Father James Martin on homosexuality: 'Christians shouldn't do everything' the Bible 'commands'

The heretical Jesuit priest has issued an outreach 'guide' on homosexuality that only serves to ignore and obscure Scripture.

(LifeSiteNews) — Dissident Jesuit priest Father James Martin has claimed Christians “shouldn’t do everything” the Bible “commands” in his new “Outreach Guide to the Bible and Homosexuality.”

Martin attempts to show how an explicit defense of homosexual behavior can be reconciled with Christianity in his “guide,” citing biblical scholars who allegedly help interpret Biblical passages on homosexuality. However, the advice of Martin as well as the scholars boils down to this: Even Christians can ignore Scriptural prohibitions on homosexual behavior.

Martin laments that such biblical verses “are used against LGBTQ people over and over,” and goes on to advise that “one response” to these verses “is to see them in their historical context and remember that even devout Christians shouldn’t do everything that [the] Old Testament commands. Likewise for the Epistles in the New Testament.”

His selective rejection of New Testament Scripture passages is at odds with the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), according to which the authors of Scripture are inspired by the Holy Ghost, and thus, “we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures.”

Martin’s rejection of Scriptural passages condemning homosexual behavior also appears inconsistent with his suggestion that what the Bible has to say on homosexuality matters. In his introduction to his guide, he writes, “The questions, though, remain: How can we best understand what the Bible says on homosexuality? What did these passages mean then and what do they mean today?

The writers the dissident Jesuit cites do little to clarify the question. Walter Brueggemann, who Martin refers to as a “giant in the field of biblical scholarship,” claims that St. Paul’s intention in his passage condemning homosexuality is “not fully clear.”

St. Paul writes: “For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.” (Rom. 1:23-27)

Brueggemann then concedes that “it is impossible to explain away” this text as well as a clear prohibition on homosexuality in Leviticus (“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination” (Lev. 18:22).

The scholar suggests that because Scripture expresses God’s welcome, in an apparent self-contradiction, to those who don’t keep “purity codes” (in this case, eunuchs, who are forbidden from the community of God according to Deuteronomy 23:1), that those who don’t abstain from homosexual behavior are likewise considered part of God’s covenant family, as if the moral law were equivalent to temporary Jewish ceremonial law.

Brueggemann fails to address this distinction between moral and ceremonial law, whereas Catholic apologist Trent Horn has pointed out that homosexual acts fall squarely within the moral domain, considering that their penalty under the Old Testament is death, something only assigned to sins like idolatry, murder, and adultery, not to the violation of ceremonial laws. Horn has also noted that mention of homosexual sin is “sandwiched between moral laws and not ceremonial ones.”

The very passage Brueggemann cites, in fact, indicates that eunuchs can be considered part of God’s family if they “hold fast” to His covenant, which means keeping God’s moral law and avoiding serious sin: “For thus says the Lord: To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters.” (Isaiah 56:4-5)

Brueggemann ambiguously concludes that “the full acceptance and embrace of LGBTQ persons follows as a clear mandate of the Gospel in our time.” It is true that, according to the CCC, that those with same-sex attraction “must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity.” However, it also affirms that “homosexual acts … are contrary to the natural law, that “they close the sexual act to the gift of life,” and that “under no circumstances can they be approved.”

None of the other scholars cited by Martin can refute Scripture’s clear prohibition on homosexual acts, but instead claim there may be loopholes, or, like Brueggemann, they suggest that because we are called to “welcome all,” active homosexuals must be included in the Body of Christ as well.

Fr. Martin is notorious for his open and heretical promotion of homosexual lifestyles and his celebration of homosexuality as a great “gift” for the Church. His tweets stating the homosexual Pete Buttigieg was “married” drew strong condemnation from numerous bishops and priests, with a Spanish priest denouncing him for “speaking out on social media in a scandalous way against the Catholic faith.”

Martin has a longstanding record of promoting LGBT ideology in dissent from Catholic teaching. Among his most notorious actions, Martin has promoted an image drawn from a series of blasphemous, homoerotic works, showing Christ as a homosexual, promoted same-sex civil unions, and has described viewing God as male as “damaging.”

biblical scholars who allegedly help interpret Biblical passages on homosexuality.

"biblical scholars" such as here below and are refuted, by the grace of God.

