A Few God Links (vol. 22)

I think after this week I may undergo a self-imposed moratorium on discussing "gay marriage" and the Obergefell v Hodges case, for a little while at least:

1. One thing which has long bothered me about this issue is the amount of deliberate deception practiced with regards to what Christ and His Church have and haven't aught regarding marriage in general and "gay marriage" in particular. Mark Shea has a good rundown of three lies employed in the present war against (Christian) marriage.
2. On a related note, seminarian Joe Heschmeyer has a good rebuttal to all of those ridiculous (insulting, and to be blunt, lying) flow charts put out as propaganda against the Christian position on marriage. I suspect that this set of propaganda--these charts, their approach, their successful misleading of many otherwise faithful Christians--have done more to directly erode the societal opposition to gay marriage than any other propaganda. I should also include a link to a good chart which upholds the Christian argument.
3. On a related note, The Gospel Coalition has a post on their blog asking 40 questions of those Christians who have been waving rainbow flags (and participating in "pride parades" etc.) in the wake of the Obergefell v Hodges decision. The blog is geared mostly for Protestants (in particular evangelicals)--and specifically ones who take their faith at least somewhat seriously--but most of these questions work for Catholics as well. Actually, a few of the questions are good reflection questions for all of us in general, on whatever side of this culture war battle we happened to fall on. "Do you believe it is possible to love someone and disagree with important decisions they make?" or "Do you hope to be more committed to the church, more committed to Christ, and more committed to the Scriptures in the years ahead?"
4. If marriage is a dignity-granting institution, where does that leave all the single people? When marriage--or at leas "romantic" (sexual") relationships--becomes the only way to know love, where does that leave friendship and the other loves?
5. You know that the "pro-gay" propaganda has an ulterior motive when we Christians have to introduce ourselves by saying, "I'm a Christian, not a bigot." The churches have always been the target and their destruction the goal here, not some mythical "equality" or "dignity."
6. Some forms of incestuous marriage are currently legal in some states. Did you assume I meant Alabama or Mississippi? No, I meant a progressive and urban state, like New York.
7. Double standards? What double standards? Whatever do you mean that their is an agenda against the Church among progressive fools and the societal elite and the media moguls (but I repeat myself)?
8. Where do we go from here? I agree with some of the suggestions that we should evangelize by our lives--show not tell--but I also admit that this is a very difficult proposition:
   
9. On another topic, it is necessary to put the pope's words in context. That is often needed, since our media likes to quote him out of context (at best) and then further misconstrue what he says or does (that is, they like put lies in his mouth which he never uttered).Here, for example, is some context about his recent remarks about weapons manufacture and arms trade.
10. A haunting and timely warning to America: no power on this earth lasts forever.

It's hard to discus other topics when one so large is looming on the horizon, or when one becomes the forefront of most discussion in society.

On the Importance of Evangelization

Rebecca Hamilton has a nice post about the importance of evangelizing:

The memorial service was a crowded event, the building filled to overflowing. I walked out, gripping my husband’s hand, hoping that in those last extremities my old friend had finally turned to God. Did he go to hell?

I said it aloud when we got back to the car. Was he dead, really, eternally dead and gone to hell? My passionate, crazy friend — had he doomed himself to eternal death?

My husband was silent for a moment. Then, he reached out and squeezed my hand.
Probably, he said.

I changed again after that. My friend’s death shook me out of my somnambulance. I realized that being quiet about Jesus was the cruelest thing I could do to the people around me.

There is much to like in the Hon. Mrs. Hamilton's post. She hits on a few points which I have made in the past, in particular concerning evangelizing as opposed to merely proselytizing, and of putting party loyalty over one's Faith. This latter becomes especially damning when neither major party (and few if any minor ones) party is particularly friendly to genuine Christianity, though one is more openly hostile towards it (and the other possibly more cynical about it).

On the other hand, there is more than one way in which we can evangelize. To literally tells people about Jesus (of better, to do our best to show them in our lives) is of course important, even necessary. It is not, however, sufficient. The simple outreach which attempts to introduce people to Jesus is important, but then again so can be catechesis.

The goal is not merely to get people to proclaim Jesus as Lord, but to go the step further of getting them into right relationships with God, man, and self. Just helping a person to become "Christian" is good, helping them to "find Jesus" is good. But helping them to understand and then embraces the fullness of His teachings is also important, and can help to avoid what I might call the "accidental scandal."

Scandal is that which causes another to stumble, be it stumbling into sin, or stumbling out of the Church. Accidental scandal, for lack of a better phrase, is that which we cause by our own ignorance which then causes another to fall into sin; and falling into sin, to perhaps then embrace the sin, then deny the Faith, and finally to deny Christ. I think we manage that well enough without neglecting catechesis, through probably well-meaning but almost certainly misguided attempts at "pastoral care."

The road seems innocuous enough. First a "lesser evil" is tolerated, then encouraged, and then even embraced as a means of avoiding what was as best as could be discerned the greater evil. But then this "lesser evil" takes seed, festers, and grows; it is not uprooted, and so it takes hold, and while we seem to master teh greater evil we fall to the lesser one, which then leads to some other evil. As Chesterton warned, that road leads down and down.

Feelgood Story of the Day

Apparently, in Southern France there is a church run by the Divine Mercy Missionaries, which sits next-door to a gay bar. The gay bar has (happily) gone bankrupt. I could stop there and it would already be a feel-good story, but it gets better:

The Divine Mercy Missionaries had several times tried to buy the bar and close it down, to no avail. But recently the bar went bankrupt and the building went to auction during liquidation.

So a bunch of these Divine Mercy Missionaries walked into a gay bar. They were armed with a 15k Euro donation from a priest in the diocese and many prayers. Some others at the auction were prepared to offer more money than these religious, but when they saw them praying there, they decided not to outbid them.

In a statement released on their website they proudly proclaim, “You will understand the importance of this place for our evangelization in the area. So the Sodom bar will become the pub of Mercy.”

Nice.