Posted on 06/01/2014 5:20:38 PM PDT by ebb tide
I don’t recommend the Church as the government, but there are various ways of having the Church involved in the government. England’s House of Lords had both Lords Temporal and Lords Spiritual, and back when the House of Lords was more powerful and the Church was not an extension of the crown, it brought another party to the table in making decisions.
Having both the Church and the State involved in education is better than a State monopoly.
All systems of government have strengths and weaknesses, some more of one, some more of the other. What works best in a particular circumstance depends upon the society involved. While having the Church too heavily identified with the State is bad for the Church, some degree of involvement can be good, and dismissing any cooperation out of hand in a blanket way for all societies and times is foolish.
England had been Catholic, so they switched from one church to a splinter church, but that doesn’t fly in America.
The entire Latin World did it though, and Spain does, Russia seems to be using that method to reinforce the government.
Given the present American system, Congress can’t establish, but traditionally it has been possible for the States to co-operate. Even at the Federal level, it would seem that there should be some room for cooperation, and initially many of the States did establish.
However, as we are considering Mexico, Spain as it was in the late 70’s, and the issue in the abstract, what is allowed in the American system isn’t the last word.
If the cooperation is such that the Church is being used to re-enforce the government, rather than the cooperation being good for all involved, the Church in the end will be burned.
You keep saying the church, which Protestant church would run America?
There is a wide spectrum between no cooperation whatsoever and a Church-run state. Even when some of the States had established Churches (and the denominations varied), it was never the case that the established Church ran the state.
If the American system were being followed closely in America, one could discuss how tweaking it might improve things. As it stands, better to concentrate on getting back to basics than introducing anything new.
Having an established Church, one with a particular special relationship to the State, only would seem to make sense to me if a majority of believers within a state were members of the largest denomination, and that is, so far as Wikipedia is to be trusted, true of only five U.S. States at present: Mississippi (Baptists), Utah (LDS), and New Mexico, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts (Catholic).
Catholicism as normally practiced in Rhode Island and Massachusetts involves trying to keep the name Catholic while doing as little as possible, and an established Baptist Church is oxymoronic, so there are only two states where a special relationship might make some sense. At the same time, that doesn’t preclude all denominations being involved in relationships in other states: e.g. the funding or partial funding of religious schools and hospitals.
A few years ago I would be shocked that someone here would even entertain such ideas, if you want change, then fight immigration, and fight to change how Catholics vote.
Mt 28: 19-20
Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you:
Actually, what’s the Biblical basis of having to be without sin completely
Being completely sinless isn't a requirement. However, a deliberate lifestyle of grave and unrepentant sin makes "teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you" a practical impossibility, since such persons contradict the Lord's teachings by their example.
or the Biblical basis of buying into Christianity completely in order to baptize a baby
How can one transmit what they themselves doubt or reject?
The ideas are grounded in part in past practice in the United States, and, insofar as we are discussing things in the abstract and prescinding from the U.S, (legitimate enough on a thread dealing with international things), things found throughout history.
My own thoughts are that if you want change, raise your kids well, pray hard, and do what God allows with the people that he sends your way. I’m very Augustinian in outlook. I might change the way of how a few people vote as part of the process, but I am not called to change how Catholics as a whole vote, and if I focus too much on that, I won’t do what I am called to do properly.
“How can one transmit what they themselves doubt or reject?”
This is the normal state of Christian education in the world today. Doubt alongside faith. Every single day.
It was Christ Himself who points this out: “If you had but this much faith (referring to the size of a mustard seed) you could move mountains.”
Every baptized baby, every single one, baptized and handed back to parents who, while believed, also doubted, and sinned, and repented (and maybe not).
In the case of the lesbians, their sin is flagrant and open, and the baptism along side this outward rejection of God’s commandments offends onlookers.
I get it.
Still, I’d rather have those sinners in the pews, with their kid, sitting alongside all the other sinners and hypocrites on Sunday.
I have a Scout Troop, and I’d rather have the kids in church. I have too many parents that think they aren’t worthy to be in church, and they never take their kids.
That’s one thing.
For someone to tell parents, no matter how f’d up they might be that their kid can’t be baptized because the parents are ‘unworthy’?
I recall Jesus having a small cow when the disciples tried to keep kids from Him after he’d spent all day working.
If I can get them in the door, and if I can keep all the hypocritical, self-righteous prigs from humiliating them into turning around and leaving, I might just have a shot at telling them that God loves them anyway He finds them, so long as He finds them, and let the process of being brought into the fold take its natural course in helping clean up their lives.
Most homosexuals are deeply, deeply unhappy people. Getting them into a church is a big step. Getting them to baptize their children is massive.
I don’t know a single, solitary individual that left church on a Sunday one day and never sinned again.
One could make the argument that even though they knew it would displease God, and even though they knew it was wrong they sinned anyway, and as such, it makes a complete mockery of their acceptance of Christ.
Lots of agnostics make that observation of many Christians and never set foot in a church.
Two lesbians baptizing their child into a Bible-believing Christian church is a golden opportunity. Woe betide the individual that squibs that particular kick.
"Unworthiness" has nothing to do with it. Every soul is precious to God.
This is about a deliberate, defiant, and public rejection of Church teaching accompanied by a demand that the Church conform to their sinful lifestyle and political agenda by providing Sacraments that they reject in practice - IOW pure hypocrisy.
I do. Without repentance, neither is going to Heaven. One group may be a little hotter than the other, but they'll both be in the same Hell.
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