Posted on 09/19/2012 9:05:44 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
I’m sorry to report that this also seems to be the case amongst the Catholics I work with and meet from around the country. They may call themselves Catholics, and they may even go to Mass, but when it comes to life choices they are virtually indistinguishable from everyone else in America. They don’t live radical Christianity out in any real sort of way. Their lives look just like the lives of their worldly neighbors. They don’t give any more than the average joe. They seem just as likely to divorce their spouses, have only 2.5 children as their non Catholic neighbors and they seem just as materialistic as everyone else. They attend church if they feel like it, but if there’s a weekend football game or the call of the beach house they’re just as likely to respond to that demand. When it comes to voting, they’ll vote as they wish according to wherever they get their opinions from–TV, the newspaper, the mass media–just like their neighbors. The one source they won’t consider when informing their vote is their priests and bishops.
Of course not all Catholics are so complacent, dull and worldly. There are some who will vote according to their Catholic conscience. There are a good number who will stand up for Catholic principles and allow their fundamental convictions to inform their vote. There are some who will vote as if their lives–and the lives of the future generations depended on it. If people want to discover what the ‘Catholic vote’ is they should talk to them. The difference between these informed and convinced Catholics and the other sort is clear to see.
What we are really looking at is the fact that the ‘Catholic Vote’ reflects the same two nation divide that is seen right across our country. You can even give names to the two types of ‘Catholics’ who make up these two voting blocs: Biden or Ryan, Kennedy or Santorum, Pelosi or Boehner. The divide is not just ‘right’ or ‘left’ or ‘Democratic’ or ‘Republican’. It’s those who’s political convictions–no matter how spotty and incomplete or faulty–are informed by the genuine teaching of the Church, and those who believe the Church should be informed by their political convictions.
Have I said it before? Every argument is a theological argument. The real divide is therefore between Catholics who believe their religion is a human and historical construct which can (and ought) to be changed according to the times and circumstances in which they live and those who believe that the times and circumstances in which they live are to be corrected and informed by the eternal, God-revealed truths of the Catholic faith.
If they want to assess the ‘Catholic vote’ they must poll those who believe the latter not the former for the latter is the Catholic faith. The other is called ‘historicism’ which is one of the gals in that brothel called ‘Modernism’.
Do we get to include all of the bitter ex-Catholics who currently describe themselves as Evangelicals, OPC'ers, Mormons, Buddhists, etc. or just those too lazy or intellectually dishonest to recalibrate their self-identifications?
Just count the Catholic’s who are baptized members of the Catholic denomination who consider themselves Catholics.
Nope - just the 70+ million that the bishops report as (still) being Catholic. Or are you accusing the bishops of being intellectually dishonest and lazy?
I think this is an important point. To the extent that Christian congregations are constrained in their witness by financial considerations, they are enslaved by Mammon. I don't believe that, in most cases, it is necessary to support or oppose an individual, named candidate in order to identify (to be blunt) those who are God's and those who are Satan's. However, if the government goes after a congregation for "excessive" political specificity, they must be prepared to deal with the financial consequences.
A lot of Christians seem to think of their church as a "free" service, like a library or public school. You just show up, and everything is provided for you, "somehow." It should just "be there," with no responsibility on their part. I think that "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be," and so if your church is important to you, then you should prioritize its financial needs.
Among the Presbyterians (mind that you can preach to your own) it's more like 70% for Obama
That IS the only reason why churches hands are tied and, believe me, it was not unintentional. No matter who or what you are, if you take money from the government they can dictate anything they want to you. Religious groups should take a stand and be free of government control about anything. Like you said, if it means paying taxes, so be it, it will be well worth it to be rid of the godless intrusion.
I like the idea of unregistered churches and house churches.
Just don’t do anything taxable and your fine.
Definitions count.
I believe Ansel12 and Natural Law are talking past each other to some extent, and it's because of differing definitions.
Cronos’ point shows that this isn't just a Roman Catholic problem. (I'm pinging this to the “Great Reformed Ping List” since it deals with Presbyterianism, and it's not just the PC(USA) — read to the end regarding problems in our own conservative PCA and OPC circles.)
