THE MCJ

To get around the principle of non-contradiction, you have to establish that the two articles are not contradictory. For example, the sanctity of life vs. the right of the woman to control her body can be resolved in one of two ways: if the fetus is not human life, then it is not sacred and the woman is free to control her body. On the other hand, you can resolve it by admitting the humanity of the unborn child, then noting that the problem is not the woman's control over her body, but the body of the child.

This isn't hard stuff.

Not only that, when the pompous ass says that scripture has multiple meanings, he speaks within the patristic tradition. Unfortunately, that doesn't make his case, since he's talking about contradictory meanings and not about the literal vs. allegorical meanings. If you want to seek out an allegorical meaning to "You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; such a thing is an abomination.", you could,I suppose, but it wouldn't get you to Robbie and Mark walking up the aisle.

Oh, I just noticed something. It's interesting that Robbie equates justifying abortion and sodomy, since the verse right before Lev. 18.22 reads

You shall not offer any of your offspring to be immolated to Molech, thus profaning the name of your God. I am the LORD.Bishop Robinson's logical course would be to dismiss the proscription of verse 22 (which he has done on other occasions); I would be interested to see him also justify child sacrifice while he is at. Not to mention incest and bestiality, also concerns in chapter 18.

So much for the shellfish argument.

In his talk in London and in a later interview with the Spectator’s Theo Hobson, Robinson laid out the precepts of Christianity in which convicted murderers, thieves, pedophiles and rapists, as a oppressed minorities, are more capable of Christian charity than the non-convicted majority.

Hmmm...so the strength of resistance to global nuclear annihilation is actually an argument for pursuing global nuclear annihilation.

Isn't this the definition of insanity?

Holding two (or more) conflicting truths or cognitions in tension is called ambivalence, dissonance, incongruity in psychology.

In Scripture, it is called 'Double-minded' and the double-minded person is described as 'unstable in all of his ways.' Being double-minded is also called duplicity.

Well, Christopher, isn't it nice to see it out in the open in black-and-white what His Grace of New Hampshire sees as the future and goal of Anglicanism? It will be the founding church of Gay Christianity. All you nasty breeders, with your horrid insensitivity and brutish, bullying, classist and racist ways can just push off to wherever you like - as long as it's not the new, improved Anglican Church.

Personality, identity and orientation have been shown to be changeable with the proven psychotherapy techniques.

This ain't your Great-grandpa's psychoanalytic or existential therapy. It's a whole new ballgame.

Let us hear nothing of finding other people's....

This assumes, of course, that Vicki is really a man. You don't suppose there's a chance he ... do you?

Actually, on the practical side of things, I think Vicki's the catcher. He doesn't need to find his own, he just needs for the other (however many "others" there are) to find his.

Probably not difficult in the right circumstances. Even with the kevlar on.

Daniel Muller asks: The important question is: despite its manner of founding, does Anglicanism now embody the greatest faithfulness to the Truth of Christianity?

No.

Actually Bp. Robinson's position on abortion being a woman's choice scandalizes me more than his position on the moral acceptability of homosexuality. Babies die, and it's okay by him because their mother chose to have them terminated. Gah!

His civil divorce, adultery with a man, his heterodox teachings, his focus on his own desires, they all point to a person who is in a battle for his eternal soul. As of course, are we all. But I feel sad for the person Gene Robinson, whilst I detest what he teaches.

Reason has never been a strong point for revisionists. If it suits their purpose, they will use it. Otherwise, they ignore it.

Besides, those who abandon God's Word as these people have done will find that God abandons them to be consumed by their passions. (cf Romans 1)

I see Jack Chick is convinced that the Vatican has some computer with every Protestant's name on it. And of course we can't forget the super-secret monks of Opus Dei, albino of course. Man I love being Catholic, we get the best toys!! The kids love their Jesuit heretic decoder rings.

For a critique of +VGR's book, please see: Book Review - In the Eye of the Storm

Based on a linked comment in the review's thread, I'd like to carry forward from the Brian McLaren MCJ post a prior conversation I had with Fr. J whom I respect.

