Posted on 04/28/2011 5:55:29 AM PDT by ZGuy
Being gay is a gift from God, asserts one church in Ohio.
That’s the message that Central United Methodist Church is spreading throughout their community via a digital billboard, launched on Monday.
This “simple statement,” the church announced, is “intended to be a gift to those who have experienced hurt and discrimination because of their real or perceived sexual orientation.”
“The Church seeks nothing less than the healing of the world, and Central UMC wants to offer words and acts of healing to those hurt and marginalized,” the website states.
Jeff Buchanan, the director of Exodus Church Equipping & Student Ministries, agrees that the Church must display love and compassion for those in the LGBT community. But he opposes the message that CUMC is sending through their “Being Gay is a Gift from God” campaign.
“Why would God bestow this ‘gift’ only to condemn it throughout the Bible? This would seemingly contradict His character as a God who is loving and just.”
The Toledo church’s controversial billboard ad is directly connected to a long month-long sermon series by its new pastor, Bill Barnard. The church is hoping that the ad will move the public towards tolerance, reported ABC 13, and not perpetuate anti-gay attitudes and behaviors, which were harming the LGBT community.
The purposes of their recently launched campaign are threefold: to offer welcome to all persons who are gay; to challenge the larger Church to fully accept persons who are gay into the life of the Church; and to call on all people to bring all the gifts of who they are to God.
“By welcoming and living in community with faithful Christians who happen to be gay, we have come to understand that being gay is part of who God made them to be,” CUMC proclaims on their site. “And by gay Christians bringing all that they are to God, the body of Christ has been strengthened.”
“In fact, we would experience the body of Christ as incomplete without LGBT persons.”
Barnard told ABC, “We really believe that being gay is a gift from God, and it’s not anything that anyone has to apologize for or be ashamed about. So that’s how [the campaign] came to be.”
Believing sexuality to be a “good gift from God” – or as they declared yet another way in God’s infinite diversity – CUMC defines sin as denying who God created them to be.
“The overwhelming scientific evidence is that people are born with their sexual orientation, that it is not a choice,” the church contends. “Fully accepting one’s sexual orientation and identity is key to leading a normal and healthy life.
“Forcing people to act against their God-given sexual orientation will lead to disordered lives. Allowing people to act in accordance with their God-given sexual orientation leads to reconciliation.”
While deeming the marginalization of LGBT persons as “unjustified” – mentioning that Jesus did not speak directly regarding homosexuality – the Toledo church recognizes that the Church today continues to be divided over interpretation of Scripture related to homosexuality.
Just two months ago, 33 retired United Methodist bishops urged the denomination to remove its ban on homosexual clergy, prolonging the undying debate within the church body.
CUMC hopes to unify believers by focusing more on “things that [they] agree on, such as kindness, justice, and humility,” instead of contributing to hate and discrimination, which they believe leads not to reconciliation, but to self-destructive practices within the LGBT community.
“Holding people responsible for matters in which they have no control is irrational and immoral,” the church declares. “We believe that both those within and without the Church are hungry for dialogue about homosexuality that reflects compassion and humility rather than intolerance and strife.”
Buchanan contends that CUMC’s message “tells people that the only option they have is a gay identity.”
But “people need to understand that thousands of men and women have found there is another way and have found freedom from homosexuality through the power of Christ,” he says.
Even if there was conclusive evidence supporting the theory that people were “born this way,” Buchanan stresses that Christians were called to be “born again.”
“While we may not choose our desires, we do have the ability and responsibility to choose whether or not we act on those desires. Our goal should be living a life that is congruent with Scripture,” he says.
“Genesis describes the fall of man and the permanent effects that sin has on us spiritually, mentally, and physically. Just because something may be inherent does not mean it was intended.”
Despite the outcry of many from the Christian community against CUMC’s campaign, Barnard continues to proclaim that homosexuality is a “gift” and has people come and remain just “as they are.”
Working to accept persons who are gay into the full life of the Church, CUMC is a founding member of the Reconciling Ministries Network, which is the United Methodist movement for gay equality in the denomination.
Two of the volunteer staff members at their church, including the music director and lead team chair, live with their partners and have served the church for over seven years.
Grieved over the misinterpretation of Scripture and false teaching that is being promoted by CUMC and many other churches like them, Buchanan encourages churches to deliver the message of Christ with love and grace, but also with accuracy and uncompromised truth.
“We must always remember that authentic love is built upon a foundation of grace and truth.”