I haven't seen the poll cited by Cronos, but if it surveyed people on the membership rolls or who claim to be affiliated in some way with the Presbyterian Church (USA) — the rapidly declining mainline liberal denomination — what that poll says may very well be true. Unlike the Roman Catholic Church, the PC(USA) is liberal and although the PC(USA) has conservative opposition groups, we would expect many of its leaders and active members to be liberal.
Very different numbers would likely result in a survey of members of the Presbyterian Church in America or Evangelical Presbyterian Church, and even more radical differences in the more conservative Presbyterian bodies like the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Those denominations are strongly conservative and open liberalism on issues like abortion and homosexuality won't be tolerated for long.
Someone will point out, correctly, that the PC(USA) is far larger in total members and claimed adherents. PC(USA) numbers start looking much different when actual attendance is compared to the PCA and EPC, not the claimed membership numbers.
Similar issues exist with regard to the different numbers that show up when we consider baptized Roman Catholics, people who are on parish membership rolls somewhere, and people who actually attend Mass on a regular basis.
This threefold division between “self-identified” adherents of a religion, people on membership rolls, and people who are regular attenders needs to be considered in any serious demographic study of religion. It would be nice if that weren't necessary, but too many liberal churches (and a fair number of broadly evangelical churches as well) have grossly inflated membership rolls which do not reflect reality, and often have pastors or priests who don't care about church discipline or actually want large membership numbers to make themselves look good.
There's a bigger problem, however. Roman Catholics have their magisterium and as long as the Pope and the bishops remain solid on abortion and homosexuality, the church's position won't change. For Protestants, if we don't remember that church discipline is the third mark of the true church, our denominations will quickly collapse.
There are exceptions in the PCA and even the OPC to what is otherwise a firm stance on issues like abortion and homosexuality.
Note, for example, my posts on the problems with Misty Irons, the wife of a former OPC minister, Lee Irons, who is now a PCA ruling elder. Lee Irons views are unclear, but there is no question that his wife supports homosexual marriages and even spoke publicly to a homosexual Christian conference on her husband's experience in the OPC and how it compared to her much "better" treatment in a PCA congregation. Misty Irons will (or should) have major problems as her views become better known. Here are some links to Free Republic posts on this problem, along with other websites where I've been criticized even by some Orthodox Presbyterians who don't have a problem with Misty Irons:
“Old Reformed” views and “Escondido 2K” views of politics
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2916768/posts
“Should We Oppose Same-Sex Marriage?” (Westminster prof “could affirm domestic partnerships”)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2919093/posts
Pushing All Those Buttons, Making All That Noise
http://presbyterianblues.wordpress.com/2012/08/17/pushing-all-the-buttons-hearing-all-the-noise/
Talking About Talking About 2K
http://presbyterianblues.wordpress.com/2012/08/14/talking-about-talking-about-2k/
Reformed Journalist Calls for the Conservative Presbyterian and Reformed Community to Understand the Realities of “Radical Two Kingdoms” and “Escondido Two Kingdoms” Theologies
http://presweek.blogspot.com/2012/08/15-august-2012.html
The 2 Kingdoms Debate
http://www.weswhite.net/2011/02/the-2-kingdoms-debate/
Here's a clue to what you'll find over at those links, quoting an Orthodox Presbyterian member who doesn't seem to have a problem with Misty Irons and homosexual civil marriage: “Give him credit: culture warrior Darrell Todd Maurina sure knows which buttons to push. Now he’s made three listserves (OPC, URC, and the Warfield List) blow up over 2k and civil unions. Not content to merely push the “gay” button, he’s just started pushing all of them.)”
Here's my response:
People like Teddy Kennedy aren't anywhere near as much of a problem to the Roman Catholic Church as people like Misty Irons are to us. We need to deal with her, and deal with her now. The PC(USA) shows what happens when church discipline does not happen. The refusal to discipline liberal Auburn Affirmationists in 1924 when they had the chance led directly to the 1929 liberal takeover of Princeton Seminary and then the 1936 discipline of the conservative leaders who subsequently left to found the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.
We forget the lessons of history at our peril.
the problem is among us all. At the end it is conservatives v/s liberals
Agreed, with some qualifications.
