Anyone interested in the religious news in the UK will be aware that the Primates of the Anglican communion are meeting in London to discuss the differences between us – most especially as it concerns the place of and treatment of homosexuals. I daresay that there will be some, perhaps many, who wonder why we are bothering, the Gospel message is clear, what’s the problem. To them I can do no better than to cite the sermon by the Preacher to the Papal Household, Fr Raniero Cantalamessa at the Westminster Abbey service at the opening of General Synod. Entitled “Rebuild my House”, Fr. Raniero urged:
“We should never allow a moral issue like that of sexuality divide us more than love for Jesus Christ unites us.”
That is a difficult saying for many. where, they will ask, is the repentance? The traditionalists are not the only ones asking for repentance, however, as a group of bishops and priests have sent a letter to the Archbishops asking them for an
Acknowledgement that we, the Church, have failed in our duty of care to LGBTI members of the Body of Christ around the world. We have not loved them as we should, and have treated them as a problem to be solved rather than as brothers and sisters in Christ to be embraced and celebrated. We have made them feel second-class citizens in the Kingdom of God, often abandoned and alone.
–
Repentance for accepting and promoting discrimination on the grounds of sexuality, and for the pain and rejection that this has caused. We, the Church, need to apologise for our part in perpetuating rather than challenging ill-informed beliefs about LGBTI people, such as the slanderous view that homosexuals have a predisposition to prey on the young.
So, we have liberals asking for repentance for how the church has treated individuals, and conservatives asking where is the repentance for the sin of homosexuality from those who reject the idea that their behaviour is sinful. Can even the Anglican communion find some middle way here?
For me the answer has to be that it cannot, if by middle way one means some compromise. Once everyone is asking for others to repent without being willing to show any sign of it themselves, we have entered a phase of passive-aggressive behaviour which will possibly only escalate. None of us ever recognises ourselves as the elder brother in the parable of the Prodigal, and none of us accepts that we are Pharisaical; it sometimes seems to me that the thing we all find most difficult is to consider ourselves as sinners.
In all of these discussions, we often fail to take into account those Christians with a same-sex attraction who take the Pauline injunctions seriously, and who abstain from acting upon that attraction for that reason. Yes, it is possible to explain away some of the words Paul uses as not meaning what the Church has always taken them to mean, and it is equally possible to argue that they do. One can get into abstruse arguments and come to the conclusion one wanted: eisegesis is easy. Less easy is to accept that the Gospel message is that we all have a tendency not to obey what Paul says to Titus about God’s Grace
Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world
We have all, on all sides, allowed this issue to divide us more than the love of Christ unites us. That, alas, may be because we are now on two sides of a chasm. You cannot repent of what you not consider a sin – and neither side here thinks it has sinned. So the question might be how we separate without hatred creeping in?
famphillipsfrancis said:
One should always apologise if one’s behaviour towards others is uncharitable. But this is different from, pointing out, in truth as well as love, that we all sin (including in the sexual sphere) and that this sin separates us from God. What is problematic today is that you can’t state this in public without being called “homophobic”. One might coin the word “Christophobic” to describe people who can’t bear the toughness of the Christian faith and hate those who try to live it. We are all called to sexual restraint outside marriage between a man and a woman. This can be very hard – but part of being a Christian is “carrying one’s cross”. Today, the “Cross” is a scandal to our hedonistic society that refuses to allow any restraint on any kind of sexual behaviour. Sadly this has infected the Anglican Church in the West – but not in Africa where the bulk of Anglicans live.
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JessicaHof said:
That would be my view entirely. Apart from anything else, what about all those people who do have a same-sex attraction but do not act on it because they are following the teaching of the Church. Are we to tell them they are fools? There seems no charity to those who resist temptation.
