No, see, Christopher, when quoting that text you must remember that the author didn’t know what we know nowadays about human sexuality, so his conception of heterosexual relationships was not that of loving, committed, monogamous, life-long unions… er… nevermind.

And what of divorce lawyers? Should they suffer because of some old text?

Gee, there’s the Johannine wedding and Peter’s mother-in-law and Pauline exhortation … guess the old CoE and Church Times folks ARE nearly as biblically illiterate as they xeem.

Unbelievable.

Since when has something as irrelevant, old-fashioned, and “out of step” as the Bible ever made any difference at all to the CoE or its revisers?

Theological modernists can’t accept the authority of scripture b/c. . .well, it’s an authority!

Fr. Philip Neri, OP

The article is dishonest from the start. It claims the Church leadership doesn’t speak for the membership, then establishes the writer as the legitimate voice of the people. It’s pure narcissism.

The rest is boilerplate gay advocacy, notable only for the editorial demand that civil partnerships aren’t enough: it must be “marriage”. But then, who didn’t know it would come to that?

These same people will tell you that there is no condemnation of homosexual activities in the Bible and will then hold up David and Jonathon as a homo couple.

Uh…Christ (man and woman-adultery in the heart), Leviticus, Sodom and Gomorrah, Paul, Titus, etc.

And for most of his adult life, David hardly acted like a homo – fornicator and adulterer perhaps, but not a homo.

Kinda like the Rev’rund Jesse Jackson describing Mary as an “unwed, homeless mother.”

I’m surprised one of these clowns hasn’t found passages in support of abortion in Scripture. Maybe putting Moses in the reed basket was “symbolic” of abortion – sending an “unwanted” child on his way or something.

Of course, in catechism class along about seventh grade, we got alot of laughs about Peter’s denial and the use of the word “cock” in the Bible, but we were young and stupid.

These people are just stupid.

Holly Bibble? Any relation to Ishka Bibble?

Now that I got my dumb reference out of the way, and only people old enough to know who Kay Kyser and his Kollege of Musical Knowledge would “get it” anyway…..

The references to “man/woman” in Scripture are quite numerous. Christ, Leviticus, Paul, Titus, Sodom and Gomorrah, etc.

I’m surprised that these clowns haven’t found passages in Scripture to support abortion. Maybe putting Moses in the reed basket on the river – symbolic of getting rid of an “unwanted” child, perhaps?

When we were young and stupid, we got alot of laughs in catechism class when Peter’s denial was discussed and we found out that the word “cock” was in the Bible.

But, we were young and stupid. These folks are just stupid.

[...] Chris Johnson is worth repeating in full… The Church Times is not down with the Church of England’s official opposition to homosexual “marriage,” which it calls “tendentious and poorly-argued.”  At this point, I don’t particularly care one way or the other what the C of E or the Church Times thinks about anything at all but among the Times ”arguments,” this one jumped out at me: [...]

Folks: need I mention HVIII again. The saying “in my beginning is my end” was invented for Anglicanism.

Once you start discarding and reinterpreting according to your whim, you establish a set of precedents on whihc later generations will rely upon.

John 18:37-38

37 Jesus said: …. “For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

38 Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”

Substitute Pilate for the Modern World.

LaValette, unfortunately, when people begin their comments with Henry VIII, I don’t read the rest.

Don Janousek: “I’m surprised one of these clowns hasn’t found passages in support of abortion in Scripture. Maybe putting Moses in the reed basket was “symbolic” of abortion – sending an “unwanted” child on his way or something.” Johnson’s law applies. Please don’t give these people ideas!

Thirty-five years ago I read every biblical reference to same-sex acts deconstructed in that great rag, The Daily Texas, aka The Deadly Toxin. It was the student newspaper at U.T. Austin. Sadly, most of those arguments have survived the sophomore year and continue today. Moreover, clowns like Bp. Robinson have developed a (false) argument from scripture to positively affirm the homosexual condition and acts.

Katherine, you are tempting me to construct a revisionist argument for abortion from the bible. If they can do it with sodomy, it can probably be done with murdering babies.

FW Ken, forgive me for being a stand-in for the Devil. Please don’t; someone will read it and take it seriously!

No kidding, Katherine. And I second your comment on Johnson’s Law. You just have to be careful these days.

