Future Church

[TheresaLS]

Has anyone have any knowledge of The Future Church which has its organization based in Cleveland, Ohio. Sister Christine Schenk is supposedly the founder. I am attempting to get some background for an article I am putting together.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[killyclogher]

I wish I could help but…

Hopefully someone will respond who can help.

 

[Polycarp78]

Here’s a link: futurechurch.org/

 

[TheresaLS]

Polycarp,
Thanks, but I have been there. I am attempting to find out how many members and how the Bishop is handling them. With 52 parishes closing in the Cleveland area, which is where they are located, there are concerns.

 

[Corki]

From some googling, it seems they have been banned by two bishops in a row from holding meetings on Church property. So that seems to be how they are being handled.

I don’t see how they are involved in Church closings.

 

[rpp]

Future Church promotes certain heresies such as women’s ordinations, normalizing abortion, remarriage after divorce without an annulment and so on. As a group, they saeem to be about as Catholic as Richard Dawkins, the British evolutionary scientist.

 

[pentecostbaby]

There was an article on CNN that quoted their founder, an “activist nun”, and gave a link to their site. Their homepage says that they want ordination to be open to “all baptized” people.
Sooooooo frustrating. Can’t CNN find a Catholic loyal to the Catholic doctrine who’s mad about the parish closings? Because I’m sure they’re out there. It makes the whole argument seem to boil down to “bad traditional hierarchy, good reformers”.

 

[TheresaLS]

I have been working on this for a while. It interests me for several reasons. I am a very conservative Catholic and believe the Church has to be obedient to the Holy Father. There is a strong voice in my area, priests and laity, that would like to see changes…woman ordination, optional celibacy, and they see nothing negative about homosexuals as priests. This is a bigger problem than we are being led to believe and those of us who would not favor the stated changes must be on guard…and pray.

 

[kyria]

I have been working on this for a while. It interests me for several reasons. I am a very conservative Catholic and believe the Church has to be obedient to the Holy Father. There is a strong voice in my area, priests and laity, that would like to see changes…woman ordination, optional celibacy, and they see nothing negative about homosexuals as priests. This is a bigger problem than we are being led to believe and those of us who would not favor the stated changes must be on guard…and pray.

Nothing negative about homosexuals as priests? It amazes me that some people would think Christ would want his Church run by a bunch of practicing homosexuals.

These people don’t know the Father aspect of the Trinity in their soul. Once you do, you really quickly get over the idea of women as priests and all the other strange things some would like the Church to adopt.

There is Hope. God got me to see there is Hope for the Church and reminded me that Hell will not bring the Church down and that the Lord will be with the True Church till the end.

Don’t let the weirdos get you down. Just kneel down and pray for them with the Rosary. One person with a Rosary and Faith, Love and Hope is more powerful then you think. You might be one person in an area of a lot of dissidents, but with your Rosary you are one person with an army.

 

[Lukeptak]

Here are the facts as I know them:

Since the church holds that it is not immoral to be homosexual (but it is immoral to have gay sexual relations), the church (up until recently) had no problems with homosexual priests, just as long as those priests did not have gay sex (or any sex, for that matter excepting of course the small number of married priests in Roman Catholicism). In light of the priest abuse scandals, however, in addition to the fact that the majority of these scandals involved the abuse of young boys, the church current policy is to not ordain priests with deep seated homosexual tendencies.

As for female priests, the Church has come to a decision on that matter multiple times. The last time I read of it, the opposite “teams” came to the same conclusion that the church should not ordain women as priests for two different reasons:

The group less in favor of female priests pointed out that Jesus did not choose any females as apostles despite having a coed following. Therefore, there must be something about being male that makes one more suited to be a priest.

The group more in favor decided against ordaining women because, although (in their view) there is no biblical or traditional indication that women cannot become priests, there is also no indication to the contrary. Thus, women MAY be able to become priests, but there would be no way of knowing. In order to preserve apostolic succession and to ensure the true administering of the sacraments, they reasoned, women should not be ordained.

Good luck with your research!

(PS: sorry about the lack of citations. Please correct me if I am wrong.)

 

[rpp]

Here are the facts as I know them:

Since the church holds that it is not immoral to be homosexual (but it is immoral to have gay sexual relations), the church (up until recently) had no problems with homosexual priests, just as long as those priests did not have gay sex (or any sex, for that matter excepting of course the small number of married priests in Roman Catholicism). In light of the priest abuse scandals, however, in addition to the fact that the majority of these scandals involved the abuse of young boys, the church current policy is to not ordain priests with deep seated homosexual tendencies.

This is not quite correct. the Church long ago recognized that same sex attraction is a grave disorder and those with homosexual attractions have been excluded from the seinaries for many centuries. It was rebellion to this beginning in the 1940s and 1950s where we saw some seminaries eventually began to exclude heterosexuals. (see the book Goodbye Good Men by Michael Rose

As for female priests, the Church has come to a decision on that matter multiple times. The last time I read of it, the opposite “teams” came to the same conclusion that the church should not ordain women as priests for two different reasons:

The group less in favor of female priests pointed out that Jesus did not choose any females as apostles despite having a coed following. Therefore, there must be something about being male that makes one more suited to be a priest.

The group more in favor decided against ordaining women because, although (in their view) there is no biblical or traditional indication that women cannot become priests, there is also no indication to the contrary. Thus, women MAY be able to become priests, but there would be no way of knowing. In order to preserve apostolic succession and to ensure the true administering of the sacraments, they reasoned, women should not be ordained.

While your conclusion is correct, the reasoning behind is faulty, incomplete and erroneous. There are MANY critical theological reasons why it is simply impossible for a womanto be a priest.

Good luck with your research!

(PS: sorry about the lack of citations. Please correct me if I am wrong.)

 

[TheresaLS]

Thank you for all the responses…I would appreciate if we could not only share knowledge but how we feel about the Church and the decisions that are being made and will have to be made. Also, if you could ask people that you know how they feel about these major issues that face the Church today. I personally feel that this is a form of evangelization since there is so much disinformation going on. The priests need to be teaching and teaching the Word instead of the popular psychobabble that many are engaging.

As John Paul said, “Be not afraid”.