...installed today by the C of E at Canterbury...it was good that the H. Father sent a friendly and supportive greeting, a sign of friendship and hope and goodwill.
Now: Dr W. must remain true to his Evangelical principles and stick up for the truth that marriage is the lifelong union of one man an one woman. This is an evangelical moment for Christians in the West, and he is right to give an upbeat and positive message. Christ is the answer to the muddle and hurt and sorrow in people's lives...including the lives of those who think that by angry lobbying they can make themselves feel comfortable about trying to avoid the beauty of God's plan...
I was a bit underwhelmed by Dr W's signal failure to affirm male/female marriage in his sermon at Canterbury: it is the single most crucial issue facing our poor country - and, unlike the Pope, he really does have a very specific duty to tackle specific issues in a specific place in addition to offering some message for the wider world. .
I have hopes (but not, alas, expectations) that Dr W. may prove a useful Christian voice in our poor nation. Let's keep him in our prayers at this time...
7 comments:
No it isn't the single most important issue facing this country. Abortion, euthanasia, the Recession, climate change, children without love, ....the list is as long as your arm. Auntie really must not act like Great Auntie but get her priorities straight.
There are indeed many other important issues though the fantasy of climate change is not one.
However how well intentioned the new Archbishop of Cantebury is personally, he will have little influence over his own heterodox and heretical (in the true sense) church let alone the country.
The Church of England long since stopped preaching the truth. Its hierarchy is for the most part morally bankrupt and concerned only with PC secular "equality" issues rather than God.
Why be so grudging? ++Justin has made a very promising start by affirming the Church's traditional teaching on marriage while at the same time speaking respectfully of gay people. This approach will be much more fruitful than would a shrill and strident campaign carrying the clear inference that homosexuals are somehow unworthy.
And Frederick Oakeley is surely right: the gay marriage issue is not the single most important one facing the country - there is a tendency for some to exaggerate its significance out of all proportion.
Anonymous (of 11.01am) write of the Church of England:
"its hierarchy is for the most part morally bankrupt"
When I read things like this I am reminded of the wisdom that those in glass houses should not throw stones.
Anonymous may be a very clever man but if I want to get the truth on climate, I go to the climate experts and they are very clear that climate change is no fantasy but a serious threat to us all. Go down into the ice and you can see more than 800,000 years of annual deposition of ice - just as you can 'read' the rings on a tree. Never before, in all that time, has the temperature risen so far or so fast as in the last 150 years. As sea levels rise and glaciers melt, the proof of that fact is all around us. Climate scientists are united in their warnings that serious climate change will threaten the future of ourselves and our children. Pope Benedict reminded us of our responsibility as Catholics as stewards of our environment. Pope Francis has taken the name of that great defender of the natural environment St Francis of Assisi. Even anonymous Catholics shouldn't dismiss the whole corpus of science nor the views of our church leaders.
The problem with the climate change is that, in the US, there is a strong creationist movement, which is almost wholly Republican. The scientific establishment in the US is almost wholly Democrat. Now on evolution creationists are clearly in the wrong. The Church has said as much. So there's a certain amount of contempt by Democrats for creation so-called "science".
Now global warming is another issue which, in the US, splits on party lines. So the Democrat scientific establishment has said "climate change denial = creationism = holocaust denial = Republicanism = Nazism". So we can just ignore it. But of course climate change isn't that type of issue.
But you need to be an expert to understand the strength of the evidence for or against, which I'm not. However we've currently got the coldest March on record. That mght, stragely enough, be caused by the Earth warming up. That's how complicated it is.
Malcolm is right. It is difficult but there' s no denying that climate experts are united in saying that the climate is changing, that man's actions are responsible, and that unless we act now it will have increasingly serious effects. We also have to recognise that much of the doubt is engendered by the vast sums of money those American coal owners etc are spending to stop International action. It's the same technique they used to put off action on smoking and health and smoke stack emissions and acid rain. Simply suggesting there's doubt means that people hope they won't have to act. It's cynical but effective and I'm glad to see that non Democrats, like Swartzenegger, Bloomberg, Chris Christie are beginning to cry foul and demand action. So its not just Democrats any more.
Post a Comment