Destroying a Church in Order to Save It

[jeff_duntemann]

We learned recently that two nearby communities in the Colorado Diocese of the Episcopal Church are closing down, and at mass this morning a good many people from Holy Spirit parish attended, doubtless "interviewing" St. Raphael as a new church home.

Holy Spirit had been having trouble for

Comments

[anonymous]

There's a general feeling around here that the conflicts in Colorado Springs are not about God at all, but about being Right Men (and Right Women) and having Our Way, no matter what collateral damage may be brought down on bystanders.

Amen, Hallelujah.

-HH

[shoei_mike]

Agree with your assessment of the Episcopal situation there. If you can't live with the Church, leave without fuss. I take issue, though, with you labelling the "birth control issue", "ridiculous". There is complex and involved theology behind it. Testament to this is the volume of material expressing the "Theology of the Body", and its growing momentum within the Roman Catholic Chruch.
You do the right thing by leaving if there is no way you can accept such a teaching. Those who stay Roman Catholic yet disagree with the teaching of the Church are choosing to put themselves in a hypocritical situation.

[jeff_duntemann]

Ummm...no. Humanae Vitae destroyed my parents' marriage and has made countless people miserable. I have researched it heavily and it's, well, ...ridiculous. It's worse than that, actually: It's cruel, and at the root of it, heretical.

I've been researching it for a good many years. The Vatican commissioned a lay group to study the issue forty-odd years ago, and then when it looked like things were going the "wrong" way, intervened and committed something very like fraud to void the findings of the commission.

The "Theology of the Body" is really sanitized Manichaeism, and it has growing momentum in the Roman Catholic Church because all the people like us left long ago, beginning in the year that the unfortunate encyclical was promulgated.

Sad, sad.

[muerk]

My personal experience with the Catholic Church's teaching on sexuality and love is that it has stengthened my marriage and brought a wonderful freedom to my life. I am enthusiastic about it because its lived experience has been so positive for my body and my sexuality as a woman.

Whatever Manichaean roots you see in it certainly do not bear fruit in its practice in my marriage.

[jeff_duntemann]

Well, that's a damned good thing. Every time I point out the cruelty of the Church's teachings on sex and the body, I hear from people who seem to have benefited from it, and I'm glad that at least a few people have ducked the bullet.

On the other hand, the same teaching that somehow strengthened your marriage turned a pious woman against her disfigured and dying husband. I don't tell that story in public, but if I did I suspect it would haunt you forever.

I will tell another story in an upcoming entry that has haunted me a little since I was 14.

I rejected what I call the Cruel Magisterium for these and many other reasons (including about two shelf-feet of books in my library dealing specifically with that problem) and will continue to point out the ways that the Roman Catholic Church's teachings on women, sex, and the body deny the Image and Likeness and continue to drive good people out of the Church, shaking their heads that such things remain in Sacred Tradition.