Fr. J: "If a church has the right teaching, it can recover from lax enforcement. If it gets the teaching wrong, there can be no recovery in practice. ...

In other words, the Catholic Church has addressed the scandals with very real changes. As an institution it can do that and be effective at it, as it has always been effective at major reforms."

I am, or maybe was, immensely pleased and relieved by such major reforms by the Vatican. Until I read about Catholics confessing to a different perspective about the actual facts on the ground in parishes and seminaries. Quoting:

"N. went on to describe a clerical culture in which sexual subterfuge is a lot more normal than people think. The Internet has made this easier. He told of a priest friend no longer in ministry who would set up anonymous dates on the Internet in cities some distance away, fly over for the weekend, have anonymous sex, then fly back. The people of the parish had no clue. That sort of thing. Double lives.

In our conversation, N. spoke of gay priest culture, because that’s what he knew intimately, but it was pretty obvious that none of this would go on without the consent, active or passive, of straight bishops and others. “Bishops are so busy putting out fires from situations that could be legally actionable that they don’t have time to worry about what consenting adults do,” N. said. I mentioned to N. something an orthodox Catholic friend, a layman who taught in a seminary, once told me of his experience. He said seminarians were having sex with each other constantly in his seminary. Did the bishop – a heterosexual with a reputation for orthodoxy – know about this? I asked. Yes, of course, said my orthodox friend.

N. said he thought the whole clerical system was so rotten that he didn’t think it was “salvageable” in its current form. ...

... they wouldn’t advise any gay man to enter into the seminaries right now, because they have become such places of sexual predation and misconduct that a gay seminarian who genuinely intends to live a life of sexual integrity faces tremendous odds. The system is against him, and the system will corrupt him by compromising him if it can. It compromises straight priests in a couple of ways:

o You see the psychological strategy here: Play on the priest or seminarian’s loyalty to the institution and desire to protect it.

o A former priest I once interviewed who left to marry said that in his diocese, there were lots of gay priests, and most of them flagrantly violated their vows of celibacy without a twinge of conscience. ... The gay priests would taunt the straight ones, telling them they should get girlfriends (something the novice told me a priest-professor told him he should do after he repeatedly spurned the priest’s advances). [Cue my third dry vomit reflex].

... This is, however, about a clerical culture in which a lot of people -- this includes the laity -- are in denial. An orthodox Catholic priest wrote me yesterday saying that it's pretty clear that the post-scandal apostolic visitation that was supposed to clean out the seminaries was a joke.

... Once I got the idea in my head that I hoped my boys wouldn’t be called to the priesthood, given what they’d face in seminary and beyond, I couldn’t stop wondering what it meant that I belonged to a church whose clerical culture, including seminaries, was something I feared as a grave danger to my sons’ souls, should they be called to the priesthood.

To be clear, I can’t imagine a greater calling than to serve as a priest … and yet, the corruption and double lives behind a façade of holiness and normalcy not uncommon, with little apparent hope for authentic reform of the system!

From: The double life of the priesthood

Although this article is about the difficult challenges in the Catholic priesthood, the lessons apply to all churches. For all churches have false undershepherds.

But I want to return to my conversation with Fr. J on a more general level, one which has nothing to do with Catholicism per se. My interest has to do with the relationship between "Right Teaching" and "Enforcement". It has been suggested to me previously on MCJ threads (I think it was by Ken perhaps; but maybe not) that teaching and enforcement are separable. At the time, perhaps for the sake of peace, I either accepted it or I just let it go.

Now I am of a different mind. I am strongly convicted that "Right Teaching" and "Enforcement" are inseparable. Enforcement (aka Discipline), or the lack of it, is prima facie evidence for the visible strength and convictions of those advocating the "right teachings," teachings which they regard as a first-order, non-negotiable orthodoxy or orthopraxy.

Any good Catholic will tell you that the Holy Roman Church has Infallible Teaching and Infallible Interpretation. An Institutionalist Anglican will declare that right teaching is contained in the 39 Articles, the Lambeth Quadrilateral, and Lambeth 1.10 which states that same-sex behavior is incompatible with Scripture. The Eastern Orthodox will stipulate that they have right teaching. And so will the Reform Protestants.

