I don’t believe it is an either/or situation. God is too big for that. We are asked to be faithful witnesses to God’s calling. I believe The Episcopal Church is doing just that. I also believe that the Roman Catholic Church is doing just that. Just as I believe the Jews are answering God’s call to be in Covenant with Him.
We can never, ever know God fully. If we think we do know God, then we are sorely mistaken. (I believe it was St Augustine who first said that.)
Reconsider your position. St Augustine also said, after all, “
If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.”
Did you just say God is “too big” for one moral law? What Doctor of the Church ever taught any such thing? Where is it in Holy Scriptures? In other words and with all due respect, where on earth did you *get *that?
How can you say on one hand, “if we think we do know God, then we are sorely mistaken” yet be entirely certain on the other hand that it must be a response to the call of God when Christians feel drawn to conform ourselves to secular culture in defiance of the plain meaning of Holy Scriptures and Tradition regarding the immutability of moral law? How can you not tremble to suggest we ought to contentedly ignore the repeated warnings by all the early witnesses of Christ against caving in to any human wisdom that seeks to accommodate the age-old desires of the flesh as if they were a new affliction, unknown to our ancestors?
On this particular matter, St. Augustine
did not at all resign himself to ignorance of moral law. He never remotely conceded moral law to be a matter on which God would lead one group of Christians in one way and others in another, because knowledge of His infinite wisdom was beyond knowing!!! He never said anything like that!
“
Can it at any time or place be an unrighteous thing for a man to love God with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his mind, and his neighbour as himself? Therefore those offenses which be contrary to nature are everywhere and at all times to be held in detestation and punished; such were those of the Sodomites, which should all nations commit, they should all be held guilty of the same crime by the divine law, which has not so made men that they should in that way abuse one another. For even that fellowship which should be between God and us is violated, when that same nature of which He is author is polluted by the perversity of lust. But those offenses which are contrary to the customs of men are to be avoided according to the customs severally prevailing; so that an agreement made, and confirmed by custom or law of any city or nation, may not be violated at the lawless pleasure of any, whether citizen or stranger. For any part which is not consistent with its whole is unseemly. But when God commands anything contrary to the customs or compacts of any nation to be done, though it were never done by them before, it is to be done; and if intermitted it is to be restored, and, if never established, to be established. For if it be lawful for a king, in the state over which he reigns, to command that which neither he himself nor any one before him had commanded, and to obey him cannot be held to be inimical to the public interest,— nay, it were so if he were not obeyed (for obedience to princes is a general compact of human society),— how much more, then, ought we unhesitatingly to obey God, the Governor of all His creatures! For as among the authorities of human society the greater authority is obeyed before the lesser, so must God above all.”
The Confessions of St. Augustine, Book 3, Ch. 8, No. 15
If you want to quote St. Augustine, then, listen to St. Augustine. Renounce this new teaching, if for no other reason than that same St. Augustine whom you quoted so clearly tells you it is in error.
On the matter of different churches following different teachings, re-read Revelations, chapters 2-3. Different churches, but judged by the same standard, which is the standard of compliance to what Our Lord taught through His Apostles:
I know your works, your love, faith, service, and endurance, and that your last works are greater than the first. Yet I hold this against you, that you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, who teaches and misleads my servants to play the harlot and to eat food sacrificed to idols.
Rev. 2:19-20
*Remember then how you accepted and heard; keep it, and repent. If you are not watchful, I will come like a thief, and you will never know at what hour I will come upon you. *
Rev. 3:2
and later:
*Those whom I love, I reprove and chastise. Be earnest, therefore, and repent. *
Rev. 3:19
Brother, we are not saying that sexual sins are the worst sins one can commit. We are saying, however, that there is such a thing as a sexual sin, even when it comes from biological urges that we must master but have not been given the power to erase.
There is nothing to say that those who master the most difficult trials will not merit the greatest crowns, nor that those who sin the most visibly or the most often have not also had the most victories, because we cannot count how many or how difficult are the trials of each one. There is, of course, mercy for all who fall and yet seek to amend and repent, even for seven times seventy times, for God does not ask us to be more patient that God is Himself.
No, we do not propose to judge persons, but rather judge this new teaching to be an invention, an error, and a departure from the faith. The moral law does not change to “fit the times.” No, Christians must tear themselves away from the demands of their times and conform themselves to the faith. We have been warned strictly and repeatedly about that since the Church began.
My vote is for politely declining without explanation. Going to the reception but not the wedding is a HUGE etiquette faux pas unless you have small children, a schedule conflict, or something else you’ve explained to the bride and groom (or in this case, grooms) beforehand.