The issue is not whether there will be broad and ardently held differences of opinion, but how those differences will be expressed. In a time when civility is in collapse, when public discourse is riddled with innuendo or outright assault, the church can model an alternative. Sometimes it does. Too often it does not.
Before arriving here last week, Mr. Engle came out with a statement condemning the harsh penalties proposed in the bill, and said that his ministry could not support it. But when he took the stage late on Sunday afternoon, with Ugandan politicians and pastors looking on, he praised the country’s “courage” and “righteousness” in promoting the bill.
The bill’s supporters, who, alas, are liberals, argue that this is a security measure because people can “hide” behind the veil. Please. Where’s the legislation banning the wearing of Groucho Marx glasses or Richard Nixon masks.
Let what we are describing be compared to a great chorus. As then the chorus is composed of different people, children, women again, and old men, and those who are still young, and, when one, namely the conductor, gives the sign, each utters sound according to his nature and power, the man as a man, the child as a child, the old man as an old man, and the young man as a young man, while all make up a single harmony;
“It’s a plot within the Vatican that they are desperate to keep quiet until they are ready to go public.” The Vatican is learning something about its bedfellows. This is a fairly transparent attempt by Anglo Catholics to influence the synod to vote against letting women be bishops. How serious can their threats be if they’re willing to break the pledge of secrecy with the Vatican?
Like Peter, I forget to seek God when things are going well. When I’m on a mountaintop, I rarely open my eyes to take in the glorious view. Through an intellectual exercise, I know that I am blessed, but this blessing fails to filter into my soul. Only when the jaggedness of grief or deprivation assaults me do I begin my tardy search for God anew.
He plainly indicates the novelty involved in his command here—and the extent to which the love he enjoins here surpasses the old idea of mutual love—by adding the words “Even as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” . . .
I am the Way and the Truth and the Life; no man comes to the Father but through me. If you know me, you know my Father also; and from henceforth you shall know him, and have seen him. Philip said to him, Lord, show us the Father, and it will be enough for us. Jesus said to him, Have I been so long with you, and you have not known me, Philip?
Good society, in all Christian countries, is the meeting on a footing of equality, and for the purpose of mutual entertainment, of men, or women, or men and women together, of good character, good education, and good breeding. But what is the real spirit of the observances which this society requires of its frequenters for the preservation of harmony, and the easy intercourse of all of them?