But if you don't lovingly enforce that which is held most precious and dear to you, then I say, "So what" to your claim that you have right teaching. Teaching without enforcement is just hollow, empty words on paper used to soothe and pacify those who think those words mean something. Enforcement without Right Teaching is just some cultic, fascist farce.

And isn't this precisely the case with the ecclesiastical zombie called the Anglican Communion? You have the historic teaching and classical creeds in Anglicanism, but they've all been craftily inverted, perverted, twisted, distorted by the linguistic revisionist apostates and heretics from decades ago in Pike, Righter, Spong, et al on issues from contraception, divorce, women's ordination, same-sex blessings, and GLBT ordinations. And there was practically no enforcement whatsoever exacted upon those who violated established Anglican teaching.

Who gives a fudge about having right teaching? It's meaningless without enforcement. And that is exactly what the GS/GAFCON bishops have recognized (or should recognize actually). I.e., the See of Canterbury and all the so-called Instruments of Unity will not enforce punitive actions against those who violate the faith once delivered to all the saints. The fact that the GS/GAFCON bishops believe and support the Windsor-Covenant process leads me to believe that they are wishful thinking delusionists if they think there is a terminable end-point for enforcement visited upon the willfully unrepentate apostate provinces. If the GS/GAFCON bishops believe in Right Teaching AND Enforcement as the way forward, then only a Formal Realignment will do. They must enforce where the ABC will not.

Any notion that an "Impaired Communion" which also happens to maintain complete relationship with the See of Canterbury lacks full biblical and ecclesiastical integrity.

"My prior experience with gays is that they usually become very conservative at this point, and wind up asserting that they,and they alone, are entitled to special consideration at this point in the argument."

Boy, aint it yhe truth! I questioned the Swan of Newark on how and on what basis she could condemn polyamorous relationships (by using all of her pro-gay arguments), and I got banned from her site.

Not that I support polyamory, of course, but I do see a disconnect in justifying one and not the other. It also appears to me that if gay inclusion is the camel's nose under the tent wall, then polyamory is the neck.

I was vilified and castigated for making the assertion that she should be blessing multi-person groups based on her pro-gay arguments, and I was banned forever..

The left has no tolerance for gadflies.

The story of Susannah and the Elders in the Book of Daniel saw Susannah, speaks to this very well. It is also a story about the struggle between the enemies of Christ and His Church.

The word Susannah (Shoshana, rose, Rose of Sharon) symbolizes both Christ and the Church. One of the evil elders was personified as a holm or oak is a (western European) tree (symbolizing power, wealth, decadence, lust, greed, possessiveness) and it was sawn asunder or divided (like the Western, Eastern and Protestant churches). The mastic from the valley of Bacca (Assyria/Arabia). This elder was torn assunder (representing hatred, war, domination, slavery, terror).

The unregenerate non-Christian secular populations of both Europe and Asia are much the same as were characterized by the elders in the story and still do not recognize Jesus as Lord and either pervert, oppose, use her for their own lusts and/or persecute the true Church (the Bride of Christ) and thus persecute Christ.

Discussion questions: Do you see Gene Robinson in this story? Where?

Thanks for the quote, I think.

You left out, though, the central point which is that the Catholic Church has now banned the ordination of homosexuals to the priesthood. This will have an important effect in the long run on the issue of the scandals, most of which cases were with 15 year old males and older--in other words, the "pedophilia scandal" was a misnomer. It was really a scandal of homosexuals have sex with minors. This, of course, doesnt make it any better morally, but gives the necessary precision for the sake of correction. The ban on the ordination of homosexuals will address this.

TUAD, now I have been a priest for 11 years. In these years I have never experienced a gay subculture among priests. Never. As a seminarian, I was aware of such a subculture in another religious community (NOT MY OWN), but must point out that those seminarians for the most part never made it to ordination.