While Catholics greatly disagree with each other, their claimed superior doctrinal unity is based upon a required implicit assent to an assuredly Infallible Magisterium (IM), which has infallibly declared itself to be infallible (in accordance with her infallibly defined (scope and content-based) formula), which is the very means used by cults (which deviate from certain core truths evangelicals contend for), versus the Biblical means of “manifestation of the truth.” (2Cor. 4:2) Nor can Rome cannot boast of a greater unity than any individual group may have based upon “sola ecclesia,” while it may be argued that the transdemonational unity of the Spirit among the evangelicals is superior in quality than that of Roman Catholicism, as it does not depend upon implicit assent to an IM.
The fact that disagreement among Catholics may not be as manifest as it might be if Catholics were more committed to doctrine - rather than evidencing that modern Rome allows and effectually fosters laxity in this area (much to the chagrin of Traditional Catholics) - does not negate the fact that beneath their oft-repeated profession of certainty is much real or potential uncertainty and disagreement.*
Even though Catholics have an IM, yet they are confused over how many times Rome has spoken infallibly (and which also have to some degree of interpretation), from 3 to potentially hundreds or more. And which is necessary to ascertain in order to yield the required assent of faith.
Moreover, as these declarations do not necessarily extend to her argumentation or reasons behind them, Catholics can be confused as to where the infallibility begins or ends.
Catholics also may not know, with the certainty of faith, whether they have received a true sacrament.
In addition, some varying degrees of dissent are allowed for teachings of the non-infallible magisteriums, which rarely issues infallible pronouncements, and is where much (or most according to Sungenis) of what Catholics believe and practice comes from, and this degree of dissent and where, is variously interpreted.
Catholic are also commanded not to interpret Scripture contrary to the “unanimous consent” of the Fathers, but this “unanimous consent” of the Fathers is itself interpreted to mean something quite different than unanimous.
In addition, as very very little of the Bible has been infallibly defined, and clarity is lacking in many areas, thus the Catholic has great liberty in interpreting Scripture, resulting in varying interpretations, even as Rome's scholarship exhibits the same. Looking to the official Roman Catholic Bible for America for guidance, the Catholic will find a hermeneutic and interpretations that vary from others, and is quite liberal.
Looking to Vatican Two, Catholics find confusion as to its own orthodoxy and degree of authority and thus the assent one must give. Here on FR some Roman Catholics contend that Lumen Gentium does not affirm Protestants can be saved unless they convert before death, and the charge of sedevacantists that Vatican Two seriously deviated from orthodox Roman Catholicism, or is so ambiguous as to allow them to be invoked by both sides, is not without a good deal of substance. Nor is the rejection by the Orthodox of Papal infallibility and Roman purgatory, as being contrary to Tradition.
Where Catholics seem most unified in is confidence in Rome that it will see them through to glory, eventually, no matter how nominal, as long as they do not covert to become conservative evangelicals as multitudes do (far more then the opposite). Yet the basis for Rome's claim of unique supremacy and power is herself, as she has infallibly defined herself thusly, and submission to her is said to be necessary to know truth of a certainty, versus searching the Scripture with the heart of a noble Berean.
Furthermore, while infallibility does not extend to all a pope says or does, but is exercised when conforming Rome's infallibly defined formula, yet much of Rome's guidance and unity is based upon having a visible head. But looking to their leader, Catholics can have a pope who, according to a leading Roman Catholic apologist,
1. Invited pagans to pray to their false gods.
2. Looked the other way while his clerics raped his children, and ordained faggots to say his Masses
3. Shuffled pedophiles and homosexuals from parish to parish, even giving them safe haven at the Vatican.
4. Subjected those Catholic who dare protest to droning quotes from Vatican I and Lumen Gentium about “submission”
5. Watched scantily clad women dance while Mass was being said.
6. Suggested that hell might not exist.
7. Suggested that the Jews still have their Old Covenant
8. Kissed the Koran
9. Made it appear as if God has given man universal salvation by using ambiguous language in official writings
10. Accepted the tenets of evolution.
11. Wrote a catechism that contained theological errors and ambiguities.
12. Changed the canonization laws: marriage laws, capital punishment laws, laws about women’s roles.
13. Went against the tradition by putting women in leadership positions and dispensing with head coverings.
14. Failed to excommunicate heretical bishops and priests who were spouting heresies.
15. Protected Bishop Marcinkus and his entourage of financial hoodlums in the Vatican.
16. Ignored the pleas of a bishop who was merely trying to preserve the tradition (Archbishop Levebre)
17. Exonerated Luther
18. Allowed the Luther‐Catholic Joint Declaration, signed by a high‐ranking Cardinal, to explicitly state that “man is justified by faith alone.”
19. Disobeyed the Fatima request to consecrate Russia. — http://www.catholicintl.com/articles/Response%20to%20John%20Dejak%20of%20The%20Wanderer.pdf http://beggarsallreformation.blogspot.com/2011/04/sungenis-alone.html -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Just some of the things which Roman Catholics can disagree on to varying degrees,
The infallible or non-infallible nature of multitudes of teachings
Meanings of the above
Extra ecclesiam nulla salus and Lemun Gentum (status of Prots)
Whether the anathemas of Trent still stand and what they entail
The infallibility of Scripture, and scope of inerrancy claims, and hermeneutical methodology .
