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Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Same-Sex "Marriage" and the Catholic Church

The Irish giving hearty approval to same-sex "marriage," as I took note of in my previous post, is another sign of the sad decline and influence of the modern Catholic Church. It seems that Frank Bruni of The New York Times, at least somewhat, agrees with me.

Though Bruni--the openly homosexual, former restaurant critic turned op-ed columnist (in other words, the typical path to advancement with the liberal media)--frames this decline in much more positive terms than I do, the evidence is unmistakable.

There are now 20 nations that have given legal status to same-sex "marriage." Those include, Belgium, Canada, Spain, Argentina, Portugal, Brazil, France, Uruguay, Luxembourg and Ireland. As Bruni notes, these nations don't share a continent, or a language. "But in all of them, the Roman Catholic Church has more adherents, at least nominally, than any other religious denomination does."

As I noted, as of 2011, over 84% of Ireland identified as Roman Catholic. As Bruni put it,

"Irish voters nonetheless rejected the church’s formal opposition to same-sex marriage. This act of defiance was described, accurately, as an illustration of church leaders’ loosening grip on the country.
"But in falling out of line with the Vatican, Irish people are actually falling in line with their Catholic counterparts in other Western countries, including the United States.
"They aren’t sloughing off their Catholicism — not exactly, not entirely. An overwhelming majority of them still identify as Catholic. But they’re incorporating religion into their lives in a manner less rooted in Rome...in Europe and the Americas in particular, the church is much more fluid than [Rome]. It harbors spiritually inclined people paying primary obeisance to their own consciences, their own senses of social justice. That impulse and tradition are as Catholic as any others." (Emphasis is mine.)

In other words, as was noted last week, such "Catholicism" shows tremendous (if not complete) "indifference" towards truth, sin, salvation, and judgement. In other words, a "fluid church" is no church at all. In fact, and almost certainly unbeknownst to Bruni, a "fluid church" sounds much like a church built on shifting sand instead of solid rock. 

As Jesus said in Matthew chapter 7

"Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it."

And great has been the fall of the Catholic Church and Mainline Protestant churches, who have abandoned truth in the name of "relevance" and "tolerance."  At least some within the Catholic Church seem to recognize this. Upon the outcome of the Irish vote, Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican Secretary of State, said he was "deeply saddened by the result." He added, "The church must take account of this reality, but in the sense that it must strengthen its commitment to evangelization. I think that you cannot just talk of a defeat for Christian principles, but of a defeat for humanity."

In other words, the "reality" of the vote in Ireland should be a wake-up call to all who follow Jesus. As more and more are calling good evil, and evil good, it is getting easier and easier to compromise with the truth. The road to eternal life seems to be getting more and more narrow and harder to find, while the path to destruction is attractive, well-lit, wide, and busy with travelers. Do not be deceived!

(Update: Just after posting this, I came across this piece from Joanna Moorhead of The Guardian. Like Bruni, she captures well the liberal worldview when it comes to the church and the truth. In complete contradiction to my take (a "fluid church" is no church at all) on what destroys the church, Moorhead declares, "The gay marriage vote has forced Catholic leaders to face a simple reality: that a church without worshippers wouldn’t be a church at all."

Of course, instead of the "bride of Christ," she sees the church much like a business. Thus, if you want people to continue to come, you must give them what they want, or at least tell them what they want to hear. Because, as she puts it, its time that the church got on board with "what most of us believe, which is that truth and right are more likely to be found in common consensus than in autocratic dictatorship." Because, as we all know, Jesus always looked to what was popular, before He decided what was "truth" and what was "right.")

Copyright 2015, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

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