{"id":2775,"date":"2008-06-26T07:24:54","date_gmt":"2008-06-26T12:24:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2775"},"modified":"2008-06-26T11:17:11","modified_gmt":"2008-06-26T16:17:11","slug":"the-immovable-object","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2775","title":{"rendered":"The Immovable Object"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m not Catholic.\u00a0 I never will be.\u00a0 I have my theological reasons.<\/p>\n

I have nothing against <\/em>Catholicism or Catholics. Many of my best friends, and some of my relatives, are Catholic.\u00a0 I agree with John Paul II – there are many paths to salvation.\u00a0 I don’t believe Catholicism is a detour on the road to salvation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As it happens, I’m Presbyterian.\u00a0 The theology of the Presbyterian Church just makes more sense to me (even though the actions of the Presbyterian Church in the USA’s non-clerical governing body<\/a> on temporal issues frequently don’t).\u00a0 I believe strongly in its focus on scripture, its mix of justification by faith with strong encouragement of putting ones’ faith into action, its governance, John Knox’s founding beliefs on the relationship between government and the faithful (hint:\u00a0 it strongly influenced how this country was founded), and many, many other things.<\/p>\n

Which isn’t to say there aren’t things I respect about Catholicism – indeed, as a newly-minted conservative in the mid-eighties, Pope John Paul II’s example was downright inspirational.<\/p>\n

But given a choice between…:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. starting a pressure group within the Catholic Church – say, “Catholics for Justification By Faith Without Eschewing Works, An Attitude of Judging Civil Authority By Its Record On Being Good Versus Evil, and An Elected Church Governing Hierarchy”, and spending decades\/centuries duking it out with a church that is based on theologically inimicable principles, or…<\/li>\n
  2. …joining a church that actually practiced these things…<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    …the choice seemed fairly simple (presuming one doesn’t live merely to fight fruitless battles the end of which one will never see).<\/p>\n

    Which is why I see things like this<\/a>:<\/p>\n

    S<\/strong>aying they don’t want to go back in the closet, gay and lesbian Catholics and their supporters took their annual prayer service celebrating gay pride outdoors Wednesday night…About 100 people marched from the parking lot to the front of St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church in south Minneapolis, where they celebrated a [GLBT prayer service] officials from the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis had banned from the church itself.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    I’m totally with ’em about not going back into the closet.<\/p>\n

    But…well…<\/p>\n

    Lucia Engelhardt, 2, was helping her sister Anna, 9, carry a sign reading “Gay love is not a mortal sin.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    I may or may not agree on that count.\u00a0 I’m pretty “live and let live” on these sorts of things.<\/p>\n

    But to the Catholic Church, the way of the gay is<\/em> a mortal sin.\u00a0 And changing the Catholic Church is like changing the orbit of the planet.<\/p>\n

    Their 7-year-old sister, Ingrid, also carried a sign supporting gays in the Catholic Church.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    “We’re here to support our gay friends,” said their mother, Stephanie Vagle. “And to show our displeasure with the Catholic Church over this issue,” their father, Bill Englehardt, quickly added.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    So here’s a question; if you disagree so completely with the Catholic Church over something that the Church itself is so adamant about not <\/em>changing, why stay Catholic?<\/p>\n

    Why not leave?<\/p>\n

    Why not find a church that reflects your beliefs?\u00a0 It’s an ancient, honorable thing;\u00a0 the Armenian and Coptic and Chaldean and Indian and finally the Greek Churches left over creeds and doctrines and, I dunno, the heights of miter caps for all I remember.\u00a0 We Protestants left over all manner of things, and have collected half a billion unforced turnovers since then.\u00a0 The Episcopals seceded over the whole “my king beats your pope” thing.<\/p>\n

    Just saying – it’d be nothing new.<\/p>\n

    I’m genuinely curious – for the second day in a row, as it happens; why stay in a church whose beliefs are so inimicable to you?<\/p>\n

    Is it the incense?\u00a0 The nuns?\u00a0 The tradition?<\/p>\n

    Someone explain it, please.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I’m not Catholic.\u00a0 I never will be.\u00a0 I have my theological reasons. I have nothing against Catholicism or Catholics. Many of my best friends, and some of my relatives, are Catholic.\u00a0 I agree with John Paul II – there are many paths to salvation.\u00a0 I don’t believe Catholicism is a detour on the road to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-war","category-faiths-and-their-followers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2775\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}