattle for 27 years before leaving in 1999 after being accused of inappropriately touching a female student. He also said he occasionally gave the girls presents and called them girlfriend and "dear heart" but denied fondling either one.

Catholics aren’t Christians? Ignorance does not become you.

Btw, Baptist Ministers have their own problems with sexual abuse. Here’s a sampling from Texas alone.

According to public records, the following persons are included in The Texas Department of Public Safety Sex Offender Registry at https://records.txdps.state.tx.us/DPS_WEB/Portal/index.aspx or have been convicted of a sexual offense. Baptist General Convention of Texas records indicate that these persons may have been ministers in a BGCT-affiliated church.

Additional names will be posted as the BGCT is provided with accurate information about clergy who are convicted of a sexual offense. This page should not be considered exhaustive or complete as the BGCT does not have the resources to make private investigations.

Andrew Argent – Texas DPS offender database SID#07497384

Joshua Ross Hyles – Texas DPS sex offender database SID# 05941153

Michael Lee Jones – Texas DPS sex offender database SID# 06217201

Joel Dean Joslin – Texas DPS sex offender database SID# 07106980

John O. McKay, Jr. – Texas DPS offender database SID#07081987

Larry Nuell Neathery – Texas DPS offender database SID#07454573

Morris David Roberts – Texas DPS sexual offender database SID# 07151613

Frank William Sizemore - Texas DPS sexual offender database SID# 02014333

Kenneth Eugene Ward – Texas DPS sexual offender database SID# 06191027

Robert Alton McClurg - Texas DPS offender database SID# 07443727

http://www.bgct.org/texasbaptists/Page.aspx?&pid=4288&srcid=824

Those who throw stones you know.......

Btw, sexual abuse by any adult against a child is wrong and the perp should face life in prison. If it’s Baptists, Catholics, Angelicans, Mormons, Agnostics, Muslims covering up the situation, both those who engage in the coverup as well as the perp should spend the rest of their life in prison.

Catholics aren’t Christians? Ignorance does not become you.

If we go by what the Bible says, then no, they're not. "For by grace and ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast." (Ephesians 2:8-9). "Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing if regeneration, and renewing of the Holg Ghost." (Titus 3:5) Any religious system that is based on earning merit with God through man's works is incompatible with the Bible, and is hence false.

Btw, Baptist Ministers have their own problems with sexual abuse. Here’s a sampling from Texas alone.

If I were to provide a list of Catholic priests who have had, ahem, indiscretions with minors, I'd get kicked off FR for eating up all their bandwidth. The point is that, while every group has their "bad apples", so to speak, it seems that the Catholic barrel is a bit more spoiled than most of the others. Even the Orthodox, who are pretty much the same as Catholics, don't have the problems that the RCR has. Why is that?

Correct, which is why the Catholic church flatly rejects that idea.

The only people who can perform meritorious works are those who are in the state of grace, that is to say, already saved.

Unfortunately, this isn't really the case. The Catechism, ppg. 1987 says,

"The grace of the Holy Spirit has the power to justify us, that is, to cleanse us from our sins and to communicate to us 'the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ' and through Baptism."

The Bible never says that baptism, in and of itself, provides justification or grace. Instead, justification comes from Christ - from the work He did, and this grace is given when one believes on Christ. Romans 4:25 tells us that we are justified by His resurrection, in addition to being saved by His death and the shedding of His blood. I Peter 3:21 tells us that baptism is a "like figure" - a didactic picture of that real resurrection of Christ which enables us to be saved. "And through baptism" is an addition not supported by Scripture, which is therefore an additional work designed to give merit, i.e. to "earn" the grace of the Holy Spirit. Per what the Catechism says, grace is at least partially given in response to a deed (baptism), rather than the deed following the grace.

The Bible never says that baptism, in and of itself, provides justification or grace ... I Peter 3:21 tells us that baptism is a "like figure" - a didactic picture of that real resurrection of Christ which enables us to be saved.

Nope. You're misreading that Scripture rather completely. It says that baptism is a "like figure" to Noah's ark (the immediately preceding reference), by which eight people "were saved through water". It continues: "This prefigures baptism, which saves you now."

Your theology of baptism is additionally mistaken in regarding baptism as something we do to somehow earn favor with God. The sacraments are something God does in every case -- he is the real celebrant and the real priest -- to confer grace on the unworthy. You can't earn baptism or deserve it any more than you can earn heaven or deserve it. It's 100% gift.

And you are partially quoting it for convenience.

Remembering the scriptural context, we note that Noah was already saved when he built the ark - Genesis 6:8 tells us that Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Noah already had been the recipient of God's grace. The ark was a means by which Noah escaped judgment. Building the ark in and of itself didn't save Noah and his family, the fact that God already gave him unmerited favour did. Noah and his family were saved physically by the ark from the waters, but they were already just in God's eyes previous to that, through the extension of God's grace.

Baptism is a symbol of that fact of justification already had. We see that any efficacy that may be had is had by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, not the baptism itself. If we skip over the parenthetical in I Peter 3:21 for a moment, the verse would read, "The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us....by the resurrection of Jesus Christ:" The parenthetic statement "(not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,)" is included by Peter so that his readers would not misunderstand his statement and attach any saving efficacy to the baptism itself. What Peter is saying is that just as the ark was the vehicle by which those whom God had already justified were rescued from His coming wrath, so also the resurrection of Jesus Christ is a promise of rescue from the future wrath to come for those who have already received justification from God. The scriptures elsewhere repeatedly emphasise that this justification comes not from works, but from God's grace, His unmerited favour.

The problem with your argument here is that you can't claim the above and yet claim that justification is by grace alone. The Catholic sacraments are for Catholics only - for people who the Roman Catholic religion consider as being "in the Church" (a community which usually is entered involuntarily through paedobaptism, and which is, as the name suggests, confirmed at their confirmation). Now, if a person is "in the Church", then that necessarily presupposes that this person is already saved, if we wish to take a Scriptural definition of it. There is no place in Scripture where any other than saved people are part of a church. So, let's say you're a good Catholic, your in the Church, you've been baptised, you've been confirmed, you're saved. Why then would you need to have grace conferred upon you through the sacraments? If you're already saved, you can't get MORE saved. That paragraph from the Catechism I read earlier clearly says that along with believing on Christ, baptism is another means by which the Holy Spirit justifies us, which would logically be understood as a conference of grace, and other portions of the Catechism say things very similar about receiving the mass and other sacraments.

If sacraments confer grace towards salvation (and this is the way it is presented), then that makes salvation a process. You're not saved at some singular point in time, you're continuing to progress towards justification, or "full" justification, and the means by which to do this is through the sacraments - which you yourself get to choose how much of and how often you take, in large measure. This makes the sacraments a work which you perform so as to "get" additional measures of this grace which you believe God extends when you perform them. This is backwards from the Scriptural presentation of justification.

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