The dioceses of Raleigh and Charlotte in North Carolina are pulling out of the interfaith Council of Churches due to the council’s position on marriage and their neutrality on life issues. The distance between the Catholic Church and many Christian denominations seems to be increasing. And it ain’t the Catholic Church that is changing.
Here’s a good bit of their letter:
“Effective Dec. 31, 2013, the Catholic Diocese of Raleigh and the Catholic Diocese of Charlotte will conclude their official membership in the North Carolina Council of Churches. This decision follows an extensive series of discussions by both dioceses with the leadership of the North Carolina Council of Churches regarding its administrative structure and its by-laws. This has resulted in religious leaders being associated, via the Council, with positions that are at times in contradiction with their practice and the teaching of their faith.
“In an effort to continue to actively participate in ecumenical dialogue and the important community activities where possible, both Catholic Dioceses proposed to the Council a new type of organizational membership, which would allow both dioceses to remain in direct and active participation with the Council through a proposed observer status. The Council did not approve this proposal.
“The Diocese of Raleigh and the Diocese of Charlotte deeply value the long standing relationship with the North Carolina Council of Churches and have informed the Council of their strong desire to continue to work together on issues where there is substantial agreement. Such issues include the implementation of comprehensive immigration reform, securing just wages for all employees, addressing the root causes of poverty and hunger, eradicating all forms of prejudice and bias and seeking the end of the death penalty. While working with the administrative structure of the Council is not possible, collaboration on these and other important issues with religious leaders throughout our State will continue.
The funding paid to the Council for membership will now be redirected to support these essential initiatives.
Of course, I think this was the right thing to do. But some aren’t too happy as evidenced by this editorial.
“Pope Francis’ surprising comments that his church should not be obsessed with abortion and gay marriage arrived a few weeks too late in North Carolina,” stated an editorial in the News Observer. “But like an ancient war in which the news spreads slowly to its distant corners, some Christian soldiers battle onward even after their leader has called for peace.”
It’s funny that the thing which drives some the craziest about the Catholic Church is its refusal to change, yet that seems to be a strength.
September 30, 2013 at 4:24 pm
Using the war analogy, I will say that the 'leader' (our Pope) of the Christian soldiers did NOT say to stop fighting, although he, as we, want peace. But Im sure the Americans, Brits, French and everyone else in WW2 wanted peace from 1939-1944. But they didnt stop fighting because there wasnt peace.
If you dont stand for something, you will fall for anything. (Chesterton?)
September 30, 2013 at 5:25 pm
""Using the war analogy, I will say that the 'leader' (our Pope) of the Christian soldiers did NOT say to stop fighting, although he, as we, want peace.""
In 1944, in a little known joint speech, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill said "Yes, of course we are sons of England and the United States, and so you can be sure we're for the defeat of the Axis powers, but it's important that our Allied troops realize it's not necessary to fight all the time. Our great nations are about more than just fighting, it's important that we're not seen as concentrating too much on fighting to the exclusion of everything else". This speech caused great unrest in the armed forces of the Allies, until the Allied officer corps was instructed to tell the troops,"Of course the commanders don't want you to stop fighting. They want you to fight harder!", and scream this at the troops day and night, in a primitive brain-washing campaign. One intrepid American General made a name for himself by inventing the doctrine of "Reading Roosevelt through Sherman" where the troubling speech was re-interpreted as consistent with the tactics of General Sherman of Civil War fame. After WWII, these psychological tactics were, of course, linked to "Post Traumatic Confusion and Disillusionment Syndrome" (PTCDS). The episode proved so embarrassing to both nations that in 1964 the Orwell Act in the UK and the Historical Accuracy Act in the US made any mention of the speech an act of treason, which is why so few people today know that it ever happened.
September 30, 2013 at 7:30 pm
My bishop(s),
My state – and I'm proud of them.
North Carolina is by no means a "distant corner" – rather the front line.
September 30, 2013 at 9:43 pm
As it is the case that only the Catholic Church is a Church, any Council of Churches must include only Catholic ones.
This isn't very hard once you remember that Catholic Doctrine (Mystici Corporis) teaches that The Catholic Church is the Church Jesus established and all other communities or congregations of material heretics embedded by birth in a false religion is not a church and those poor souls must be told the truth about the sole Church that Jesus established so they may profit unto Salvation by the Sacramental System established by Jesus, Our Lord and Saviour.
See; the new evangelisation, like the old evanagelisastion, isn't that hard.
Try it.
O, I hear you – What about the Orthodox Church?
Well, there is no Apostolic Succession apart from the approval of Bishops by the Roman Pontiff, so, that collection of eastern schismatic heretics, the seedbed of heresies and iconoclasm, is also a congregation of Photian Christians separated by Pride, Error, Arrogance (they arrogated authority unto themselves) and Doctrinal Delusion.
October 3, 2013 at 10:57 pm
@I am not Spartacus
The ordination of bishops without Papal mandate does not make their ordinations invalid, but illicit. Hence the reason that the bishops in the SSPX are valid bishops, but without jurisdiction and their ordinations were illicit.
So the Orthodox still have valid sacraments, which makes the separation between the Catholics and Orthodox all the more scandalous.