Homosexuality promoted through Catholic Charities [vanity]

[Faith Presses On]

Something I was reminded of when I heard about World Vision deciding to hire those in "gay marriages" is how Catholic Charities has long promoted homosexuality. I know this because when I was living as a lesbian 15 to 20 years ago, I went to Catholic Charities several times for counsleing, and I found that the counseling was purely secular. When I went with a "partner," our lifestyle was embraced by the counselor. When I went to a couple other counselors myself later on, I was beginning to have doubts about this life, but one counselor even tried to encourage me to accept homosexuality. She said she had many homosexual friends, and these gay friends affectionately called their straight friends "breeders," but beyond that difference all relationships are the same.

It's troubled me for a long time that the Catholic Church raises money for Catholic Charities, and it goes for psychological counseling, which only makes one conform to the ways of the world.

[boatbums]

Those are conversion stories; not hit pieces on protestantism. If that’s the way you see them, that’s the glass you’re looking through. So I will say it again, the Religion forum is basically for Catholics. Protestants for some strange reason don’t like to share stories concerning their faith, but they do like to offer their advice on what they perceive as being wrong with those heathen Catholics.

Dude...you HAVE to take off those rose-colored glasses! If you don't see those "conversion" stories as hit pieces on Protestants here, then why, when an occasional Catholic turning Protestant thread gets posted, your peeps throw a hissy fit and storm the thread in the same way you are accusing us of doing to yours? These kinds of threads don't go past five before the long knives come out and it's labeled as Catholic bashing. And you throw out the hypocrite verse? Try looking in a mirror next time you grope for that speck, why don't you?

And, sorry, much as I just know some of you would LOVE for Free Republic to be a Catholic-only club and the Religion Forum up solely for your propaganda arm of the Vatican, it ISN'T. It only takes a quick look see to know that, although the Catholic contingent does monopolize the forum, there are plenty of threads that aren't. Just because you may not ever bother to read them, doesn't mean they aren't there. An OPEN Religion Forum thread means that ANYONE can post comments and we aren't afraid to make the majority of them open instead of the exclusive caucus-only way of doing it.

[boatbums]

I’m impressed. Guess what, you will not find my name on these two posts saying nary a word about your faith. You should try using the same courtesy.

You're "impressed" but not enough to admit you were wrong? And this coming from a man who has as his tagline:

"To be deep in history is to cease being Protestant" - John Henry Cardinal Newman

With every comment you make, you are "bashing" Protestants. Are you unaware of that?

[NKP_Vet]

“To be deep in history is to cease being Protestant” - John Henry Cardinal Newman

A truer statement was never made.

[redleghunter]

>>“To be deep in history is to cease being Protestant” - John Henry Cardinal Newman<<

I wonder how “deep” Newman went in that history. Wonder what he thought about Pope Damasus seizing the papacy with the edge of the sword and a host of thugs.

[boatbums]

You’re entitled to your opinion. I disagree with Newman AND you.

[BlueDragon]

I wonder how “deep” Newman went in that history.

NKP_Vet, please pay attention to the following, and then perhaps you may be able to begin to understand why the Newman quote just doesn't work, and instead is silly, coming across not as factual, but rather from limited actual knowledge (of history) resulting in the quote being an expression of Romanist bigotry.

Newman is likely to not have known the ECF's as well as Coxe, Roberts, Donaldson & Schaff, for those made more in- depth (than previous) translation of what can be known of ECF's and with Schaff, the history of the Church.

As A.C.C (A. Cleveland Coxe) noted in the Preface in Ante Nicene Fathers

The American Editor has performed the humble task of ushering these works into American use, with scanty contributions of his own. Such was the understanding with the public: they were to be presented with the Edinburgh series, free from appreciable colour or alloy. His duty was (1) to give historic arrangement to the confused mass of the original series; (2) to supply, in continuity, such brief introductory notices as might slightly popularize what was apparently meant for scholars only, in the introductions of the translators; (3) to supply a few deficiencies by short notes and references; (4) to add such references to Scripture, or to authors of general repute, as might lend additional aid to students, without clogging or overlaying the comments of the translators; and (5) to note such corruptions or distortions of Patristic testimony as have been circulated, in the spirit of the forged Decretals, by those who carry on the old imposture by means essentially equivalent. Too long have they been allowed to speak to the popular mind as if the Fathers were their own; while, to every candid reader, it must be evident that, alike, the testimony, the arguments, and the silence of the Ante-Nicene writers confound all attempts to identify the ecclesiastical establishment of “the Holy Roman Empire,” with “the Holy Catholic Church” of the ancient creeds.

