Posted on 07/26/2013 2:57:13 PM PDT by Alex Murphy
Nearly forty years ago, I was an aggressive pro-life candidate for public office. When the campaign was over, I was visited by two very earnest young Mormons serving their missionary year who had been sent by the President (or equivalent of bishop) of the local Stake (equivalent of diocese) who told me they had been instructed to do whatever I asked them to do as pro-lifers. I told them I was a cradle Catholic who would not convert and that I was not sure what to ask them to do.
Later, when I was active at a national level in College Republicans, Young Republicans and Young Americans for Freedom, I met many Mormons who were unfailingly clean-cut, respectful, solid conservatives and pro-lifers. When not in Utah, a few would drink an occasional light beer or Coca Cola a bit bashfully.
Other than that, I have encountered some folks here who say that they are Mormons and, again, found them to be reliably conservative and pro-life.
Now, there have been Mormons in public office who have been quite disappointing. First and foremost is Mitt Romney whom I regard as a phony, an unrepentant pro-abort and a wide variety of other unacceptable things. I refused to vote for him. I also despised his father George Romney as a radical who had no business in the GOP. I believe that the late Frank Church was a similar poor excuse for a Mormon and for an American. There are a variety of Udalls in public life who usually take (or took) the wrong positions on everything important but occasionally had a libertarian inspiration or two. Orrin Hatch has been a reasonably decent US Senator. Mike Lee is outstanding. Robert Bennett is not missed. Jon Huntsman is a disgrace. Harry Reid is, well, Harry Reid. What more can be said?
It is hard for me to claim that the bad Mormons have not been expelled from Mormonism when my own Roman Catholic Church does not publicly excommunicate and humiliate such deserving counterfeit "Catholics" as the late Edward Kennedy (along with most Hyannisport related Kennedys), Nancy Pelosi, Rosa DeLauro, Patrick Leahy, Christopher Dodd, Christopher Murphy, Robert Menendez, Arnold Schwartzenegger, Susan Collins, Richard Durbin, Joseph Biden, and so many, many others. These are my enemies and in no sense whatsoever are they my co-religionists. I know it. They know it. Let's formalize it.
The points you raise against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints are well worth pondering by the leaders of that church. Perhaps the Prophet might provide a new revelation to bring the church firmly into the ambit of the traditional morality once dominant in Western Civilization and ponder what Brigham Young might have done to anyone in Mormonism tolerating abortion in his time.
I am a Roman Catholic. I suspect you are as well. At least, you are apparently not Mormon. Neither you nor I will have a meaningful influence in changing those aspects of the LDS as an institution as to which you rightly object.
Again, I am disappointed to learn what you have taught but it is worth learning. Thanks for the correction. May God bless you and yours!
You are welcome. The post is the simple truth. Many Reformed Christians have earned those words and suffered to do so but also were filled with the joy of our Lord for doing so. May God bless you and yours!
Superb post! May God bless you and yours!
There are thousands of Christians, Catholic and Reformed, who went to jail in many states in Operation Rescue and similar movements.
The Baptist pastor whom you reference was not alone. I represented many folks, Catholic and Reformed, who went to jail rather than pay court costs or fines or even promise not to break the law in the future or most certainly not to go back to the abortion mills.
You are absolutely correct that the attitude in the pews is vitally important and that it is the folks in the pews that vote.
It was my privilege, as an attorney, to repeatedly represent the late Fr. Norman Weslin in my previous home state. He was the elderly priest arrested at Notre Shame University for simply carrying a cross onto the campus in protest on the day that Obozo defiled that already defiled campus by speaking there at graduation.
Fr. Weslin sometimes seemed to be serving life in prison on the installment plan as he absolutely refused to obey any court order perceived as supportive of abortion. If Fr. Weslin was jailed, an entire network of Christians of all persuasions would come to the abortion mill from which he had been jailed and hammer that mill day in and day out. Enter the premises. Flood the premises with many pro-lifers. Desterilize the instruments. Put broken raw eggs into the suction machines. Resist being dragged off to jail. Resist in jail. Provide a Biblical witness in court and otherwise to judge, jury, court personnel, general public and especially to fellow prisoners. Be released as impossible prisoners. State after state. Mill after mill. Last May (2012), worn out in service to God, ravaged by Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, he passed away.
Fr. Weslin had also worked for Mother Teresa in New York fishing alcoholics and narcotics addicts out of the gutters and putting them on their feet, restoring their faith and self-respect, often turning them to the task of combating the abortion mills. I had the privilege of representing them as well. Those folks, along with Fr. Weslin, were among the very toughest Rescuers in this country.
