Pride goeth before the fall

More e-mailing - although this one, I trust, better written! The question was: "what's the big to-do over the new Anglican bishop?" My best shot at answering! Mmmm-wah - love ya J!

Heya, babe!

*crossing fingers hoping that this goes through*

Right, so the Anglican bishop with all the controversy. From everything I've read, the broo-ha-ha isn't that he's a "self-defined homosexual," but that he's ACTIVELY engaging in homosexual intercourse.

We Catholics have had many priests with same-sex inclinations who have vowed, like heterosexual priests, to live celibate lives. A priest who has taken a vow of celibacy and fulfills that vow has kept his word to God and to the Church. No problem there.

The problem begins when we start playing around with marriage and what marriage is. The Roman Catholic Church has found through the centuries that those priests who were able to best fulfill their duties were those who lived celibate lives: they could fully devote themselves to the Church, putting nothing - not even their own lives - before their duty to serve God and His Church. Therefore, for Catholics (I'm getting to the Anglicans - hold on! :) ANY priest who engages in ANY non-celibate activity has violated his covenant with God. Doesn't matter who the priest slept with - performing the marital act outside of marriage, and breaking a solemn oath as well, cannot be tolerated.

Now, for the Anglican Church, they've reinstated a married priesthood. Historically, this is because the very basis of the split between the Anglican Church and the Catholic Church is Henry VIII's libido. If you recall, he wanted to divorce his first wife (who he'd made such a big ruckus about marrying in the first place, since she had been married to his late brother. Henry had to get a special dispensation from Rome and everything. So having once been a huge cry-baby, the Pope felt that perhaps it would be better if Henry started behaving responsibly. I'd imagine that Henry's executed wives wished the same thing just before they were axed...), in order to sleep around with his mistress. And then his next mistress. And his next. And so on to the sixth bedwarmer. Well, having mucked about so much with marriage, it's little wonder that Henry, exerting little control over his own lusts would allow priests to marry as well.

We can argue about whether or not married priests ought to be allowed until we're blue in the face. From a practical standpoint, I'd argue that one job as priest is quite enough, just as the job of biological father and loving husband is also a full-time job! However, it has been known in our own Roman Catholic Church for those married Anglican priests who have converted to Catholicism to sometimes receive a dispensation to retain both their sacraments. In the Eastern Orthodox and the Eastern Catholic Church, priests are also given the option of marriage. However, Bishops - having a greater job - must be celibates. The issue is one for debate - although cultural and practical considerations ought to be thought of while pondering. (AKA, could the West stand such an upheaval? What has the past taught us?)

Anywho, the point about married Anglican priests is that they have taken on two sacraments: the vow to God to serve His Church AND the marriage vows. Marriage, in both Catholic and Anglican view (as well as, may I add, every established culture and religion from time immemorial - even the Greeks who had ritualized homosexuality *never* presumed to call those man/youth dalliances marriage) is between and man and a woman. Specifically, ONE man, ONE woman. (This is important: otherwise we open the doors to ONE man, HAREM [which I think both you and I shouldn't much like! I want my man's love all for my onesies, savvy? ;P], or ONE man and his LLAMA or whatever you want to come up with.)

Why? Couple of reasons. Both you and I can look to Genesis and see how God made this world: with Adam and Eve (not Adam and Steve as some are fond of quipping %). ONE man, ONE woman. Over and over, too, we see the difficulties of those who engage in polygamy: Jacob would have been so much happier if he could have just married Rachel without Leah being imposed on him. And they would have been happier, too, and not gotten into a "any sons you can have I can have more" match, including their poor servants in the race as well, and thus saddling Jacob with two snippish wives and two uppity concubines! Same goes for Abraham - he ought to have just trusted in God and kept faithful to Sarah, and Sarah shouldn't have thrown at him a surrogate Hagar whom the promptly disdained! As a household brother of mine once said, "Polygamy is its own punishment."

But why one MAN, one WOMAN? Again - look to Genesis. Look to Leviticus. God's pretty DARN vocal on this score: He made us, male and female. Any other combination (male/male, female/female, male/animal, or various forms of incest) are, in His words, "abominations." Why? Because God made us as these perfect creatures, made us complimentary to one another, gave one strengths that are complimented by the other's strengths.

