Real late on my comments here, but I'll get them in before they're completely outdated. I extend my congratulations and best wishes to my Catholic brothers and sisters on the occasion of choosing their next Pope, Benedict XVI. I'm glad the church has as its leader one who says that Truth is not subject to majority opinion. What detractors don't seem to understand is that the church is not subject to popular opinion, it is subject to Christ. As Patricia Heaton said, when each of us stands before the judgment seat at the last day, it won't be Barbra Streisand we're answering to, but rather Jesus Himself. A pope who understands that will draw the world's wrath, but he'll lead the church right. Another sign that he's leading the church right is his opposition, people who mock godliness and dignify hedonism and materialism. The church has no business accomodating those values.
Along with the election of Pope Benedict XVI came the sad news of the passing of Diane Knippers, president of The Institute on Religion and Democracy. In addition to her role as President of IR&D, she also served that organization's Episcopal Action branch, and was active in a lot of the events surrounding the creation of the American Anglican Council.
The implication that everyone who opposes Ratzinger is a hedonist or materialist is nonsense.
I see the dangers of relativism but I also see the danger of assuming that any one Pope or any one church or denomination will perfectly reflect Truth. Majority opinion? No. But if the collective faith community doesn't work together to discern God's truth how else are we to understand it?
The late Pope said the invasion of Iraq was immoral. The head of the Southern Baptist Convention said it was a just war. Was one of those two a relativist? What I'm finding from many conservative evangelicals is that if you disagree with them on any issue, you are labelled such a relativist.
I'm not enthusiastic because I think Ratzinger's rhetoric on gays went beyond calling homosexuality a sin into using terminology that was demeaning and sometimes hateful. He not only opposed gay adoption but claimed that allowing it was a violent act against children. He opposed the hiring of gay school teachers and supported housing discriminination against gays. Are you positive that represents God's absolute truth? Ratzinger also opposed gays in the military. How do you know for a fact that the Bible prohibits gays from serving there?
Posted by: Joel Thomas at April 26, 2005 04:29 AMSo you are saying that the church should promote homosexuality? Just take a pair of scissors and cut out passages like 1 Corinthians 6 that say it's sinful? I don't think so, Joel. And as far as it being an act of violence for children to be raised by homosexual partners, I think the church is right, and I have a link to the church's position on the left, where it is discussed in more detail than the slogans and stereotypes that the homosexuals and feminists like to sling at those who uphold traditional values.
I don't like discrimination. I think homosexuals have basic rights, as all human beings do, and I also believe that those rights do not necessitate the redefinition of marriage or the raising of children in a unisexual environment where they are shielded from learning about sexual complementarity. You can probably correctly assume that I disagree with you on the military issue as well.
Joel,
You don't like discrimination? Well, you certainly favor it with regard to the military.
The church should accept loving, committted monogamous homosexual relationships. Yes, that's what I believe, as do around 45% of all United Methodist pastors and about 20% of the laity.
I'm astonished that you believe that homosexuals are violent people over and above what heterosexuals are.
Recently, led by Republicans in the Oklahoma House of Representatives and supported by most religious leaders, the state house approved a measure making it against the law for any state agency or entity to pass any law or regulation prohibiting employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The author of the bill said that those who engaged in homosexual conduct have no right to employment. The Catholic Church in Oklahoma refused to oppose the bill. Why? Because they had been directed earlier by Ratzinger to oppose ALL civil rights bills regarding homosexuals regardless of the content of the bill.
Some day God will hold Ratzinger and other accountable for such vile, demonic hatred.
Posted by: Joel Thomas at April 26, 2005 09:40 PMJoel, here's how the word "violence" is used in the Vatican statement, "Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children, in the sense that their condition of dependency would be used to place them in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development". If you think that I believe homosexuals are physically violent people because the word "violence" is used in that sentence and I have endorsed it, you are wrong in that belief.
While I'm at it, let me correct a bit of careless language in my previous comment. Not all feminists mock traditional values; feminism and traditional views are not mutually exclusive points of view. I respect feminists such as Patricia Heaton, of Feminists for Life, who believe that women are equal, yet different, and who also believe that abortion hurts women. My comment yesterday was directed to those who, like the National Organization for Women, claim that legal access to abortion is a fundamental right for women.
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Slander me on your own blog, Joel. [JF]
Posted by: Joel Thomas at April 27, 2005 12:33 PMJoel,
I will re-post what I wrote at Connexions. For something to be slander it has to be untrue.
Posted by: Joel Thomas at April 28, 2005 01:15 AMJoel,
You seem to be claiming that I implied that you are a homophobe, but let's look at what you implied about me.
The facts:
1. I'm against Ratzinger.
2. You said his opposition was made up of those who mock godliness, dignify hedonism and materialism. (If you had said that some of his opponents were such, I might have reacted differently.)
So, if I have implied anything negative about you, is it worse than anything that you might have implied about me?
Posted by: Joel Thomas at April 29, 2005 10:54 AMAcknowledged, Joel. I could have quantified that sentence better. There are people who disagree with the Catholic Church for religious or doctrinal reasons.
Posted by: Joel Fuhrmann at April 29, 2005 12:19 PMThank you for the congratulations to us Catholics but I didn't have any part in the choosing of the pope. I'm not a great fan of augustinian theology as is the present pope and as I try to steer clear of the tautologies so much in evidence in much of his moral reasoning that he wouldn't make my top ten. Alas I am not a prince of the church but a mere peasant. I am somewhat amused how the Truth played out as an Absolute in the platonian realm of ideals as it seems to be suggested by Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict xvi and how this is opposed to the relativism of Truth.
What most of your respondents articulate rather well is in fact the question-What is Truth? or what is the Truth of the Christ? To which you get a variety of answers in many situations to the same question. Such is situational ethics, such is relativism. In the catholic church as in the world there has been a healthy tension between those with a more absolutist vision of Truth and those who hold one of a more diverse pluralistic revelations of the truth and which defines the church's catholicity. Cardinal Newman acknowledged that in a perfect world there would be absolute truth. There we would not change but here on this earth we do change and to be perfect is to have changed often.
On another but related topic regarding the new pope's condemnation of gay/lesbian adoptions as being of violence against children. It seems a statement at the very least somewhat ironic if not outright hypocritical given the more demonstrable evil against children has been perpetuated by the priests and by accomplice, the bishops and princes of the church.