Lesbian Catholic religious education coordinator denied award from the Archdiocese of St. Paul

The Star Tribune ^ | 02.22.03

[Coleus]

A Catholic religious education coordinator was denied an award from the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis Wednesday evening because she is a lesbian, prompting a protest at the dinner honoring the other 17 recipients.

About 200 members of St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church demonstrated Wednesday night in support of Kathy Itzin, the church's religious education coordinator. Itzin, a member of St. Joan's, was to be one of 18 archdiocesan workers honored for their work in teaching young people about the faith. She is in a relationship with a partner, and they have four children, ages 10 to 16.

[hardhead]

Bishops with b**ls!

[Saundra Duffy]

Oh, brother.

[Elsie]

Are you a Jehovah's Witness, by any chance?

Can't you tell??

I actually paste things from a REAL bible to back up my beliefs! Something that very few in FRland seem to do.

[Elsie]

(The Bible doesn't say that Christ is the only intercessor or the only mediator. Read the passage you quoted in the Greek.)

 

OH?  Why??

 

 

NIV 1 Timothy 2

 1.  I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone--
 2.  for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness.
 3.  This is good, and pleases God our Savior,
 4.  who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.
 5.  For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,
 6.  who gave himself as a ransom for all men--the testimony given in its proper time.

 

 

-- King James
1 Timothy 2:5  For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;

 

-- American Standard
1 Timothy 2:5  For there is one God, one mediator also between God and men, himself man, Christ Jesus,

 

-- New International
1 Timothy 2:5  For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,

 

Do ALL of the translators get it wrong???

 

[Elsie]

As far as your analogy of souls "rushing back down" to earth, this is a silly anthropomorphism.

Then what do you call these verses?

1 Thessalonians 4:16-17
16. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.
17. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. The 'dead' rise first (rise from WHERE I ask?) then the LIVING saints are joined with them to meet the Lord.

---

How do YOU read it??

[Coleus]

Refusing her the award because she's a lesbian "doesn't sound very Godlike to us," he said.

nope, and neither is sodomy very God like either...When will they ever learn?

How about a bolt of lightening, then?
Sounds good to me.This World may, some day, have to be flooded again.

[Huber]

Of course, the penalties of excommunication probably won't be applied if God's the only one who knows about it.

C'mon Z, What the EARTHLY penalties?? What do they amount to?

[lilylangtree]

After all the scandals, lawsuits and money awards given to victims of sexual abuse by priests of late, 200 people want the Catholic Church to honor a lesbian? Unbelievable! This is ludicrous. One of the prophecies in the Bible did predict in the last days that what was morally right would be wrong in the eyes of the unbelievers and what was morally wrong would be right. This is a true example of that prediction.

[Elsie]

Sounds good to me.This World may, some day, have to be flooded again.

---

On no: never again!

---

Genesis 8

 

 1.  But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded.
 2.  Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky.
 3.  The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down,
 4.  and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.
 5.  The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible.
 6.  After forty days Noah opened the window he had made in the ark
 7.  and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth.
 8.  Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground.
 9.  But the dove could find no place to set its feet because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark.
 10.  He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark.
 11.  When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth.
 12.  He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him.
 13.  By the first day of the first month of Noah's six hundred and first year, the water had dried up from the earth. Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry.
 14.  By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was completely dry.
 15.  Then God said to Noah,
 16.  "Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives.
 17.  Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you--the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground--so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number upon it."
 18.  So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons' wives.
 19.  All the animals and all the creatures that move along the ground and all the birds--everything that moves on the earth--came out of the ark, one kind after another.
 20.  Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it.
 21.  The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: "Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though  every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.
 22.  "As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease."

 

Genesis 9

 

.

.

.

 8.  Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him:
 9.  "I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you
 10.  and with every living creature that was with you--the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you--every living creature on earth.
 11.  I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth."
 12.  And God said, "This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come:
 13.  I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.
 14.  Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds,
 15.  I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life.
 16.  Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth."
 17.  So God said to Noah, "This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth."
 

