Posted on 06/28/2006 6:04:33 AM PDT by wagglebee
BOSTON, June 27, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A group of clergy including members from a number of mainline Christian denominations and other religious organizations, including a number of Catholics, is calling on the Catholic hierarchy to end its opposition to homosexual “marriage,” claiming that it is in violation of “religious freedom”.
The group, calling itself the Religious Coalition for the Freedom to Marry, will release an open letter to Cardinal Sean O’Malley and Roman Catholic bishops of Massachusetts asking the Catholic hierarchy “to respect religious freedom and stop lobbying for a constitutional amendment that would deny civil marriage rights to couples married by other denominations.”
The group consists of clergy from the American Baptist, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Quaker (or Society of Friends), Southern Baptist and United Methodist denominations.
The letter says that although the group disagrees with the “position” of the Catholic Church that homosexual acts are gravely sinful, they “honor your right to believe as you wish. We respect your right to practice your faith according to your laws.”
That “honor” reaches only so far as the strictly private sphere however. Public defence of Traditional marriage is beyond the pale.
“You are promoting prejudice through your political campaign, intentionally or not,” the letter says.
“By proclaiming homosexuality and same-sex unions to be universally immoral and worthy of second-class status under state law, you are sending a message that our faith communities are immoral. You are harming us and our families and your own faithful as well. Thousands of Roman Catholics have signed our Roman Catholic Statement in support of marriage equality. They have signed out of their pain and their love and concern for the Church.”
The largest group in the Coalition is from the Unitarian Universalist church – a non-Christian organization – followed by the Episcopalians.
In meetings last week, the US Episcopal Church (ECUSA) pushed the Worldwide Anglican Communion to the point of disintegration by refusing a moratorium on ordaining homosexual bishops and other clergy. Last week, ECUSA’s House of Deputies voted overwhelmingly to refuse to consider a resolution that affirmed Jesus Christ as the "only name by which any person may be saved,” a defining Christian doctrine.
Read the full text of the letter:
http://www.rcfm.org/LettertoRCBishops.htm
"And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh" (Genesis 2:23-24)
Matthew 19:4-6
4 And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made[a]them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’[b] 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?[c] 6 So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”
Christians who don't read the bible - well, they're not exactly Christians are they?
"Go away or I shall taunt you a second time".
That's what you're thinking about. Monty Python rules!!!!
Romans 1:27 (King James Version)
King James Version (KJV)
Public Domain
A Public Domain Bible KJV at Zondervan Zondervan
27And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
http://www.biblegateway.com
These people are picking and choosing verses that apply to them and do not apply. Last I checked, all verses apply to us all.
Is this a joke?
Since when does God establish moral guidelines, statutes and laws based on "religious freedom"?
What these clergy are demanding is the Catholic Church abandon it's ties to God and His laws and establish a man-made religious institution.
Incredible.
My close friend was an American Baptist pastor until the "open and affirming" crowd took over. He then met with a number of other pastors here in the Pacific SouthWest region of their denomination and they voted to leave the denomination and start on their own.
arrgh! ya beat me to it!
Damn, moustache spitting - what's next? Vicious comments about someones camel?!?!
Another example of the intolerant "tolerance" doctrine in action...
(Denny Crane: "Every one should carry a gun strapped to their waist. We need more - not less guns.")
Where's your husband?
Why, he's dead.
I bet he's just using that as an excuse!
Mrs. Teasdale and Rufus T. Firefly
Duck Soup
(Denny Crane: "Every one should carry a gun strapped to their waist. We need more - not less guns.")
I really wish these people would quit calling themselves Christian.
Unfortunately, the Methodists would approve of this. Southern Baptists -- no way.
If the Catholic Church merely supports what has been status quo for, oh, the last ten thousand years or so, that's "applying its dogma to civil laws."
But if the Unitarians and the other crazies lobby endlessly to change laws on the books to permit so-called "gay marriage" that's ... what, exactly?
Catholics are supposed to take their beliefs, treat them as mere personal preferences, and butt out of the public square ... and leave the field to pro-homosexual propagandists, who will aggressively promote their beliefs and seek to ram them down everyone else's throats.
That's sure just, fair, and even-handed. NOT!
If liberals are Christians, the Bible is the NY Times. Again, who cares what a bunch of mainliners think when their own denominations are committing moral and spiritual suicide with stands which are driving thousands from their congregations as we write?
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