--- Church Leadership

ONE GOD, NOT THREE

(2Tim.1:7 & Num.11:23-29

(The Fallacy of Trinity)

God is supreme and sovereign and He has all things under control according to His Will, Word and His spirit. He made you and me and now He has sent His Son, Jesus Christ to redeem every one of us. If you reject Him, you will live hereafter without Him, but if you believe in Him and accept His offer, you will meet God one of these days. However, you have to let Him guide, lead, direct and watch over your life by the spirit of God. God knows all things and He will not allow you to be deceived if you are committed to Him in Christ through the spirit of God.

When people straighten others in jackets of one stereotype or another it is too often for purposes of demeaning others and advantaging self. I am as guilty as anyone in odious stereotyping for I have grown up in the common culture in which it prevails.

The truth is that every person is nuanced in beliefs; and even though all may be culturally inclined toward stereotypical belief, everyone deep down has moments of openness to newness beyond habituated sameness. This counter tendency is also present in human nature; in other words, CONVERSION remains the CONSTANT of personal/ social REDEMPTION.

I went online to 'clonard.com' today and heard the novena Mass from Clonard monastery and heard Mass said by a Redemptorist priest and the sermon was given by a neighboring pastor but a funny thing the visiting preacher was a canon of the church of Ireland [Anglican] and the four previous preachers were Methodist,Presbyterian and Lutheran. Prayers of the faithful included the intentions of the meighbor anglican church.

While many of the faithful hoped it wouldn’t come to this, including myself, it probably shouldn’t be surprising that it has. I speak of the sharpest language yet in the matter of official Church positioning against the ordination of women to the priesthood.

The exclusionary caste system of the male hierarchical priesthood dates back to the OT Judaic culture of patriarchal electionism of the priestly order in the line of Melchisedek. By birth, I am a Roman Catholic. I was early drawn to the Catholic priesthood and I entered the High School Seminary in preparation to become a priest. Eleven years later, at the age of 24, I opted to discontinue my pursuit of the institutional priesthood.

I recently read an email article re. the Vatican urging U.S. dioceses to avoid providing parish records to Mormon archives for genealogical intent, because the Mormon church uses these to find their own ancestors and posthumously baptize them into the Mormon church. Understandably, the Vatican disapproves of this practice and does not recognize these "baptisms" as legitimate. Here is my question: Isn't this a "God job"? Meaning, clearly God can recognize legitimate Baptisms from illegitimate ones. So what difference does it make what the Mormons do? It won't make my great-grandfather any less Catholic, no matter what Mormons might do in his name. And I have absolutely NO fear that my great-grandfather might end up in "Mormon heaven" as opposed to "Catholic heaven." So why would the Vatican risk alienating Mormons over something so seemingly silly to worry about? God will "fix it" eventually anyway. And dialogue with Mormons might be negatively impacted by making this such a public emphasis. I can understand making this an example of how the Mormons differ in their beliefs from Catholics, but wouldn't that be better served in private dialogue with Church leaders?

Dear Pope Benedict:

In your speech to the United Nations, you spoke eloquently about human rights as a path to equality, however, sadly, the Roman Catholic church discriminates against women . Church law bars women from ordination and patriarchal structures have colluded with the sexual abuse and violence against women that occurs in all religions, nations, and cultures throughout the centuries.

Church is effective in its work when it works to persuade and reconcile, as Jesus did. At the opening of the Second Vatican Council, the grandfatherly Pope John XXIII instructed the gathered fathers to think of mercy as the right remedy to cultural misdirection rather than severity. (Maureen Sullivan, Review of book, “VATICAN II: Did Anything Happen?”, AMERICA, March 3, 2008, pg 26)

Grandfatherly Pope Benedict XVI now seems determined to advance Vatican II by his proactive affirmation of the necessary and continuing work of correlating Faith and Reason, as did Pope John Paul II in his “Fides et Ratio”. The ongoing correlation of Faith and Reason in social/ personal living accomplishes in fact the updating “aggiornamento” theme of the Second Vatican Council.

Pope Benedict XVI will in a few days be coming to the United States of America. The advanced billing he is getting promises that his every word and action will be scrutinized from every possible direction. What signals will you be looking for and what message do you hope for?

I am hoping that he will come across as the Pope of "green religion", emphasizing universal moral obligations of all to the God/ Land/ Human Covenant. As to Church discipline, etc, I will be watching to see if he comes across as a "conciliarist" pope, open to Church collegiality, or if he will continue in the ancient precedent of Vatican "infallibilism".

Where is the LOVE?

In the press recently it has been reported that the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith has ruled that a baptism is invalid if any substitution of ‘Father’ is used such as Redeemer, Creator or Sanctifier, which apparently are feminist terms arising from feminist theology. Once again some of the hierarchy of the Church want to put the blame for this ‘aberration’ onto to women, the convenient scapegoat for celibate men when they feel they are losing control of any situation. Adam gave them the idea.