...

...May the Lord God of our Fathers bless the undertaking to all my fellow-Christians, and make good to them the promise which was once felicitously chosen for the motto of a similar series of publications: “Yet shall not thy teachers be removed into a corner any more, but thine eyes shall see thy teachers.”

As Schaff related in his General Introduction to History of The Church

From Jesus Christ, since his manifestation in the flesh, an unbroken stream of divine light and life has been and is still flowing, and will continue to flow, in ever-growing volume through the waste of our fallen race; and all that is truly great and good and holy in the annals of church history is due, ultimately, to the impulse of his spirit. He is the fly-wheel in the world’s progress. But he works upon the world through sinful and fallible men, who, while as self-conscious and free agents they are accountable for all their actions, must still, willing or unwilling, serve the great purpose of God. As Christ, in the days of his flesh, was bated, mocked, and crucified, his church likewise is assailed and persecuted by the powers of darkness. The history of Christianity includes therefore a history of Antichrist. With an unending succession of works of saving power and manifestations of divine truth and holiness, it uncovers also a fearful mass of corruption and error. The church militant must, from its very nature, be at perpetual warfare with the world, the flesh, and the devil, both without and within. For as Judas sat among the apostles, so "the man of sin" sits in the temple of God; and as even a Peter denied the Lord, though he afterwards wept bitterly and regained his holy office, so do many disciples in all ages deny him in word and in deed.[bolding and size enlargement for emphasis my own]

None of the men mentioned here (other than Newman, and late in life, Gibbons, who Newman mercilessly and perhaps unjustifiably critiqued, though Gibbons very much was a queer duck, as the older sense of that phrase would mean) converted to [Roman] Catholicism, and in their own works, uncover some of the historical details and present reasons why one need not do so -- in fact -- would need disregard particular aspects of history itself, or view it through distinctively Romanist lens to do so with anything resembling scholastic integrity.

As Schaff further noted during brief discussion of his own extensive list of other historians of note, whose works he also consulted/and or utilized among his own assortment of source materials;

IV. Roman Catholic historians.

The Roman Catholic Church was roused by the shock of the Reformation, in the sixteenth century, to great activity in this and other departments of theology, and produced some works of immense learning and antiquarian research, but generally characterized rather by zeal for the papacy, and against Protestantism, than by the purely historical spirit. Her best historians are either Italians, and ultramontane in spirit, or Frenchmen, mostly on the side of the more liberal but less consistent Gallicanism.

In that intensive bibliography of sorts regarding church historians, both Romanist and Protestant, includes mention also of Dollinger:

Dr. John Joseph Ignatius Döllinger (Professor in Munich, born 1799), the most learned historian of the Roman Church in the nineteenth century, represents the opposite course from popery to anti-popery. He began, but never finished, a Handbook of Christian Church History (Landshut, 1833, 2 vols.) till a.d. 680, and a Manual of Church History (1836, 2d ed., 1843, 2 vols.) to the fifteenth century, and in part to 1517.21 He wrote also learned works against the Reformation (Die Reformation, 1846–’48, in 3 vols.), on Hippolytus and Callistus (1853), on the preparation for Christianity (Heidenthum u Judenthum, 1857), Christianity and the Church in the time of its Founding (1860), The Church and the Churches (1862), Papal Fables of the Middle Age (1865), The Pope and the Council (under the assumed name of "Janus," 1869), etc.

During the Vatican Council in 1870 Döllinger broke with Rome, became the theological leader of the Old Catholic recession, and was excommunicated by the Archbishop of Munich (his former pupil), April 17, 1871, as being guilty of "the crime of open and formal heresy." He knows too much of church history to believe in the infallibility of the pope. He solemnly declared (March 28, 1871) that "as a Christian, as a theologian, as a historian, and as a citizen," he could not accept the Vatican decrees, because they contradict the spirit of the gospel and the genuine tradition of the church, and, if carried out, must involve church and state, the clergy and the laity, in irreconcilable conflict.22[underlining for emphasis, my own]

And mentioning Gibbons, listing under

(c) English works.

