Another Front in the Battle

The battle for the shape of the Church has manifested itself recently in the ranks of the Roman Catholic church - in view of the impending visit to the UK by Pope Benedict: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/7987774/Catholic-group-accuses-Church-of-intolerance-ahead-of-Pope-visit.htm

For the record, I'm no fan of the Catholic church - in fact, I'm one of its card-carrying detractors. There are various reasons for this: primarily, I have serious doctrinal issues with its claims and beliefs in all areas where they've replaced Scriptural teaching by papal decree. Since the RC church is constitutionally unable to reverse its historically-established doctrines (e.g. papal authority, the priesthood, celibacy of the clergy, the authority and exclusivity of the church and its teachings, the doctrines of the Virgin Mary, transubstantiation among many others), it's stuck with them. It is literally a prisoner of its own history, tied up by the bonds of its own decrees. Furthermore I find it difficult to summon any respect for an institution which for years has systematically concealed the gross sexual misconduct of its ministers - some of them high-ranking - towards the vulnerable and weak. Without doubt this is wickedness and betrayal of the highest order.

Despite all this, I recognise that there are many fine Christians in its ranks, and must admit a certain amount of sympathy for them through these times; their church has had a lot of (albeit deserved) bad press. But it's also noticeable that such an organisation - notoriously inflexible - now shares with the protestant churches the steady corrosive attack of the secular age and its values. It has become fair game for the homosexual lobby, who have been whittling away at the Church of England for years. It's a sad feature of many of the protestant denominations that they have generally failed to fend off their secular assailants by a vigorous and determined grasp of scripture. There is a morbid fear of appearing to appear to be irrelevant or bigoted to the proponents of the zeitgeist. Many of the aforesaid proponents of political correctness and so-called 'diversity' have been among the ranks of the church, so the attack has been from within.

As I perceive it, the secular battle against the Roman Catholic church is a lost cause. The Pope and his cardinals won't budge on the matters of homosexuality and similarly contentious issues. They won't move on abortion either. This at least earns from me a glimmer of respect - but I suspect that their reasons for fending off these issues differ from my own. I oppose them for one reason: Scripture, which is the revealed word of God - proscribes them, either by plain textual statement or by doctrinal weight where textual statements are not present. On the other hand, the Roman Catholic church opposes them for no other reason than the fact that it always has - since its traditions are as immutable as the laws of the Medes and Persians.