Jesus, the Vatican, and gay marriage rights

[Lochias]

I don’t understand all of your stubbornness on this issue.

We do what Jesus asked us to do. Nothing more, nothing less.

All I can say is that someday, gay marriage will be recognized in all 50 US states and all of the developed world. And that day, children will go to school and be horrified and disdainful at why people in 2013 would deny equal civil rights to gay people.

And “gay marriage” and homosexual acts will still be objectively sinful. Popular opinion has no power over objective truth.

Much like how we have disdain for Americans before the Civil War who denied equal rights to blacks.

Homosexual acts are not equal to skin color. Being born black isn’t a sin. Being born with same-sex attraction isn’t a sin. ACTING on same-sex attraction is most assuredly a sin, as the Bible tells us.

And for the record, Coptic, I am a Protestant. Like I said before, Protestants know how to make Christianity relevant in today’s world that wishes gays and straights to coexist equally and peacefully. That is why, among other reasons, Protestantism is growing in the West, and Catholicism is shrinking.

Jesus never changed his morals and actions to fit in with popular opinion, and neither will his Church, the Catholic Church. We co-exist with and peacefully love all men and women, but we will never do either with sinful actions.

 

[CaliLobo]

Lobo,

You are the font of unknowledge…you again provide misinformation and only opinion…If you or any lurkers go to this website…adherents you will find…

adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html

adherents.com/adh_rb.html

Notice that when you combine the Catholic Church, Islam and Eastern Orthodox that equates to 2.25 Billion and when considering the Catholic/Orthodox that is 1 million 325 thousand adherents…then notice Protestant groups…

The next largest Protestant group = 77,000,000 and the Anglicans are being decimated by Homosexuality, women priests and other issues causing division…

Assemblies of God = 55,000,000 and unless you belong to one of these groups then you do not belong to a majority Christian group

So concerning what you believe to be a dwindling group you are again mistaken and are providing opinion and not accurate information as has been the case in all your posts.

And everyone knows that those figures are grossly inflated, because there is no way to gauge how serious or genuine each believer is. Often, they are based on number of baptisms (as is the case in Europe), but everyone knows that people get baptized as babies but don’t care afterward. How else do we explain Eurobarometer polls that say that most Irish are Catholic but only about half of them believe there is a God?

Ask Protestant pastors and missionaries and they will tell you that only 4% of Americans under 30 attend church regularly. Only 3% of deaf people attend church regularly. Only 10% of Canadians and British attend church regularly. Only 10% of French claim to be Christian at all. Scandinavians and Dutch don’t care. Even in Poland, only 30% of Polish attend church regularly, and people under 30 are abandoning Catholic values in favor of a more secular society like England, France, and Germany. People under 30 in Poland widely supported Komorowski over Kaczynski for president in 2010, and even Komorowski was not liberal enough for them. Irish people feel that Catholicism has not done anything good for their country (there is a thread on CAF about this).

In Asia, only 2% of China and 1% of Japan is Christian, and that’s largely due to Protestant missionaries, not Catholics. In Korea, although 30% claim Christianity (again mostly Protestant), churches have trouble retaining youth and there is a lot of commingling of religions. Indonesia is Muslim, Vietnam is Buddhist, and the Philippines is much like Latin America–abandoning Catholicism, turning to Protestantism, and the government is expanding access to contraception. (In my hometown of LA I meet more Protestant Filipinos than Catholic ones.)

In Latin America, secular rulers are slowly legalizing abortion and gay marriages, and Catholics are increasingly turning to Protestantism. You see more Hispanics in Evangelical churches in America these days. Hispanic Protestants feel like they are experiencing God for the first time, and that the CC was a bunch of empty rote rituals. College-educated Hispanics abandon Catholicism.

In Africa, the church is growing but there is a battle with Islam, and commingling of Christianity with voodoo. And we’ll see if Africans maintain Christian values once they become prosperous again.

The statistics are dire.

 

[Sjonesd3]

You can’t equate gay marriage to civil rights, as those rights were rights that were guaranteed to all Americans but somehow denied based solely on skin color. They were in turn disregarding our own laws put in place.

 

[Maria1993]

If the church is getting smaller, than it will prune. The followers who are true to the faith will remain and the church will be united in battle, against the real threat, satan. The church accepts our homosexual brothers and sisters, but like all of us, give up sin and be willing to change. The Lord did not condemn those, but he told them to go and sin no more, he accepted them with compassion, but he told them to ‘go and sin no more’.