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Dave Smith said:
In my lifetime I have stood by and watched the ‘science’ of psychology change among the elitists in the field: who, stangely enough, were homosexual themselves it seems. The same has happened within theology. What was previously up is now down. They have managed to turn an abnormality into a ‘lifestyle’ choice and a ‘mortal sin’ into that which we are almost at the brink of de-classifying as a deadly sin. It is a modernist world we live in and all that we knew from our faith is now on trial and we are following the lead of the ‘new’ psychology concerning these problems. What problem: there is no problem anymore. What sin: there is no sin anymore.
The churches are giving into this bizzaro world that has been created and calling it charitable and loving whilst we sit idly by and actually encourage such sins by our attitudes and self reproach. Self-loathing is the enemy in my mind. We cannot stand to be critical of anyone or anything. We must love whatever it is that we should cringe from . . . for the greatest sin today is to recognize sin and to call a sin a sin (after all, it might hurt someone’s feelings.) So hating ourselves for our gut reaction . . . we remain indifferent or we join in with the chorus of the modern world. If you’ve watched this unfold during your own lifetime . . . you might see it for what it is . . . another deception by the evil one.
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Gareth Thomas said:
“Can even the Anglican communion find some middle way here?”
No.
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JessicaHof said:
I try never to underestimate our ability to find a gap where noone ever found one before – but I think you are right.
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JessicaHof said:
I agree – we must not be judgmental – has anyone told God?
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orthodoxgirl99 said:
Absolutely sums up my feelings Dave. I left my previous parish because of the dangerous stuff being peddled by our PPriest – all in the name of ‘love/equality (especially equal marriage grrrrr!) and the like. Needless to say I stood up and said NO, not from my priest thank you and had to listen to his groupies making out that any other viewpoint was narrow, uncharitable and not what Jesus would have wanted. How are our young people possibly going to understand WHAT the Church teaches on love and morals when all these mixed messages are being flung around? I despair and grind my teeth. I have gay friends and I personally know gay clergy so this whole issue does not sit easily with me because I cannot buy into the currently popular agenda of ‘live and let live..all.the trads. are narrow minded, evil people’ etc. I just don’t know where we can or will go with this issue.
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Dave Smith said:
Aye, Orthodoxgirl. Isn’t it funny how all the ‘loving’ and ‘compassionat’ folks who tell us that only they speak for Christ and His love . . . do despise and disparage anyone who has a different opinion? Only they are right and they are not willing to even debate their positions. Apparently you and I are both a bit tired of their arrogance . . . and their non-negotiable, infallible understanding of just about everything. It has become a tirade of meaningless and repetitive diatribes which I don’t want to waste time even reading anymore.
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Steve Brown said:
Dave, I see you have been practicing with that hammer of yours. Seems you are hitting that nail squarely on the head. Bravo!
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Dave Smith said:
I practiced by using it on my head for many years.
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Dave Smith said:
After I hit you in the head with my hammer last night you left your phone here; though I am probably the only person that calls you . . . I thought you might like to know.
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ginnyfree said:
Well, for starters, I’m not Anglican so I can’t have any kind of Anglican Attitude on the matter. I do know we in the Catholic Church are stuck with a regular plague of homosexuals in the priesthood, in the monasteries and in our convents as well. No, the women aren’t immune and this sickness was even permitted to penetrate the Brides of Christ. It is sad and will be with us for a while longer fostering the virtues of Fortitude and Prudence among us as well as the other two Cardinal virtues. Yes, it was, is and will remain a trial by fire for many. Thanks for the topic. God bless. Ginnyfree.
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JessicaHof said:
Alas, none of us are free from it – and I can’t see how it will end.
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Steve Brown said:
Ginny, bravo! And the plague will only end when we demand it, en masse.
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Gareth Thomas said:
We have children being starved to death in a war between mediaeval barbarians in Syria, and the woeful consequence of that is a refugee stream of literally millions into Europe. There is a frightening and murderous genocide of Christians in the Middle East and a systematic repression of any expression of Christian faith in Western European countries, in the name of a supposed secularism which is actually not secularism but a successful proselytising by atheists imposing their non-belief system on others. At the same time poor countries are being beguiled and bludgeoned, by a hysterical bunch of green pseudo-Marxists and vested financial interests, into believing that every time they open a power station to improve their country’s economy they are upsetting the planet; and very few people now have the guts to fight this nonsense.
