Divining Revelation: The Christian Response to Authority

Today after praying prior to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, having a Bible in the pew book rack before me, I prayed the Lord to guide my fingers to a good place in that Bible in order to instruct me on what His Will is today.  Of course, I was seeking His guidance for me personally, not for anyone else.

I sat back in the pew, grabbed the Bible, sort of let my thumb grab a random spot on the pages, opened, and looked down at this, the first heading I saw:

Obedience to Authority

Here is what St. Paul had to say in his Letter to the Romans on Obedience to Authority:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.  Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.  For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval;  for it is God’s servant for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority[a] does not bear the sword in vain! It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer.  Therefore one must be subject, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience.  For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, busy with this very thing.  Pay to all what is due them—taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due. [Romans 13:1-7 NRSVCE]

Oh yes!  It’s About the Impeachment of Pres. Donald Trump!

The first thing which came to mind was the Impeachment of President Trump, that the good Lord is *with* President Trump, his appointed authority, and not with the politicians who do injustice by twisting contexts and implying what is not true because their real intention is simply to dismiss the 2016 Presidential Elections by Act of Congress and to interfere in the 2020 Presidential Elections…because they would rather have won.  We could say that many of the opponents of President Donald Trump work for their spiritual father, Satan, the “Father of Lies.”

Is President Trump hard to like?  Well, yes, he can be coarse and misunderstood by the unforgiving and proud soul.  Is President Trump easy to like?  Yes, he can certainly be liked when one agrees to his truly good intentions and deeds.  The Scripture says, “Then do what is good and you will receive its approval…do what is wrong and you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain!”  His opponents have almost never done what is good and just toward President Trump; they have egged him on – provoked him – set his own people against him, and so on.  They have been unrelenting in what appears to me to be criminal bullying to a high degree.

I fully expect Pres. Trump to be exonerated and for some Members of Congress to be investigated and maybe even politically punished for their outrageous conduct toward President Trump.  If he is convicted, then I expect God to make Pres. Trump into the Great Swamp Plug which, when pulled, exposes many, many improprieties leading to many more investigations of Elected Members, past and present.

Ah, But Maybe It’s About Me and My Parish Leadership?

Now, in this sitting, I have also considered another context:  my own.  If the reader will go back a few posts, there is a post I made about the slothful servant.  I have been very angry about the conduct of some of my parish leadership and staff over a period of several years for various valid reasons.  When the straw finally broke under constant strain of serial disappointments (which I have tried to explain tactfully to leadership but with sometimes uncaring, arrogant and rude responses – except for responses from one good priest), I and my wife have simply decided to dramatically reduce our annual giving (aside from our promise for the Capital Campaign, all of which we paid fully and in advance for the good of those after us who will benefit from better facilities), resign from parish ministries, and begin attending another parish.  Recently, we even halved our lowered monthly donation to our assigned parish and began giving half to the other parish which we are routinely attending now.

For me, it is a sincere act of justice.  Am I being disobedient?  I don’t think so.  I feel like I am serving the Lord in helping to wake up a slothful staff to their condition which really needs improvement.  Is this hard on us?  Yes, we are disconnected now while we wait to move to another State in the next year or two – that will be like The Promised Land for us.  I will continue to think it over and pray about it, but my conscience is clear.

And The Last Pastor Resigned for Cause

Something which has caused me to lose confidence in our clerical leadership is that the previous pastor before the current one, after my wife and I had developed a years-long good relationship of trust with him, resigned because of an unreported and uninvestigated sexual impropriety he had years earlier.  OF his own volition, he admitted his mistake and then just up and quit, and no one saw it coming.  We had a great relationship with him and both my and my wife’s ministry involvement slowly increased under his good stewardship.

So What Is It?  Trump or Me?

It could be both because there is a Principle here.  But, Trump’s destiny is being decided right now while the world watches, and mark my word:  God is watching, too!

 

Warning to Methodists on Gay Marriage

This morning, I had a spiritual inspiration while preparing for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass this morning at St. Louis parish.  The recent news about the United Methodist Church splitting over LGBTQ issues was weighing heavily on my mind.  But before I go into detail…

The latest news about the United Methodist Church can be found here: United Methodist Church Announces Proposal to Split Over Gay Marriage. Essentially, they propose to send traditionalists packing with $25 million to form a new Christian denomination. [Perhaps the Catholic Church will admit them as a new ordinariate – speculation on my part.] This means that the United Methodist Church will have formally become corrupted.

UMC Logo with Gay Theme

I personally feel compassion for persons who have decided to submit to living a gay lifestyle or who chronically suffer from same-sex attraction, and the Catholic Church formally welcomes and prays for these who struggle to master these challenges.  I am not a homophobic person.   Love the sinner; hate the sin.  I’m a sinner, and I love me, too.

