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PLEASANTVILLE, NY (ChurchMilitant.com) - A New York rabbi is claiming God is transgender. In an op-ed published Friday in the New York Times, Rabbi Mark Sameth of the Pleasantville Community Synagogue maintains the Hebrew Bible's "highly elastic" view of gender leaves open the possibility that God Himself is transgender. Citing various examples of pronoun usage found in several passages in Genesis, the rabbi comes to the conclusion that, "counter to everything we grew up believing, the God of Israel — the God of the three monotheistic, Abrahamic religions to which fully half the people on the planet today belong —...

[ELCA News] The 2016 Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Churchwide Assembly took several significant steps Aug. 10 moving forward the mission of this church as a church for the sake of the world. By a vote of 931 to 9, the assembly overwhelmingly accepted the “Declaration on the Way,” a unique ecumenical document that marks a path toward greater unity between Roman Catholics and Lutherans. Following the vote, an emotional assembly stood to applaud the momentous decision. At the heart of the document are 32 “Statements of Agreement” that state where Lutherans and Roman Catholics do not have church-dividing...

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has approved a resolution calling on the American government to end all aid to Israel if Israel does not stop building in Judea and Samaria and "enable an independent Palestinian state", JTA reported Sunday. Voting at its triennial assembly in New Orleans that ended Saturday, the church also sought a halt to all investment in companies that profit from Israel's alleged “occupation” and called on the president of the United States to recognize the “State of Palestine.”

August 9, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Italian Bishop Nunzio Galantino, a personal appointee of the pope and a prelate who has been extolled as the “prototypical ‘Pope Francis bishop,’” is coming under criticism after delivering a homily to young people at World Youth Day in which he rewrote the story of God’s destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. While the clear meaning of the text is to emphasize God’s hatred of sin, in the bishop’s telling the message of the story is about Abraham’s willingness to emphasize “positive possibilities” and "signs of hope" despite the “misdeeds” of the people of Sodom. It’s...

Pope Francis made comments last week that reveal the most important single thing you need to know about the modern world: The most dynamic religion of the last hundred years has been leftism. Not Christianity, and not Islam, but leftism. Leftism has taken over the world's leading educational institutions, the world's news media and the world's popular entertainment, and it has influenced Christianity (and Judaism) far more than Christianity (or Judaism) has influenced anything. On July 26, two Muslims slit the throat of a French Roman Catholic priest, the Rev. Jacques Hamel, 85, while he was saying Mass in his...

The Church of England is to ban protests at the consecration of female bishops after a campaign mounted by Women and the Church (WATCH). The organisation wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury following protests that disrupted the last four consecrations of women bishops, saying: "Such interruptions create the perception that the Church is willing to allow a woman who has been called by God and the Church, and appointed by the Crown, to be publicly insulted and undermined. "If that is so, it undermines and insults all women: and especially women for whom female bishops are potent symbols of a...

The German theologian Karl-Heinz Menke – one of the members of the new papal commission on female deacons – said in a 4 August 2016 interview with the German newspaper Die Welt that female cardinals are possible if that is what Pope Francis wishes. The retired professor of theology – who also was appointed in 2014 by Pope Francis to be a member of the International Theological Commission – points out in this interview that it is out of the question to make women ordained deaconesses because it would mean that they would become part of the three-fold Sacrament of...

The Vatican may need to step in and rebuke Hillary Clinton's pro-abortion running mate With the nomination of Senator Tim Kaine, American Catholic voters once again face a decision about whether to send a pro-abortion, dissenting Catholic to Number One Observatory Circle, the official residence of the Vice President of the United States.For the past eight years Vice President Joseph Biden has lived there, an abortion supporter for sure, but he never pitched his Catholic credentials to the voters in the way that Hillary, her surrogates, the Democratic Party and Kaine himself have done from the get-go.Kaine, unlike Biden,...

Why would anyone except a professional organist take the magazine The American Organist? A friend gave me a recent issue of this highly specialized publication. The stunning picture on the front cover got my attention. The foreground features a glorious pipe organ with five key boards, endless foot pedals and a hundred stops. In the background is the grandiose nave and the vaulted ceiling of the historic Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago. To me, the church organ is a symbol of high Western Christian culture, made famous by the soaring oratorios of Johann Sebastian Bach and the stirring grandeur of...

USCCB blog refers to Joe Biden's recent performance of same-sex wedding, but doesn't mention him by nameThe following comes from an August 5 statement from Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz, Bishop Richard J. Malone and Archbishop Thomas G. Wenski published on the USCCB Blog. Archbishop Kurtz of Louisville, Kentucky, is president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops; Bishop Malone of Buffalo, New York, is chairman of the USCCB Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth; and Archbishop Wenski of Miami, is chairman of the USCCB Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development.Questions revolving around marriage and human sexuality are...