We don’t seem to be able to do anything about these real pressing issues. But along comes a minority bunch of self-obsessed perverts and says, “We demand you change all your institutions to celebrate our discovery that having sexual relations with fruit and vegetables (Lettuces, Grapes, Broccoli, Turnips; yes, and we even use their catchy little acronym LGBT) is perfectly normal.”
And what do we do? We bend over – if you pardon the expression – to accommodate their every whim. It’s not as if there are greater issues needing our attention, is it?
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JessicaHof said:
For me, this is the perfect response – there is no shortage of really serious things we should be doing – and fracturing over this one osn’t one of them.
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Gareth Thomas said:
Yes, exactly. I wrote the above during the first minutes of my lunch hour in school today. When I came home from work I listened to the BBC Radio 4 PM programme, which is normally intelligent and provides goo analysis to what is in the news. Nearly the entire programme was taken up with the news of David Bowie’s death.
It was the lead story. Following sadly behind after a long interval, was the news that a food convoy had finally got through to the starving children in that town in Syria I mentioned earlier. They spent two minutes on that topic, then devoted most of the hour-long programme to peoiple’s reactions to Bowie’s death. When some nameless member of the chattering classes recalled his thrill that Bowie in the 1980s was making “bisexuality” acceptable, I finally turned off the programme and said a very rood and norty word, three times.
Don’t get me wrong. I too remember Bowie’s “Space Oddity” playing across the RAF barrack room tannoy system when I was a sixteen year old in military training, and it was part of my youth. But how far have we fallen when that superficial entertainment news takes precedence over starving kids who look like victims of Belsen? The revolting spectacle of news media turning their backs quickly on the starving poor and the vulnerable in order to laud the “glamrock” superstar should make us all feel physically sick.
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David B. Monier-Williams said:
I went to YouTube and listened to Bowie’s Blackstar for about 30 secs, couldn’t understand a word. Enough! It was worse than reading St. Bisto and that’s saying something.
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orthodoxgirl99 said:
Bwahahaha! I know this is serious Gareth, but you do make me laugh – brilliantly put! It was that last paragraph which finished me off 🙂
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Gareth Thomas said:
I am but an amateur when it comes to writing. I learn the craft from Rubí donkey and when I went to check on her and the others just now, she reminded me it is Tuesday tomorrow. She wants to write her blog on the topic of Descartes. Oh well, another day with no readers.
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Dave Smith said:
Perhaps this is the first thing we should meditate upon.
At the most basic level this all boils down to substituting a subjective ‘good’ for an ‘objective” good. We have stood idly by and watched the redefinition of masturbation, fornication outside of wedlock, contraception, abortion and in some places euthanization. All of these aberrations and dreadful practices substitute a subjective good for an objective good.
Masturbation: redifined by science as a discovery of our sexuality and is now healthy.
Fornication outside of wedlock: redefined as a good way to learn if a couple is compatible without creating the legal burdens associated with marriage.
Contraception: redefined as a good for the planet and a good for medical prevention of disease etc.
Abortion: redefined as a good for unintended pregnancies, for women’s health, for financial well-being (stopping a life of poverty).
Euthanasia: redefined as a good for the suffering. Let us just separate the soul from the body and ease their mortal pain. Of course, the proponents of this do not believe in a soul.
Homosexuality is next. It is also being redefined into that which is a ‘loving’ relationship. It is simply a minority lifestyle and it is genetic.
What they have in common: they are all lies and they substitute the subjective good of the offender for the objective good of the whole person; the objective good of one’s immortal soul.
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JessicaHof said:
Our society is not religious, it has no time for anything which gets in the way of its hedonism, so if we take our values from it the conclusions are so obvious I hope even my Archbishops can reach them 🙂
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Dave Smith said:
It is not only your church, dear friend: we are seeing it everywhere. The bastions of our moral fortress has been breached before but today it seems we are inviting the attackers and holding up their principles instead of our own.
