tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22091055674090420212024-02-18T21:23:11.162-05:00Meaningful Conversationtom in ohiohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14204732406904344969noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2209105567409042021.post-17169304088298618742011-02-26T23:44:00.000-05:002011-02-26T23:44:04.508-05:00Good instructionHere is a clip that shows how biblical Catholic belief about Mary is. Take a look!<br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aU18v-tl8I&feature=player_embedded#at=72">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aU18v-tl8I&feature=player_embedded#at=72</a>tom in ohiohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14204732406904344969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2209105567409042021.post-23057514423544832812011-02-22T10:43:00.000-05:002011-02-22T10:43:12.548-05:00Main thingsThe main thing, the main things, how easy it is to lose track of them, to chase rabbits, to lose the daily attention to the main thing, the main things. <br />
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As Christians we place God at the top of the list, or so we say. I don' think I do that very successfully. Change is necessary. Firm commitment to certain things on a regular basis will need to be renewed. <br />
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Right now I am still battling the worst flu/cold/bronchitis attack I have ever encountered. All I want to do is sleep and veg. So the renewal of a firm commitment waits in the wings. Hopefully not for long.tom in ohiohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14204732406904344969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2209105567409042021.post-78968331634202368432011-02-20T18:09:00.000-05:002011-02-20T18:09:04.820-05:00Deception pro and conA friend sent me this: "A few years ago, a municipality sent mailers to several hundred addresses suspected to be where bail-jumpers were hiding. "Congratulations, you've been selected for a free big-screen Superbowl party! Come down to the auditorium to see the game and have free pizza and drinks!" Several hundred scofflaws came down, got their free pizza and drinks, got real comfortable, and then the police swarmed in and scooped them all up. Beautiful."<br />
<br />
If this is ligit for cops to do, and most people think it is, then this sort of deception is not intrinsically evil. The state is not allowed to do something intrinically evil, no matter what. So . . . if that is the beef that the antagonists have in the discussion about sting operations (Lila Rose), then we are not arguing about lying and its intrinsic evil. but rather a behavior that might or might not be called vigilanteism.<br />
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It's a different discussion.tom in ohiohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14204732406904344969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2209105567409042021.post-34157475812464180752011-02-19T10:16:00.001-05:002011-02-19T10:45:11.518-05:00On Retreat<span style="font-family: Calibri;"> <div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">My wife and I are visiting a mini-retreat put on by Opus Dei. Last night was the men’s turn, with an evening of recollection. There was a talk by an Opus Dei priest on the Mass, a talk by a layman on the importance of having “a plan”, an examination of conscience, a second talk by the priest about every Christian’s priestly soul and ample opportunity for confession. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This morning was mass and then the women’s turn. So I am holed up at a local coffee house, already on my second cup and thinking about lots of things. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">What is coming to mind is how real that old phrase is—the one we utter when someone else does unthinkable things: “But for the grace of God there go I.” I think this is often said without much thought, sometimes even smugly. For me, today, the phrase is very real. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I have prayed for humility for years, and now I begin to see that humility is very simply a deep inward realization of truth. If we are given even a glimpse of where we would be without divine providence we must shed the ragged clothes of pride and exhale its puffed-upness, we must open our closed fists and look up to see Him who was pierced, who bled, who suffered, who sacrificed all he had, yes, giving his very life . . . for me</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIU8mwrU2mo_FtE85eSWKf2CcpOkuPlYYChaImYmbZBIvgwYoToYUH1kmK6oct9xZHrCiNTySDoq7QCE5Mbts3Wo2AlZnZebWYJGJvO2AwNLlsNQRH4ljwjAldjVz_2eL9ntGDqcTwvGih/s1600/crucifix.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="269" j6="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIU8mwrU2mo_FtE85eSWKf2CcpOkuPlYYChaImYmbZBIvgwYoToYUH1kmK6oct9xZHrCiNTySDoq7QCE5Mbts3Wo2AlZnZebWYJGJvO2AwNLlsNQRH4ljwjAldjVz_2eL9ntGDqcTwvGih/s320/crucifix.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div></span>tom in ohiohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14204732406904344969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2209105567409042021.post-31441624374908917762011-02-18T15:55:00.001-05:002011-02-22T13:35:47.827-05:00How come . . . ?How many have followed the conversion of Planned Parenthood worker <a href="http://www.abbyjohnson.org/">Abby Johnson</a>? It's a pretty cool story. <br />
<br />