“Now that I got my dumb reference out of the way, and only people old enough to know who Kay Kyser and his Kollege of Musical Knowledge would “get it” anyway…..”

Thanks to a dad who instilled a love of old movies in me, I get the reference.

The usual suspects are always blathering on with “Christ never said anything about (liberal passion of the day)” in order to bolster support for their causes. Yet when Christ does have a lot to say on a subject such as hell, these same liberals don’t count Christ saying things as having much import.

I have a sneaking suspicion that it is not Christ at all who they really care about, but a license to continue in their own sins.

Not surprising: high church + still C of E = liberal.

Don,

Nope. Just a suggestion that the Church Times editorial staff would take one look at That Book and decide that the two words on the front were the name of the author.

I’ve heard the same argument — David and Jonathan — by homos in my parish (St Paul’s, K Street, Washington, DC) but, alas, they’ve never ventured the Naomi-Ruth bunk that lesbians push. Could it be that there just aren’t enough lesbians in the parish?

Katherine: Read my quote from John.

Are you afraid of the truth or do you not want to face it? Do you have your own version of “Godwin’s Law’ when it comes to HVIII? History, PROVIDED IT IS FACTUAL AND RELEVANT, can never be out of place in a discussion.

The point remains that once one fiddles or ignores one of the clearest and most pointed directive in the Bible from the mouth of Christ Himself, then the everything else in the Good Book is up for grabs. In the CofE the first one to do so was its very first Supreme Governor no less, and the rest is history.

No, LaVallette, because using “Henry VIII” is a convenient way for sixteenth-century Catholic apologists to avoid facing the very real problems in the Church in that era across western Christendom. He was a sinful man, and so was the pope who refused Luther’s appeals about indulgences, and the pope who, under pressure from European princes, refused a political annulment, something which other monarchs in other times had been granted. Even Catherine of Aragon, who refused earnest advice from the church to retire to a convent and thus avoid the succession crisis can be blamed. Further, none of this helps us where we are today, post Reformation and Counter-Reformation. Your quote also avoids the essential question of whether the truth you cite includes the universal ordinary jurisdiction of the Roman pontiff, something which many Christians think does not follow. You come here to make a snide comment to say, basically, Anglicans are just stupid, or we never read the Scripture. It’s atypical of your other very insightful and understanding comments on other subjects.

Katherine: First of all you have rather hysterically changed the subject. Not very intellectual.

Secondly you have just regurgitated the Anglican/protestant Apologia for their Reformation. Lots of re-writing of history there.

But then I am sure God is an Englishman, and this explains Anglican pride and superiority over the centuries.

Whether you realise it or not, what you are doing is mounting a defence for HVIII’s rejection pf Christ’s clear direction against divorce! Ipso facto: you are standing on the side of the current Anglican/Episocpalian revision of what Christianity stands for, rejecting Biblicasl teaching in the process. After all what is good for the goose…!

Nope, LaValette, I’m of English ancestry but emphatically American, so no Anglican superiority. How could I claim superiority with the mess we’ve got? Your response simply dismisses ANY validity for any of the problems which resulted in the various Reformations. Neither side benefits, at this late date, from “I’m right and you’re wrong!”

For the record, I oppose divorce. I also oppose the coupling of church and state which caused so many problems in so many centuries and places. Neither Protestant nor Catholic nor Orthodox have been immune to the difficulties which state religion has caused.

What I suggest is that a more irenic attitude towards fellow Christians would do you more credit. I defend the Catholic Church against a variety of current wild charges. Your snide dismissal of Anglican Christians with “Henry VIII” as if that’s definitive of my faith has the faint flavor of “Whitestone” who comes here with a nonsense interpretation of the Catholic catechism (which I have on my bookshelf).

Katherine: First of all you have rather hysterically changed the subject of the discussion. Not very intellectually disciplined.

Secondly you have merely regurgitated the Anglican/protestant Apologia for their Reformation. Lots of re-writing of history there.

But then I am sure God was and still is an Englishman, and this explains Anglican pride and superior attitude over the centuries since its foundation. Why, you yourself are still capable still refer to “16th century Catholic apologists” despite the fact that “the very real problems in the Church in that era across western Christendom” were dealt with by the Counter Reformation. We have moved forward since that time, and have retained a coherent Theology and body Moral Principles. .