Once we fought the moral battles by helping people cope with their spritual tasks: finding their predominant fault, or help in the training of the will. Now we seem to think that any moral issue that has political or social legs must be accepted in the same vein that it is accepted in the world.
Here is what whe used to do: I wonder if it would still work?
Teaching on the Predominant Fault: http://www.catholictradition.org/Christ/predominate-fault.htm
Training the will: http://www.booksforcatholics.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=B&Product_Code=091214131X&Category_Code=
It worked for all people no matter what their sins were. We didn’t apologize for them we instructed them on how to use these faults and lack of will to turn themselves into saints. 🙂
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JessicaHof said:
I am afraid that the success of secularism lies, in part, in its promise to people that they don’t need to bother about these things.
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Dave Smith said:
Indeed for they do not know or believe in such things.
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chalcedon451 said:
This is where the Anglican Communion has been heading for a long time. You are right, in essentials to say that there is a similar split in the RCC covered by coded language
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famphillipsfrancis said:
A thousands splits don’t make a schism (to paraphrase Newman).
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chalcedon451 said:
Indeed, but one of the problems with this Pope is he may throw his weight behind those advocating things which run counter to orthodox teaching.
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famphillipsfrancis said:
He might; I don’t want to speculate. But Popes come and go; the Church remains; on earth it is the Mystical Body of Christ – and Christ is yesterday, today and forever.
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Steve Brown said:
“May”!?! He has for two and a half years.
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chalcedon451 said:
It gets wearisome, doesn’t it? Alas!
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chalcedon451 said:
I fear you are right – but we must stand firm and fear not.
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Dave Smith said:
. . . and depending on the person, not so very coded language. Some are rather straight forward and it is rather startling that they are not corrected . . . but rather accepted as a being another valid voice of equal relevance. If it continues the overall message to the people is that moral doctrine is being reevaluated and can be changed.
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Rob said:
I have been busy arranging the purchase an apartment in Tenerife and a conference I hope to attend in UK where I’m hoping to meet up with my son and his friends to encourage them.
My son has been sharing Christ with a number of friends – totally non-Christian and un-churched young adults. A few of them have asked to get together to pray with him. One of his friends just went out to buy a Bible for the first time. Another has joined him for prayer and he baptised him today.
He sent us a video link of the event from his phone. They did a few miles run in the hills of South Wales to warm up prior to the baptism in a freezing cold river. I’m sure it was more comfortable baptising in the Jordan River!
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orthodoxgirl99 said:
Wow! That’s hard core Rob 🙂 Many blessings on you and your son and those young people he has introduced to Christ. May their faith be deep, joyful and eternal.
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Rob said:
Well the family organiser (my wife Mary) has just managed to change my flights from Tenerife to UK and UK to Barbados to allow me to attend the Christian conference. I have heard from my son that he will attend the conference with me and is bringing 3 or 4 of his mates some of whom are not yet Christians – please pray for these guys – and together we will see what the Lord does.
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orthodoxgirl99 said:
I think one of the stumbling points for many, Christian and non (myself included) is the fact that Jesus does not appear to say anything specific about same sex relationships, albeit he was living in a country governed by a bunch of hedonistic Romans, other than living within a chaste and faithful union of marriage. Perhaps that is the answer? I am not sure. Help me out here because your knowledge of Scripture etc is much better than mine. This is always the default argument of the proponents of gay relationships which few can counter with specifics. Was Jesus that vague or am I missing something? I really, really struggle with this whole issue of homosexuality. More particularly because I have two friends who are now deeply, emotionally scarred because they feel they have battled with their inner feelings for years and years, not wanting to feel the way they do and wondering WHY they feel they do. I have enormous compassion for such individuals because they are still beloved of God and one of them is a devout Christian. It breaks my heart to witness such misery and torment. Some people I truly believe move towards homosexuality as a result of growing up in an emotionally dysfunctional family and are seeking the love and approval of the same sex adult which they did not get as a child. This is over-simplifying the issue, but I think you can get my drift? Others say they KNEW they were homosexual from being very small children and can see no other way of being. Yes, they do not have to go on to express their sexuality, I get that, but then that is condemning them to a life of complete chastity and physical loneliness. That alone can screw with someone’s mind because we are all made to give and receive physical love, albeit within a healthy framework/right relationship. On a deep level, I dislike same sex relationships and view them as a disorder against God’s creation… So it brings me back to this conumdrum again and I cannot find my way to any kind of answers.