So here is my question. When the <a href="http://www.aboutabortions.com/Confess.html">Bernard Nathansons</a> and even the <a href="http://roenomore.org/core.htm">Norma McGorveys</a> (the plaintiff in Roe v. Wade) and now the Abby Johnsons see the light and become pro-life, why is their conversion to pro-life so often accompanied by conversion to the Catholic Church.<br />
<br />
Do evangelicals know this? Does it give them pause? Would it perhaps be something that might change how many bible-only folks think about the ancient faith (the Catholic one)?<br />
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What do evangelicals think when <a href="http://liveaction.org/">Lila Rose</a>--who has done more than anyone else I can think of to expose the evil of Planned Parenthood's agenda--embraces the Catholic faith? Does it put any kind of dent in the "Whore of Babylon" myths so rampant in the evangelical world? Does it cause them to stop and re-consider their position?<br />
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Any curiosity out there at all?<br />
<br />
A parallel question arises in light of the faith of the Scalia-Thomas-Roberts and Alito supreme court quartet, all of them pro-life, all of them devout Catholics. <br />
<br />
just wondering . . . is the wall between us that high that evangelicals can't see this sort of thing?<br />
<br />
tom in ohio<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYpFaUXGom_FhmCMIr3braLUIOjcjJOzOw8y9ZWx_2HRh3lADA_MGLY242OWK5hek9o_trlfqzrysZFdr-4rfG84criHR-Ly-fu9qZft-k6FPuHbXrmpce-sgy5w8I20MG173WPbvZVy3z/s1600/baby+in+the+womb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="292" j6="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYpFaUXGom_FhmCMIr3braLUIOjcjJOzOw8y9ZWx_2HRh3lADA_MGLY242OWK5hek9o_trlfqzrysZFdr-4rfG84criHR-Ly-fu9qZft-k6FPuHbXrmpce-sgy5w8I20MG173WPbvZVy3z/s320/baby+in+the+womb.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>tom in ohiohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14204732406904344969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2209105567409042021.post-89301388378433911892011-02-17T22:44:00.000-05:002011-02-18T00:30:17.878-05:00The Prayers of Heaven<div class="MsoNormal">A while back, six years ago actually, I went to the movie <em>The Passion of the Christ</em> with friends: Protestant friends. Afterwards, we went out to a local tavern and enjoyed what turned out to be quite lively and pleasant conversation. One of the participants in the conversation, a good friend, made the comment, “in <em>The Passion of the Christ</em>, we were presented with the great beauty of Mary’s humanity, not the picture of <em>some saint</em>.” This comment struck me as quite incongruous. What is there about Mary’s humanity, her “humanness” as it were, which would contradict her being recognized as a saint, a resident of heaven? What sort of understanding of the Catholic canon of saints did my friend’s opinion reflect?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a name='more'></a><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I am a convert from evangelical Protestantism to Catholicism. Such conversions do not happen overnight. From the first uncanny inkling that there night be something to this Catholic Church, to the joy of being received into her, many tumultuous years went by. It all began with reading a book by Alan Schreck, <em>Catholic and Christian</em>, which presents Catholic explanations on a number of topics typically misunderstood by Protestants. The explanations seemed quite reasonable, and, as I weighed them one by one in my mind, they initiated a development, slowly but surely, which would eventually change my Christian views completely.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I began to read about Christianity from a Catholic point of view, from authors such as G.K. Chesterton, John Henry Newman, Karl Adam, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Hans Urs von Balthazar, Joseph Pieper, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Avery Dulles, Patrick Madrid, Peter Kreeft, Thomas Howard, David Currie, Karl Keating, James Pearce, Scott Hahn, etc. They made some very strong arguments for the truth of Catholicism. I also discovered the very early Church Fathers: St. Clement, St. Irenaeus, St. Justin Martyr, St. Cyprian, Tertullian, Origin, who were members of the pre-Constantine Church of the Catacombs. It was very hard, but I had to admit it was true; the very early Church was many things, and opinions vary as to what those things mean for us today, but it was <em>not</em> Protestant. The Church gathered around the Eucharist, which was a re-presentation of the Sacrifice on Calvary. The Eucharist was heaven come to earth; a true communion with the living God, whose very Son had taken on human flesh. To worship in such a Church was to touch, to taste, to see and to know the Supernatural, the Eternal, and the All-powerful in the bread and the wine become His Flesh and Blood. Unity was expressed around the office and authority of the bishop. The bishop of Rome exercised an authority which was different from the other bishops, not just in degree, but in kind. No, this was not the Protestant church.