Whether you realise it or not, you have gone on the defensive and you are seeking to justify HVIII’s rejection of Christ’s clear direction against divorce! But then “what is good for the goose…!” and if you concede that right than ipso facto: you stand on the side of the current Anglican/Episcopalian revisionist of what Christianity stands for, through ignorance, reinterpretation,picking and choosing and deliberate and outright rejection of Biblical teachings and mandates. This is what the topic here is all about.

I was hoping this was an inadvertent double posting, LaValette, but alas, not so. My entire argument is that re-fighting the issues of the sixteenth century is not at all helpful to the current state of Christianity. May I point out to you that your Church in the U.S. is currently granting annulments to many many thousands of Catholics who do not have at least the sad excuse of a royal succession to justify themselves? Ask any American Catholic if this is not so. They, and the pope, deplore it.

I respect your Catholicism, LaValette, and I request that you show some respect for Christians in the twenty-first century who do not, unfortunately, share communion with you.

Katherine,

You are mistaken on at least two accounts. One of them is rather vague, concerning the pope “who refused Luther’s appeals about indulgences,” so I am not sure what you meant by it. From the time he “went public” Luther was opposed to the mere fact of indulgences as a matter of principle, although in the initial stages of the controversy he suggested, probably sarcastically, that the pope ought to issue an indulgence at one blow releasing all those in Purgatory from it. In reality, though, Luther believed that the fate of every individual was determined at death, and so prayer for the dead of any sort could not affect their “fate.” (Unlike other reformers, and especially those of the Reformed, who believed that any sort of prayer for the dead was blasphemous and futile — and this included almost all the English Reformers — Luther was prepared to allow prayer for the dead, but only as an expression of grief on the part of the living, and as an appeal to God for consolation.) This view of Luther’s was not contrary only to late medieval “indulgences abuses” (most of which were remedied at Trent), but to the longaeval practice of the Church.

The other concerns Henry VIII and his “divorce.” You will not be surprised to know that I am no admirer of Henry VIII, but I do believe that historians have a responsibility to do justice to the dead so far as possible, even and especially, to those who are easily seen as “monsters.” In that vein, I have already tried to correct Don Janousek concerning his grotesquely erroneous (albeit “mythological”) remarks about the “syphillitic” Henry VIII on another thread:

http://themcj.com/?p=32015#comments

(see his comment any my response on June 3)

but he is evidently incorrigible on the subject:

http://themcj.com/?p=32266

(see his June 13 comment)

but I can’t let your comment here pass, either: “and the pope who, under pressure from European princes, refused a political annulment, something which other monarchs in other times had been granted. Even Catherine of Aragon, who refused earnest advice from the church to retire to a convent and thus avoid the succession crisis can be blamed.”

I pass over your astonishing rebuke of Good Queen Catherine, whom you appear to think ought to have sacrificed the vindication of her own conscience and her daughter’s legitimacy for the sake of merely “avoiding a succession crisis,” and say that almost all annulments in that era were politically-fraught, and many of them involved a great deal of “economy with the truth” on all sides (e.g., Louis XII’s obtaining an annulment from his first wife, Joan of France, in 1499, and Margaret Tudor’s obtaining an annulment in 1527 of her marriage to Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus — both of these cases involved outright lying on the part of those seeking the annulments, and while in the second case the lying seems to have gone undetected in Rome, and so secured the annulment, in Louis XII’s case Rome ignored Louis’ reasons and annulled the marriage because they were cousins and had not rec’d a dispensation before their marriage), which was almost inevitable in the circumstances, but I do not see what conclusion one can draw from this if (1) one accepts the legitimacy in principle of “annulments” and (2) agrees with the Latin Church’s view that divorce, the dissolution of a valid marriage such that the parties to it can remarry within the life-times of their previous spouses — as everyone up to the Protestant Reformers did, and these Reformers themselves disagreed only with #2 of these principles.