Help me out here please – I’m drowning! I hope you get the gist of my dilemma?
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famphillipsfrancis said:
Dear Orthodox Girl (I like your pen-name!), Jesus didn’t speak of many things – including whether we should be capitalists or socialists, whether we should seek transgender operations, how much we should drink or eat and so on. Catholics believe that the Church was founded by Christ to carry on His teachings; thus to follow the magisterium and sacred Tradition is to follow Christ Himself. At Cana He made marriage into a Sacrament – between a man and a woman, faithful for life. That is the answer to this part of your comment. Since the Fall, we have all had to endure sorrow and misery; unwanted sexual attraction to one’s one sex is one of these – alongside many other sorrows too numerous to enumerate. (I only say this because the media would try to have us believe that the GLBT community endures unique pain which can be “changed” by legal decree. Pain can’t be healed by acts of Parliament; sometimes we all have to carry our crosses – as Our Lord did. Homosexuality is not innate; there are features from nature and others from nurture which should not surprise us; a latent disposition (as with an addiction) only becomes certain behaviour if the nurture goes wrong. Fr John Harvey was a US priest who started the organisation “Courage” and who carried out an apostolate with homosexual men years before it became a matter of public concern. He interviewed and assisted thousands of such men; he writes in his book that virtually all of them had a wounded/unhappy or absent relationship with their father and grew up in the kind of emotionally dysfunctional families you describe. I think his book is called “The Homosexual Condition”; worth reading. One of the reasons there seem to be more people with this orientation today might be the huge explosion of single-parent households where the father is absent? No-one is “condemned” to a life of complete chastity and “physical loneliness”, as you put it; that is to adopt the language of the media which deifies sex and which does not understand our human condition. Chastity, accepted for the love of Christ, is liberating. Many people, those with certain physical disabilities, some people with learning disabilities, people who have an accident or been wounded in war, cannot have a full sexual relationship, as in marriage – but that, as I have said, does not mean they are without love or friendship. Love is greater than sex and none of us can do without love. But, eg, those “who make themselves eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven” can be deeply fulfilled and joyful – witness the life of John Paul II. Many single people, who don’t or can’t marry for one reason or another, lead happy and fulfilled lives. It is only our sex-obsessed society which assumes that if you don’t have an active “sex life” at all times you must be missing something essential. Not true. We are made to give and receive love – yes; but love can be expressed in a million ways. Sex, divorced from love, leads to – well, divorce…
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orthodoxgirl99 said:
Great answer famphillipsfrancis! Thank you this really helps. I will re-read it and probably come back to you with more questions… I need to get clear on this once and for all. The problem I see as well, as Jess has mentioned before, that our society by and large rejects the Church (and Her teachings) and thus their ‘model’ of living is designed to fit secular agendas and therefore our points of objection/reason will never fit their ‘model’. Individualistic living and freedoms rule the day and any other suggestion of modesty/morality etc is just seen as unfair/punitive/out-dated. Houston we have a BIG problem on our hands!