 

[Coleus]

Thanks, I know, I was just being rhetorical and making a point, although God did make a covenant that he will never flood the earth again, he never mentioned wiping us out by other means or by not protecting us here in the USA as he once did. I think we lost His protection on 9.11 due to all the evils which prevail in this country regarding abortion, gay marriages, etc.

[wideawake]

How do YOU read it??

The souls of the saved dead are literally present everywhere because they are spirit.

The issue is not one of a soul being a concrete, limited object that has to be moved from one place to another in order to animate a body.

The body will rise when Christ says it is time for the soul to animate the body once more. The soul does not have to move anyplace in order to do it.

Also, you neglect to look at 1 Corinthians 15, especially 51-53:

Lo! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,

in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.

For this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality.

Even the bodies of the resurrected and glorified will be different from what we know.

[wideawake]

The earthly penalties amount to not being allowed to receive communion, absolution or Catholic burial. One is not allowed to stand as godparent either or witness a Catholic wedding.

[biblewonk]

Thanks Elsie.

[biblewonk]

Makes perfect sense. Not.

That sad little analogy could be just as easily and incorrectly be invented about marriage and how much I love my wife right now and how much I will love her as wife in heaven. That's what happens when we use human reason in place of the bible.

[Elsie]

The souls of the saved dead are literally present everywhere because they are spirit.

Upon WHAT do you base this assumption?

---

One more time....

Lazarus was a believer: where was his soul for four days??

[Elsie]

The body will rise when Christ says it is time for the soul to animate the body once more.

Not logical.

If our soul goes to be with the Lord after death (saved people) then WHY does it go BACK to the old, corrupted flesh again?

Why does that body, which will soon be useless, need to be 'animated'?

[wideawake]

Not logical.

It's illogical only if one doesn't understand that the soul and the body are two very different things with very different properties.

If our soul goes to be with the Lord after death (saved people) then WHY does it go BACK to the old, corrupted flesh again?

That "old, corrupted flesh" is no longer old and corrupted but changed.

Why does that body, which will soon be useless, need to be 'animated'?

Primarily because God said so, but your question begs another question: why did Jesus' soul take on his body in glorified form at the resurrection? Why is anyone's resurrection, especially Christ's, even necessary?

I would recommend that you study John's account of the risen Christ closely. His body was clearly glorified - his appearance was transformed and his own disciples on the road to Emmaus only recognized Him by His gestures; yet it was clearly the same body, since it bore the same wounds inflicted on Him at the crucifixion.

It would also help if you clarified your own position: you seem to enjoy taking shots at other people's beliefs, but you seem ashamed to profess your own thinking explicitly.

[wideawake]

Upon WHAT do you base this assumption?

Upon the definition of the soul.

[biblewonk]

The inability of other Christians to receive the full implications of the Scriptural doctrine of the communion of the saints does not mean that believing the Church is eternally one in the body of Christ is a heathen notion.

You are changing my statement. I didn't say that, I said praying to the dead is a heathen notion, irrespective of our feelings about what kind of state the are in. Obviously the heathen doesn't think the dead are dead either or they wouldn't pray to them and do other rituals like cutting themselves for them. But on to Mary.

[biblewonk]

