This is from a D.C. area Catholic church, which shall remain nameless. This represents the front and back of a little card they handed out—small enough to fit in my shirt pocket. On the front is a specific prayer and the back is a message.
This seems obviously related to the recent concern and litigation over Obamacare. I previously discussed the matter here.
---------------------------------------
Follow me at Twitter @aaronworthing, mostly for snark and site updates. And you can purchase my book (or borrow it for free if you have Amazon Prime), Archangel: A Novel of Alternate, Recent History here. And you can read a little more about my novel, here.
Amen! Atque: Laudate Dominum, nos transcendere rosaria.
ReplyDeleteDominus Vobiscum :-)
"In the United States, people of faith continually face attacks against our religious freedom in the areas of ... marriage ..."
ReplyDeleteReally? So, someone out there is trying to make a law that says Christians can no longer marry? Or maybe that there can be no mention of God or Jesus during a marriage ceremony?
Oh, no, that's right! This is talking about how so many Christians continually violate the religious freedoms of others by telling them who they can and can't marry! My, bad, I didn't expect such blatant hypocrisy.
What the hell?
You miss the point of their whole Freedom of Religion "thing". It means that we as Christians cannot be FORCED to go against our religion (because that would be the Congress creating or establishing a religion that includes all the tenants of Christianity AND homosexuality). The thing that you miss is that marriage IS being attacked in the hearts and minds and lives of the Protestant Christian and Catholic church. We, as a majority, do not hate the homosexual person. It is the ACT that we do not like. We believe that the act is a sin. Sins should not be honored. Sin begets death (Genesis 3 - the Fall - where Adam disobeys God and is given a life with a death at the end - but we are reminded of of something else with that in 1 Corinthians 15:22).
DeleteAnd yes, I WILL quote the Bible to make my case, since that is the reason for the issue in the first place. The Bible tells us our laws and obligations to God.
So even though there is no law against Christians marrying, it is the fact that we have to accept and perform marriages to those who are sinning in their actions against the beliefs that we have. THIS is the attacking that the Bishop is referring to.
And no, we are not violating the religious freedoms of homosexuals, we are telling them that we will not honor their "marriage" as a biblically and holy sacrament. We are also telling them that we will not perform the ceremonies.
It is hypocrisy to accept and condone actions that are sins in your Holy Book. It in NOT hypocrisy to tell those who are sinning that they cannot be married in your church. A divorced person cannot be married in a Catholic church. A non-Catholic cannot be married in a Catholic church or ceremony. Why, then, should ANYONE ELSE get the "right" to? Hmmm... I think that would be the church exercising their right of conscious AND religion AND association. [Ref: U.S. Constitution Bill of Rights First Amendment and Palko v. Connecticut (1937) and National Association for the Advancement of Colored People v. Alabama, 357 U.S. 449 (1958)]
So basically, you are equating the "right" to marry the person you want and FORCING a PRIVATE INSTITUTION to help them when it is against their religion to do so, with an acceptance of that person or couples freedom of religion? Nope, not the same thing. If I was to try to marry someone who was Catholic, I would not be able to have a Catholic ceremony. That is fine by me. I understand that. That is their right. If I were to try to marry a Catholic in a Baptist church, there would be two problems: I am non-denominational but leaning Baptist, so not really a Baptist, and he would, of course, be Catholic. That Baptist church has EVERY right to say, "we can't perform the ceremony." I understand.
What you are doing is saying that the right to marry and the freedom of religion are the same. You are oh so wrong. They are different issues all together. One is a religious right, and one is a civil right. Frankly, the few homosexuals that I know who WANT to get married (I know many who don't), don't want to have a ceremony in a church, they just want to get a marriage license.
But, hey, I have an idea: you go tell all the Muslims that they MUST let homosexual people get married in their mosque and see how that reaction goes. That will not go over as gently or as civilly as this letter from the Bishop.
Saol fada agus breac-shláinte chugat!
First of all muslims seldomly marry inside their mosques. And second of all you are right. It is not smart being a gay Catholic tryig to get married, while Christianity (and Islam and Judaism) is so against homosexual activities. And I get your point of not wanting to be a hypocrite. But think about this: What if the bible has been written and later adapted by men who had absolutely no concept of genetics, and therefore merely follow the logic of a penis only fitting into a vag-g, and not into another penis? Woud it make sense that God would create a genetic code for homosexuals just so straight Christians could start to marginalize them? Just for fun! Sounds kinda gay to me... What if you are and gay AND religious and you want to be bonded 'sacredly'? Isn't it up to God to decide on judgement day whether it is legit or not for you to have been married to a certain type of person, just like interracial marriages were once forbidden by a whole bunch of Catholic interpretations throughout history? So is this moral? Does a gay couple that want to marry really harm you in trying to pusrue it's happiness?