Princeton's Robert George called for Mr Biden's excommunication soon after Mr Biden's wedding duty was reported. But although the Church doesn't sanctify gay marriage and considers homosexual behaviour a sin, Mr Biden didn't actually break Church law, said Fr James Bretzke, a theologian at Boston College. A Catholic can only be excommunicated on "canonical grounds," he said. "It's not like voting the person off the island." A bishop would have to cite the specific Church law, known as canon, that the Catholic follower broke, "much like arresting someone," Fr Bretzke said. "There is no provision in canon allowing for the...

The other day, pro-abortion, “practicing Catholic”, democrat Vice President Joe Biden performed a same-sex civil “marriage”.In effect, Biden gave the digitus infamis to the Catholic Church.Canonist Ed Peters has observations about this scandalous flipping of the proverbial bird.  HERE Some canonical thoughts VP Biden’s recent deed[After discussion of why excommunication doesn’t apply in this case….]But if canonical criminal law as found in Book Six of the Code is not (at least not immediately) useful against Biden’s affront to Christ’s and the Church’s teaching on marriage, canonical sacramental law as found in Book Four of the Code, especially Canon 915 therein, could...

One of the nation’s largest and oldest black churches, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, is warning black people about the dangers of climate change. The Guardian reported Sunday that the AME church “passed its first resolution in its 200-year history devoted to climate change, calling for a swift transition to renewable energy” at the church’s general conference in Philadelphia. “We can move away from the dirty fuels that make us sick and shift toward safe, clean energy like wind and solar that help make every breath our neighbors and families take a healthy one,” the resolution stated according to the...

"More souls go to hell because of sins of the flesh than for any other reason," Our Lady of Fatima warned the three young seers in 1917. But this message, unfortunately, is entirely absent from the Vatican’s newly released sex-ed program for teens. Instead, sexual sins are not mentioned at all. The 6th and 9th commandments are ignored while sexually explicit images and immoral videos are used as springboards for discussion.

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 25, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) — A Catholic priest asked that pro-abortion Vice Presidential nominee Tim Kaine “do us both a favor” and not show up in his Communion line. “I take Canon 915 seriously. It'd be embarrassing for you & for me,” tweeted Dominican Father Thomas Petri, the vice president and academic dean of the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception at the Dominican House of Studies. Canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law instructs that those “persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches,...

RICHMOND, Virginia, July 26, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Pro-abortion Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Senator Tim Kaine received a standing ovation at his parish on Sunday and several Catholic priests praised his nomination. Meanwhile, as Catholics call for Kaine to be denied Communion in accord with the Church’s laws, his bishop in the Diocese of Richmond has issued a statement saying that Catholics have a duty to determine their own worthiness “through an upright and informed conscience.” Kaine and his wife were “like every other married couple going to church on a Sunday morning — if every other couple were met by...

At an interfaith gathering hosted by the Democratic National Convention Committee in Philadelphia, Rev. James A. Forbes, senior minister emeritus of the Riverside Church in New York City and president of the Healing of the Nations Foundation, said Sunday that the nation faces problems of bigotry, climate change, greed and the “demonic matter” of xenophobia. During the gathering titled, “Stronger Together: In Pursuit of Love and Kindness,” Forbes referenced the lyrics of the 1960s musical, The Music Man, “Ya got trouble, folks, right here in River City. Trouble with a capital ‘T’ and that rhymes with ‘P’ and that stands...

Truncated title. Full title: Bishop Tobin: Tim Kaine’s Abortion, Gay Views ‘Clearly Contrary’ to Catholic Teaching and Pope Francis Although some analysts describe Hillary Clinton’s vice presidential pick, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), as a devout, “Pope Francis Catholic,” whose faith is “central” to his work, Bishop Thomas J. Tobin said Kaine’s pro-choice position on abortion and support for gay marriage and women priests are views “clearly contrary to well-established Catholic teachings.” Bishop Tobin, head of the diocese of Providence, R.I., added that Kaine’s positions on those issues are also “opposed by Pope Francis.”

The Very Rev. Katherine Ragsdale, lesbian cleric and then president and dean of Episcopal Divinity School, delivers 2009 'abortion is a blessing' address (National Organization for Women/Flickr) Via the Episcopal News Service, a press release revealing that the ultramegaliberal Episcopal Divinity School is winding things down: Episcopal Divinity School will cease to grant degrees at the end of the upcoming academic year, the seminary’s board of trustees decided July 21 on a 11-4 vote. During the next year, the board will explore options for EDS’s future, some of which were suggested by a specially convened Futures Task Force to...

Hillary Clinton's selection of Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Virginia) as her running mate is already creating one distortion of reality: that Kaine is somehow a "centrist." His American Conservative Union rating score in his first three years in the Senate is 0.00. But here was The Wall Street Journal opening up its coverage tonight: The other distortion is any journalist touting Kaine as a "devout Catholic" or "traditional Catholic" without noting it would be more accurate to call him a devout and traditional Democrat. A "devout" believer in the church would champion in public its pro-life stance and its opposition to...