What Tradition is
What the Fathers taught
The distinction between contrition and attrition and contritio caritate perfecta.
Whether Tradition is the second of a two-part revelation (known as partim-partim), or if both forms of revelation contain the entirety of God's revealed truth.
Darwinian evolution vs not-Darwinian evolution
Geocentricity or Heliocentricity
Parts of predestination
Purgatorial suffering
Whether one can know they are part of the elect.
Capital punishment.
Whether the church was right in sanctioning torture
Papal infallibility
Whether the Virgin Mary died and then was assumed or whether she was assumed before death
Whether the Pope is subject to Ecumenical Councils
What mode of predestination is right - ie Molinism vs Augustinian
Mass in Latin or in vernacular
Whether Trent closed the canon or not
Infallibility of canonizations
What happens to unbaptized babies
The authority of Vatican Two
The meaning of Lumen Gentium as regards the salvation of those apart from Rome, etc.
Couldn’t have “said” it better myself.
:D
Hoss
You are right and I apologize the post I was referencing was by Notwithstanding I owe you an apology ....
Bingo!
And I bet most RCs here would agree with that ...
Is he right on this?
“Protestants generally misapprehend Catholicism as conservative and never evolving. Instead, it was always capable of radical revisions. For example, on the issue of purgatory, Augustine in the 400’s said there is a heaven and a hell but of a “third place we are entirely ignorant.” Then speculation began in the 600’s on purgatory. It was then only in 1140 A.D. that purgatory became an official doctrine. Then in 1563, it was decreed at Trent that anyone who denied purgatory was cursed and could not be saved. See Isaac Mann, Cursory Remarks, on a Treatise Entitled, Thoughts on Nature and Religion; or, an apology for the Right of Private Judgment, maintained by Michael Servetus, M.D. in his answer to John Calvin by a Clergyman of the Church of England (Cork: William Flyn, 1775) at 24.
Your gracious apology is gratefully accepted.
Whatever happened to *Innocent until proved guilty*?
Or is that only for pedophile Catholic priests?
Catholics, to avoid being hypocrites, need to hold themselves to the level of proof required by them to condemn a priest.
If they're going to smear Calvin like that, they need PROOF and it's up to them to present it to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, because I'm sure some Catholic is going to come along and claim that Calvin is guilty by default and it's up to someone else to prove he wasn't.
Proof from the Catholics, not hearsay, or innuendo, but facts, like the kind they demand before condemning their own priests (who Catholics will not admit as being guilty even when the priest ADMITS to the crime)
Double standards = hypocrisy.
Anything to try to establish denominational affiliation, eh?
The process of elimination isn’t working so well for them is it?
As said, I think the objections to V2 have some real warrant, such as expressed by the sedevacantist referred to above.
As for purgatory, thus the EOs generally reject the RC version of it, some more strongly than others, such as Orthodox apologist and author Clark Carlton:
“The Orthodox Church opposes the Roman doctrines of universal papal jurisdiction, papal infallibility, purgatory, and the Immaculate Conception precisely because they are untraditional.” Clark Carlton, THE WAY: What Every Protestant Should Know About the Orthodox Church, 1997, p 135.
The Orthodox Church does not believe in purgatory (a place of purging), that is, the inter-mediate state after death in which the souls of the saved (those who have not received temporal punishment for their sins) are purified of all taint preparatory to entering into Heaven, where every soul is perfect and fit to see God. Also, the Orthodox Church does not believe in indulgences as remissions from purgatoral punishment. Both purgatory and indulgences are inter-corrolated theories, unwitnessed in the Bible or in the Ancient Church, and when they were enforced and applied they brought about evil practices at the expense of the prevailing Truths of the Church. If Almighty God in His merciful loving-kindness changes the dreadful situation of the sinner, it is unknown to the Church of Christ. The Church lived for fifteen hundred years without such a theory. — http://www.goarch.org/ourfaith/ourfaith7076
However, Orthodox churches do believe that,
there is a state beyond death where believers continue to be perfected and led to full “divinization.” Though some Orthodox teachers have described this intermediate state as “purgatory,” others prefer to distinguish it from the Roman Catholic understanding of purgatory, insistingly that it is not necessarily a place of punishment but rather a place of growth....Although Orthodox teachers maintain that such a belief is necessary, there is little speculation as to what it might be like.: — Christian confessions: a historical introduction, by Ted Campbell
The Orthodox Church has neither explicitly recognized the term “purgatory” nor officially accepted such a state, which is distinct from the more general being “asleep in the Lord.” In his book entitled Why Do We Reject Purgatory?, Coptic Pope Shenouda III presents many theological and biblical arguments against Purgatory.
