Actually, our church does have a formal policy on murderers. Murder is wrong, per the fourth commandment, and a mortal sin requiring absolution per the catechism, with clear guidelines on what that absolution should be, per whatever book priests reference for that purpose.

Wait, what?

If someone comes to your church and says they just murdered someone in the parking lot, your formal policy is to offer absolution?  Not, say, call the cops and turn them in?

Same thing with child abuse.  Abuse of any kind, for that matter.  I didn't bring that up, because after the Catholic priest incidents, some churches do have a formal policy in place.  What I'm getting at is that churches don't bother with policies like "turn in mass murderers", because that's the law and there's no reason to duplicate them.

That really depends. If someone runs into the middle of service and says he just killed someone, civil law applies. But if he goes into a confessional and says last year he killed someone, then the religious rules apply (including, for instance, the priest will not call the cops or testify against that person).

Wow, really?  A priest will not report a confessed murderer?  Is that just in theory and not in practice though?

That's in practice. If someone goes into the confessional and says "father, I murdered someone", the priest cannot call the police and cannot testify in court. If he does, he may be disbarred.

It sounds crazy, but it actually makes sense if you think about it. This covers only a very narrow scenario; the individual goes into the confessional seeking spiritual absolution, and voluntarily confesses. If you try to legally mandate the priest testify, it just means the murderer won't seek out spiritual absolution, and won't voluntarily confess to a priest.

Under all other cases, it doesn't apply. If someone walks into the confessional covered with blood, if the priest witnesses a murder, whatever, the priest still is obligated to testify like normal.

I'm not saying he should be legally mandated.  I'm saying he should act like a human being and report someone for murder.  I find that repugnant and always thought it was a myth.  I never thought it was actually true.

We're getting sidetracked.  The point is, there's no formal policy on not murdering people, because that's just the way the law is.  In the same vein, back in the day there was no need to ban interracial marriage, because it was illegal as well-- and right now, in many states there's no need to ban homosexual marriage, for the same reason.

I just don't follow the line of your argument, and what conclusion you're trying to reach. You seem to be saying that all religious prohibitions are irrelevant if there's a secular prohibition as well, and that interracial marriage is no longer illegal and homosexual marriage is in the process of becoming no longer illegal. But because you exclude religious prohibitions in the early part of the argument, you can't draw any conclusions about what that means for religion & homosexual marriage in the long run.

I'm responding to Katisara's argument that certain churches weren't racist pre-60's, because they didn't have a specific prohibition against interracial marriage.  Some churches were very racist, to the point where many have apologized for their past behavior.

In the same vein, even though churches may not have a specific prohibition against homosexual marriage, that doesn't mean they're not homophobic.  Forty years from now, when homosexual marriage becomes the norm, people like Katisara are going to point at our era and say: "See, they didn't ban homosexual marriage, which proves we were on your side all along!"  Sorry, but that's just not the case.

I don't think that argument holds together. Churches are banning homosexual marriage right now, and those statements will be around in the future for people to reference. The Catholics, Mormons, and even the Anglicans currently have public statements to that effect.

I know some churches (such as the Mormons) banned interracial marriage, but I don't know if it was the norm for Christian denominations. If someone wanted to argue it was the norm, they would have to provide quotes to that effect from the major denominations.

Until states started repealing the laws banning interracial marriage, churches didn't have to specifically ban it.  If it's against the law, there's no reason to.  It's not proof that they approve of it, though.

Going back to the murder analogy, churches don't need to have a specific policy banning murder because laws exist to deal with that.  So, demanding policy quotes is shifting the goalposts.  They just need to support the status quo.

You're just repeating what you said earlier.

By ignoring what religions think of something while it's illegal, you're unable to draw any conclusions about what they'll think about it if it becomes legal.

The reason this sidetrack came up is because there IS a formal policy on not murdering people. Like I said, ten commandments is a big start, plus the catechism, plus plenty of other resources on the topics. Murdering people is explicitly forbidden, by policy, by the Catholic Church (and just about every other Christian Church staffed by literate leaders).



Let me be very clear here; I'm not saying the churches weren't racist. I'm asking if they had a specific policy, or if it was just an ingrained, unstated practice. The two are very different, and will have a major impact if you're trying to extrapolate future behavior.

There is no difference, at least when it comes to supporting the status quo.

Look, you can't have an extensive history of racism and bigotry when its popular, and then try to pretend like it didn't happen when times change.  "Sure, we unofficially told your grandparents they couldn't marry in our church, because of their race.  But it's okay now, because we didn't have an official policy saying so!"  Pretending like the church was never racist won't fix things.  Instead, you do what the Southern Baptists did, and admit you were wrong.

I don't think you even understand what I'm driving at here. You're going off on wild tangents.

Your point was that homosexual marriage will soon be accepted by churches just like biracial marriages are, because in your mind they're so similar.

But they aren't similar as far as churches are concerned, because most of them banned biracial marriages due to cultural pressures, while they ban homosexual marriages through a combination of cultural and biblical pressures. Cultural pressures change, but the bible doesn't.

You misunderstand, because you see the bible from a modern perspective.  The bible was used to justify banning interracial marriage back then, just like it's used to support it now.

Back then, people used the prohibition against marrying outside of your faith (originally in the OT as prohibiting Jews from marrying Gentiles) to argue that the races should not marry.  Now, you're going to argue that it means something different.  And you're right, we see it that way... now.  But then?  No, that was really how they viewed things.