English literature is rich in works on Christian antiquity, English church history, and other special departments, but poor in general histories of Christianity.

The first place among English historians, perhaps, is due to Edward Gibbon (d. 1794). In his monumental History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (finished after twenty years’ labor, at Lausanne, June 27,1787), he notices throughout the chief events in ecclesiastical history from the introduction of the Christian religion to the times of the crusades and the capture of Constantinople (1453), with an accurate knowledge of the chief sources and the consummate skill of a master in the art of composition, with occasional admiration for heroic characters like Athanasius and Chrysostom, but with a keener eye to the failings of Christians and the imperfections of the visible church, and unfortunately without sympathy and understanding of the spirit of Christianity which runs like a golden thread even through the darkest centuries. He conceived the idea of his magnificent work in papal Rome, among the ruins of the Capitol, and in tracing the gradual decline and fall of imperial Rome, which he calls "the greatest, perhaps, and most awful scene in the history of mankind," he has involuntarily become a witness to the gradual growth and triumph of the religion of the cross, of which no historian of the future will ever record a history of decline and fall, though some "lonely traveller from New Zealand," taking his stand on "a broken arch" of the bridge of St. Angelo, may sketch the ruins of St. Peter’s.37

Which footnote (#37) lead to none other than the deeply opinionated (but not as studied as Schaff) -- Newman himself;

Cardinal Newman, shortly before his transition from Oxford Tractarianism to Romanism (in his essay on Development of Christian Doctrine, 1845), declared "the infidel Gibbon to be the chief, perhaps the only English writer who has any claim to be considered an ecclesiastical historian." This is certainly not true any longer. Dr. McDonald, in an essay "Was Gibbon an infidel?" (in the "Bibliotheca Sacra" for July, 1868, Andover, Ham.), tried to vindicate him against the charge of infidelity. But Gibbon was undoubtedly a Deist and deeply affected by the skepticism of Hume and Voltaire. While a student at Oxford he was converted to Romanism by reading Bossuet’s Variations of Protestantism, and afterwards passed over to infidelity, with scarcely a ray of hope of any immortality but that of fame, See his Autobiography, Ch. VIII., and his letter to Lord Sheffield of April 27, 1793, where he says that his "only consolation" in view of death and the trials of life was "the presence of a friend." Best ed. of Gibbon, by W. Smith.

Now do you see why I had posted to you some days ago now, that Schaff and Co.(by which I meant historians contemporary to Schaff's era) --which overlapped but succeeded (came on the heels of) as it were Newman's own scholastic period --- puts that particular quote of Newman's to rest?

I doubt you'll be able to admit to it, for that would entail admitting Romanist promotional, triumphalist crowing is less well founded than Roman Catholics have been led to believe, but which myself and a few others continue to take pains to explain the factual reasons for, yet continue to be seemingly ignored (as to content, information, and various issues discussed).

From the in-case-you-missed-it department, posted here on FR there were two recent replies which include Roman Catholic historians (some of them priests) disagreeing with fairly common RC misapprehension (if not deliberate distortion?) of historical facts, as those distortions are frequently repeated by adherents of [Roman] Catholicism.

The wheels are coming off of the bus...not only for the goofy "social justice" ride that certain particular Nuns advertise themselves as touring upon.

See http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/3135058/posts?page=796#796 and http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/3135058/posts?page=772#772

I suggest that one stop, drop the Newman quote (retire it) and check the torque on ye olde lug nuts. The wheels still are going 'round & 'round perhaps, but from this angle I can see some big 'ol scary looking wobbly action to them. There are some serious issues somehow out of whack...

[daniel1212]

I suggest that one stop, drop the Newman quote (retire it) and check the torque on ye olde lug nuts. The wheels still are going 'round & 'round perhaps, but from this angle I can see some big 'ol scary looking wobbly action to them. There are some serious issues somehow out of whack...

Your substantive reproof can be expected to simply be dismissed as others, and the same propaganda reposted as if it was irrefutable. For as Newman also said, going "deep in history,"

"in all cases the immediate motive in the mind of a Catholic for his reception of them is, not that they are proved to him by Reason or by History, but because Revelation has declared them by means of that high ecclesiastical Magisterium which is their legitimate exponent.” — John Henry Newman, “A Letter Addressed to the Duke of Norfolk on Occasion of Mr. Gladstone's Recent Expostulation.” 8. The Vatican Council lhttp://www.newmanreader.org/works/anglicans/volume2/gladstone/section8.html

Even EOs state,

Roman Catholicism, unable to show a continuity of faith and in order to justify new doctrine, erected in the last century, a theory of "doctrinal development."