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Grandpa Zeke said:
Hello orthodoxgirl, I can only offer a few random thoughts. Yes we most definitely do have a problem when our culture seems to have “thrown out the baby with the bath water” when it comes to Christianity. In general it seems that many have lost their ability to “hear” the beauty and truth contained in words of salvation and instead of embracing it they reject it often quite vehemently. This is a tragedy and I wonder how this can be overcome? I know the answer must have to do with love, the sort that Francis wrote about in her comment to you. The common refrain we hear nowadays is “Love wins” which sounds good and true, but really what people are saying is “Sex wins.” Love does not equal sex. It all has to do with a true understanding of Christian self-giving love which is a choice, not a compulsion. Like Gareth has pointed out, some people might feel compelled to have sex with a head of lettuce, but most of us would not mistake that for love. 🙂
Also, just this morning in my Internet wanderings I came across a prayer that is attributed to Saint Francis. I had never heard it before, and it strikes me after reading your comments above, if this prayer would be a reverent attitude to teach to anyone who is hurting and in search of answers.
Who are you, God? And who am I?
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orthodoxgirl99 said:
Thank you Grandpa, you make very good points too. I also sense that society today seems to lack any real depth of emotional intelligence (generalising again to make a point!) which is reflected in the way people live, interact with each other, use and abuse each other etc. Wisdom comes not just from life experience but more particularly from a life rooted in Christ and a life centred in prayer. The wisdom I have received from those who are really prayerful, humble priests and religious is so clearly imparted to them through the workings of the Holy Spirit. No matter they are not ‘of the world’, they seem to have a handle on most things and better so than some of the laity.
Thank you for the prayer reference – I will go in search of it 🙂
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Grandpa Zeke said:
I found this link to the prayer
http://www.franciscanmedia.org/enews/fr042711.asp
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ginnyfree said:
You should come visit Church Militant while they are giving a free 15 day trial. I highly recommend them and their show Houses Built on Sand. Very good stuff. I think you’d enjoy watching them. God bless. Ginnyfree.
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famphillipsfrancis said:
Hi Ginnyfree, I have watched Michael Voris since he began his apostolate – and interviewed him in person for the Catholic Herald when he once came to London to speak, about 3 years ago. If you give me your email address I will send you the interview in an attachment. He is very good (especially in his coverage of the October Synod last year) – but I would not use the word “enjoy” about his broadcasts.
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ginnyfree said:
As a general rule I never give my email to folks in places like this.
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Jock McSporran said:
….. so what’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this? 🙂
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ginnyfree said:
You could simply post a link here to the article or the title and I can google it. I’m sure if it is written they have a record of it. They’ve got just about everything ever published available. God bless. Ginnyfree.
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famphillipsfrancis said:
I have checked on Google and can’t find the interview, which was done for the Catholic Herald around the end of November 2011. All I could find was a blog I wrote about Voris on 25th August 2011. If you Google his name, my name and the Catholic Herald and the date, you might find it? I am not very good at finding stuff via Google.
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orthodoxgirl99 said:
Would you also be able to forward that to me too Francis? I would really like to hear what he said. I think you can obtain my email from Chalcedon. Thank you very much.
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famphillipsfrancis said:
It would be a pleasure. Jessica Hof (who runs this blog site) has my email address, Jessica: could you forward OrthodoxGirl’s email address to me? Then I can respond personally.
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chalcedon451 said:
Dear Francis, as I am not sure Jess will pick this up, I have and have emailed Orthodoxgirl’s address to you. C451
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JessicaHof said:
Thank you 🙂 xx
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JessicaHof said:
C451 tells me he has been in touch – bless him 🙂 xx
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Pingback: A Lutheran’s View on the Anglican Meeting | All Along the Watchtower
Jock McSporran said:
My sermon for today is on Genesis 2 and the creation ordinances.
Firstly, God gave Adam stewardship of the garden of Eden and in so doing, ordained Work for Man, as a grace and blessing to him. In the 1980’s, when the government implemented an economic policy which sent unemployment sky high to 3.5 million, yes, the Church of England did speak out against it. This is to their credit. Since they are a national church, they should speak out when, as a result of government policies, so many people are denied something that is fundamental to creation. I believe that many of the problems that Britain has had since then can be traced back to the huge numbers of people ready, willing and able to work, but to whom work was denied.
