Posted on 04/22/2023 7:07:36 PM PDT by NetAddicted
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.”
I guess he never read any of Paul’s writings about who would inherit the Kingdom of God.
Too bad heretics are not burned at the stake anymore.
Agree. This trash is a disgrace.
Sounds like something Satan would say...
Exactly, everyone goes all wobbly about the inquisitions, well, this is what we get for ending them. Bring back anathemas, inquisitions and crusades.
Proverbs 4:27
Do not turn to the right or the left; keep your foot from evil.
(Meaning don’t make up your own self-serving version of any part of the Bible.)
Deuteronomy 22:5
“A woman shall not wear a man’s clothing, nor shall a man put on a woman’s clothing; for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD your God.
Leviticus 18:22
You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.
Ignoring all of those passages doesn't get you off of the hook - also numerous other passages pertaining to man/woman, husband/wife, male/female, sexual behavior, etc. You have to "ignore" a lot more than just that.
Everything in the Bible is profitable and is meant to be learned from. There are somethings that were meant to be learned as a principle and can be adapted to modern times, like the 613 little laws of the Torah, but it’s all good and meant for our benefit.
And apparently neither has Andy Stanley.....what a heretic he is.
Matthew 5:18
For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled
Jesus gave his life on the cross, and if someone isn’t even willing to give up some bizarre and forbidden sexual habits, but instead embrace them as their identity, well....
Drop the nukes.
Most of this worlds population isnt worth saving any longer.
Be Gone Demon Priest
The Catholic church has homosexuals/pedophiles saying Mass, performing all the rites of the church, and forgiving sins as a representative of Christ. Does God still see this as an abomination, or is it OK if the priest and church keep it secret? Should these priests be tried under old testament law at put to death? Adultery is also an abomination to God. We see how Jesus dealt with that. Grab your stones and go kick so Homo butt.
I guess he never read any of Paul’s writings about who would inherit the Kingdom of God.
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Jesus taught that the “Kingdom” of God is a position here on earth. It’s not a place in the heavens. I imagine there are plenty of God-fearing Christians that fail to find it, seeing that many have no idea what it is
Too bad heretics are not burned at the stake anymore.
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Nothing showed God’s love like the days of Tourquemada. What better way to spread the gospel of love?
9 Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, 10 nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were never sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.
If they don’t do what is commanded by God, are they really Christians?
* Sodom was destroyed because its people were inhospitable to strangers by attempting to rape them. The story does not condemn any form of consensual sex.
* Leviticus actually prohibits anally raping prisoners of war, which was common in those days. It's not about consensual gay sex.
* David and Jonathan were "obviously" gay lovers, which the Bible celebrates.
* God is love. Christianity is all about love. So long as there's love, there's no such thing as bad sex.
* Paul is not Jesus. Paul misinterprets Jesus. Ignore Paul.
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