Posted on 06/26/2011 2:59:58 PM PDT by Cronos
More than 200 United Methodist clergy in Illinois have pledged to flout church policy and bless unions for same-sex couples, putting their jobs, homes and callings in jeopardy if couples take advantage of their offer.
Methodists in the Northern Illinois Conference also called on the global church to impose no more than a 24-hour suspension for clergy who defy the policy.
Elders, deacons and pastors took their stand after civil unions in Illinois became legal this month. But they said their determination to support same-sex unions has been fueled further by a church trial last week in which a jury found a Wisconsin pastor guilty of performing a holy union for a lesbian couple, suspending her for 20 days.
"Unfortunately the church has lost its prophetic voice on this issue," said the Rev. Gregory Gross, a deacon who organized the campaign. "Our civil society has taken the lead. Now the church is trying to catch up."
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
Losing both legs is fabulous: no more sore feet!
Property is evil, it leads to theft.
I can't say enough for death. Dead people don't litter.
It's not just that they consider themselves Christians, it's that they consider themselves thoughtful! To them I would say,"Decapitation in your case should be praised. It cannot possibly lead to gross errors of thought!"
Let me slip into "O tempora, o mores" mode here. I could begin by wondering how many of these geniuses could identify that quote. It's not that knowing bits of Cicero's first oration against Cataline is essential to thought. But in might be necessary (but not sufficient) to the kind of education that leads to ordered thought.
O Chronoi! (little translingual pun there...) Once again the importance of having a clue about the Incarnation shows itself. If we start out thinking that the body is an inconvenient and unreliable locus of a thinking entity, the first things to go are two of the four cardinal virtues. Prudence goes because we have denied the possibility of the benign influence on our thought of our creatureliness. We think, like the Cathars, think we can cut ourselves free of the limitations of our fleshy finitude if only we try hard enough. And so we mistake rash and disordered thought for courageous new speculation.
Temperance goes because the same limitations of finitude are considered foreign enemies to our beautifully (in our view) free thought and will, rather than guides to happiness.
When we have bereft ourselves of those habits of wisdom, our courage will fail us the first time our bodies rise up in revolt, and justice won't even get in the door, since it is as foolish not to know one's desires and inclinations as it is to ignore the massing of enemy troops on one's borders.
Okay, first rant of the day. I could go on but I'm merciful, and it would be better for all if I just mutter and grumble into my coffee-cup.
Oh, absolutely. Every heresy from the past has been revived and marketed to people in this country as an acceptable "Christian" viewpoint and is either undermining a particular existing church from within or is the basis for a separate church on it's own.
At the same time, those who are sincere are showered with deceptions and slanders against every identifiable group of faithful Christians to such a degree that they never combine with fellow Christians and become effective combatants in the war against Satan. Instead, they are constantly encouraged to focus on the few doctrinal issues that separate them from fellow Christians rather than the immense evil they should be fighting.
Regards
Yep.
“By schisms rent asunder, by heresies distrest.”
One the one hand there is a need for apologetics. On the other hand, the enemy is at the gates.
Please, don't retreat into muttering to yourself. Had I run into more people who muttered and grumbled aloud it would have spared me many a year in the wilderness.
Regards
This is the kind of thing that happened in the Episcopal Church. When bishops ordained women and then practicing homosexuals before the whole body gave the official okey-dokey, they were maybe rebuked but that was it.
So the world thought the bishops "courageous" for daring this dreadful consequence, while we in the bodies in question realized that church order meant nothing more than acquiescence to the spirit of the age.
And as we see in the Episcopal Church, failing to stand for anything in particular leads to falling for anything in general.
Oh my!
Cronos knows. I will soon reach critical mass and explode again.
Israel spent 40 years in the wilderness and, though they sinned much, they received many graces. It is not wasted.
At least by the end of 40 years we should be able to admit that we are froward murmurers whose automatic response on the day that we hear His voice is to jam our fingers in our ears.
“Meribah? Massa? Never ‘eard of ‘em! Whoa! Where’d those burning snakes come from?”
you are incredibly spot on accurate today.
What we need is more shouting by folks and fighting. We need to take back our churches!
Since I had made solemn promises when I was ordained a priest (or not) in the Episcopal Church (TEC), my departure and renunciation were slow and deliberate.
What pushed me over the edge was this: A bishop, an ordinary, was fool enough to hear the confessions of his high-church clergy, one of whom later turned out to be a child molester. (Ordinaries ought not to hear confessions because it can trash their ability to discipline their clergy. It can tie their hands.)
So at the civil suit of the diocese, the confessions came up. Since the point of the suit was that the diocese knew or should have known about the abuse, the content of the confessions was highly material. The penitent molester gave his permission, but that's immaterial, IMHO.