In the same vein, the bible was used to support slavery (the founding fathers were slaveowners) and there's a large tradition of bible-supported racism in this country.  You live in an era where those readings are unthinkable, so you're not used to thinking of it that way.  The point is, even though the bible hasn't changed, the readings of it have.  Back in the day, no one would have thought the bible verses that supported racism would be used against it.

In the same vein, there's nothing in the bible actually banning homosexual marriage.  There's that bit banning anal sex, but that part of Hebrew law is ignored by modern christians anyway.  Even Jerry Falwell, who blasted the teletubbies for being gay, later recanted and admitted as much.  The reading of the bible will change over time.

The ban is "a man shall not lie with a man", which is pretty explicit. Now I can't speak for Falwell or his ilk, but the Catholic Church has also explicitly outlawed homosexual marriage in the catechism, by papal decree, and a dozen other sources. I'm not aware of any Catholic source explicitly stating that marriage between races is forbidden. If you're aware of a papal decree or such, please show it. And the RCC is very proud of having never changed on matters of doctrine. Practices, yes, but there are certain items which are matter of doctrine and Hell will freeze over before the RCC recants them. This includes things like female priests, premarital sex, and yes, homosexual marriage. (It does not include things like female deacons, priests getting married, management of local legal requirements, language of the mass, etc. Those items can change to meet the times.)

Now I can't speak for other churches. I don't know how the Baptist Church works, et al. I have a pretty good guess for the LDS Church.

"A man shall not lie with a man" is a ban on anal sex, not marriage.  Catholics used to support slavery as well.  There is something in the new testament asking owners to treat their slaves kindly, but slavery itself wasn't actively condemned until around 1890.

In other words, things do change over time.  You don't read "treat your slaves kindly" as tacit acceptance of slavery, because you line in the modern age where slavery is unthinkable.  If you lived before the civil war?  You might have a different view.  It's worth noting that different eras have different perspectives.

You might be right in the case of those churches that rely solely on the bible for guidance. I'm not sure how you see it as a ban on anal sex; there's not a lot I could 'lie with a man' doing that, well ... you get the picture. I guess I don't see which part of 'things gay men can do' falls outside of 'things a hetero couple can do' (banning sword fights, of course).

But many people interpret scripture to meet their current views, whatever they are. Your bringing up slavery is a great example of that.

With that said, the RCC at least has explicitly said 'homosexual relationships are out, and here's why'. It's pretty unambiguous. (Quoting from the same page of the catechism I posted in the other thread ...)



This is supported by Persona Humana:
http://www.newadvent.org/library/docs_df75se.htm

These writings are pretty unambiguous. And the way the RCC rolls, once it's written down as doctrine, as doctrine it stays.

This is why I was asking if you had written policies supporting slavery, et al. If you're a new church, or a church that relies solely on the bible, writing down a policy probably doesn't matter very much. The policy isn't the bible, so you can write and ignore policies all you want. But for the RCC, the doctrine is law, with as much force as the bible (perhaps even more, as very little interpretation is required). So if you can find evidence of Catholic doctrine supporting slavery, that would be a pretty big deal.

My research indicates the RCC has gone back and forth on the subject.  This is a wikipedia quote, which I don't have time to verify, but here's one example:


There have been a number of position papers condemning slavery over the centuries, but the practice wasn't officially condemned until 1890.

This is kind of getting off the topic of, "What makes you Christian?"

The Bible is used to ban only interracial marriages from different tribes outside of Israel, because they had Pagan traditions. Most Hebrews, were Semites, ergo, there was a marriage ban.

They used it to ban all non-Jews, including ones we'd think of as Semitic today.  At any event, it wasn't that long ago when christian churches used that, and the story of Ham, to justify banning interracial marriage in general.  We read it differently now, but they read it differently then,

Yeah, the Old Testament stresses not marrying someone who's not the same religion, that you shouldn't marry "outside the covenant".

There was that one guy, Shechem, if memory serves me right, who wasn't an Israelite, kidnapped Dinah, raped her, then fell in love and wanted to marry her, and sent his dad to talk to Jacob and his 12 sons about that.  The 12 sons said, "Sure, if you get circumcised we'll commingle funds", and he jumped at the chance, and talked all his buds and the rest of the men in the city into doing the same thing.  The Bible stresses how honorable he was for agreeing to that (despite his earlier kidnapping/rape) and how deceitful Jacob's other sons were for offering that when they didn't intend to follow through on that promise (not the only time they were jerks, by a long shot).

Take the story of Ruth.  Ruth wasn't an Israelite, until she married one, then really cleaved to that.  Once her husband died, she choose to stay with her mother-in-law instead of going back to her family.  And she didn't just stay with Naomi, "your gods will be my gods, etc."  And she was so righteous that the end result was a promise that the Savior would eventually come as one of her descendants.

The Bible pretty clearly stresses that it's not necessarily physical race, as in color (other than that whole mark of Cain/Ham thing that people kept arguing about, and what it really meant), it was all about whether or not your spouse was the same religion.  Same religion = shared values and you support each other.  Different religion = you'll probably both be pagan in the end.

In reply to Bart (msg # 569):

Again, that's a very modern reading of it.  About sixty years ago, you would have heard a wider disagreement on it, and a hundred and twenty years ago the majority opinion would've flip-flopped.