Gay Marriage - Getting the bible wrong - a Christian tradition, e.g. Crusades, Inquisition, Galileo, slavery… USA Election Day - “voters got it right even if the church gets it wrong” 11/14/12

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President Obama - Election Night - ...We want our children to live in an America that isn’t burdened by debt; that isn’t weakened by inequality; that isn’t threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet... November 07, 2012 - 12:38 A.M. CST

http://fathermartykurylowicz.blogspot.com/2012/11/president-obama-election-night-we-want.html

 

On gay marriage, voters got it right even if the church gets it wrong - 11/14/12

Last week, citizens in Maine, Maryland and Washington state made history with their votes to legalize same-sex marriage. Minnesotans, too, rejected a constitutional amendment that would have banned gay marriage. Since 1998, 32 states have had marriage equality measures on their ballots, and voters have rejected every one of them. The six states that have legalized gay marriage did it through legislation or by court order.

The voters who passed these history-making resolutions on Election Day did so despite significant opposition from Christian churches and institutions that believe their faith requires them to oppose marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples. Even though an exceptionally strong biblical case can be made in favor of gay civil rights, these groups generally dismiss such arguments because of tradition. 

“If this’new’ interpretation of the Bible is true,” as one young evangelical asked me, “how could Christians have had it wrong all these years?”

That’s actually a pretty easy question to answer. All too often, getting it wrong has also been a Christian tradition.

Throughout the ages, various Christian beliefs have been the basis for institutions and actions that were anything but Christian. The Inquisition and the Crusades come immediately to mind, but more recent history also has its share... 
Read more:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/on-gay-marriage-voters-got-it-right-even-if-the-church-gets-it-wrong/2012/11/14/d2eaa620-2e91-11e2-b631-2aad9d9c73ac_story.html

Galileo facing the Roman Inquisition

Holy Office of the Inquisition

http://fathermartykurylowicz.blogspot.com/2010/09/threats-silence-harm-and-disposal-of.html

Secret Files of the Inquisition

http://www.inquisitionproductions.com/about.html

Ecclesiastes 1:5 (New International Version)

5 The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.

Ecclesiastes 1:5 (New American Standard Bible)

5 Also, the sun rises and the sun sets; And hastening to its place it rises there again. 

1 Chronicles 16:30 (New International Version)

30 Tremble before him, all the earth! 
The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved.

1 Chronicles 16:30 (New American Standard Bible)

30 Tremble before Him, all the earth; Indeed, the world is firmly established, it will not be moved. 

Psalm 93:1 (New International Version)

1 The LORD reigns, he is robed in majesty; 
 the LORD is robed in majesty 
 and is armed with strength. The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved.

Psalm 93:1 (New American Standard Bible)

1 The LORD reigns, He is clothed with majesty; The LORD has clothed and girded Himself with strength; Indeed, the world is firmly established, it will not be moved. 

Psalm 96:10 (New International Version)

10 Say among the nations, "The LORD reigns." 
 The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved; 
 he will judge the peoples with equity.

Psalm 96:10 (New American Standard Bible)

10 Say among the nations, "The LORD reigns; Indeed, the world is firmly established, it will not be moved; He will judge the peoples with equity." 

Psalm 104:5 (New International Version)

5 He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved.

Psalm 104:5 (New American Standard Bible)

5 He established the earth upon its foundations, So that it will not totter forever and ever. 

Holy Office of the Inquisition

http://www.inquisitionproductions.com/about.html

http://fathermartykurylowicz.blogspot.com/2010/09/threats-silence-harm-and-disposal-of.html