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">As each issue presented itself I would study, consulting both orthodox Catholic sources, as well as the best of Protestant arguments against the Catholic position. And I was in a position to do so; I was a tenured faculty member at Trinity International University in Deerfield Illinois, one of the leading Evangelical Protestant institutions in the world. I had access to an excellent library and to some of the best-trained minds in the Evangelical scene. Over time, a pattern emerged. With almost every issue, I would begin to see some good sense in what the Church teaches. I began to notice that my thinking up to that point had been founded, at least in part, on misconcemptions or false assumptions. This was disturbing. The whole reason I became a Christian in the first place was based on conviction that Christianity was true. As I persevered in study it became clear that many Protestant arguments against Catholic doctrines such as the visible Church, the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the authority of a bishop, the authority of the Pope, Purgatory, salvation by faith formed in love, and finally Mary, the Rosary, and the communion of saints are based upon misperceptions, exaggerations, and even purposeful misrepresentations of what the Church really teaches. I began to realize that I had been misled into a way of thinking which was not entirely free of bigotry and unexamined anti-Catholic bias, with its own prejudice and its own intolerance.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So when my friend made her comment about the saints I suspected she was operating under of one of those classic Protestant misconceptions. She had been raised in a very conservative branch of the Lutheran Church. It has been my experience that some pretty big accusations are brought against the Catholic Church by people from such denominations. My friend had likely been told that Catholics are guilty of idol worship, necromancy, salvation by works, and being duped by a Roman power-monger. Such biases run deep.</div><div class="MsoNormal">It is exciting and humbling when someone you know and respect asks about your faith. But answering takes time, it can’t be done quickly, certainly not all at one sitting. The Catholic faith is both colorful and complex, and all of its various topics and themes are intertwined. The issues are so closely related that addressing one of them immediately necessitates at least skirting a number of others. In reality however, each conversation begins with one topic at a time; in this case the topic was Mary and the saints.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The following represents much of what I said, and more of what I would have said if there had been time, in attempting to answer to my friend’s question.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">What, or . . . who, in fact, is a saint?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In the real world of language use, words develop in such a way that one word often gets used to cover more than one situation. A chair can be sat on, it can be a person in an academic department, or it can be a verb designating what that person does, she <em>chairs</em>. A table can be where you find a chair, it can be a graph in a book or a verb used to express what the chair proposes when an issue needs to be postponed until later, or perhaps forever; a proposal is <em>tabled.</em> The real world of vocabulary development is alive; words take on multiple meanings over time. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The word <em>saint</em> is used in the scriptures to designate someone who is holy, set apart. More specifically it designates someone who has been set apart by his faith in Jesus Christ. Thus, there is a sense in which every Christian is a saint, set apart by the Word of God. At the same time there is another sense which speaks to a future perfection of the holiness of those in heaven, where no unclean thing shall ever be. In describing the heavenly Jerusalem St. John declares, “But nothing unclean shall enter it, nor any one who practices abomination or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life” (Rev. 21: 27).</div><div class="content">In other words there is a holiness every Christian still looks forward to. When a person enters Paradise (like the thief on the cross), it can be said that his holiness has become complete. Such a person is then a saint in the second sense of the word. But we on earth, who still populate this valley of tears, are saints only in the first, less perfect sense.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Paul makes a strong statement about that future perfection, which we hope one day to enjoy: “And I am sure that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6).</div><div class="MsoNormal">Quite early on in the Church’s pilgrimage, as the generation of the apostles began to pass away, members of the Church, aware of the great power of the prayers possessed by leading figures in the Church, realized that these prayers would not cease after death. One can well imagine possible conversations with Peter, John, Mary Magdalene, or quite pointedly, Mary the Mother of Our Lord, “you will be in Paradise! You will be with Jesus, will you please ask Him to heal my brother of his leprosy”, or “will you ask Our Father to protect our children from the anti-Christian errors they are hearing on the streets” etc. The early Christians particularly addressed such prayer requests to those about to suffer a martyr’s death.<br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">According to St. Paul, Jesus Christ is in heaven, seated at the right hand of the Father. He always intercedes for us: “Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died – more than that, who was raised to life – is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.” (Rom. 8:34) When the saints arrive in heaven they join in. They do as they see the master doing. Indeed, who would they be if they did not intercede for us?