[BlackElk]

Frances Kissling is said to be an ex-nun. She is certainly an ex-Catholic whatever she may claim. More pertinent is the fact that one of her board members is an ex-priest who was one of my parish priests in the 1960s and who was a friend and with whom I lifted weights three times a week. Please pray for him that he return to faith in God and leaves behind the evils of promoting abortion. He is one of the six of twelve children in his family who entered the religious life and his brother, a priest, was martyred by beheading in Vietnam in 1954.

If I did not make it clear, I was not trying to smear the membership of ELCA but was attacking Dr. Marty whom I had thought was the head of that denomination. If I was wrong about that, I wanted to ping you for confirmation one way or another since you would know better than I.

As I have posted in the past, my mother's closest friend was a very old-fashioned Methodist woman who spent her last twenty or so years unchurched since the area Methodist Churches in our community offered her no genuinely Bible-based preachers or pastors. She was not Catholic at all but she was the most Christian woman I ever hope to know. I have never believed the claim that one must be a Catholic to go to heaven. Whatever my differences with reformed churches, I respect many of their members including you. May God bless you and yours.