St. Paul’s
109 S.
Elm, Kewanee , Illinois 61443
Newsletter
Volume 25 May 2013 No. 5
On Marriage and the Homosexual Agenda
On April 17th, the New Zealand New Zealand
Gay
rights advocates are hoping other countries in the region will follow suit,
including especially neighboring Australia Uruguay
And
in our country, the Supreme Court mulls the question, and although it seems
unlikely that the Court will stop short of a broad ruling in favor of gay
marriage, it’s quite possible to see the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) struck
down, and the matter returned to the states with momentum continuing to rise on
the side of homosexual activists.
In
Illinois , the matter was taken up by the State
House and came up twelve votes shy of passage, but momentum, says Speaker Michael
Madigan, is continuing to build among Illinois
Even
political conservatives tend to concede that it’s only a matter of time before
this becomes the law of the land.
The
question for us is how then to live in the land as Christians. Much of this month’s newsletter is dedicated,
here and in other articles, to helping our members sort this out morally and
spiritually.
First,
we need to remember that marriage has always been between a man and a woman. Never in all of history has it been
otherwise. The new “morality” that calls
for “enlightened” thinking on the matter is itself a product of a misguided
idea that we are progressing toward a new spiritual reality that is wiser than
our parents were, an arrogance that
implicitly denigrates not only our forebears (against the fourth commandment),
but the Bible itself. And speaking of
the Bible, it couldn’t be clearer in saying that homosexuality is sin against
nature: “likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in
their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and
receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet”(Rom 1:27).
And
here is where we need to be, as Jesus put it, wise as serpents but innocent as
doves. To know that homosexuality is
sinful is not the same thing as to consider a homosexual to be beyond
hope. The Church prays for such people,
just as she does for all who do not know Christ. Nor do we consider homosexuals to be more
sinful than we ourselves are. The
difference is that like us, they also need to repent, but their lives are clear
indications that they have not done so, which we find tragic. For without repentance there can be no faith,
no mercy, no salvation. Unless the law
does its work and brings someone to contrition, the Gospel cannot enter to
bring him Christ. This is ultimately why
we must oppose the gay agenda.
(continued, next page)
(continued from page 1)
But
now there come allegations that we who have known this all our lives are
hypocritical and judgmental. And such
allegations are not only being made from outside the church, but alas, from within.
What
I find most troubling about all this is the massive societal movement not only
in the direction of gay marriage, but of the “normalcy” of a gay agenda, which
seems increasingly to want to silence or at least marginalize any who would
have the audacity to call homosexuality sinful.
What this is likely to mean for us is persecution, at some point in the
future. For if the trend continues, not
only will the homosexual agenda become widely accepted and approved, but we who
disagree will likely be scolded, ridiculed, scorned with increasingly shrill
voices, ostracized, and punished.
We
can and should pray that it does not come to this, but we should be prepared to
know how to behave if it does. And here,
Jesus has made it clear to us: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you,
do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you,
and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in
heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth
rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what
reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your
brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? Be ye
therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (St.
Matthew 5).
+ Pastor Eckardt
TALKING POINTS:
Why Homosexual
"Marriage" is Wrong
By Jan
LaRue, Chief Counsel, Concerned Women for America
1. Homosexuals are seeking a special right. They already
have the same right to marry the rest of us have-the right to marry a person of
the opposite sex. Limiting marriage to one man and one woman doesn't
discriminate on the basis of sex or sexual orientation.
2. It denies the self-evident truth of nature that male
and female bodies are designed for and complement each other. Opposite-sex
marriage is the natural means by which the human race reproduces.
3. Granting same-sex couples a license to marry will not
create true marriage. Neither two men nor two women can become one flesh.
Licensing the unnatural does not make it natural. It would be a
state-sanctioned counterfeit, a sham and a fraud. A licensed electrician cannot
produce power by taping two same-sex plugs together. Homosexual sex is
dangerous and destructive to the human body and powerless for human
reproduction.
4. Homosexual marriage will always be an abomination to
God regardless of whether a clergyman performs the ceremony. When God calls
something unholy, man cannot make it holy or bless it.
5. Homosexual marriage is as wrong as giving a man a
license to marry his mother or daughter or sister or a group.
6. Homosexual marriage will harm children by denying
them the love and nurture of a mom and dad. The only "procreation"
homosexuals can engage in requires that a third party must be brought into the
relationship.
7. Granting a marriage license to homosexuals because
they engage in sex is as illogical as granting a medical license to a barber
because he wears a white coat or a law license to a salesman because he carries
a briefcase. Real doctors, lawyers and the public would suffer as a result of
licensing the unqualified and granting them rights, benefits and
responsibilities as if they were qualified.
8. Homosexual marriage will devalue your marriage. A
license to marry is a legal document by which government will treat same-sex
marriage as if it were equal to the real thing. A license speaks for the
government and will tell society that government says the marriages are equal.
Any time a lesser thing is made equal to a greater, the greater is devalued.
