NEW YORK BISHOP RESIGNS

NEW YORK (AP) _ A high-ranking priest in the Archdiocese of New York resigned his positions as church pastor and auxiliary bishop after admitting to several affairs with women, the archdiocese announced Tuesday.

Bishop James F. McCarthy, pastor of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church in Shrub Oak in Westchester County, admitted to the affairs after they were brought to the attention of archdiocesan officials in a letter that arrived Saturday. ``I take this opportunity to express my personal care and concern for all involved in this situation, in particular any women and their families who may have been hurt, and Bishop McCarthy as well,'' Archbishop Edward Egan said in a statement.

The affairs took place over the course of several years, according to the archdiocese. Church officials will cooperate with prosecutors if any legal issues arise from the affairs.

The Westchester district attorney did not immediately return a call about the case.

Just two months ago, McCarthy had spoken about how the ongoing scandal involving sexual abuse by priests had eroded the relationship between priests and their parishioners.

Throughout the metropolitan area, at least 11 priests accused of sexual misconduct have been suspended from front-line duties in Roman Catholic Church parishes and schools. Officials in the New York archdiocese have given prosecutors in

formation on 35 years worth of sex abuse cases. In the neighboring Brooklyn Diocese, officials gave prosecutors information on more than 30 priests accused of sexual misconduct with minors over the past 20 years.

I'll let Mr. Jefferson speak for himself on this...

So will I. To be a Christian, a person must at the very least profess the Creed:

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.
And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord;
who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, dead, and buried;
he descended into hell;
the third day he rose again from the dead;
he ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty;
from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy catholic Church; the communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting.
AMEN.

Now compare that Creed to the following statements of Jefferson:

"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter" (Works, Vol. iv, p. 365).
"If we could believe that he [Jesus] really countenanced the follies, the falsehoods, and the charlatanism which his biographers [Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,] father on him, and admit the misconstructions, interpolations, and theorizations of the fathers of the early, and the fanatics of the latter ages, the conclusion would be irresistible by every sound mind that he was an impostor" (Ibid.)
"Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others, again, of so much ignorance, of so much absurdity, so much untruth and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being. I separate, therefore, the gold from the dross, restore to him the former, and leave the latter to the stupidity of some and the roguery of others of his disciples" (Ibid., 320).

Do me a favor: read this essay and let me know if you still think Jefferson was a Christian. I think you'll have to agree that Jefferson was the sort of "Christian" who did not believe in the divinity of Christ, the veracity of the Gospels, the reality of miracles, the Holy Trinity, the Virgin Birth, or the Second Coming -- in other words, not a Christian at all.

[Tradition] is important and edifying, and yes, we can learn from it; but it's not on par with Scripture itself as an inerrant source of divine revelation.

Sez who?

As I pointed out earlier, "absolute power corrupts absolutely," and in the spiritual realm this has hardly been demonstrated anywhere better than by the papacy. Remember all those power-grabbing Renaissance popes? Alexander (Borgia) was a real gem; so was Julius (della Rovere). Today's "princes of the church" covering up for homosexual and/or lecherous priests are no better!

First: Lord Acton said that power tends to corrupt, not that it does corrupt. Second: what of all the Popes and kings who, possessed of absolute power, did not become corrupt? There have been a great many Popes; few were corrupt by the standards of their own day. Third: What of the Borgias and the other corrupt men who became Pope? Did any of them every teach anything contrary to the Christian Faith? The answer is no. Wicked men can become President, too, but the fact that they are personally corrupt does not besmirch the dignity of their office; a bad man can be a good President. The fact that a few Protestant preachers are fraudulent con-men does not invalidate the authority of all Protestant preachers. The Holy Father is infallible (incapable of teaching error) not impecable (incapable of sin)! The existence of the bad Popes only proves that all men are sinners.

To have spiritual authority, a leader must be credible. Not perfect, but at least held to a higher standard than the rest of us. <;/i>

Yes, but who gets to decide when the "line of credibility" is crossed? Does one sin destroy the credibility of a spiritual authority, or do you have to do something big, like being an anti-semite?

(Speaking of anti-semitism: are you familiar with the life of Martin Luther outside of his theological activities? You might check it out. I think you'll find that he's quite capable of sin himself -- and thus, by your standards, is no longer a credible authority.)

"And what do you do when the guy you voted out refuses to get out?"

Send in James Baker and Ted Olson... ;-)

Nice dodge, but you didn't answer my question. The question was: What do you do when an defeated president refuses to give up his office?

"St. Francis Xavier was a Jesuit..."
And he was an exceptionally good one. Even we Lutherans look to him as a good example of Christian service!

As a former Lutheran myself, I knew that his example would be appropriate.

"Thanks to Martin Luther and his leap of faith, Christians can now sleep with each other before marriage, commit sodomy, sterilize themselves, divorce and remarry over and over..."

That is hardly what Martin Luther taught...

"Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly... as long as we are here [in this world] we have to sin... . No sin will separate us from the Lamb, even though we commit fornication and murder a thousand times a day." [Luther, Letter 501 to Melanchthon]

(And there are plenty more where that came from...)

...and hardly what any conservative or evangelical Protestant believes today! You know better than that, right?

No, I do not. Please name an evangelical Protestant denomination that categorically condemns divorce and remarriage, artificial contraception, or voluntary sterilization of healthy adults. I am a former LCMS member, and I thank God that the Missouri Synod does condemn homosexual behavior, abortion and euthanasia, but most other mainline Protestant denoms (coughELCAcough) couldn't care less, and even the LCMS gives a pass to remarried divorcees, users of birth control, and those who choose to get a vasectomy/ligation. Since Protestant believers recognize no authority other than their own interpretation of the Bible, the question of what the Bible condemns as sin and what it does not becomes a matter to be decided by vote -- and more and more Protestants are voting that homosexuality, abortion, and euthanasia are okay with God. I fail to see the good in this trend.

The way I see it, Luther performed a wonderful service by reminding us that while beliefs are important, the rigid intellectual conformity to doctrines (intellectual assent to what's spoonfed by church bureaucrats) is not what gets you into heaven!

Oh, really? So what happens if one fails to rigidly intellectually conform to what Luther taught? We all know what happened to those who deviated from the Calvinist party line...

A life full of Christian acts—yes, good works are the fruits of faith—are evidence of a person saved. That living faith that produces good fruit is the complete, unwavering, almost reckless confidence in Almighty God as our Redeemer, Provider and Lord.

Ah, good old-fashioned Catholic dogma, straight outta Trent. Glad to have you on board.

"Why would anyone settle for merely "connecting" themselves to the Lord when they can eat His Flesh and drink His Blood?"

The Lutheran church I go to teaches that the bread and wine IS the Body and Blood of our Lord. (no "symbolizing") It is REAL.

Nope. Check the Small Catechism: "...[T]he bread and wine are not changed into the body and blood of Jesus but there is a most intimate union between them while they are given and received in the sacrament." [Luther's Small Catechism (Mankato, MN: Luther Synod Book Co., 1966), 214]

I believe the Anglican Communion also teaches Real Presence.

They teach it, but, lacking genuine apostolic authority, their priests cannot confect the Sacraments.

Granted, we don't bother to ask why or how (transubstantiation = magic trick?) but we believe with that same total confidence that God comes to us, touches us and embraces us in the sacrament of Holy Communion.

Yes, but (as you know) the Lutheran churches do not teach transubstantiation -- they teach consubstantiation, a different thing altogether.

In the end, the question remains: who is the final authority on matters of faith and morals? We Catholics believe that the teaching magisterium of the Church was instituted by Christ and endowed by the Holy Spirit with the charism of infallibility, making it incapable of teaching error in matters of Faith. Others differ. But, like Pilate before him, even Martin Luther himself wondered: "What is Truth?" On Nov. 25, 1521 he wrote to the Augustinians in Wittenberg: "With how much pain and labor did I scarcely justify my conscience that I alone should proceed against the Pope, hold him for Antichrist, and the bishops for his apostles. How often did my heart punish me and reproach me with this strong argument: 'Art thou alone wise? Could all the others err and have erred for a long time? How if thou errest and leadest into error so many people who would all be damned forever?'"

How indeed.

Yours in Christian fraternity,

B-chan

Right, they are not changed into Christ's Body and Blood by some mystical rite performed by a sacredotal priest. They simply are the Body and Blood of Christ by sacramental union (referenced above, but also appears somewhere else in the Catechism). Why get hung up on the mechanics of "how" it happens, when in faith we can simply appreciate that God gives us this most unique way to touch Him and receive Him, and experiece firsthand His love for us?

Because how it happens determines if it happens or not. We start out with bread that looks like bread and wine that looks like wine, then Something happens, and suddenly the bread and wine are gone and in their place is Flesh that looks like bread and Blood that looks like wine. We know from Tradition that he only way that can happen is by the Power of God acting through the hands of a consecrated priest, therefore, unless a consecated priest confects the Sacraments, the bread and wine remain mere bread and wine.

Only Catholic and Orthodox priests are consecrated by apostolic succession directly from Christ. Only they may confect the Sacraments.

Another quarter or so (myself included) consider the Bible—the Written Word of God—to be the ultimate authority, and believe that God sent the Holy Spirit to dwell in us (both corporately as a church and individually as believers) to guide us and hold us accountable.

Yes, but among the several thousand Protestant denominations, which one truly has the guidance of the Holy Spirit? They can't all be right. Who here on Earth has the final say?

Yours in the fraternity of Christ...and with great gratitude for challenging me, making me think and holding me accountable(!)...

You're welcome, brother, but I'm in the same boat as you, working out my faith in fear and trembling. I appreciate your friendly and thoughtful discussion, and hope that together we can all grow closer to our Lord.

Yours in Christian fraternity,

B-chan

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