While some primary prohomosex scholars do confess that it appears, "Wherever the Bible clearly seems to refer to homosexual activity, we must recognize a judgment of condemnation", (McNeil, drawing from the word of Dutch scholar Herman van Spijker, referenced by By Stanley J. Grenz, Welcoming But Not Affirming, p. 83) or that "It might seem that only a series of verbal pyrotechnics could eliminate the seemingly obvious reference to homosexuality in Romans 1, (Scroggs, The New Testament and Homosexuality, p. 14) yet they contend that aggravating circumstances or other aspects provide reasons why injunctions against homosexual relations cannot apply to "loving, monogamous homosexual relationships." Much effort is expended in seeking to relegate Biblical injunctions (sometimes referred to as "clobber passages") against homosexual relations to only a formal cultic context, or only pertaining to pederasty, or to heterosexuals acting contrary to the orientation, while on the other hand they usually profess to see homosexuality within most any close heterosexual relationship in the Bible.

Another among the minority of pro homosexuals who affirm that the Bible does condemn homosexual relations while seeking to reject such is Walter Wink, who states "I have long insisted that the issue is one of hermeneutics, and that efforts to twist the text to mean what it clearly does not say are deplorable. Simply put, the Bible is negative toward same-sex behavior, and there is no getting around it." And that "Paul wouldn't accept a loving homosexual relationship for a minute." However, he joins similar revisionists who disallow that the Bible offers a coherent sexual morality ''for today'', especially as regards homoeroticism, which teaching Wink terms “interpretative quicksand”. Instead, he joins others in asserting that people possess a right to sex that can supercede Biblical laws, and essentially proposes that sexual ethics are best determined by one's own subjective understanding of Christian love. (Walter Wink, "To hell with gays" and "the Bible and homosexuality") Daniel Helminiak's theory of ethics is similar, which Olliff and Hodges notes "is, at its very foundation, self-refuting. While he professes Christianity, he has adopted the autonomous man's position for the basis of his ethics." A Further Look at Pro-Homosexual Theology, Derrick K. Olliff and Dewey H. Hodges

Likewise, pro-homosexual author Daniel Via states, "that Scripture gives no explicit approval to same-sex intercourse. I maintain, however, that the absolute prohibition can be overridden, regardless of how many times it is stated, for there are good reasons to override it." (Dan Otto Via, Robert A. J. Gagnon, "Homosexuality and the Bible: two views," pp. 38,94) This requires the same type of discredited reasoning as Wink, and Via's opposing co-author Robert Gagnon responds by noting that Via is an absolutist about no absolutes," and while Scripture clearly manifests otherwise, by arguing that nothing is intrinsically immoral no sexual act can be categorically considered as immoral, including the consensual incestuous relationship of a man with his mother, which was so sinful that it required severe spiritual discipline. (1Cor. 5) (http://www.robgagnon.net/2vrejoinder.htm) (Homosexuality and the Bible: A Real Debate)

While few pro homosexual writers concede that the Bible is contrary to same sex behavior, virtually all reject any Biblical censure of it. Author Robin Scroggs states, “Biblical judgments against homosexuality are not relevant to today’s debate.”(Robin Scroggs, The New Testament and Homosexuality (Philadelphia: Fortress, l983) p. 127.) William M. Kent, a member of the committee assigned by United Methodists to study homosexuality, explicitly denied the inspiration of any anti-homosex passages in the Bible, and their application today. John Boswell stated, regarding the Bible, that "one must first relinquish the concept of a single book containing a uniform corpus of writings accepted as morally authoritative." (John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980), 92) John Barton states that the Bible is "a big baggy compendium of a book, full of variety and inconsistency, sometimes mistaken on matters of fact and theology alike." (John Barton, "The Place of the Bible in Moral Debate," Theology 88 (May 1985), 206) Gary David Comstock, Protestant chaplain at Wesleyan University, termed it "dangerous" to fail to condemn the apostle Paul's condemnation of homosexual relations, and advocated removing such from the canon. (Gary David Comstock, Gay Theology Without Apology (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 1993), p. 43. http://www.albertmohler.com/article_read.php?cid7) Episcopalian professor L. William Countryman contends, “The gospel allows no rule against the following, in and of themselves: . .. bestiality, polygamy, homosexual acts,” or “pornography.” (Dirt, Greed, and Sex (Fortress, 1988) Christine E. Gudorf flatly denies that the Bible is the primary authority for Christian ethics. (Balch, Homosexuality, Science, and the "plain Sense" of Scripture p. 121) Bishop (Ret.) John Shelby Spong denies all miracles, including the virgin conception and literal bodily resurrection of Christ, as well as the Divine inspiration of Scripture, and denies that there are any moral absolutes (Michael Bott and Jonathan Sarfati, "What’s Wrong With (Former) Bishop Spong?") and relegates the clear condemnation of homosexual relations in Romans 1 to being the product of the apostle Paul's “ill-informed, culturally biased prejudices.” (Spong, Living in Sin? A Bishop Rethinks Human Sexuality, 149-52)

