Amazing Disgrace
The effrontery of the ELCA Church Council is breathtaking. Its degree of unmitigated gall is just sinking in.
There is no way that its decision to accept applications from theoretically celibate homosexual clergy to be granted what amounts to a license to commit sodomy can be justified no matter how you look at it. If it's OK to grant the exemptions, it's as obvious as the nose on my face (and believe me, my nose is obvious!) that it is utterly immoral and illogical to retain the policy forbidding ELCA pastors to perform fellatio, cunnilingus, and anal intercourse with members of their own gender in the first place. If, on the other hand, God the Holy Spirit was justified in inspiring the Apostle Paul to write
then the ELCA action makes precisely as much sense as licencing certain of its pastors to be drunkards or extortioners!
And they'll get away with it. I have no doubt that, not being stupid, the Church Council deliberately put itself in just such an obviously untenable position, knowing that the outcry at its unsupportability will provide the perfect opportunity for the ELCA to "fix" things by doing away with the prohibition entirely!
I am curious tonight to know how certain of my former parishioners are defending this decision to themselves. Now that they've been stripped of any possible vestage of an excuse for their gullibility, will they at long last decide that gay pastors are OK after all? Or will they somehow figure out some way to twist the facts, even now, in order to create some sort of absurd scenario for themselves whereby the ELCA has not effectively put its stamp of approval on clerical sodomy? I wish I could even hope at this point that at long last they will wake up and remember that I tried to warn them.
But I doubt it. Even now, I doubt it.
There is no way that its decision to accept applications from theoretically celibate homosexual clergy to be granted what amounts to a license to commit sodomy can be justified no matter how you look at it. If it's OK to grant the exemptions, it's as obvious as the nose on my face (and believe me, my nose is obvious!) that it is utterly immoral and illogical to retain the policy forbidding ELCA pastors to perform fellatio, cunnilingus, and anal intercourse with members of their own gender in the first place. If, on the other hand, God the Holy Spirit was justified in inspiring the Apostle Paul to write
Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God...
then the ELCA action makes precisely as much sense as licencing certain of its pastors to be drunkards or extortioners!
And they'll get away with it. I have no doubt that, not being stupid, the Church Council deliberately put itself in just such an obviously untenable position, knowing that the outcry at its unsupportability will provide the perfect opportunity for the ELCA to "fix" things by doing away with the prohibition entirely!
I am curious tonight to know how certain of my former parishioners are defending this decision to themselves. Now that they've been stripped of any possible vestage of an excuse for their gullibility, will they at long last decide that gay pastors are OK after all? Or will they somehow figure out some way to twist the facts, even now, in order to create some sort of absurd scenario for themselves whereby the ELCA has not effectively put its stamp of approval on clerical sodomy? I wish I could even hope at this point that at long last they will wake up and remember that I tried to warn them.
But I doubt it. Even now, I doubt it.
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