Secondly, the day of rest. This again was part of the creation ordinance, instituted as a grace and blessing to man. Does the Church of England speak out against Sunday shopping, Sunday sport, Sunday drinking? I used to enjoy watching golf, but I haven’t done so since 1980; the Muirfield Open of 1980 was the first year when they had the final day’s play on Sunday. The C. of E. doesn’t seem to be speaking out in favour of the day of rest, which is, properly understood, intended for our well being.
Thirdly, the ordinance of marriage, ‘it is not good for man to be alone’. For an organisation that is so enthusiastic about monastic retreats, idolising celebacy – in flat contradiction to the creation ordinance – it isn’t surprising that they have now decided to dump the whole precept of one man and one woman in lifelong union all together.
So I (perhaps) give them (grudgingly) one out of three when it comes to the creation ordinance – they did speak up against the enormous unemployment – but they have been utterly cavalier about the other two – and the current discussion seems to me to be the logical conclusion of a long process.
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Jock McSporran said:
We do have a fundamental disagreement here – those of us who are ‘in Christ’ are all, in that sense, not alone; we all have a particular spiritual union with Christ (the Paraclete).
I believe that these ‘consecrated virgins’ whom you mention are denying themselves a fundamental part of the creation ordinance and for no good spiritual reason.
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orthodoxgirl99 said:
I need to reflect further before I reply more fully, but I agree with you in general. My feeling is that the C of E (it does have some very fine points which Jess covered earlier in another essay) i.e. the ABC & ABY seem to be approaching things like a political party. Essential Church teaching is tweaked, watered down or altered to suit today’s society and lifestyles. This is, I concede, a generalisation but one which I feel has tainted its credibility in the overall picture. Society is supposed to reflect the Church, not the other way around! Sadly, it doesn’t and making the message softer, fluffier, less truthful is not going to ‘win the right kind of votes’. People don’t want things to be challenging, difficult or create conflict in their life, so they will always choose the easy road – human nature and all that. Consequently, the C of E may eventually ‘recruit’ more followers by going down this liberal path, but at what cost? What kind of Christians will they be? In addition, the Bishops are too poop-scared to speak out about any of these fundamental subjects for fear of causing a rumpus, losing even more votes and being labelled as bigots and not luvvey-duvvey Christians. I gently challenged one last summer on a particular subject and he waffled his way out of answering and said “I wouldn’t dream of telling ladies how to dress” etc. etc. I’ll stop blathering now and let someone else have a chance!
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Rob said:
My knowledge of the Church of England is very limited but I am aware it covers a wide spectrum Anglo Catholic, low church, modernist, evangelical and charismatic congregations. It seems to me that whatever decisions come from the top that congregations (which is what the church actually consist of) will follow their convictions.
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Jock McSporran said:
QVUO – have you ever considered the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland?
http://www.fpchurch.org.uk/
They’re dead serious and I think you might enjoy them. They even banned the Lord Chancellor from Communion once.
I like them because they take the Sabbath seriously – to such an extent that they close their web page. Try the above link on a Sunday and you’ll get a message stating that the web page is closed for the Sabbath, with the appropriate verses from Exodus (KJV of course)
Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:
But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:
For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
I think you may enjoy them. Much more your cup of tea than the Anglicans or the Catholics under Pope Francis.
The only problem is that you would have to emigrate to the Western Isles.
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Dave Smith said:
It seems to me that if one has a pathology (whether spiritual, mental or physical) and all the physicians seem willing to do is vote on how to treat the patient . . . we are in trouble. And if they decide, by consensus, to take the patient’s own diagnosis and cure, we pronounce them healthy and attribute their problems to how others see him. In this way we have administered a placebo and informed his friends and family to dismiss the symptoms, and we all sit back, quite content to pass the decision on to another generation. Though in the spiritual realm what we have done is pass the buck back to Jesus (the Great Physician) though He gave us the ability to spot and treat the malady. It is neither compassionate nor intelligent to treat a soul in this manner. I do wonder how the Great Physician will deal with the timid and indifferent physicians that He put in place to run things in His absence.