...That said, Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Kallistos Ware acknowledges several schools of thought among the Orthodox on the topic of purification after death. This divergence indicates that the Catholic interpretation of purgatory, more than the concept itself, is what is universally rejected. — http://orthodoxwiki.org/Purgatory
EO descriptions of the afterlife vary, both with the past and among each other, with some being closer to Rome than others, while various claims are made by Catholics, such as “Free 1,000 Souls From Purgatory & they will pray for you unceasingly all your life!”
In the 13th century, Aquinas believed that the pain of Purgatory, both of loss and of sense, surpasses all the pains of this life “(Aquinas T. The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Appendix I, Article 1.).
And also sated, “Nothing is clearly stated in Scripture about the situation of Purgatory, nor is it possible to offer convincing arguments on this question.” Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Appendix II (Purgatory), Article 2
Evangelicals see the Scriptures only testifying of believers going to forever with the Lord after death, with purgatory being a later “development of doctrine” (p.109). — http://beggarsallreformation.blogspot.com/2009/02/defending-purgatory-with-all-your-cards.html
From the Catholic Encyclopedia under the heading ‘Jerome Bolsec’:
“Shortly after this (Bolsec’s return to France), he recanted his errors, was reconciled with the Catholic Church, and published biographies of the two Genevan reformers, Calvin and Beza (1519-1605). These works are violent in tone, and find little favour with protestant writers. Their historical statements cannot always be relied on.” (ellipsis mine.)
To put it mildly! “ Their historical statements cannot always be relied on.”
Never will understand why they insist on constantly bringing Calvin into the fray....always something that diverts away from what they will never be able to justify...and they know it....so I suppose Calvin..or any other they might name will do the “trick”.
Wonder if their Priests have ever sought forgiveness for their acts? or were they simply repentant because they got caught?..and so many of them and more yet to be revealed no doubt.
Oh, look! Sophistry.
There's a world of difference between being sorry for your sin and sorry you got caught sinning.
1 John 2 1My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. 2 He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. 3And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. 4Whoever says "I know him" but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, 5but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: 6whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.
(Which doesn't include molesting children or homosexual conduct, or robbing the church as Judas used to do with the money bag)
1 John 2 15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16For all that is in the world— the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world. 17And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.
1 John 3:4-10 4Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. 5You know that he appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. 6No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. 7Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. 8 Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. 9 No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. 10By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.
It's only sophistry if it is untrue which makes your statement demagogy.
Ah, but it is untrue. The Torah is to be read to the assembly (gathered together) every seven years. One of the reasons enumerated by YHWH is so that the children born in the interim can hear the words of YHWH. So the Word is meant to be understood by a child. No doubt there is milk and meat. There is a deeper understanding. But to say that the "simple" cannot interpret what YHWH has said is against the very words of YHWH.
Yes, Bingo is another practice that finds disagreement among Catholics.
Actually, the Torah is is to be read on a seven tear Talmudic Cycle (Schmita), not read every seven years. Anyone who would tell you that Judaism does not have or need teachers (Rabbis) because the Torah simple enough for a child to understand is a fool.
lol. That “web page” is a complete lie.
“Stanford Rives,” with his ludicrous “Standford Rives Home Page,” (http://sites.google.com/site/standfordrives/Home) is probably some pimply-faced seminarian charged with lying about a true man of God.
No surprise since Roman Catholics only have charlatans, conjurers and child rapists to lead them. Blind men can’t discern light from darkness.
I am talking of the Torah, not the talmud:
Deu 31:9 And Moses wrote this law, and delivered it unto the priests the sons of Levi, which bare the ark of the covenant of the LORD, and unto all the elders of Israel.
Deu 31:10 And Moses commanded them, saying, At the end of every seven years, in the solemnity of the year of release, in the feast of tabernacles,
Deu 31:11 When all Israel is come to appear before the LORD thy God in the place which he shall choose, thou shalt read this law before all Israel in their hearing.
Deu 31:12 Gather the people together, men, and women, and children, and thy stranger that is within thy gates, that they may hear, and that they may learn, and fear the LORD your God, and observe to do all the words of this law:
Deu 31:13 And that their children, which have not known any thing, may hear, and learn to fear the LORD your God, as long as ye live in the land whither ye go over Jordan to possess it.
e-Sword:KJV)
Anyone who would tell you that Judaism does not have or need teachers (Rabbis) because the Torah simple enough for a child to understand is a fool.
Judaism has forgotten the Torah in favor of their oral traditions (Talmud). Sound familiar?
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