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Posted on 01/28/2007 6:15:18 AM PST by NYer
London, Jan 25, 2007 / 09:05 am (CNA).- The Church of England has weighed in on the public debate on whether the Catholic Church should be exempt from a gay-rights law that would force 12 Catholic adoption agencies to place children with same-sex couples or close their doors.
In a letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, and of York, Dr John Sentamu, said “rights of conscience cannot be made subject to legislation.”
They warn against the danger of the row escalating to the point where some might question the ability of people with a strong faith to be in government. They also warn that the argument over the Sexual Orientation Regulations has reached damaging proportions and that “much could be lost”.
“Many in the voluntary sector are dedicated to public service because of the dictates of their conscience,” they wrote. “In legislating to protect and promote the rights of particular groups the Government is faced with the delicate but important challenge of not thereby creating the conditions within which others feel their rights to have been ignored or sacrificed, or in which the dictates of personal conscience are put at risk.
“It is vitally important that the interests of vulnerable children are not relegated to suit any political interest,” they continued. “And that conditions are not inadvertently created which make the claims of conscience an obstacle to, rather than the inspiration for, the invaluable public service rendered by parts of the voluntary sector.”
The letter comes after the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, wrote to every member of the Cabinet stating that the Catholic Church could not accept a law forcing its adoption agencies to accept gay couples. He said the law would force the agencies to close.
According to The London Times, the move has put Blair in a tough spot. If he accedes to the demands, he will face accusations from the gay rights lobby and from some within his own government of being a “Vatican puppet”. If he stands by the gay lobby, he risks alienating hundreds of thousands of Catholic voters, says The Times report.
But Blair has reportedly signaled his support for the exemption for the Catholic Church despite accusations of blackmail by bishops, threatening with closure, and that he favors a compromise.
However, most other Cabinet ministers believe that compromise is impossible, saying that an exemption would undermine the fundamental position of law.
The prime minister said on Thursday that a decision on the exemption would come sometime next week and that the law requiring homosexual adoption should be put to a vote in Parliament within a month.
Anglican ping!
Thank you, Anglicans - Ping
Aren't murder, theft, and adultery matters of conscience?
I think what we need here --- and the Catholic and Anglicans may help us to get it --- is an adequate definition of what kind of conscience we're talking about.
A lot of people use conscience loosely to mean opinion, or instinct, or even a purely individual inclination or preference. The word itself indicates that it's not a purely individual thing ("con-science" means to "know-with," i.e. to know with the other people of God throughout the ages -- to have the mind of the Church.)
Before it has rights, the conscience has duties: The duties are to be formed and informed. Over the years, your conscience has to be formed by virtue, by habitual upright behavior, by thinking, accepting, and internalizing God's laws. Informed means that the person has made an effort to learn the moral principles which apply, plus the real factual basis of the situation.
Conscience is a student, not a teacher.
Not exactly
Jer 31:33 "But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days," declares the LORD, "I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.
Rom 2:14 For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves,
Rom 2:15 in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them,
Rom 2:16 on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus.
The homosexual agenda must be learned. The Law of God is inherent.... and inerrant.
Obviously the rights of gays come before the rights of conscience or, I would say, the rights of children to a normal upbringing.
If I understand you (correct me if I'm wrong), you're referring to Natural Law: the law that derives from human nature, having certain God-created instincts which constitute an kind of "Law of the heart."
If this is what you're speaking of, then yes; but one has to distinguish between this Law, and all the other inward things that might rival it or distort it, such as inordinate appetites, inclinations, and drives.
Even a natural philosopher, to understand Natural Law, has to look broadly to compass all of human nature, across cultures, continents, and centuries... not merely his own individual tendencies
Keep in mind that our natures, inherited from Adam, were wounded by his sin; our natures are no longer inherently good as they were when God first created Man in His image and likeness. Because of these inherited tendences, our inner self can be bleared, smeared, distorted, diseased.
Jeremiah 17:9
The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can understand it?
Deuteronomy 12:8
You shall not at all do as we are doing here today—every man doing whatever is right in his own eyes.
Proverbs 3:5
Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.
That's why people who study Natural Law can't just go with whatever seems right to them.
Proverbs 21:2
Every way of a man is right in his own eyes: but the LORD pondereth the hearts.
Romans 10:14-15
How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent?
The heart of man itself asks:
Psalm 119:34 Give me understanding, and I will keep your law and obey it with all my heart.
And God answers:
Jeremiah 3:15
Then I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will lead you with knowledge and understanding.
