Has Bp Gene Robinson Gone Daft?

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HagiaSophia

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Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly homosexual bishop of his denomination, has angered traditionalist Anglicans by suggesting that Jesus Christ might have been homosexual.

Robinson, who left his wife – and mother of his two daughters – to cohabit with his male lover, Mark, made his inflammatory remarks during an address titled, “Homosexuality and the Body of Christ: Is There a New Way?” at Christ Church of Hamilton and Wenham, Massachusetts. The bishop was asked by a congregant how Christians could both accept homosexuality and the Bible’s emphasis on redemption for sins.

“Interestingly enough, in this day of traditional family values,” answered Robinson, "this man that we follow was single, as far as we know, traveled with a bunch of men, had a disciple who was known as ‘the one whom Jesus loved’ and said my family is not my mother and father, my family is those who do the will of God. None of us likes those harsh words. That’s who Jesus is, that’s who he was at heart, in his earthly life.

“Those who would posit the nuclear family as the be all and end all of God’s creation probably don’t find that much in the gospels to support it,” he concluded.

worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43618
 
I really don’t see how the Episcopaleans, even with the ordination of female priests, can stomach this. Let us hope and pray that some of their conservative congregations will cross the Tiber like they did about twenty years ago over the ordination of women.
 
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geezerbob:
I really don’t see how the Episcopaleans, even with the ordination of female priests, can stomach this. Let us hope and pray that some of their conservative congregations will cross the Tiber like they did about twenty years ago over the ordination of women.
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I can’t believe that with all the grief he has caused he comes out with this - it’s as if he has an axe at the base of the Anglican tree and can’t quit swinging at the branch he is sitting on. Would that he finally saws himself off …between Robinson and Spong one wonders what is going on…What does one have to do to get kicked out of the church — light a cigarette?
 
I wonder how many recognize just how evil, satanic such an assertion is? God a homosexual? Very, very evil.
 
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HagiaSophia:
I can’t believe that with all the grief he has caused he comes out with this - it’s as if he has an axe at the base of the Anglican tree and can’t quit swinging at the branch he is sitting on. Would that he finally saws himself off …between Robinson and Spong one wonders what is going on…What does one have to do to get kicked out of the church — light a cigarette?
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Hagia Sophia: When I was an Episcopalian, a wise priest of that church told me “it’s like this: you can preach heresy from the pulpit, but God help you if you move the furniture.” The cigarette would probably do it, since you asked, but only if it were actually lit during the celebration Holy Communion.
 
Haved the Episcopalin church looked at how many people have left their church recently. I bet its not pretty. Its funny liberals make changes and all the faitful leave and the stuffy liberals are left as clerics preaching to nobody. This is exactly what would happen if we let lezbian nuns become become priests they would preach to an empty church. Yet they don’t realize what they want the faithful don’t want.
 
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JKirkLVNV:
Hagia Sophia: When I was an Episcopalian, a wise priest of that church told me “it’s like this: you can preach heresy from the pulpit, but God help you if you move the furniture.” The cigarette would probably do it, since you asked, but only if it were actually lit during the celebration Holy Communion.
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😃
 
Regradless of whether he was gay or not, why was a guy who ditched his wife and kids to go live with his lover made a bishop in the first place?
 
Who is more daft, the heterodox bishop, or the group that appointed him?
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HagiaSophia:
Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly homosexual bishop of his denomination, has angered traditionalist Anglicans by suggesting that Jesus Christ might have been homosexual.

Robinson, who left his wife – and mother of his two daughters – to cohabit with his male lover, Mark, made his inflammatory remarks during an address titled, “Homosexuality and the Body of Christ: Is There a New Way?” at Christ Church of Hamilton and Wenham, Massachusetts. The bishop was asked by a congregant how Christians could both accept homosexuality and the Bible’s emphasis on redemption for sins.

“Interestingly enough, in this day of traditional family values,” answered Robinson, "this man that we follow was single, as far as we know, traveled with a bunch of men, had a disciple who was known as ‘the one whom Jesus loved’ and said my family is not my mother and father, my family is those who do the will of God. None of us likes those harsh words. That’s who Jesus is, that’s who he was at heart, in his earthly life.

“Those who would posit the nuclear family as the be all and end all of God’s creation probably don’t find that much in the gospels to support it,” he concluded.

worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43618
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Scott_Lafrance:
Who is more daft, the heterodox bishop, or the group that appointed him?
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The laity of his diocese elected him. Can you imagine the chaos in the American or European Church if WE did this?!?! I look at the V. Genes and think “Thank You for leading me to the Catholic Church!,”
the Joanie Chichesters and Roger Mahoneys not withstanding.
 