For example:
·
If the Smithsonian
Museum
·
If an employer uses a robot as an employee and treats the robot the
same way it treats human employees, human employees are devalued. By doing so,
the employer says, "A robot can do your job, you're no better." What
will you and the public think of your job and you?
·
If the government issues a license to babysitters that grants them the
same rights, protections and responsibilities as a child's parents, parenthood
is devalued. The government says parents are just babysitters.
·
If government grants professional licenses to just anybody, every
profession and qualified professional is devalued. The government says an
uneducated panhandler can do brain surgery.
9. The assumption by many is that marriage is just two
people with a license who have sex and wear rings. Homosexuals do that; why not
give them the license? Engaging in sex doesn't equal marriage. Adults involved
in incest have sex too; should government call it marriage and license them?
Certainly not.
10. The biggest problem we have in getting people,
especially younger ones, to understand why marriage is devalued by the
existence of a counterfeit is that much of the public does not value marriage
at all. Adultery is no big deal. No- fault divorce is tolerated. Absentee
fathers and mothers devalue marriage. Unmarried pregnancies are common.
Fornication is "normal." When we make the case against homosexual
marriage, we need to speak against these other problems that devalue marriage
too. As we acknowledge these problems we can emphasize that legalizing
homosexual marriage will compound the problems, not solve or lessen them.
May Anniversaries
5/17/1959 Allan
and Barbra Kraklow
5/19/1979 Chuck
and Jean Russell
5/22/1976 Ed and
Lynn Woller
5/28/1982 Christine and Garry Erickson
5/28/1977 John and Charlene Sovanski
May Ushers
Otis Anderson, John
Ricknell, Bill Thompson
May Birthdays
5/2 Sheri Kraklow
5/6 Emilie Ricknell
5/10 William Thompson
5/16 John Eckardt
5/17 Jeffery Boswell
5/26 Preston
Powers
May Meetings
First Tuesday meetings
are May 7th, as usual: Altar Guild at 6 pm, Vespers 6:45; Elders 7:15.
Church Council will be
meeting on Wednesday, May 15th, at 5:30 pm.
Pentecost
We will observe
Pentecost with its vigil beginning on Saturday, May 18th. To get the most out of the Feast of
Pentecost, come first on Saturday night at 5:30 for the vigil, a smaller and
shorter version of the Easter vigil.
Then, on Pentecost Sunday, May 19th, we will again hear the opening
verse of the Gospel in several languages, a commemoration of the event
described in Acts 2, where the Gospel was proclaimed in several tongues.
Altar Guild Notes
• Wednesday, May 1st: SS Philip and
James, color is RED.
• No mass on Wednesday, May 8th; instead,
mass is on Thursday, June 9th, which is Ascension Day. The color is WHITE.
• No mass on Tuesday, May 14th; Gottesdienst Chicago event prevents Pastor
from being here.
• Color changes to RED for the Vigil of
Pentecost, Saturday, May 18th, and remains so for the following Pentecost week.
• Color changes to WHITE on Saturday, May
25th, for Trinity, and remains white through the Trinity Octave (changes to
Green after Sunday mass on June 2nd.
Gottesdienst Chicago
The annual Gottesdienst
– Chicago
“Missing Something?”
—emphasizing the Holy Sacrament and the frequency
of its celebration
at Gloria Dei Lutheran
Church
Featuring from among our
editors:
Rev. Fr. Jason Braaten,
MDiv.: “John 6, the Bread of Life, and the Sacrament”
Rev. Fr. Burnell F.
Eckardt Jr., PhD: “Why the Sacrament? Why Not the Word Alone?”
Panel Discussion: “Every
Sunday Communion” with
Rev. Fr. D. Richard
Stuckwisch Jr., PhD
Rev. Fr. David H. Petersen,
MDiv
Rev. Fr. Larry Beane,
MDiv
Recommended hotel: Sleep
Inn $159. 6650 S Cicero Ave ,
Bedford Park , IL
MARRIAGE AND RELIGIOUS FREEDOM:
Fundamental Goods That Stand or
Fall Together
An Open Letter from about 50 leaders of church
bodies across America
Dear
Friends:
The promotion and protection of
marriage—the union of one man and one woman as husband and wife—is a matter of
the common good and serves the wellbeing of the couple, of children, of civil
society and all people. The meaning and
value of marriage precedes and transcends any particular society, government,
or religious community. It is a universal
good and the foundational institution of all societies. It is bound up with the nature of the human
person as male and female, and with the essential task of bearing and nurturing
children.
As
religious leaders across a wide variety of faith communities, we join together
to affirm that marriage in its true definition must be protected for its own
sake and for the good of society. We also recognize the grave consequences of
altering this definition. One of these consequences—the interference with the
religious freedom of those who continue to affirm the true definition of
“marriage”—warrants special attention within our faith communities and
throughout society as a whole. For this
reason, we come together with one voice in this letter.
Some
posit that the principal threat to religious freedom posed by same-sex “marriage”
is the possibility of government’s
forcing religious ministers to preside over such “weddings,” on pain of civil
or criminal liability. While we cannot
rule out this possibility entirely, we believe that the First Amendment creates
a very high bar to such attempts.