J. Gresham Machen, a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary who was regarded as one of the intellectual leaders on the conservative side of the American fundamentalist-modernist fight a century ago, wrote a helpful book entitled “Christianity and Liberalism” in which he argued that the differences between millennial views (a major issue then, less so now), the Arminian-Calvinist divide, and even the Roman Catholic-Protestant divide were far less important than the division between liberalism and historic Christianity.
Machen argued that while the other differences were important, liberalism not only is not Christianity, it is in an entirely different class of religions from Christianity. Liberalism, in Machen’s view, has more in common with non-revelatory religions which do not rely on propositional truth and an authoritative Scripture than it has in common with either Christianity or Judaism.
Machen is now known primarily as the founder of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and of Westminster Theological Seminary. That's a fairly narrow sphere of influence. In the days when he was fighting the fundamentalist-modernist battles, he had a much greater influence, and while he was certainly a conservative Calvinist, he was willing to work with others in the shared fight.
One of the most interesting points about Machen is that in his day, when cooperation of conservative Protestants (or even liberal Protestants) with Roman Catholics was almost unheard of, Machen attended speeches of leading Roman Catholic apologists and clearly admired the Roman Catholic stance for truth on key issues. It is unfair to say that he believed in co-belligerency — that had to wait another half-century for Francis Schaeffer — but the level of evangelical and Catholic cooperation we see today in the pro-life movement simply did not exist until the chaos of the 1960s and 1970s.
Put bluntly, as traditional Roman Catholics and evangelical Protestants we need to recognize that we have important differences, but to realize that it is entirely possible to demand strict adherence to orthodoxy within our own confessional boundaries in our own churches while cooperating together to fight wickedness in the civil realm.
As a Calvinist, I find Abraham Kuyper's doctrine of sphere sovereignty to be helpful, i.e., that God had established separate and distinct governments in the sphere of the family, the church, and the state, and has tasked enforcement of His standards to different authorities in each sphere. Fathers have certain roles in the home into which neither the church nor the state may intrude, pastors and elders have certain roles in the institutional church into which neither the family nor the state can intrude, and the civil magistrates have certain roles in the state into which neither the family nor the church can intrude. For example, a father whose daughter has been raped may not take the law into his own hands and kill the rapist, the state may not decide who can and cannot come to communion, and the church may not wage war.
In the civil realm, the standards are those of Romans 13. That allows for a great deal of cooperation between traditional Roman Catholics, evangelical Protestants, Orthodox Jews, and even secularists who value the American Constitution or some other system of law based on external authority rather than individual and subjective personal feelings. All of us have far more in common with each other than we have with liberals, and we need to cooperate. If we don't do so, the liberals most certainly will exploit that division between us.
Polling is useless compared to actual voting, or else republicans would often do great with Jews and Catholics because during democrat administrations, they often are angry at their president.
I don’t recall anyone here defending how Presbyterians vote, or denying how they vote, or denying that it is even possible to know how they vote, or even denying that the people being identified as Presbyterian are Presbyterian.
Those are the 4 angry attacks directed against political discussions of the devastating Catholic vote in America, in an attempt to shut off discussion and analysis or even awareness of it by conservatives.
Nobody here defends the Presbyterian denomination producing liberal, pro-abortion, pro-homosexual voters.
We don’t know how Presbyterians vote, they are small, and no one is fighting to pretend that they are not liberal anyway, most conservative interest is directed to where it should be, telling it’s members to change it, or leave it, and there is no push back from conservative, Presbyterian freepers on that, in fact, they always agree and want to discuss options and strategies of what they can do to make their denomination more conservative, and less friendly to the abortion and gay movements.
and as long as the Pope and the bishops remain solid on abortion and homosexuality
I would take issue with this statement. It's my recollection that a few years ago during a controversy surrounding Notre Dame, only about half of the U.S. bishops were willing to take a strong, public, pro life stand. And a few have taken fairly strong stands for unBiblical positions. So I wouldn't describe the American bishops as 'solid'.
Of course, I'd rather spend my energies at this point trying to clean up the PCA.
Thanks, PAR... we definitely agree that the PCA needs to be cleaned up, and despite the level of problems, it would be much easier to clean up the PCA than a lot of other denominations.
BTW, I’m ARP. My wife and the rest of my Korean-speaking family attend a Korean PCA where the pastor speaks virtually no English.
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