In addition, while contending about what the Bible says, few pro-homosexual writers believe that the Bible is Divinely inspired, and some use pagan stories and their interpretation of them to favor the practice they seek to justify, expecting that Israel would be like their pagan neighbors in this. The lack of any established sanction for homosexual relations in the Bible is often explained as being the result of editing by homophobic editors, (B.A. Robinson; Thomas Horner; Steven Greenberg) and by deeming that writers of holy writ were too ignorant on the subject of homosexuality for their censure of it to be valid. (Victor Paul Furnish, The Moral Teachings of Paul: p. 85) Similar to one of the women in 1 Kings 3:17-27, they would rather effectively destroy the authority of the Bible than allow it to be used to prove them wrong.

https://peacebyjesus.net/homosex_versus_the_bible.html

I guess he never read any of Paul’s writings about who would inherit the Kingdom of God.

Perhaps a LOT of folks haven't!!

So, for the uninformed, I give you...

We are living in a Genesis 19:9 world...

"Get out of our way,” they replied.
“This fellow came here as a foreigner, and now he wants to play the judge!
We’ll treat you worse than them.”
They kept bringing pressure on Lot and moved forward to break down the door.

The Health Risks of gay sex.

And now, a BIBLICAL Message about homosexuality

Genesis 13:13

Now the men of Sodom were wicked and were sinning greatly against the LORD.

Genesis 18:20-21
20. Then the LORD said, "The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous
21. that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know."

Genesis 19:4-7
4. Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom--both young and old--surrounded the house.
5. They called to Lot, "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them."
6. Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him
7. and said, "No, my friends. Don't do this wicked thing.

Leviticus niv

18:22 Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.

20:13 If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable.

They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.

Psalms 12:8 The wicked freely strut about when what is vile is honored among men.

Isaiah 3:9 The look on their faces testifies against them;

they parade their sin like Sodom; they do not hide it.

Woe to them! They have brought disaster upon themselves.

================================================

2 Peter 2:13b Their idea of pleasure is to carouse in broad daylight.

They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their pleasures while they feast with you.

================================================

Ezekiel 16:49-50 "`Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom:

She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.

They were haughty and did detestable things before me.

Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.

Romans 1 New American Bible (Revised Edition) (NABRE)

18 The wrath of God is indeed being revealed from heaven against every impiety and wickedness of those who suppress the truth by their wickedness. 19 For what can be known about God is evident to them, because God made it evident to them. 20 Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made. As a result, they have no excuse; 21 for although they knew God they did not accord him glory as God or give him thanks. Instead, they became vain in their reasoning, and their senseless minds were darkened. 22 While claiming to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for the likeness of an image of mortal man or of birds or of four-legged animals or of snakes.

24 Therefore, God handed them over to impurity through the lusts of their hearts for the mutual degradation of their bodies. 25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and revered and worshiped the creature rather than the creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. 26 Therefore, God handed them over to degrading passions. Their females exchanged natural relations for unnatural, 27 and the males likewise gave up natural relations with females and burned with lust for one another. Males did shameful things with males and thus received in their own persons the due penalty for their perversity. 28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God handed them over to their undiscerning mind to do what is improper. 29 They are filled with every form of wickedness, evil, greed, and malice; full of envy, murder, rivalry, treachery, and spite.

2 Peter 2

1. But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them--bringing swift destruction on themselves.
2. Many will follow their shameful ways and will bring the way of truth into disrepute.
3. In their greed these teachers will exploit you with stories they have made up. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.
4. For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them into gloomy dungeons to be held for judgment;
5. if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others;
6. if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly;
7. and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the filthy lives of lawless men
8. (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)--
9. if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue godly men from trials and to hold the unrighteous for the day of judgment, while continuing their punishment.
10. This is especially true of those who follow the corrupt desire of the sinful nature and despise authority. Bold and arrogant, these men are not afraid to slander celestial beings;
11. yet even angels, although they are stronger and more powerful, do not bring slanderous accusations against such beings in the presence of the Lord.
12. But these men blaspheme in matters they do not understand. They are like brute beasts, creatures of instinct, born only to be caught and destroyed, and like beasts they too will perish.
13. They will be paid back with harm for the harm they have done. Their idea of pleasure is to carouse in broad daylight. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their pleasures while they feast with you.

What kind of a people are we;

that we allow men dressed in womens clothes

to pervert the minds of little children?

But there IS hope!!!

1 Corinthians 6:9-11

9. Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived:
Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders
10. nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
11. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

If you could NOT change, you would be in most pitiful shape...

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