Following the philosophical spirit of the time (and the lead of Cardinal Henry Newman), Roman Catholic theologians began to define and teach the idea that Christ only gave us an "original deposit" of faith, a "seed," which grew and matured through the centuries. The Holy Spirit, they said, amplified the Christian Faith as the Church moved into new circumstances and acquired other needs...

On this basis, theories such as the dogmas of "papal infallibility" and "the immaculate conception" of the Virgin Mary (about which we will say more) are justifiably presented to the Faithful as necessary to their salvation. http://www.ocf.org/OrthodoxPage/reading/ortho_cath.html .

And as Steve Hays states ,

In order to get from Peter to the modern papacy you have to establish every exegetical and historical link in the chain [see link]. To my knowledge, I haven’t said anything here that a contemporary Catholic scholar or theologian would necessarily deny. They would simply fallback on a Newmanesque principle of dogmatic development to justify their position. Of which dogmatic development of doctrine see links.

And the same Newman affirmed,

The use of temples, and these dedicated to particular saints, and ornamented on occasions with branches of trees; incense, lamps, and candles; votive offerings on recovery from illness; holy water; asylums; holydays and seasons, use of calendars, processions, blessings on the fields; sacerdotal vestments, the tonsure, the ring in marriage, turning to the East, images at a later date, perhaps the ecclesiastical chant, and the Kyrie Eleison [Note 17], are all of pagan origin, and sanctified by their adoption into the Church. {374}; http://www.newmanreader.org/works/development/chapter8.html)

And Newman's view of history is that of one under the spell of the imaginary Mary of Catholicism , versus the virtuous one of Scripture who is to be honored, as with other servant of God.

He might have endued that being, so created, with a richer grant of grace, of power, of blessedness: but in one respect she surpasses all even possible creations, viz., that she is Mother of her Creator. . What outfit of sanctity, what fullness and redundance of grace, what exuberance of merits must have been hers,... St. Cyril, too, at Ephesus, "Hail. Mary, Mother of God,...through Whom the Holy Trinity is sanctified . . . through whom Angels and Archangels rejoice, devils are put to flight.. (Works taken from "Letter to the Rev. E. B. Pusey" contained in Newman's "Difficulties of Anglicans" Volume II); http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/newman-mary.asp

Basil of Seleucia says that, "she shines out above all the martyrs as the sun above the stars, and that she mediates between God and men." "Run through all creation in your thought," says Proclus, "and see if there be one equal or superior to the Holy Virgin, Mother of God." And St. Cyril, too, at Ephesus, "Hail. Mary, Mother of God,...through Whom the Holy Trinity is sanctified . . . through whom Angels and Archangels rejoice, devils are put to flight.. (Works taken from "Letter to the Rev. E. B. Pusey" contained in Newman's "Difficulties of Anglicans" Volume II); http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/newman-mary.asp

[BlueDragon]

Your substantive reproof can be expected to simply be dismissed as others

Probably. As if it will be even read through and considered. Historians from more than a hundred years ago now -- have supplied the refutation --- which even many [Roman] Catholic historians agree upon as being the real "history", as you have frequently and abundantly shown on these pages.

So while the refutations will be ignored, and ourselves called "haters" by some (irregardless of the validity of the information which our disputations are much supported by...as you continued;

"...and the same propaganda reposted as if it was irrefutable."

which of course is the same propaganda which has been soundly refuted, time and again.

Meanwhile, on other threads, the likes of we-'uns are likened to swine.

Fighting words --spitwads, what's the difference?

It means one thing --they are losing, and losing badly in some areas of their propaganda war, on these pages.

[daniel1212]

I never see threads of Catholics initiating an argument with protestants on FR. Never.

Absolutely, in-credible! As if posting articles like "According to Scripture" which attacks, fallaciously , a cardinal Prot. doctrine. That's like saying "I never see threads by conservatives attacking liberals because they are written for conservatives"!

