Posted on 05/17/2006 9:08:53 PM PDT by Full Court
font face="Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="4" color="#990000">From Operation Rescue to Operation Convert
May 21-27, 2006 |
| by TIM DRAKE |
Also in the Register: Randal Terry, CatholicRandall Terry has become Catholic. Tell me about your family. How did you come to know Christ? How did you first get started in pro-life work? What led to the founding of Operation Rescue? How many times were you arrested? When did you first take an interest in the Catholic Church? Which theological hurdles were the most difficult for you to jump? I understand that you are awaiting word on the annulment of your first marriage. Can you tell me why you chose to be received into the Church (without being able to receive the Eucharist), before the resolution of your annulment? Tell me how your reception into the Church came about. What was your greatest fear? How do you expect your evangelical colleagues will react to news of your conversion? Do you anticipate that your conversion could hurt you in your Senate race in a predominantly Protestant state?
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Yes, he did leave his wife for another woman, and a much younger one at that.
And the Vatican will approve his annulment because he is a high profile convert.
I can testify to the truth of that. I received one of those letters.
Acts 17:11 These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.
12 Therefore many of them believed; also of honourable women which were Greeks, and of men, not a few.
2 Timothy 3:16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:
17 That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.
Prove it, from some "normal" news source.
"And the Vatican will approve his annulment because he is a high profile convert."
I doubt THAT seriously. The annulment process is VERY thorough and as legalistic as a normal court proceeding.
"Spiritually inoculated" against a "threat"?
Yesterday I posted a citation from the Catechism of the Catholic Church which calls non-Catholic Christians our "brothers".
You, OTOH, call us a "threat," and use language more suited to a public health campaign against a menacing disease organism. The last group of folks who characterized an entire religion that way ... wore brown shirts.
BTW, don't trust your vaccinations too much. Baptists make fine Catholics; a young Catholic friend of mine is the son of an SBC pastor.
Neither verse claims that all Christian truth is in the Bible.
Acts 17:11 favorably compares the Bereans to the Thessalonians. The Thessalonians rioted when Paul preached to them, the Bereans compared his preaching with Scripture. Good for them.
2 Tm 3:16, in context, talks about the Scriptures which Timothy has known "since his infancy". That can't mean the New Testament, which he certainly hadn't known since his infancy (it hadn't been written), but must mean the Hebrew Scriptures. If 2 Tm 3:16 teaches the formal sufficiency of Scripture, then it teaches the formal sufficiency of the Old Testament alone.
But it doesn't. It says that the scriptures are profitable (certainly) and necessary for the man of God to be "perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works". "Necessary" is not the same thing as "formally sufficient; completely sufficient in and of themselves".
My understanding is that his first wife was a divorcee when they married, which would make his first marriage "defective according to form," and the granting of a decree of nullity almost automatic, "high profile convert" or not.
**[Randall Terry now Catholic] **
Whaht a wonderful things. Thanks for the thread.
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**Left his wife for another woman, both daughters pregnant out of wedlock, (one is now a Muslim,) one son is a homosexual.**
Catholics believe that Christ died for ALL sinners. Do you have a problem with the intentions of Christ and Our Father, God in Heaven?
Please notify me via FReepmail if you would like to be added to or taken off the Catholic Discussion Ping List.
**First of all, he believes that forgiveness ONLY comes through a Priest**
The forgiveness comes from God, through the priest. Are you acquainted with the actual words of absolution that the priest says?
I'm just quoting what my friend says the church believes.
He gave me a book, by the way..."Not By Bread Alone" that had some of the same concept.
Ed
Here's one, although I know the NYT is not popular around here:
Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
July 20, 2001 Friday
Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section A; Column 5; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 1
HEADLINE: Icon for Abortion Protesters Is Looking for a Second Act
BYLINE: By DAN BARRY
DATELINE: WINDSOR, N.Y., July 17
BODY:
Randall Terry sat at the shiny black piano that dominates his home here in the hills outside Binghamton, singing and playing to a recording of himself singing and playing songs written by Randall Terry.
Halfway across the country, in Kansas, people who once considered him their leader were commemorating the 10th anniversary of anti-abortion demonstrations that vexed Wichita for several weeks and resulted in more than 2,700 arrests. "I was the tip of the spear," Mr. Terry recalled. But now, he said, people in Wichita were probably asking: "Where's Randall?"
"It's a bummer," he added.
Randall Terry, the charismatic, hyper-aggressive founder of Operation Rescue, who personified the anti-abortion cause, is being ostracized by the very movement he helped create. His former pastor and colleagues say he is an unrepentant sinner who betrayed the faith by abandoning his wife, using foul language and drinking alcohol in the presence of children, and who nevertheless still seeks to raise money from those unaware of how far he has fallen.
"Now you see the unfortunate demise of one who was used so powerfully by God and is now on a back burner," said the Rev. Flip Benham, who is leading the Wichita commemoration. "And that's where he will forever stay."
Mr. Terry smiled when told of Mr. Benham's judgment. "And I smoke cigars," he said. "That was a big thing for them."
......
Mr. Terry, 42, makes no apologies for divorcing his wife of 19 years and marrying a former assistant who is 16 years his junior -- although he expresses sadness over the marriage's failure. But he said that he did regret some of what he has said and done (although he would not say what), and he wondered aloud what yesterday's Randall Terry would say about the Randall Terry of today.
"I think I would have been too detached and too unkind," he said. "That's painful for me; that's reality."