Robinson’s thesis (I do not use the title he claims, since he has no legitimate right to use it) has been enunciated before, notably in the notorious play Corpus Christi which has actually been performed on campuses of universities claiming Catholic affiliation.

this thesis demonstrates perfectly that homosexual activity and the entire gay lib movement is a perversion of the natural order, and why. To embrace and attempt to “normalize” sodomy as one of many legitimate human sexual activities is to pervert human sexuality, and all human relationships. It arises from the same fundamental errors of thought that endorse artificial contraception, abortion, divorce, and extra-marital sex. It denies the reality of human nature, gender complementarity and sexuality as part of the natural order of creation endowed by the Creator.

A mindset that accepts homosexuality as a normative relationship ignores and rejects marriage between man and woman and sexuality ordered to its unitive and procreative aspects. It acknowledges only erotic love and rejects all other, higher forms of love relationships. Therefore it perverts not only marriage and sexuality, but also friendship, brotherhood, family relationships, disinterested charity, agape, and ultimately the love relationship that is the Holy Trinity, and therefore the love of Creator for creatures.
 
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JKirkLVNV:
The laity of his diocese elected him. Can you imagine the chaos in the American or European Church if WE did this?!?! I look at the V. Genes and think “Thank You for leading me to the Catholic Church!,”
the Joanie Chichesters and Roger Mahoneys not withstanding.
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Frankly, given some of the bishops produced the current Catholic system, it’s hard to see how it could be much worse. As a Catholic, you are bound to believe that the Holy Spirit, not a historically contingent system that developed fairly late, protects the Church from error. Since bishops were elected in the early Church–and in many cases until modern times (though by the cathedral chapter, not the laity)–you have no grounds for thinking that the Spirit’s guidance is necessarily linked to the system of papal appointment. Don’t you think the bishops and Popes of the early Church, who were elected by the people, were protected from error?

In Christ,

Edwin
 
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Contarini:
Frankly, given some of the bishops produced the current Catholic system, it’s hard to see how it could be much worse. As a Catholic, you are bound to believe that the Holy Spirit, not a historically contingent system that developed fairly late, protects the Church from error. Since bishops were elected in the early Church–and in many cases until modern times (though by the cathedral chapter, not the laity)–you have no grounds for thinking that the Spirit’s guidance is necessarily linked to the system of papal appointment. Don’t you think the bishops and Popes of the early Church, who were elected by the people, were protected from error?

In Christ,

Edwin
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Edwin: I didn’t intend to offend. I was referring to the state of the American and European Church, that’s all. And yes, I think they were protected from error.
 
Offence isn’t the point. The point is that your remark wasn’t logical, because clearly elected bishops can be preserved from error just as papally appointed ones can (and papally appointed ones can make a horrid hash of things). I’m pressing this point because one of my issues with Catholicism is precisely its lack of faith in the Holy Spirit’s ability to work through laity as well as clergy. To me, the more democratic structures of Anglicanism and Methodism (the two forms of Christianity with which I currently have some connection) are a plus, not a minus. In Catholicism any form of election would obviously have to be subject to the confirmation of the Pope and the other bishops. But this is true in ECUSA as well–Robinson’s election had to be confirmed by ECUSA generally, which is what the big fight was about in August 2003. (The pro-Robinson folks will tell you that the confirmation was supposed only to check that the proper procedure had been followed. If so, that is a serious problem. But I’m not sufficiently familiar with our own canon law to be sure that that is the case.) Our problem isn’t our system of election per se, but our lack of communion with Rome and hence our lack of accountability to the whole Church throughout time and space (though the Orthodox manage to have a good sense of the latter without the former).

In Christ,

Edwin
 
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Contarini:
Offence isn’t the point. The point is that your remark wasn’t logical, because clearly elected bishops can be preserved from error just as papally appointed ones can (and papally appointed ones can make a horrid hash of things). I’m pressing this point because one of my issues with Catholicism is precisely its lack of faith in the Holy Spirit’s ability to work through laity as well as clergy. To me, the more democratic structures of Anglicanism and Methodism (the two forms of Christianity with which I currently have some connection) are a plus, not a minus. In Catholicism any form of election would obviously have to be subject to the confirmation of the Pope and the other bishops. But this is true in ECUSA as well–Robinson’s election had to be confirmed by ECUSA generally, which is what the big fight was about in August 2003. (The pro-Robinson folks will tell you that the confirmation was supposed only to check that the proper procedure had been followed. If so, that is a serious problem. But I’m not sufficiently familiar with our own canon law to be sure that that is the case.) Our problem isn’t our system of election per se, but our lack of communion with Rome and hence our lack of accountability to the whole Church throughout time and space (though the Orthodox manage to have a good sense of the latter without the former).