The best work on Henry VIII’s “Great Matter” is Henry A. Kelly’s *The Matrimonial Trials of Henry VIII* (1976, repub. 2004). Kelly was a Jesuit and Canon Lawyer before he left the Order to marry, and if his work shows any slight hint of “bias” at all, it is rather against the “canon law tradition” concerning matrimony, and not against Henry (whose legal creativity he seems almost to admire). Kelly makes it abundantly clear that Henry wasn’t merely seeking an annulment from his marriage to Catherine, although that was his primary goal, but making up a theological rationale for it as he went along. In other words, where Louis XII and Margaret Tudor (whose seeking of an anullment evoked strong denunciations from her brother!) made up facts to justify their desires, Henry VIII made up theology. His position essentially was that the marriage of a man to his brother’s widow, whether or not that previous marriage had been consummated, was against Divine Law, and so no pope had the authority to permit such a marriage. Sometimes he “highlighted” this argument, but most of his advocates tried to downplay it, especially to Rome, before he broke with Rome in 1533. (And let me shoot down two canards here: [1] from 1530 onwards the resolution of the case in Rome was delayed not only because of the hesitations and timidity of Clement VII in the face of political pressure, but especially because Henry himself kept pressing for the resolution to be delayed, once he realized in 1530 that Rome would almost certainly rule against him & [2] a few years ago an Italian scholar identified some anonymous notes on Henry VIII’s annulment petition in the Vatican archives as being in the hand of Clement VII, which, if true, would indicate that Clement at one point — and Clement himself was nepotistic and timid, but not vicious in the manner of Alexander VI or Julius II — took a personal interest in Henry’s case and, as the notes seem to indicate, came reluctantly to the conclusion there was no canonical basis to grant Henry what he desired.

This argument was never “going to fly” in Rome, since allowing a sibling to marry his or her sibling’s widow or widower in cases where the first marriage had manifestly not been consummated had been allowed “time out of mind” in the Latin Church, and since the 1380s the papacy had been giving dispensations for such marriages in cases in which they had been consummated. Henry VIII himself, a very legally-minded man who held, e.g., that what he saw as the Divine Law’s absolute prohibition on a man marrying his deceased brother’s widow (Catherine of Aragon) has no bearing on whether a man might marry a previous mistress’s sister (Anne Boleyn), although just to be on the safe side Henry sought, and obtained, a papal dispensation in 1528 to allow him to marry, should he ever be free to marry again, any woman of whose sister he may have had previously carnal knowledge.

Henry VIII’s case in Canon Law was, to put it bluntly, risible, and Kelly’s book has the merit of demonstrating, in his study of Henry’s second (from Anne Boleyn) and third (from Anne of Cleves) — annulments obtained from the complaisant Cranmer, not from Rome — how Henry, to suit his necessities, kept “changing his mind” about the legal definition of “validity” and “matrimony” and, since he was “Supreme Head on Earth under Christ of the Church of England,” having Parliament enact statutes to alter, and then realter, the law (both Common and Canon) of marriage.

Oh dear. I knew I might draw a historical rebuke from the eminently qualified Dr. Tighe. I really have little interest in re-fighting and re-litigating the controversies of the sixteenth century. It doesn’t help us today at all.

This post is about an entirely ignorant article in a Church of England newspaper which appears to know nothing of Scripture. The problem is not Henry VIII or sixteenth century disputes. The problem is a clear failure on the part of many Anglican Christians to believe and attempt to understand the faith to which they nominally subscribe. Anyone who actually believes what is in any of the classical Prayer Books and has a passing understanding of Scripture could not write such an article. The problem is a lack of faith, not Henry VIII. In the same vein, the problem with, for instance, the priest sex scandals or the numerous nearly or entirely heretical articles published in some “Catholic” journals is not papal authority and Catholic church structure, as some radical Protestants like to argue. The problem is, as Richard John Neuhaus wrote, a lack of faithfulness by some Catholic writers and bishops.

So I regret to say that when Chris Johnson publishes another example of current Anglican idiocy and someone says, “It’s all because of Henry VIII,” I regard that as just as silly as people who say the sex scandals were all the Pope’s fault, or that the Catechism is pro-Muslim, as one of Chris’s resident trolls likes to argue. Nonsense.

FW Ken, I’ve replied to your dishonest slander here: http://themcj.com/?p=32381#comments

In case you missed it.

Katherine: One final comment: Truth is one of the foundation stones of all loving realtionships.

Katherine,

Smile, most of us have gotten Dr. Tighe’s corrective at one point or another.