So the judge ordered the bishop to divulge. He demurred. She threatened to hold him in contempt and to fine him $1k per day. He stalled for time, and asked “815” (TEC headquarters in New York) for backup.
They told him to go ahead and divulge.
Now at least in theory rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer (BCP) have the force of law, and the BCP is only changed with great work and the votes of two successive triennial general (national) conventions.
And the relevant rubric reads, “The secrecy of a confession is morally absolute for the confessor, and must under no circumstances be broken.”
Very UN-EPiscopalian language: “morally absolute” and “under no circumstances.” So what we had was the headquarters of TEC telling a bishop to break a rubric.
So much for the representative character of the TEC polity. So much for “Vox (Episcopal) populi, vox dei.” It all came down to the illegal decision of the bureaucrats of the Presiding Bishop.
This same Church took the decision to abandon centuries of tradition and ordain women to the priesthood and episcopate as something it could do, did do, and which the people of TEC should accept as authoritative. But the rubric on the secrecy of the confessional was optional?
Not only is there the obvious legal and “authority” problem here, there is a moral problem. At the very least, 815 should promulgate their decision that “morally absolute” means “morally relative” and “under no circumstances” means “under some circumstances”. That way, pious layfolk would know that the confidentiality they had been given to expect was illusory.
Needless to say, that didn't happen either.
So, I wrote a monograph, in the mode of a crank, I suppose. I had enough copies printed for all the clergy of the diocese and handed them out at a diocesan clergy meeting.
I got ONE response.
So I concluded we had an organization that began in a dispute about the authority of the Bishop of Rome, finally dissolving into a group refusing to abide by its own decisions and evidently perceiving none of the responsibilities of taking authority.
Not only that, but in this and all the other transgressions of discipline, TEC was revealed to be a body that declined to bear the burden of apostolic authority. “Believe what you want about gender and sexuality, abortion, the Holy Sacrament of the Altar, the creeds, the nature of Christ, or anything whatsoever,” is the opposite of Apostolic, as much as shrugging is the opposite of a declaration.
For me, it wasn't a matter of leaving one ‘church’ for another because I liked the other more. It was a matter of the church which two times had required of me that I subscribe to or make verbally an oath of conformity — as witnessed by the congregation, which would naturally conclude what was suggested, namely: that I meant to be obedient — expected no conformity from me or from its other clergy. We each were expected to do what was right in our own eyes, and by this incident were shown to conform not even to our own wills but to our whims.
It was conceptually impossible that I had been ordained by a church that intended ordination or, indeed, that intended anything whatsoever!
But specifically, this showed that the overwhelmingly vast majority of the Episcopal “clergy” were FINE with that state of affairs.
(I have been told I am “too reasonable”! Moi! It's not that my arguments were bad, it's that they were GOOD, therefore they should not be listened to or answered!)
So, yes, by all means let us shout and tangle. But the great somnolent mass of adherents to mainstream denominations will not let their slumber be disturbed. In forsaking proper authority, they end up having forsaken ANY authority.
Wow. That's so similar to the conclusion that regularly picks fights with me that it's scary.
It took me a long time, but I finally realized that the only alternative to floating in the murky waters that pass for non-Catholic doctrine really is the the Catholic Church Christ, oddly enough, said He would build on solid rock. The great majority of folks, though, happily float along on their inflated mat of self-absorbsion and to them anyone swimming in search of solid ground is either a distraction or a joke. It doesn't bother them a bit that their doctrine is like Grandpa's Axe and has had the handle replaced three times and the head replaced twice. As long as they're cozy they have no intention of getting off their lovely little personal mat or paying any attention to what they're floating towards.
Only a small percentage are willing to even dip a toe in the water much less abandon their mat and swim off in search of solid ground. That small percentage is desperately needed at the barricades but time spent trying to guide them to solid ground is time not on the barricades and effort that often times is counterproductive. We're up against a very smart opponent, one who frames the battle in a way that pits our attempts to be as wise as serpents against our desire to be as harmless as doves.
Regards
I am too naive then, but then if we don’t do this, I despair that it means giving up.
We may build the altar, but the fire will come from heaven.
Bookmark
Right. My reference to New Age being old hat was aimed at "New Ideas" regarding tarot cards, astrology, divining, and so forth. I completely agree with your conclusions.
I am also a Methodist. I probably will not be after the 2012 Methodist conference. It is going to surprise me if they do not lift the ban on gay clergy. If you want a real eye opener on what is going on in the Methodist Church visit the site United Methodist Church General Board Of Church and Society.
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