The doctrine of the immaculate conception is again based on a Scriptural inference - the description of Mary as kecharitoumene or "filled with grace" implies that she was already filled with grace when the angel arrived, making her worthy to bear Christ. We know that all people are naturally conceived in sin. We know that unless we have been forgiven our sins or have never sinned we can't have grace. We know from Paul that Mary's obedient faithfulness to the law did not bring her grace. How was it possible for her to be full of grace if she was in her sins? The inference the Catholic draws is that Christ, who "before Abraham was, I am" had preserved her from sin by his power in order to make her worthy to bear him, even under the law. The immaculate conception is a Christian answer to a Scriptural difficulty. The assumption follows from this doctrine: if she was never touched by original sin, her body was never subject to the corruption which that sin brings. Both Enoch and Elijah were assumed into Heaven, so there is certainly Scriptural precedent. As far as "distributrix of all graces" this is a hyperbolic statement which I do not believe to be part of official Catholic teaching. She is a participator in the redemption because God allowed her to cooperate in his work of bringing the Savior into the world. All grace comes from Christ and Christ literally came from her womb - to use a cruder Scriptural example: when Christ rubs mud on the blind man's eyes, is the mud a distributor of Christ's healing power to the blind man? In a way, yes. But there is no doubt as to the true source of the healing power. If Mary was conceived immaculately it is not because she was somehow sinless through her own merit - it was the power of Christ her son working in her. If she was assumed into Heaven like Elijah it was not on her own merit, but the power of her Son welcoming her into His kingdom. If she is the means He used to enter the world it is because He chose her as His vessel. But Christ was sinless by His own divine power, He ascended into Heaven by his own divine power and any grace which anyone receives comes from Him, no matter which means He uses to distribute it. I fully understand why you may have an argument against each one of these Scriptural inferences, but I would not believe them if I thought they were simply made up of whole cloth without regard to Scriptural truth.

All I can say is your euphemistic use of the phrase "scriptural inference" doesn't hide the fact that your explination leads us from what might almost pass as scriptural to the unread to:

AD DIEM ILLUM LAETISSIMUM ENCYCLICAL OF POPE PIUS X ON THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION TO THE PATRIARCHS, PRIMATES, ARCHBISHOPS, BISHOPS, AND OTHER ORDINARIES IN PEACE AND COMMUNION WITH THE APOSTOLIC SEE. February 2, 1904

But, since Divine Providence has been pleased that we should have the Man-God through Mary, who conceived Him by the Holy Ghost and bore Him in her breast, it only remains for us to receive Christ from the hands of Mary...

Mary not only preserved and meditated on the events of Bethlehem and the facts which took place in Jerusalem in the Temple of the Lord, but sharing as she did the thoughts and the secret wishes of Christ she may be said to have lived the very life of her Son...

Hence it follows, as We have already pointed out, that the Virgin is more powerful than all others as a means for uniting mankind with Christ. Hence too since, according to Christ Himself, "Now this is eternal life: That they may know thee the only truly God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent" (John xvii., 3), and since it is through Mary that we attain to the knowledge of Christ, through Mary also we most easily obtain that life of which Christ is the source and origin...

When the supreme hour of the Son came, beside the Cross of Jesus there stood Mary His Mother, not merely occupied in contemplating the cruel spectacle, but rejoicing that her Only Son was offered for the salvation of mankind, and so entirely participating in His Passion, that if it had been possible she would have gladly borne all the torments that her Son bore (S. Bonav. 1. Sent d. 48, ad Litt. dub. 4). And from this community of will and suffering between Christ and Mary she merited to become most worthily the Reparatrix of the lost world (Eadmeri Mon. De Excellentia Virg. Mariae, c. 9) and Dispensatrix of all the gifts that Our Savior purchased for us by His Death and by His Blood...

We are then, it will be seen, very far from attributing to the Mother of God a productive power of grace - a power which belongs to God alone. Yet, since Mary carries it over all in holiness and union with Jesus Christ, and has been associated by Jesus Christ in the work of redemption, she merits for us de congruo, in the language of theologians, what Jesus Christ merits for us de condigno, and she is the supreme Minister of the distribution of graces. Jesus "sitteth on the right hand of the majesty on high" (Hebrews i. b.). Mary sitteth at the right hand of her Son - a refuge so secure and a help so trusty against all dangers that we have nothing to fear or to despair of under her guidance, her patronage, her protection...

Those, alas! furnish us by their conduct with a peremptory proof of it, who seduced by the wiles of the demon or deceived by false doctrines think they can do without the help of the Virgin... Then the love of God with which she burned made her a partaker in the sufferings of Christ and the associate in His passion; with him moreover, as if forgetful of her own sorrow, she prayed for the pardon of the executioners although they in their hate cried out: "His blood be upon us and upon our children"...

And there is lots and lots more where this came from.