In Christ,

Edwin
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The Holy Spirit COULD, I suppose, act inerrantly through the laity, ***BUT ***the only way we would know it would be through the confirmation of it by the successor of Saint Peter or that same successor acting in consort with all the other bishops. If you’re talking about “Sesum Fidei,” as Newman used it, I think that would apply to the whole of the Church and not to the sense of the faithful in local dioceses. I realize our early bishops were chosen by the laity. My point was can orthodox Catholics (particularly in North America and Europe) imagine the hash that would be made if we did it now? And let me ask you, as an Episcopalian, do you believe the lay and clerical delegates of the Diocese of New Hampshire who, in convention, elected Bishop Robinson were guided by the Holy Spirit, let alone protected from error in their choice (something you and I both know Anglicans would not claim)?
 
No, I don’t think Episcopalians were protected from error in their choice–nor for that matter is the Pope protected from error when he chooses a bishop. I’ll try one more time to make my point:
  1. Bad bishops get chosen under all systems, period.
  2. The only protection anyone claims is that in the Catholic view, the totality of bishops in communion with the Pope will not err in matters of faith and morals when making solemn definitions (or in their constant, universal, ordinary teaching). Episcopalians don’t have that protection, but even in the Catholic view this has nothing to do with our method of choosing bishops.
Edwin
 
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Contarini:
No, I don’t think Episcopalians were protected from error in their choice–nor for that matter is the Pope protected from error when he chooses a bishop. I’ll try one more time to make my point:
  1. Bad bishops get chosen under all systems, period.
  2. The only protection anyone claims is that in the Catholic view, the totality of bishops in communion with the Pope will not err in matters of faith and morals when making solemn definitions (or in their constant, universal, ordinary teaching). Episcopalians don’t have that protection, but even in the Catholic view this has nothing to do with our method of choosing bishops.
Edwin
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Ah, yes, now I understand. Sorry. But you must admit, as daft as some of ours are, none of them (that we know of) are currently in the state of openly living with their publicly acknowledged boy friends. AND I still make the point that the American and European laity in the US and Western Europe could not be counted on to elect doctrinally orthodox men as bishops. We’d get the “accepting homosexuals means excepting their lifestyle, I personally hate abortion myself, but who am I to force my views on a woman, who can be a priest, by the way” types. Most American and Western European Catholics have bought into the dissenting mindset and surrendered to the prevailing trends and culture. And that was my only point.
 
Agreed. The Pope and the international community of bishops would have to act firmly to reject or even depose heretical bishops or episcopal candidates. And I’m not in favor of a presidential-style election in which every confirmed Catholic would vote by secret ballot (that’s not how Episcopalians do it either). But I think that election of bishops was the practice of the ancient Church for good reasons, and that the only long-term way to deal with the problems in the Western Church is to restore a healthier balance of authority. Of course, I would say that. That’s one of the reasons I’ve stayed Anglican . . . .

Edwin
 
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Contarini:
Don’t you think the bishops and Popes of the early Church, who were elected by the people, were protected from error?

In Christ,

Edwin
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What makes you think that the early bishops were elected by the laity? The early bishops were appointed by the Apostles. These early bishops then appointed priests and deacons, and eventually, other bishops. The authoritative structure of the Catholic Church has always been top down, not bottom up. We have never even remotely resembled a democracy.
 
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Scott_Lafrance:
What makes you think that the early bishops were elected by the laity? The early bishops were appointed by the Apostles. These early bishops then appointed priests and deacons, and eventually, other bishops. The authoritative structure of the Catholic Church has always been top down, not bottom up. We have never even remotely resembled a democracy.
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No, Scott, after the time that the Apostles died, the laity and/or priests did, in fact, elect the bishops. Both Saint Ambrose and Saint Augustine were elected. Even the Popes were elected by the populace of Rome, after the passing of the Apostles. These bishops were still ordained by men who had been ordained by the Apostles, but they were selected, in one way or another, by their constituent flocks. I cannot remember at what point this changed to appointment by the Bishop of Rome, but it did move to this. I think even early on, he had to confirm elections.
 
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