ReplyDeleteI'm a straight person and an Arab ex-muslim, and what bothers me the most about religion is the fact that it is not only outdated (e.g. the clear acceptance and justificatin of slavery in the Torah , Bibles and Qoran), but also the fact that scriptures have been interpreted and translated by some rather cruel new leaders (you simply could not be only a pacifist in those times, you also had tyo be able to win wars, and the winners are the ones who eventually write, and rewrite history; the pacifism is only there for spreading the faith amongst new humans; it is a response to their humanism; it was useful in a time of US vs. THEM, we're the good guys, they are the bad guys, NO! you are all good and bad, because you are human). You can say that a lot of pacifist characters have lived in those times, for example you would say that Jesus was such a pacifist that my whole statement about 'rather cruel leaders' is non-valid. But my point is that it is never that simple. How can a religion work nowadays if it doens't have a humanistic appeal to it? What's also true is the fact that the humanism in relgious scriptures often refers to the relgious community. Outsiders and non-religious people must die, if not the will burn in hell. (Man I can't believe I used to believe this once, sorry about that my hindu, buddist, atheist and agnostic friends of that time, it's just what my parents told me, because some dude in a dress had read it in some book)
On top of that, the scriptures are so ambiguous that you can justify any idea of opression of a minority whilst being a pacifist.Just by cherrypicking verses. Because believe it or not: (and I believe this as strongly as you guys believe Jesus is God's son and others believe Muhammad is the last prophet or even that a piece of land belongs to a particular group simply because it is Zion) you can be a vicious slave-owning homophobe raping 15-year-old 'spoils of war' and you can be a peace-loving anti-aristocrate beneficiary, and you would both get support from excerpts from the Bible or Torah or Qoran. Because they are so ambiguous. And why are they so ambiguous? Not only because they were altered by the ruling classes from the years 1500/0/600 onwards, but also because they were written in times we knew relatively nothing. So even if you believe in the word of God, you wouldn't even know if it's his word or something King James interpreted out of it. It's called history my friends, read a modern-day 'introduction to world history' and you will see my point.
ReplyDeleteBottom line, maybe the problem is not gay marriages making hypocrites out of Christians, by letting them marry eventhough it is forbidden in the bible, maybe the problem is Christianity forbidding homosexuality in the first place. God is going to be angry if you interfere in his judgement' (of which the average Christian has not even a clue of what this constituted in Jesus' mind, thanks to many rewrites and misinterpretations) on whether or not gays should be able to get married, it's his call. And why would God create gay Christians in the first place? Is he/she/it that bored, that he/she/it would cause trouble amongst his people on purpose like that? (typical dogmatic answer: The lord works in mysterious ways... NOT BUYING IT! How about this for an answer: relgion makes you outdated, conservative, stubborn, indoctrinated, closed-minded, but the younger the religion, the more humanistic values it carries, which is logical, because people aren't gonna fall for religion if a liberal law has more moral values anyway. Plus let's not forget the fact that it lessens the fear of dying...)
Life becomes so clear once you step out of the religion paradigm...unlearn all the dogma's and look at the world objectively people... This is my experience as a once indoctrinated but later on more and more open-minded citizen of the world, with respect for all religions, unless they have some over-testosteroned ancient unmoral opinion about homosexuals, slaves, women, freedom speech, freedom of thought and the fate of this planet... Just one more message to religious people: If it's arrogant to say that God does not exist, isn't it also arrogant to say that he absolutely does exist? There is no such thing as an absolute thruth... If we could be certain that God exists, we would be God... get it? If I follow your religious logic I would say that God has made you and you little brain sooo small (perhaps compared to the universe) that you should really shut up and let God do the judging! Because in the end maybe God does not 'hate fags' and that's just someting people made of it, through legitimate alterifications of the bible or not. But be honest, would God really hate fags? I thought he/she/it was cooler than that....
Thinking you will go to heaven because you fear death is naively and selfishly comforting, making planet earth a paradise for your fellow human beings and all of our next generations simply isn't...
ReplyDeleteKind regards,
The Devil
Sike :p
PS: I'm probably not going to read reactions to this... Why? Because anything less open minded has already been told to me a thousand times... by myself when I was still a muslim... plus I have shit to do... study world history and stuff...
Above all, peace and love... you cute little crazy Jesus-lovers you.... mmmmwah xxxx