We have the advantage of God's Law revealed explicitly to us: we have our shepherds who guide us in knowledge and understanding. That's why we refer to the obligation of conscience to think with the mind of the Church.
Eze 22:26 Her priests have violated my law, and have profaned mine holy things: they have put no difference between the holy and profane, neither have they showed difference between the unclean and the clean, and have hid their eyes from my sabbaths, and I am profaned among them.
We have the advantage of God's Law revealed explicitly to us: we have our shepherds who guide us in knowledge and understanding. That's why we refer to the obligation of conscience to think with the mind of the Church.
What do you do when the shepherds are themselves sexually devient and profaners of the Law of God?
Unfortunately, not so among some of their members. A very tiny amount.
They are matters of conscience, yes, but are legislative acts in conflict in the area of "rights of conscience" when it comes to them? IOW, is the state forcing murder, theft & adultery via legislation & if it did, would one's right of conscience exclude one from participating?
The article states “rights of conscience cannot be made subject to legislation.” Murder, theft, and adultery are all matters of conscience that have been made into law. The left knows this and has been softening us up to "gay rights" and "tolerance" for years in order to pull on our heart strings and make these causes "matters of conscience". The deamonize anyone who does not share their agenda as being bigots and such so as to come back around to legislate immorality.
I've never, to my knowledge, had a pastor who was sexually deviant or a profaner of the Law of God. It would be a most painful situation.
If he were (say) a criminal abuser, you'd be better advised to go to the police before you went to the bishop.
If he were doing something not covered by secular criminal law, like teaching heresy, you'd have to do like the Lord says: (Matthew 18:15-17) "... go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that 'every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.'If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector."
This is an incredible shame.
1Co 6:1 Does any one of you, when he has a case against his neighbor, dare to go to law before the unrighteous and not before the saints?
1Co 6:2 Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? If the world is judged by you, are you not competent to constitute the smallest law courts?
1Co 6:3 Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more matters of this life?
1Co 6:4 So if you have law courts dealing with matters of this life, do you appoint them as judges who are of no account in the church?
1Co 6:5 I say this to your shame. Is it so, that there is not among you one wise man who will be able to decide between his brethren,
1Co 6:6 but brother goes to law with brother, and that before unbelievers?
1Co 6:7 Actually, then, it is already a defeat for you, that you have lawsuits with one another. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be defrauded?
1Co 6:8 On the contrary, you yourselves wrong and defraud. You do this even to your brethren.
1Co 6:9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals,
1Co 6:10 nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.
Mat 18:15 "If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother.
Mat 18:16 "But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that BY THE MOUTH OF TWO OR THREE WITNESSES EVERY FACT MAY BE CONFIRMED.
Mat 18:17 "If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.
I couldn't agree more. When you have a problem, the last stop is the congregation. The problem with this verse over the years is that "the church" has come to mean "the bureaucats that you pay to tell you what to think", when it is suppose to mean "the congregation".
ekklēsia; from G1537 and G2564; an assembly, a (religious) congregation: - assembly (3), church (74), churches (35), congregation (2).
There is a long standing tradition of it, yes & we should rejoice in it, as our secular brethren have embraced the same truth as we have in those areas... to a point. Many of them have rationalized society into a different position from the faithful in all of the areas you mentioned. Murder and theft are "understandable", when committed by the "disadvantaged". Adultery was first decriminalized & then torts involving it mostly defanged.
The left knows this and has been softening us up to "gay rights" and "tolerance" for years in order to pull on our heart strings and make these causes "matters of conscience". The deamonize anyone who does not share their agenda as being bigots and such so as to come back around to legislate immorality.
The left does what the left does. Doesn't mean we have to let them or go along to get along. The Roman Catholic Church pushed back & the Anglican Church has joined her. The matter of conscience we're dealing with here is saying no to the agenda of the left, despite the deamonization.
Hopefully my posts do not appear to endorse the homosexual agenda. I just think that the archishop's statement is ludicrous and does not further his righteous agenda.
They don't. I get where you're coming from.
I just think that the archishop's statement is ludicrous and does not further his righteous agenda.
I disagree. He was being maybe overly gentle, but another way to say what he said would be to chide the state for trying to bully the Church into accepting laws which are against their teachings. He spoke of the "right", in a way where the right is derived from God, not from the state. The left doesn't accept that premise, preferring to see rights being both derived & protected by the state.
It certainly must have this wider, singular sense: because the Church is the Bride of Christ, and I don't think He means He has a harem.
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