Instead,
we believe the most urgent peril is this:
forcing or pressuring both individuals and religious organizations—throughout
their operations, well beyond religious ceremonies—to treat same-sex sexual
conduct as the moral equivalent of marital sexual conduct. There is no doubt that the many people and
groups whose moral and religious convictions forbid same-sex sexual conduct
will resist the compulsion of the law, and church-state conflicts will result.
These
conflicts bear serious consequences.
They will arise in a broad range of legal contexts, because altering the
civil definition of “marriage” does not change one law, but hundreds, even
thousands, at once. By a single stroke,
every law where rights depend on marital status—such as employment
discrimination, employment benefits, adoption, education, healthcare, elder
care, housing, property, and taxation—will change so that same-sex sexual
relationships must be treated as if they were marriage. That requirement, in turn, will apply to
religious people and groups in the ordinary course of their many private or
public occupations and ministries—including running schools, hospitals, nursing
homes and other housing facilities, providing adoption and counseling services,
and many others.
So,
for example, religious adoption services that place children exclusively with married
couples would be required by law to place children with persons of the same sex
who are civilly “married.” Religious
marriage counselors would be denied their professional accreditation for
refusing to provide counseling in support of same-sex “married”
relationships. Religious employers who
provide special health benefits to married employees would be required by law
to extend those benefits to same-sex “spouses.”
Religious employers would also face lawsuits for taking any adverse
employment action—no matter how modest—
against
an employee for the public act of obtaining a civil “marriage” with a member of
the same sex. This is not idle speculation, as these sorts of
situations have already come to pass.
Even
where religious people and groups succeed in avoiding civil liability in cases
like these, they would face other government sanctions—the targeted withdrawal
of government co-operation, grants, or other benefits.
For
example, in New Jersey San Francisco Portland , Maine
partners”
as a condition of receiving city housing and community development funds.
In
short, the refusal of these religious organizations to treat a same-sex sexual
relationship as if it were a marriage marked them and their members as bigots,
subjecting them to the full arsenal of government punishments and pressures
reserved for racists. These punishments
will only grow more frequent and more severe if civil “marriage” is redefined
in additional jurisdictions. For then,
government will compel special recognition of relationships that we the
undersigned religious leaders and the communities of faith that we
represent
cannot, in conscience, affirm. Because
law and government not only coerce and incentivize but also teach, these
sanctions would lend greater moral legitimacy to private efforts to punish
those who defend marriage.
Therefore,
we encourage all people of good will to protect marriage as the union between
one man and one woman, and to consider carefully the far-reaching consequences
for the religious freedom of all Americans if marriage is redefined. We especially urge those entrusted with the
public good to support laws that uphold the time-honored definition of
marriage, and so avoid threatening the religious freedom of countless
institutions and citizens in this country.
Marriage and religious freedom are both deeply woven into the fabric of
this nation.
May
we all work together to strengthen and preserve the unique meaning of marriage
and the precious gift of religious freedom.
In
Our Prayers
In
addition to our shut-ins, our current list of prayer intentions at mass
includes the names on the lists here following. To update the list, please inform pastor.
In our parish:
Mark Baker, Ann Baker, Sara
Bidni, Don Murphy, Emilie Ricknell, Bob Bock, Ruth Snider
outside
our parish:
David Dakin [re Harris]
Anna Rutowicz [re Harris]
Julie Ross [Svetlana Meaker’s daughter, cancer]
Caleb Cleaver [re Ricknell]
Pam Mansnarus [Ricknell]
Christian Johnson [re Kemerlings]
Madison Lindsay [re Andersons
Tom Fornoff [Jean Russell’s brother-in-law]
Nina [nine-a] Hartz [Sharon
Rev. Don Chambers [Manito]
Stacie Liese, wife of Rev. Michael Liese
Lisa Gustafson [with Thyroid cancer - Harlow ]
Crystal Stoll
Linda Peterson [re Kemerlings]
Michelle Steuber [re Fischer]
Pat Shreck
Marilyn Johnson [relative of the Kemerlings]
Michelle Loesch [re Clappers]
in
the military:
John Eckardt
Michael Fisa [re Kemerlings]
Donny Appleman [re Ricknells]
Thomas Kim [re Shrecks]
Jaclyn Harden Alvarez
Michael Creech [re Murphys]
in trouble:
especially any unborn children in danger of abortion, and those suffering from
unrest, persecution, and imprisonment in Egypt ,
Iraq , Iran
Tensions
leading up to the assault ignited when youth spray-painted inflammatory
symbols, including a swastika, on an Islamic institution. This led to a quarrel
with onlookers in Shubra el-Kheima, located just north of Cairo
The
difficulty is that the latest constitution says that no law can be passed that
contravenes Islam, so guarantees of religious freedom are not particularly
trustworthy. Registration of new churches is difficult, and persecution has
become particularly ferocious in recent years. About 334,000 Christians remain
in Iraq Iraq ,
particularly in Kurdistan .
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