That's what marriage is. God has created for me, for you, a perfect half - your perfect compliment, in body, mind and spirit. Where you and I are strong-willed and passionate, God has created for us a man who will temper us when we fly off the handle, and whom we can inspire to greater heights. Where you and I are doubtful, God has created for us a man who is confident. Where you and I are (I hope!:) not unintelligent, in fact where you are the poetic genius! God has created for you a man who will appreciate, love and help feed your poetry. And likewise, physically, he is your compliment. It's mind-boggling. You have an other half who is also incomplete until he finds YOU. And more, together you are meant to bring each other to God.

Consider the isocolese triangle. Consider God to be the topmost point, yourself to be the left point and your husband to be the right point. Now, you two are connected, yes? But there is a distance between you. If you eliminated God from your marriage, that's the distance you'll most likely remain - and who wants that? But if God is in your marriage - for it's been truthfully said that marriage is humanly impossible, or but for the grace of God go [we]! - then as you both draw closer to Him, then you draw closer to each other. Do you not see that He is Love? That's not a nice platitude - He IS Love. Not the emotion, the thing itself. So any love you ever feel, and your heart is just brimming with it all the time, it overflows you!, that love comes first from God. If you want that awesome love in your marriage, wouldn't it make sense to draw as close as possible to the source of Love, to Love Himself?

Anywho, for the sake of argument, understand that this is the reasoning for Catholicism, Anglicanism, and Judaism (and actually pretty much every other religion to some degree or another of understanding). Therefore, if a priest is engaging in homosexual activity, he is a) potentially violating a vow of celibacy (depending on what church he's in), b) violating God's law against sodomy (laws set up for his body's own health), and c) spitting in the eye of marriage.

This is the controversy. The bishop in question isn't friends with his partner. Good heavens! It will be sad day indeed if friendship is violated! But he is actively, vocally, unashamedly engaging in sodomy with his partner without any intention of changing his situation.

Consider this, then. I know for Catholics we are meant to submit to the rulings of our Bishops, who themselves submit to the rulings of the Pope, who is of course subject to God. (We're all subject to God, but peoples is peoples and we need folks who are willing to give up their lives to really listen to Him and preach His word.) I presume, then, that for Anglicans who have no Pope (remember Henry "nyahing" the Pope to get his way in the first place), Anglicans bishops are sort of nominally meant to nod to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Anglicans are meant to listen to their Bishops.

You can see where this is breaking down. Here is a Bishop who is promoting a rather grave sin. Here is the shepherd living with the proverbial wolf. Is this Bishop going to preach what's in the Gospel, what's in Leviticus and Numbers, what's in Chapter 2 of Genesis - or is he going to deliberately preach against the teachings of his own church? Certainly, he will do the latter - he is already doing the latter. It's the equivalent of AA electing to the presidency a known boozer who has no intention of quitting heavy drinking and in fact holds keggers open to all AA members. Or if the school board named a known pornographer to the job of principal. The question isn't: "Do you struggle with lust?" The question is: "Are you striving to live what God demands of you?" If the answer to the latter is, "No. I am striving to preach in God's church what *I* believe is true, not what God teaches" then we're engaging in the most serious sin of all: pride.

Recall this: the root of all evil is pride. I mean hubris, technically - that pride that's overweening, that says to God, "I think You're on my throne." It's that demonic pride, the first words Lucifer uttered as he shrank into Satan: "I will not serve." This is the gravest sin of this Bishop - that he has vowed to preach against God's law in God's church.

Should he simply submit to God's word in thought AND in deed, there wouldn't be any difficulty. But since he has vowed publically not to, and continues to prove his adamance against God's law, we should all be appalled. However, we neither one of us has control over this bishop. We can pray for him, pray for the Anglican church, certainly - we should. But the first, the ABSOLUTE first question we ought to ask ourselves is this: what am *I* doing. As Chesterton put it so succinctly when asked what the gravest problem facing the world today is: "I am."

Mood: Accomplished
Music: The "Paper Flowers" song from Evanescence
What ruined my day: Students who refuse to sing! Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
What made my day: Hmmm, chicken salad, I suppose. Writing this. Stretching the old grey cells.
What to do? Order the 60-gig HD! Edit "Real Love of My Life" for Thursday. Hug Julie.