Sigh part deux....get the feeling we're backsliding?

LadyJeanne said:

I've wondered about this, too. And I wonder how people can support a religion that doesn't support them. What's the point? What kind of spiritual guidance can you possibly be getting that is meaningful?

When parents tell their children they are stupid, we call that abuse. When a religion tells people they are not good enough to belong to their church, doesn't that feel like abuse too? Why would anyone seek this out, insist on sticking around to be constantly abused with messages of condemnation?

I remember that United Church of Christ had that ad campaign last year that the networks deemed too controversial to air: Jesus didn't turn people away. Neither do we. When there are religions that accept who you are, why go somewhere where they're constantly telling you that there's something wrong with you?

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Christianity dosen't preach against gays. There are really very few tennets that cross all the major sects, much less all the minor sects as well. Further, many parochial schools provide a substantially better education than the public schools in the area. So the choice to send your child to a privately run institution may have nothing at all to do with religion. I knew a lot of non episcopalians who went to St. Andrew's in Jackson because the education offered was top shelf. The religious indoctrination was something they told their kids to just ignore.

At the bottom line, if you walked with your diploma from St. Andrew's you had a far better shot of getting into the university you wanted. Even public universities recognized the level of education you had to have digested to graduate from there.

In an effort to see your child armed with the best education you can afford them, I think most folks would be willing to privately encourage them to ignore or at least treat with scepticism the religious portion of the cirriculum. In jackson, when I was young, St. Andrews offered an education better than even Jackson Prep., which was the non religious affiliated private school. Either school, or Jackson Academy, HillCrest Baptist, Woodland Hills Baptist St. Joe's or McClure offered an education that was far superior to anything Jackson public schools could offer.

The private and Parochial schools hired teachers based on merit. They produced cirriculums that emphacized education over socilization, and they had not the slightest problem employing corproal punishment or failing you if you didn't meet the academic standards. Religion was kept to a mandantory chappal service on mondays and taking bible courses in nineth grade and again as a senior.

Were I involved with a long term partner, and we had a school age child and were living in Jackson, I'd send my kid to St. Andrews without a qualm. I'd want him or her to get the best education I could provide and if that education comes with a little religious indoctrination, I can accept that as the price of a superior educational opportunity. Never mind that I am not an episcopalian and wouldn't try to rear my child as one unless he or she chose that religion for themselves.

"Your family does not meet the policies of admission," Superintendent Leonard Stob wrote to Tina Clark, the girl's biological mother.

Stob wrote that school policy requires that at least one parent may not engage in practices "immoral or inconsistent with a positive Christian life style, such as cohabitating without marriage or in a homosexual relationship," The Los Angeles Times reported in Friday's edition.

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YES! YES! YES!

Thank goodness she got out of that idiotic school! If that's the kind of bullshit they judge peopel by, can you imagine the standard of the rest of the education???

Thank godess atleast ONE girl is saved from that place and its narrow-minded teachings!

Svenskaflicka said:

Thank goodness she got out of that idiotic school! If that's the kind of bullshit they judge peopel by, can you imagine the standard of the rest of the education???

Thank godess atleast ONE girl is saved from that place and its narrow-minded teachings!

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You got a point there.

Always look on the briiiight siide of life. ♪♫

minsue said:

The thread title will be my only editorial comment on the matter this time....

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No offence but ROFLOL to the original thread title, you are funny!

Doc? it is possible though not practised. I think more a bloodline doner as J pointed out? A brother, perhaps? As for nazis? Ya could you say the same thing 75 years ago?

Why would anyone want to be part of a religion that rejects them anyhow?
--It's not the "rejects them" part that they want. It's the whole "I find God in Christianity/Islam/Ba'hai" that's the problem. People raised in a faith tradition tend to believe that faith tradition is true, is right, fits best with them, etc. It's not that easy to give it up because a part, even a very significant and powerful part, is opposed to who they are. Honest. I remained a Christian far longer than I should have because I thought that was where God wanted me and where I felt good/comfortable. If that's how you relate to God, that's not so easy to give up.

Dr. M, would you give up Judaism if Jews in general condemned homosexual orientation and practice?

This just in........

Jesuit Official Rips Expected Ban on Gays
By RACHEL ZOLL, AP Religion Writer



NEW YORK - A top Jesuit official has been contacting leaders of the Roman Catholic Church to protest a soon-to-be-released Vatican document that is expected to reinforce the teaching that gays are not welcome in the priesthood.

The Rev. Gerald Chojnacki, head of the New York Province of the Society of Jesus, said in a letter to his priests that he was asking bishops to tell Vatican officials who are drafting the policy "of the great harm this will cause many good priests and the Catholic faithful."

Chojnacki wrote in the letter, dated Monday, that he had participated in the funerals of several gay Jesuit clergy over the last few years.

"I find it insulting to demean their memory and their years of service by even hinting that they were unfit for priesthood because of their sexual orientation," he wrote.

Chojnacki said he would be working with the Conference of Major Superiors, which represents leaders of religious orders in the United States including the Jesuits, Franciscans and others, and with bishops to fight "for the opportunity of a gay person to say yes to God's call in celibate service of priesthood and chaste religious life."

A priest who supports the protest provided the letter to The Associated Press. A spokesman for the New York province did not respond to a request for comment Friday.

A Vatican official said last week that the upcoming "instruction" from the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education will reaffirm the church's belief that homosexuals should not be ordained.

In recent decades, Vatican officials have stated several times that gays should not become priests because their sexual orientation is "intrinsically disordered" and makes them unsuitable for ministry. A Vatican-directed evaluation of all 229 U.S. seminaries is underway, and is looking for "evidence of homosexuality" in the schools among other issues, such as whether their instruction keeps with church teaching.

The evaluation was organized in response to the clergy sex abuse crisis.

Priests in religious orders throughout the country said in interviews that anger is building among their members about the prospect of a ban on gay seminarians.

Some have said clergy are considering staging a strike on a Sunday, to show how critical gay priests are to serving the church. Priests who had not disclosed their sexual orientation to parishioners are now thinking about coming out and denouncing the idea of a ban. Others have talked about signing their names to a protest letter to the Vatican.

Estimates of the numbers of gays in the priesthood vary from 25 percent to 50 percent. About one-third of the 42,500 U.S. priests are members of religious orders.