And when Catholics start bandying Henry 8 around, I think you ought to throw him right back in our faces, because he was our dog first!. That “Defender of the Faith” thing didn’t come from the Archbishop of Canterbury, you know.

Seriously, I think your point is valid: ignorance of Scripture is hardly the exclusive property of Anglicans. Even serious, devout, and believing Christians (not to mention any specific group like Catholics, of course) can have a hard time justifying their faith from the bible. It happens, and if you are of a revisionist turn of mind, I think that exacerbates the problem. Anyway, I learned a great deal about the bible from Anglican sources, not to mention my childhood Baptist Sunday School (ok, that was about the best).

Now, I think there is a lesson in Tudor history tangential to 16th century polemics which can profit all of us, Anglican or Catholic. In fact, I’m about to go all Eastern Orthodox on ya’ll, so be forewarned:

How many Eastern Orthodox does it take to change a lightbulb?

EO answer: What is this thing “change” you speak of?

Back to Henry: when you change something, a lot of other things become subject to change. Henry got the title “Defender of the Faith” for his defense of the seven sacraments and papal supremacy. It was against protestant theology in general, but particularly Luther’s ideas. So Henry changed one thing – papal supremacy – and within a generation you have the 39 articles and the Elizabethan settlement, with two sacraments and a good bit of Lutheran (and Calvinist) theology. I understand that Anglicans think of those as good things; my point is not whether they are or not, but that change begets change, and you need mechanisms for evaluating the changes that come along.

I should note that the lightbulb joke came from an EO source.

There were a couple of lacunae in my long comment above. To mention only one:

(1) where I wrote:

“Henry VIII himself, a very legally-minded man who held, e.g., that what he saw as the Divine Law’s absolute prohibition on a man marrying his deceased brother’s widow (Catherine of Aragon) has no bearing on whether a man might marry a previous mistress’s sister (Anne Boleyn), although just to be on the safe side Henry sought, and obtained, a papal dispensation in 1528 to allow him to marry, should he ever be free to marry again, any woman of whose sister he may have had previously carnal knowledge.”

I should have written:

“Henry VIII himself, a very legalistically-minded man, in religion as in other matters … ” and ended with “was absolutely certain of the righteousness of his own cause, which led him to believe that those who persisted in disagreeing with it were either ignorant or, as in the cases of Fisher, More and other opponents whom he had once esteemed, had revealed by doing so their fundamental wickedness.”

Put differently, the “Henry VIII” of the film “A Man for All Seasons” strikes me as much more like “the real Henry” than Richard Burton’s besotted and yet cynical Henry VIII of the film “Anne of the Thousand Days.”

Nothing of what I wrote was intended to disparage you personally, Katherine, whom (as you know) I esteem highly. And in any case, what we call “Anglicanism” owes far more to Elizabeth I than it does to Henry VIII (or, as I might say pedantically, to Elizabeth I and, later, Richard Hooker and Lancelot Andrewes and their followers and disciples).

No, no, I didn’t take your remarks personally, Bill. No worries.

Thanks, also, FW Ken. It is true that many Catholic leaders of the time worried a great deal about what would happen if Scripture became available to all. They feared everyone would make individual interpretations, and this, history proves, was not an unreasonable fear. Today in America we have preachers with the “truth,” a different truth, on every corner. For myself, I’m doing the best I can and trust God to set me straight when I see him face to face. I know that Catholic and Orthodox believers do the same.

I learned something new recently about Henry VIII and the title “Fidei Defensor,” or “Defender of the Faith.” I has always assumed that Pope Leo X granted the title to Henry VIII and his successors in (overly hopeful) perpetuity, just as a few years earlier the title “the Catholic King(s)” had been granted to Ferdinand & Isabella (and analogous titles such as “Rex Apostolicus” to Kings of Hungary; “Rex Fidelissimus” to Kings of Portugal; and the like). In fact, though, the title which Pope Leo granted to Henry VIII was granted to him personally and individually. It was an Act of Parliament of 1544, a decade after Henry’s break with Rome, that made “Defender of the Faith” a permanent feature of the “royal style” of Kings of England.

So did Anne Boleyn really have six fingers, or was that just another rumor?

I don’t know.

Divorce lawyers? I suggest vertical impalement. (I never was divorced; But, was married for 40-plus years before being widowed.)