So what happened at Mass?  What happened was, during my initial prayers after I arrived the pew in the parish, I noticed a Bible in the hymnal rack.  I grabbed the Bible and asked the Lord, “Lord, guide my hands to turn to the page which you select for me to read, that I might know your message for me today.”  In doing so, I opened it immediately and directly to the 2nd Letter of Peter, Chapter 2.  It was in part about sexual licentiousness and the punishment due those who lead people into this error!  It mentions Sodom and Gomorrah!  I was amazed!  Here’s what it says :

False Prophets and Their Punishment

2 But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive opinions. They will even deny the Master who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. ² Even so, many will follow their licentious ways, and because of these teachers^[a] the way of truth will be maligned. ³ And in their greed they will exploit you with deceptive words. Their condemnation, pronounced against them long ago, has not been idle, and their destruction is not asleep.

⁴ For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell^[b] and committed them to chains^[c] of deepest darkness to be kept until the judgment; ⁵ and if he did not spare the ancient world, even though he saved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood on a world of the ungodly; ⁶ and if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction^[d] and made them an example of what is coming to the ungodly;^{[e] 7} and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man greatly distressed by the licentiousness of the lawless ⁸ (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by their lawless deeds that he saw and heard), ⁹ then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trial, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment ¹⁰ —especially those who indulge their flesh in depraved lust, and who despise authority.

Bold and willful, they are not afraid to slander the glorious ones,^{[f] 11} whereas angels, though greater in might and power, do not bring against them a slanderous judgment from the Lord.^{[g] 12} These people, however, are like irrational animals, mere creatures of instinct, born to be caught and killed. They slander what they do not understand, and when those creatures are destroyed,^[h] they also will be destroyed, ¹³ suffering^[i] the penalty for doing wrong. They count it a pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their dissipation^[j] while they feast with you. ¹⁴ They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls. They have hearts trained in greed. Accursed children! ¹⁵ They have left the straight road and have gone astray, following the road of Balaam son of Bosor,^[k] who loved the wages of doing wrong, ¹⁶ but was rebuked for his own transgression; a speechless donkey spoke with a human voice and restrained the prophet’s madness.

¹⁷ These are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm; for them the deepest darkness has been reserved. ¹⁸ For they speak bombastic nonsense, and with licentious desires of the flesh they entice people who have just^[l] escaped from those who live in error. ¹⁹ They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption; for people are slaves to whatever masters them. ²⁰ For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overpowered, the last state has become worse for them than the first. ²¹ For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than, after knowing it, to turn back from the holy commandment that was passed on to them. ²² It has happened to them according to the true proverb,

“The dog turns back to its own vomit,”

and,

“The sow is washed only to wallow in the mud.”

 

[Source:  2nd Letter of St. Peter, 2:1-22, NRSVCE Bible]

In faith, this was a VERY CLEAR message about where the Lord sits on this issue.  He is not with the LGBTQ plan.  He loves everyone, but everyone has a choice to make.  When Christianity, above all, preaches the existence of temptation, the wrong choice of sin, repentance for sins, healing from the injuries of sinful choices, growing in holiness and closeness to and love for God in this life and then eternal salvation for those who love and serve God, then a choice which is expressly counter to Divine Revelation and Natural Law is a seriously selfish and potentially spiritually deadly choice.  I do not wish any of my gay brothers and sisters to be misled and chained down by the weight of their sins forever.

While the State can provide a license of marriage to a gay couple (e.g., for the sake of giving politically demanding, enamored, monogamous homosexual couples property rights which a validly married couple would have under the law and allowing the use of the term “marriage” for simple administrative convenience), there can be no same-sex Holy Matrimony in a valid Christian setting.  God has already defined human marriage in Natural Law and in Divine Revelation.  Jesus the Lord has expressed this clearly in Sacred Scripture.  There can be no acceptable willful corruption of what God has established to be held.  As well, there can be no person placed in a position of responsibility who secretly intends to undermine Christian doctrine as regards moral sexuality, and that means that a person who is a committed, practicing LGBTQ should not be an ordained pastor in a valid Christian denomination.  In fact, as long as they preach a doctrine opposed to the Lord, they shouldn’t be preaching at all…at least for the good of their own salvation.

Read, understand, and obey Sacred Scripture.  Let no one be offended.  This is a warning for those who are not too learned in the ways of God, and who desire that God be someone who does not recognize sin or value obedience in sexual design.  Everyone naturally has sexual urges, but humans are the only ones who can willfully abuse the treatment of those urges.  Orient them on reproducing beloved life by being a mom and wife or a father and husband.  This is your only chance.