The Galileo Project

http://galileo.rice.edu/chr/inquisition.html

 Torturer’s Apprentice

…The original Inquisition was initiated by the Church in the 13th century to deal with heretics and other undesirables, and continued off and on for 600 years. But it’s a mistake to think of the Inquisition as just a metaphor, or as relegated to the past. For one thing, within the Church, it has never quite ended; the office charged today with safeguarding doctrine and meting out discipline occupies the Inquisition’s old palazzo at the Vatican. More to the point, the Inquisition had all the hallmarks of a modern institution—with a bureaucracy, a memory, a procedure, a set of tools, a staff of technocrats, and an all-encompassing ideology that brooked no dissent. It was not a relic but a harbinger…

…And then there is the matter of torture. Pope Innocent IV authorized its use by the Inquisition in 1252 in the papal bull Ad extirpanda. Few words summon the Dark Ages as quickly as torture, but the uncomfortable reality is that the emergence of torture as an instrument of justice marks the advent of a modern way of thinking: the truth can be ascertained without God’s help. Photo

…Thus the reliance not on judges or juries but on iudicium Dei—the judgment of an all-knowing God—to determine guilt or innocence. This often took the form of trial by ordeal. The accused would be submerged in water, or made to walk on red-hot coals, or forced to plunge an arm into boiling water. If he or she suffered no harm, or if the wounds healed sufficiently within a certain period of time, then it was the judgment of God that the accused was innocent. This regime was common in Europe for many centuries. It was unquestionably primitive and certainly barbaric. In its favor, it was devoid of hubris about what mere mortals can ever really know.

The late-medieval revolution in legal thinking—manifest everywhere, from Church courts to secular ones—took the pursuit of justice out of God’s hands and put it into the hands of human beings…

…When God is the judge, no other standard of proof is needed. When human beings are the judges, the question of proof comes to the fore…

The Inquisition rarely resorted to these specific instruments. It relied on three different techniques, all of them used today. Before a session began, the person to be interrogated would be brought into the torture chamber and told what was about to be done. The experience of being in conspectus tormentorum [torture was a definite prospect] was often enough to compel testimony.  If not, the session commenced…

Read more:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/01/torturers-apprentice/308838/?single_page=true

 

Amistad Africans

Supreme Court Trial 1841

President John Quincy Adam Addresses the Supreme Court

…The truth, in truth, has been driven from this case like a slave, flogged from court to court, wretched and destitute…

Yea, this is no mere property case, gentlemen. I put it to you thus: This is the most important case ever to come before this court. Because what it, in fact, concerns is the very nature of man…

…This is a publication of the Office of the President. It's called the Executive Review, and I'm sure you all read it. At least I'm sure the President hopes you all read it. This is a recent issue, and there's an article in here written by a "keen mind of the South," who is my former Vice President, John Calhoun, perhaps -- Could it be? -- who asserts that:

"There has never existed a civilized society in which one segment did not thrive upon the labor of another. As far back as one chooses to look -- to ancient times, to biblical times -- history bears this out. In Eden, where only two were created, even there one was pronounced subordinate to the other. Slavery has always been with us and is neither sinful nor immoral. Rather, as war and antagonism are the natural states of man, so, too, slavery, as natural as it is inevitable."

Now, gentlemen, I must say I differ with the keen minds of the South, and with our president, who apparently shares their views, offering that the natural state of mankind is instead -- and I know this is a controversial idea -- is freedom. Is freedom. And the proof is the length to which a man, woman, or child will go to regain it, once taken. He will break loose his chains, He will decimate his enemies. He will try and try and try against all odds, against all prejudices, to get home.

… Yet, if the South is right, what are we to do with that embarrassing, annoying document, "The Declaration of Independence?" What of its conceits? "All men...created equal," "inalienable rights," "life," "liberty," and so on and so forth? What on earth are we to do with this? Photo

…James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, John Adams: We've long resisted asking you for guidance. Perhaps we have feared in doing so we might acknowledge that our individuality which we so, so revere is not entirely our own. Perhaps we've feared an appeal to you might be taken for weakness. But, we've come to understand, finally, that this is not so. We understand now, we've been made to understand, and to embrace the understanding that who we are is who we were.