In short, it is not my experience that we have a problem with a gay subculture in the priesthood. I am not sure what your friend is referring to. Perhaps your "orthodox" Catholic friend is aware of a problem in a particular locale. I should also advise that those who are extraordinarily critical in the Church seem to me to be prone to exaggeration and distortion often because of long years of grievance.

If there was a widespread problem with a homosexual subculture in the Catholic priesthood, I suspect the evidence of this would be overwhelming and with all the Church's enemies, this would be very common knowledge. Instead, the attestations of this are not so commonplace and often surface as the word of an anonymous "orthodox friend." It just seems a bit tinfoil hat to me.

Excellent. Glad to hear it. I assume you mean not ordaining practicing or active homosexuals to the Catholic priesthood. I assume a gay man who's taken vows of celibacy could still be ordained to the priesthood.

To your central point please understand my central point. I.e., teaching cannot be uncoupled from enforcement through loving, biblical disciplinary and chastening measures to correct and restore violators. In the specific context of your central point my central point is that the pronouncement that the Catholic Church has banned homosexuals to the priesthood needs to be enforced for it to have any meaningful effect.

I hope that my larger point is not lost amidst the salaciousness of the lesser story. Although I do recognize that this lesser story is quite important in its own regard. To wit, I have no first-hand knowledge of a gay subculture in the Catholic priesthood. I just observe that there are a number of Catholics themselves who attest to it. And getting back to the topic of +VGR, I recall reading that he led a retreat within the last couple of years in England for gay Catholic priests.

I am glad you have said what your assumptions are, so I can clarify still what I have left muddied. In the past the Catholic Church would ordain a homosexual as a celibate man. What is changed is that the Catholic Church now no longer will ordain men with a homosexual orientation--at all.

Now it is interesting that this has not gotten much attention beyond the initial announcement in 2005. Certainly, you average Catholic is not going to protest this. And it seems to me to be evidence that the activist/protesting sort of Catholic has generally already left the Church, because no one but no one has made a stink. To me this is a very, very positive sign for the Church.

I looked at the source of your information about the homosexual subculture in the Catholic priesthood. You should know that Rod D. is known, in Catholic internet circles, for being very stuck on that idea. Sometimes, his reactions tend to be similar to Sarah Hey's reactions about WO.

I have no doubt that there is a problem, but to that extent, I need more evidence, from unbiased sources.

I forgot to get to your major point--that law is one thing, and enforcement is another. Who could disagree? But, I would add something else--as long as a law remains on "the books," its lack of enforcement in one era doesn't necessarily prevent its future enforcement in a later era--this has to do with the less political nature of Catholic teaching.

So, for example in TEC, a ban on X which is not enforced will likely attract more of X to circles of power so that later X can be approved.

In the Catholic Church, because we are not democratic, no such strategy will work. So, if X is banned but the ban is not enforced, Rome simply nominates a new generation of bishops who will enforce the ban. And those who favor the acceptance of X will eventually be discourage and become Episcopalians or whatever.

There is also the strategy of leaving certain teachings fairly latent in the Church, saved for a day when the culture is more amenable. Humanae Vitae is such a teaching. It is a very hard one for many in the Church and world today. But the politics of population collapse in Western "Christian" societies will eventually prove the Catholic Church right on this one, I believe.

It must be understood that in a time of social upheaval such as the present one, a certain amount of shrinkage of membership numbers is actually a good sign. Most of the dissenters on various issues have, in their leaving the Catholic Church, done her a great favor and have left her stronger for the next cultural battle. This has been happening over the past 40 years, if not the past 2000. And, generally a grateful Church bids them farewell and hopes that other Christian bodies will not succumb to their wiles.

But, of course some of these churches have and will succumb. TEC is just the beginning of the devastation that ex-Catholic will do in the next 10 to 20 years. Let's not forget that KJS is an ex-Catholic, which explains her venomous and very unAnglican approach to those who differ. She is getting rid of traditional Anglicans the way the Catholic Church moves on its dissenters--though she is far more violent and vehement in her approach. The point being TUAD, that the question of enforcement can work both ways.