Tag Archives: scripture

Reflections on a Homosexual Bible Study (Part I)

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Inspired by Funky’s recent exchange with Amba, I’ve decided to share my opinions regarding Christian acceptance of gays.

At the University of Pittsburgh (aka Pitt), in the fall semester of 1999, I attended a bible study series sponsored by the Pitt Rainbow Alliance and lead by Dr. Michael Penn-Strah, a protestant minister from Pittsburgh’s Northside. They used the study book Claiming the Promise by Mary Jo Osterman. I would like to share some reflections of that Bible study that stuck in my mind along with some other intermingled comments. (As a matter of disclosure, I am a Catholic Christian who before and after the Bible study believed that a homosexual tendency is not a sin but that engaging in homosexual sex, even in same-sex “marriage”, is sinful.)

I attended the study for personal as well as “professional” reasons. I was an opinions writer for The Pitt News. There was another writer, Michael Mazza, who always wrote pro-gay columns. I thought that I should balance out his columns with at least one from the other side.

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An Exchange on Gay Christians (Part II)

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Read Part I of "An Exchange on Gay Christians"
Read Annie's response to Part I.

It's much the kind of response I was hoping for.

Good. 🙂

The question is whether demanding celibacy of someone not called to be a priest isn't "inhumane." It is pretty easy, and not very charitable, for a heterosexual, from the fortunate heights of normalcy, to condemn a homosexual to that fate.

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Possibilities of the Reunion of East and West.

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In the past half-century, relations between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church have been growing ever closer and oriented ever more toward possible reunion. Perhaps the greatest hope of the late Holy Father John Paul II, of happy memory, was the reunion of these two oldest Churches of Christendom. In his many efforts to bridge the doctrinal and cultural divides which separate the Churches, he was successful in fostering much greater mutual respect, if not any actual reunification. Understandably, the steps taken by the Holy Father’s predecessor have excited much hope for reunion. However, it is my belief that the steps taken, on each side, toward the noble goal of rebuilding the single pre-schism Church, truly amount to little more than window-dressing, with no substantial gains made.

Not to be a party-pooper, but there is a huge list of very important things that need to be cleared up before reunion can be effected.

In compiling this list, I have provided a brief summary of each point. In order to shorten this article to a readable length, I have eliminated source citations. If you would like a citation on a particular point, please let me know in the comments section or via e-mail.

I invite your commentary.

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Language and Order

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Witnessing all the recent hubbub about new English mass translation that’s just been approved by US bishops and the ever-present tensions between rival Bible translators, I thought the following quite from Peter Berger’s The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion might provoke interesting discussion.

"The social world constitutes a nomos both objectively and subjectively. The objective nomos is given in the process of objectivation as such. the fact of language, even if taken by itself, can readily be seen as the imposition of order upon experience. Language nomizes by imposing differentiation and structure upon the ongoing flux of experience. As an item of experience is named, it is ipso facto, taken out of this flux and given stability as the entity so named. Language further provides a fundamental order of relationships by the addition of syntax and grammar to vocabulary. It is impossible to use language without participating in its order. Every empirical language may be said to constitute a nomos in the making, or, with equal validity, as the historical consequence of the nomizing activity of generations of men. The original nomizing act is to say that an item is this, and thus not that. As this original incorporation of the item into the order that includes other items is followed by sharper linguistic designations (the item is male and not female, singular and not plural, a noun and not a verb, and so forth), the nomizing act intends a comprehensive order of all items that may be linguistically objectivated, that is, intends a totalizing nomos.

What I primarily take from this is the importance of word choice for the recording and transmission of information, i.e., order. When we translate Scripture or liturgies to modern languages, we must be mindful of a few important questions.

  • What sort of order did the original author(s) intend to impose with the words they chose?
  • What sort of order do we wish to impose with the words we choose?
  • If these orders do not match, why do they not, and how should that affect our translation efforts?

A Case for Female Priests?

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“Greet Andronicus and Junia, my relatives and my fellow prisoners; they are prominent among the apostles and they were in Christ before me.” – Romans 16:7

Were there female apostles? Were all apostoloi also prebyteroi and/or episcopoi? Were there once female episcopoi/presbyteroi in the Church?