His reality includes no intention of backing off from organizing opposition to abortion and homosexual marriage, and every intention of reclaiming the spotlight to which he was once so accustomed. He still fancies himself a dragon slayer: he recently had T-shirts made in this motif, and the sculpture of a dragon slayer that he commissioned sits on his piano.
He also continues to rely on direct-mail "gifts" to finance his way. Donations to the "Randall Terry Sabbatical Fund" paid for a yearlong break, he said, which included time spent in a Nashville studio, recording country-western and gospel music.
"My sabbatical is over," he wrote. "I have resumed ministry."
........
And, he said, he was no longer happy in his marriage. "I was dying on the inside; the music was gone," he said. "But I stuck it out as long as I did because I did not want to bring harm to the name of Christian ministry."
.....
"Our name was very often connected to his, and all that he was doing," Mr. Little said. "The elders of the church didn't want anyone thinking that we gave him a bye: to go ahead and get a divorce, go ahead and marry this lady, and by the way keep sending out your fund-raising letters."
Mr. Terry moved out of his home in August 1999, and resigned the same month from the Landmark Church. Three months later, Mr. Little issued a letter of censure against his former congregant, charging that Mr. Terry had left his wife and had engaged in a "pattern of repeated sinful relationships and conversations with both single and married women."
Three months later, Mr. Benham, the director of Operation Save America -- the organization that Mr. Terry founded as Operation Rescue -- placed the letter of censure on his organization's Web site under the headline "Please Pray for Randall Terry." In a long message fraught with scriptural reference, he rebuked and ridiculed Mr. Terry as a man who "has dragons to slay and funds to raise."
Shortly after the posting on the Internet, Mr. Benham said, he received his last call from Mr. Terry. Both men agree that Mr. Terry made just one comment: "Is that you, Judas?"
Mr. Terry now suggests that Mr. Benham had gotten involved for one reason: "patricide."
The Internet posting was devastating, Mr. Terry said, recalling that he was flooded with calls and letters from people demanding to be taken off his mailing list. So the radio show went off the air. One last appeal for more money went out ("Randall, we will stand with you and your family during this sabbatical"). And Mr. Terry took a time-out, financed by "people who believed my life was worth redeeming."
"I went on a sabbatical, bought Guinevere, and started writing music, man," he said. Guinevere is the name of his new Gibson guitar; Elizabeth is the name of his piano.
Mr. Terry said that he also attended a Charismatic Episcopal gathering in California, where he became reacquainted with Andrea Kollmorgen, who had worked on his Congressional campaign. In October, he moved to Las Vegas for several weeks to establish residency, and then filed for divorce.
Once the divorce became final in early January, Mr. Terry said, he and Ms. Kollmorgen began dating; in fact, he said, she inspired some of the songs that he recorded in Nashville. He proposed to her in mid-March by strumming on Guinevere and singing lyrics laden with Arthurian references. And on June 9, Mr. Terry and Ms. Kollmorgen were wed in a ceremony on Long Island.
After a honeymoon in Rome, the Terrys and their puppy moved into a house just 200 yards from where his ex-wife and children live, although that house -- and the 119 acres that go with it -- are being sold. He acknowledged that the situation was awkward, but said that he had returned to the area to be near his children, with whom he remains close.
"There is irony" in the situation, he said. "I acknowledge it, and it's not without pain and comedy."
Still, Mr. Terry is returning to the job of trying to slay the dragons he sees. For the moment, he is working out of a white trailer in Windsor that serves as the offices for his ministry, his used-car business and the 100-watt radio station that once broadcast "Randall Terry Live." He shares space with the burly host of a Christian-rock program called "Rippin' Richie's Radical Revolution."
Books by Randall Terry are stacked on shelves; framed newspaper articles about Randall Terry hang on the wall; opened envelopes addressed to Randall Terry and his "Back to the Battle" fund-raising campaign sit on a desk.
"Now I start building my comeback," he said.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
Forgiveness does not come through Communion, but rather the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Some people like to call it the Sacrament of Penance or simply Confession.
Holy Communion is receiving the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ -- just like the apostles did at the Last Supper. In fact, I invite you to attend a Mass with your friend who has just converted and witness these words being said by the priest.
**I don't see that an anywhere in the Bible. **
Oh, but it is!
Christ to the apostles:
"Receive the Holy Spirit, whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; whose sins you shall retain, they are retained."
The gentleman in question is on a journey, as we all are, and obviously still has a couple of ducks which need to be lined up but with God's grace, hopefully all will be well.
The world's most famous prostitute was, after all, the first to see the risen Jesus.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32934-2004Apr21?language=printer
"A few years back, Randall Terry divorced his wife, Cindy -- who once said her husband was touched by the divine -- and married a much younger woman. (Terry's ex barely speaks to him anymore.) Their four children say they still love their father but the relationship has frayed. Terry recently barred one of his adopted teenage daughters from his house after she got pregnant out of wedlock for the second time. Another adopted daughter also became pregnant as a teenager and later converted to Islam, a religion Terry has described as composed of "murderers" and "terrorists." (The couple's lone biological child, a daughter, is in college.) "
The other woman, Andrea Kollmorgan, age 26, was his former congressional campaign secretary.
Please go back to the Wedding at Cana. Who asked Jesus to help out the groom since he had run out of wine.
The blessed Mother of God, Mary.
After Jesus told her that it was not yet his time, she said to the servants:
"Do as He tells you."
Mary interceded, Christ acted. It happened then and it continues to happen! What a blessing!
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