He often addressed very pro-life Reformed congregations to recruit Rescuers and spread the message. He did so with respect, with humility, with charming good humor and unvarnished truth and on a few occasions with a singing voice like chalk on a blackboard. The singing voice was the one flaw I ever noticed in the man.
Let's pull that wedge out, shall we? I know that Reformed you and Catholic I differ on some important religious matters but the 95% that unites us is also important. Your Savior and mine knew that His flock would not be as one. That flock need not be as one for us to join together as fellow Christians in service to Him on matters such as resisting abortion.
I hope that I have never denigrated you or your faith here. I hope never to do so in the future. If I have, I assure you that I have adjusted my attitude and will strive not to do so again. I apologize for any offense I may have ever given to you.
May God bless you and yours!
Did not! Did too! Did not! Did too! Did not! Did too!.... (Repeat endlessly until you are carted off to the glue factory).
Sadly I don’t think it had a positive impact on many of the posters on this thread. If I start to fall back into bad habits feel free to give me some fraternal correction.
Thank you for that wonderful post.
For the record, I do not identify as Reformed.
I take some issue on their position of election and choice.
Er,.... not *choice* as in abortion, but choice in regard to what is sometimes labeled *free will*.
Thank you, for your kind reply and wishes.
Would love to sit and talk with you sometime, though probably not likely to happen.
Blessings to you and yours, as well!
Man. Where did you get that? There are plenty of Catholics that leave. Where do you think Protestants get their congregations? I left when I was 13 and returned when my wife to be wanted to be married Catholic. I am glad to be back. It isn't perfect. Nothing involving human beings ever is. But, it's right for me.
Yes, Catholics can leave anytime. I just wish the ones who give us a bad name would be shown the door.
huh?
I think they might make up a very small percentage of Protestant congregations.
You didn't have to get "re-baptized" when you return, did you?
I might have misinterpreted your original post, "Isn’t the Roman Catholic Church the one you can never really leave, like the “family?”"
By "family", I thought you meant, like the Mafia. That can be a tough "family" to leave. My friend's grandfather managed to leave that family though. At least, that was the story his parents told him.
BTTT!
Your post is effective evidence for several conclusions, chiefly that Protestantism, while it harbors genuine Christians, is a failed revolt.
Herein lies the crux of the problem. I can understand that you did not really believe Jesus was who he said he was while you attended church, and later came to repentance and faith. Changing from Baptist to Presbyterian makes no sense and shows the fundamental flaw in Protestantism; it really is a continuous protest without apostolic succession.
How so?
What do the major historians of Protestantism say? Like almost all their colleagues, John Dillenberger and Claude Welch link the origin of the word Protestant to the ‘Protestation’ of the German evangelical estates in the second Diet of Speyer. But they see in that term “the duality of protest and affirmative witness.” That protest, they write, wasfrom the standpoint of affirmed faith. Few churches ever adopted the name “Protestant.” The most commonly adopted designations were rather “evangelical” and “reformed.” ... [W]hen the word Protestant came into currency in England (in Elizabethan times), its accepted significance was not “objection” but “avowal” or “witness” or “confession” (as the Latin protestari meant also “to profess”).That meaning lasted for another century, say Dillenberger and Welch, and it referred to the Church of England’smaking its profession of the faith in the Thirty-nine Articles and the Book of Common Prayer. Only later did the word “protest” come to have a primarily negative significance, and the term “Protestant” come to refer to non-Roman churches in general.-- from the thread History Lesson: Positively Protestant
They continually seek to reform, really reestablish, the Church of Christ (oops, cannot use that name, already taken, along with thousands of other names ... ) because their premise is that the LORD Jesus Christ did not build his church upon a rock that withstood the gates of hell in a public, powerful, and historical witness to the world. Every denominational split amongst mainline Protestants bears witness to nature of the movements. Do you really want to make the argument that your denomination is the holy catholic apostolic church founded on Messiah by the Apostles (and the rest are in some kind of error) ? Do you prefer to argue there is no holy catholic apostolic church in existence on this planet ? Or that diversity of doctrine is good because it let's freedom of the individual rule in a cafeteria style of live and let live prosperity (oops, that word is already claimed too) . The so-called Hebrew Roots Movement is another example. Do you want to argue all the Gentiles got it wrong until now ?
That is the fundamental problem.
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