We desperately need your strength and wisdom to triumph over our fears, our prejudices, our-selves. Give us the courage to do what is right. And if it means civil war, then let it come. And when it does, may it be, finally, the last battle of the American Revolution. Photo

That's all I have to say,
John Quincy Adams

[Patrick Henry, American Revolution “GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH”]

AMISTAD - 1997 movie, Spielberg Photo 
"Amistad" (1997) - American Rhetoric: Movie Speech – Video:

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/MovieSpeeches/moviespeechamistadjqadams.html

AMISTAD - 1997 movie, Spielberg   

http://www.scruffles.net/spielberg/movies/amistad.html

Amistad Case 1839 - Library of Congress

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trr021.html

"We can't afford to have

two kinds of citizens,

We must have

equal citizenship for anybody in our country."

Eleanor Roosevelt

 

GAY MARRIAGE – UNIDENTIFIED - Internalized Homophobia - Benedict XVI, Hierarchy & Blind Followers - GAY-BASHERS UK & US | UK Blair & Cameron Legalization of Gay Marriage | Kids Are Being Hurt!!! | PART 8

http://fathermartykurylowicz.blogspot.com/2012/10/benedict-xvi-rejection-of-human_6341.html

 

As SCIENCE moves forward on Research & Understanding Homosexuality -- RATZINGER/BENEDICT XVI Ignoring Science - Sanctions Ignorance & Silence Promoting discrimination of Homosexuality – A Timeline

http://fathermartykurylowicz.blogspot.com/2012/09/as-science-moves-forward-on-research.html

 

Cardinal Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) … efforts to PREVENT the EVOLUTION in Church Teaching toward ACCEPTANCE of HOMOSEXUALS - Milestones in campaign to hold the doctrinal - beginning 1984 - July 30, 1999

http://natcath.org/NCR_Online/archives2/1999c/073099/073099e.htm

 

Archbishop Weakland’s - 1986 - Warnings to Vatican inquisitor – valuing RIGIDITY OF DOCTRINE over PEOPLE – Mistreatment of Archbishop HUNTHAUSEN – 9/28/1986 ---

…He contended that previous efforts to monitor and safeguard Catholic doctrine have been undertaken in an atmosphere where ``amateurs-turned-theologians easily became headhunters and leaders were picked (on the basis of) the rigidity of their doctrine, so that often second-rate and repressive minds, riding on the waves of fear, took over.

          ``Religion under such circumstances then can become an ideology that tolerates no obstacle and that values ideas more than people,`` he wrote... Photo

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1986-09-28/news/8603120562_1_archbishop-weakland-seattle-archbishop-raymond-hunthausen-seattle-archdiocese

 

GAY RIGHTS – US President Obama Appreciates Fr. Marty Kurylowicz’s Perspective on Gay (LGBT) Rights | US Catholic Clergy Supportive of GAY RIGHTS – Are Attacked, Silenced and Removed for the past 30 years by Ratzinger / Benedict XVI  - 1983 Archbishop Hunthausen of Seattle

http://fathermartykurylowicz.blogspot.com/2012/10/1977-against-gay-discrimination.html

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Injustice anywhere is a

threat to

Justice everywhere

Martin Luther King

The Nobel Peace Prize 1964

Martin Luther King Jr.

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1964/king-bio.html

What you cannot do is accept injustice.

From Hitler – or anyone.

You must make the injustice visible

– be prepared to die like a

 soldier to do so.

Mahatma Gandhi

Kids Are Being Hurt!!!

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“Someday, maybe, there will exist a well-informed, well considered and yet fervent public conviction that the most deadly of all possible sins is the mutilation of a child’s spirit.” 

Erik Erikson

…whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. Matthew 18:6

Important note: No disrespect meant to Pope Benedict XVI or the hierarchy, the one and only concern is the safety and well-being of children.

Kids Are Being Hurt!!!