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orthodoxgirl99 said:
Amen to that. Again this all revolves around the argument I hear from some of my contemporaries that Jesus is all merciful and surely will not banish people to hell…. will he?? But, people just don’t want to be accountable or feel they have to acknowledge that maybe they didn’t deal with the malady as they should have done. There seem to be many variations of answer to the question: “What would Jesus do?” that they make my head spin.
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Dave Smith said:
Indeed so orthodox girl. We should be asking, “What would Jesus have me do?” And after meditating and praying over it see if just maybe Christ is not calling us to proclaim the Truth and to give our compassion to them who seek to find the Truth.
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ginnyfree said:
Dave, the answer to that question is only half way there. After you figure out what it is that God wills you to do, it still remains to DO IT! Some never put the two together. God bless. Ginnyfree.
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Geoffrey RS Sales said:
So, ginny, 55 years ago God told me to dedicate myself to serving him, and that I have done, having not only become an elder of my Church (which involves a full tithe), but teaching Sunday school and preaching every Saturday morning. Now my question to you, is why do you insist that God speaks only to your church. Are you going to tell me that 55 years of doing God’s will as it has been revealed to me is going to land me in hell? Are you, go on, double dare you.
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ginnyfree said:
Geoffrey, where in my statement above do I say what you claim I do? Can you show me please? God bless. Ginnyfree.
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Geoffrey RS Sales said:
I never said you did there, but on the logic of what your church believes, you must surely think it a probability 🙂
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JessicaHof said:
Geoffrey, I do believe you are trailing your coat … 🙂 xx
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orthodoxgirl99 said:
Yes, good point Dave. As I work full time in a busy job, I use my time at work to give my time diligently to my company but also you enable others to see my Christian witness. My desk walls are dedicated not only to business information but also to my holy icons. On my computer stand I have a small iconostasis with the Angelus there as well. The Jesus prayer is written in Latin and Greek on the bottom of my computer and I have the Cross placed in the centre of all of this. Any visitors that come to my workstation cannot help but see that I am Christian and it has been noticed by some in a very positive way. My colleagues now ask me questions about my faith etc and I am delighted to be able to tell them about Jesus and his teachings when they do 🙂
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Dave Smith said:
Yes, of course you’re right. Bearing Christ’s witness is very important and we need to that. But specifically, in context to my first point: it is our pastors who can both preach the moral law and treat the moral defects in the confessional or privately if the offender is open and willing to seek truth and help in turning their lives around. I’m not even sure if many pastors are equipped to this anymore.
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famphillipsfrancis said:
Dave, Jesus is always calling on us to proclaim the Truth and our faith in Him – but this can be done in different ways: by example, by conversation, by displaying icons at one’s work station (like Orthodoxgirl), by writing Letters to the press, by pro-life prayer vigils and so on; there is always something we can do to proclaim our love for Him, according to our circumstances – and the promptings of the Holy Spirit!
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Dave Smith said:
Yes, indeed Francis. I am speaking about those situations where someone you know and care about is open to changing their pathology of spirit; homosexual tendencies or other immoral tendencies etc. It is ticklish for the layman and our pastors seem to think on the surface level of these issues. They can always get the ball rolling by consistent teaching of the moral truths . . . but the real trick is to use the desire of the offender to seek God and Truth to ‘train their will’ and to look at their particular sin as a predominant fault that will actuallly help them grow in holiness and a deepen their love of God.
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orthodoxgirl99 said:
Don’t read the C of E’s official booklet on homosexuality and its position on it! I read that a couple of year’s ago and finished it and thought….what was that all about?? It seems to be a complete fudge of the issue: clergy, if they are gay, must remain chaste whereas homosexuality within laity is sort of side-stepped. So we have mixed messages again. I was really underwhelmed by the style of the writing and found it tedious. Perhaps I should read it again and give it another shot. No consistent teaching of the moral truths there I fear.
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chalcedon451 said:
That, alas, is not the Anglican style – that is more, find a fudge where no one imagined there could be one 🙂
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Dave Smith said:
Such nonsense is being spread far and wide and is not just confined to the C of E.
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