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Furthermore, Christ promised that those who were faithful on earth would be given commensurate responsibilities in heaven: “His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness.’’’ (Matt. 25:23) Of course, in heaven, the great task, the one into which all enter to greater or lesser degree, with greater or lesser authority, depending on their faithfulness with “few things,” is the ministry of intercession.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Lastly, there is a track record throughout time of those prayers being answered. Granted, the testimony is riddled, as all human records are, with some fabrications and exaggerations. Nevertheless, innumerable supernatural interventions, miraculous healings, and other wondrous occurrences dot the landscape inhabited by those who pray with the inhabitants of heaven. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Thus, it is quite appropriate to call the citizens of heaven <em>saints</em>. Granted, the use of the word is slightly different from Paul’s usage in his letters, which address citizens not of heaven, but of Ephesus (Eph. 1:2), Philippi (Phil. 1:1), or Colossae (Col. 1:1) but it is closely related. The sainthood or sanctification of those on earth is not yet complete, whereas the process for those above is in fact complete.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It is appropriate to enlist the prayers of the saints in our lives. We are One Body in Him who is the God of the living—not the dead—the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Yes, of course, a saint now glorified in heaven is a wonder to behold. Have you ever read C.S. Lewis <em>The Great Divorce</em>? Glorified beings are . . . well, <em>glorious</em>! So, of course Mary is sometimes depicted in all her heavenly glory, beginning in Revelation 12 and continuing throughout history. But, in response to the initial observation about Mary, we look to her as the saint of saints, the captain of the heavenly prayer team, the Queen of heaven, <em>because</em> of her humility, her femininity and her motherliness, on earth, <em>not in spite of it</em>. There is no contradiction here. Never was a mother more perfectly motherly than the Mother of Our Lord. She is now regarded as a saint because of the beautiful and, we believe, perfect humanity she possesses: a humanity which, while on earth, was fragile, neither all-knowing nor all-powerful; a human-ness which depended totally upon God in its weakness, neediness and vulnerability.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So, yes! when the depiction of Mary’s humanity in Gibson’s film is admired, we Catholics chime right in, “Yeah! What a Mom!” When it is implied that this is somehow in contradiction to what we believe about her as a saint, we ask, somewhat dumbfounded, “huh?” </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The tapestry of Catholic thought is one whole cloth. It is difficult to talk about one part of it without drawing upon other parts. So, quite naturally other questions followed. My friend also challenged me about our belief that Mary is and always has been without sin. “Obviously”, she asserted, “you see her as some kind of God, and not as just a human mother, because no one is without sin except God Himself.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Is that true? To attribute sinlessness, purity, or innocence to an individual is to claim deity for them? I think not. Adam and Eve were certainly without sin until the Fall. Believing that is not tantamount to deifying our first parents. So, it is <em>possible</em> to believe that someone is without sin without deifying them, even in Reformed traditions like Lutheranism.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In heaven there is no impure thing. We hope we will be in Heaven. Logically, we will have to be, in fact—in our very essence—pure, without sin. We will be so because God, by Grace, has made us so. It is <em>His</em> work that makes us pure, clean, and without blemish or fault; in a word, holy. Listen to the Apostle Paul, “And I am sure that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6). <em>Believing this is not the same as saying we will one day be more than human, nor does it provoke the accusation that we think we will become “some kind of God”. </em>By the same token, claiming that God preserved Mary from the stain of original sin does not deify her.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The Church has always believed that Mary’s sanctity is in a special category; that the complete sanctification which <em>we</em> are given in heaven, <em>she</em> was given in advance, by Grace, in order to become the Mother of God’s only Son. She is the one human being—except for her Son, the God-man—who turned out exactly as she was always supposed to. The detour through the pit of sin was circumvented, ultimately by the power of her Son’s salvific work on the Cross and by the Grace that flows from it. She was perfectly human, but by Grace, by Grace <em>alone</em>, she was preserved from the horrible stain of original sin.