What? Do you wear blinders when you read Free Republic??? Here are some just in the last few WEEKS:

Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch. (Matthew 15:14)

Some time ago another RC asserted "there is not and never has been a scintilla of anti-protestant bigotry on FR." And when examples were given describing Protestants as vandals who should be eradicated from the face of the earth, absolutely alien to Christianity, as a bizarre and false religion, who completely reject Christ, with no solid foundation, etc., she still denied them.

[daniel1212]

Who decided that? I didn't see that posted on the RM's homepage anywhere

Why not, they have much used FR as a PR and propaganda organ. And after all, the RC position is that Heaven and creation is basically for Catholics. Yet in reality we can expect to see relatively few in Heaven, sadly.

[daniel1212]

Forgot to ping you to my use of your quote above .

[metmom]

To be deep in Scripture is to cease to be Catholic.

[metmom]

It means one thing --they are losing, and losing badly in some areas of their propaganda war, on these pages.

Especially when you begin to see that as their first choice in response.

[NKP_Vet]

“I wonder how “deep” Newman went in that history”

Well since protestants didn’t exist before the Reformation, he didn’t have have to go back too far.

[NKP_Vet]

The brother Jimmy Swaggart “I don’t need no stinkin’ church”
crowd weighs in. Drum roll please.

[metmom]

I’m not Jimmy Swaggart and I don’t give a rip what he says.

Why drag him into it?

Looks like a red herring to me.

[BlueDragon]

Well since protestants didn’t exist before the Reformation, he didn’t have have to go back too far.

What I gave you included links to historians who did go "further back" more completely than Newman did -- but did not themselves 'cease to be Protestant'.

If you are going to be quoting Newman --- you owe it to yourself to be aware of that one's contemporaries, and their own responses to things such as Newman's 'acorn' developmental theory, which prior to Newman was not taught within [Roman] Catholicism, but needed to be invented to cover the gaping chasm between the Romish claims towards themselves being 'just as Christ and the Apostles established' and all the sundry changes that had crept in over the centuries, with some of those changes having significant theological implication -- resulting in a form of Gospel being preached (in pattern, practice, and demands placed upon supplicants) which was not preached by Paul and the immediate successors to the original 12 Apostles.

Further --there were those who protested prior to the Reformation, surely enough.

In many instances, Romanists slaughtered those complainers, killed them dead, with that activity stretching back through history, at least as far as to Jan Hus & Jerome of Prague (two fine "protesting" Catholics the Romanists Catholics burned at the stake) and a bit further 'back in history' to Wyclif.

Prior to that -- those in opposition to Rome in any regard significant enough to be troublesome to Romish claims to near-unfettered powers over the lives of men, suffered papal crusades (that means war based upon religious difference, in this context) launched against them, with entire towns and the surrounding countryside taken as spoils, then divvied up amongst those who did all the killing in the name of the church of Rome, and that church ecclesiastical community, itself.

[redleghunter]

The use of temples, and these dedicated to particular saints, and ornamented on occasions with branches of trees; incense, lamps, and candles; votive offerings on recovery from illness; holy water; asylums; holydays and seasons, use of calendars, processions, blessings on the fields; sacerdotal vestments, the tonsure, the ring in marriage, turning to the East, images at a later date, perhaps the ecclesiastical chant, and the Kyrie Eleison [Note 17], are all of pagan origin, and sanctified by their adoption into the Church. {374}; http://www.newmanreader.org/works/development/chapter8.html)

So if we "dig deeper" in the history we find 'sanctification' of pagan practices because the Roman Church says so. Opens the door for the Roman Church to futher 'sanctify' that which it sees fit.

[redleghunter]

What I gave you included links to historians who did go "further back" more completely than Newman did -- but did not themselves 'cease to be Protestant'.

You are better off trying to convince Obama we have a Constitution.

[BlueDragon]

You are better off trying to convince Obama we have a Constitution.

Yes, that is correct I do believe, but I didn't want the shallow snark I was handed in reply to be allowed to go unchallenged.

The "there were no Protestants" until the Reformation argument doesn't work either...when what is attempted by using that particular tactic is return to the pretense that it is the church ecclesiastical community of Rome and none other, which was what the Lord had in mind when establishing His church, particularly when Newman's lonely acorn need be invoked as cover for all the changes...which changes in doctrine & practices from those of the church at it's earliest times is much of what the 'protesting' was all about.