Just sayin'...
I'm fascinated by the smugness of some Roman Catholics in the blogosphere and elsewhere over the ELCA's decision to ordain practicing homosexuals.
I mean, it's not as if when the ELCA ministerium reaches its highest point of saturation with homosexual pastors the Roman Catholic church won't still lead the Christian world in the percentage of its clergy who are gay. And despite the sexual incontinence of some of the student body at Wartburg Seminary during my time there, never at its worst did it approach the horrors described by Michael Rose in his hair-raising book on priestly formation, Good-Bye, Good Men.
That a nominally Lutheran denomination has taken this step outside the bounds of the Christian confession should sadden all who call themselves Lutherans, even among those of us with better claim to that label than the ELCA rightfully has. But one thing for which it definitely does not provide occasion is Roman Catholic triumphalism.
I mean, it's not as if when the ELCA ministerium reaches its highest point of saturation with homosexual pastors the Roman Catholic church won't still lead the Christian world in the percentage of its clergy who are gay. And despite the sexual incontinence of some of the student body at Wartburg Seminary during my time there, never at its worst did it approach the horrors described by Michael Rose in his hair-raising book on priestly formation, Good-Bye, Good Men.
That a nominally Lutheran denomination has taken this step outside the bounds of the Christian confession should sadden all who call themselves Lutherans, even among those of us with better claim to that label than the ELCA rightfully has. But one thing for which it definitely does not provide occasion is Roman Catholic triumphalism.
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Rose himself, it should be noted, is a conservative Catholic.
Certainly the folly of compulsory celibacy (or at least compulsory singleness) for the clergy has contributed not only to the shortage of Catholic priests, but to specifically a shortage of suitable candidates for the priesthood- and a temptation not only for predators, but for those who may have a homosexual orientation to one degree or another.
In any case, neither the travesty in Minneapolis nor the struggles the Catholic church has over this issue are any reason for any Christian to gloat. Both are not simply sad, but tragic.