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Throughout Church history the Fathers and Doctors may have disagreed about when Mary’s purity began (at conception, just after conception, at birth), but they have all agreed, with startling unanimity, that her purity was and is unique. This has always been believed in the Church. We believe it as firmly as we do the Incarnation—an idea which is considerably more elaborate and, in the truest sense of the word, <em>fantastic</em>. You believe the one dogma, the difficult one, the one which requires some real work; God became a man! You should also believe the other: God preserved His Son’s earthly Mother, who carried Him into the world, from the stain of original sin. You swallow a camel and strain at a gnat.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">To conclude, it would be good to point out that the Marian dogmas serve one purpose and one purpose alone: Christology. We believe that the truths about Mary serve not only to preserve and protect, but also to elucidate and illuminate the teachings about Jesus. They protect our view of Christ from dissolving into a Christ who is not only less God but also one who is certainly less human; a Christ who is less of a Savior. My observation of the non-Catholic world confirms this; <em>lose Mary and the fullness of Catholic teaching about her, and eventually you lose the fullness of Christ.</em> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Indeed, in Gibson’s <em>Passion of the Christ,</em> Mary makes all of the things we believe about Jesus come alive. That is exactly what the Rosary does as well, or any other practice of Marian devotion. The Son is born through, and becomes one of us through His Mother. When we see through her eyes, we truly see the Son, not only fully God, but fully man. Gibson’s movie is in this regard authentically <em>Catholic.</em></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div>tom in ohiohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14204732406904344969noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2209105567409042021.post-63404690711267403032011-02-17T17:34:00.002-05:002011-02-19T11:13:05.773-05:00Lila Rose's Sting Operations: condemn or commend?<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Much conversation has ensued in the blogoshere about whether <a href="http://liveaction.org/lila-rose"><span style="color: blue;">Lila Rose</span></a> sins by presenting a persona other than her own to Planned Parenthood clinics in her "sting operations." Through her actions much truth comes out, but that does not <i>necessarily</i> legitimize the way in which comes out.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There was a long thread <a href="http://www.bustedhalo.com/features/building-a-culture-of-lie"><span style="color: blue;">here</span></a> of responses to an initial article by Dawn Eden and William Doino Jr. Eden and Doino take the clear position that lying is always wrong, intrinsically. Mark Shea <a href="http://www.ncregister.com/blog/dawn-eden-is-right-darn-it"><span style="color: blue;">concurs</span></a>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">When something is intrinsically evil it cannot be condoned even if it seems to bring about good. Is this the case with Lila Rose's "stings"? Are they evil?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Firstly, I wonder about the the drama of it all, the playacting that Lila and her crew do. They pretend to be persons they are not, dressing and talking like a whore and her pimp, or dressing and talking like a troubled 14-year old who is being abused by a 30-year old man. They are playing the role that a real whore and a real pimp, or a real teenager would also play (albeit not before a camera at least no voluntarily), that is, they are representing something that really does exist, something that is neither phantom nor make-believe. They know this, and they also know that when the sting is over they will take off their masks and make-up and return to their lives. When the sting is over the deception ends, the purpose is not deception, but rather the opposite! And this purpose is not thwarted.</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><hr align="center" size="8" width="100%" /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Secondly, one must ask: When does the practice of deception become sinful? Is <i>all</i> deception sinful? In war time don't submarines hide under the water? In police work don't undercover agents pose as non-policemen? When Corrie Ten Boom hid Jews wasn't she being, in a certain sense, deceitful, right from the get-go, long before anyone interrogated her? She pretended to the Germans to not be hiding Jews. The very act of hiding carries with it the will to deceive. Is it the speaking the deception make it sinful? Is that the test, when it is spoken? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">What about a Joseph who hides his identity from his brothers as well as his ability to both speak and understand their language. This is intrinsically evil? What about Rahab, the harlot in Joshua 2 who hides Jewish spies, lies to the authorities about it, and earns a place in the bible hall of fame in Hebrews 11 for doing so. Augustine claims Rahab was wrong to lie but that she did not know better because she was a Pagan, not a Jew and did not know the 10 commandments. That seems weak to me, especially given her reward in the New Testament. Furthermore, the the law forbidding lying certainly belongs to the category of "natural"--things we can't not know, laws that don't require revelation for us to be bound by them. In other words even Pagans know it is wrong to lie--and so do Hindus and Buddhists. The golden rule (I won't lie to you because I don't want you to lie to me) does not require any "thus says the Lord;" it is written in the human heart.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Was Strider sinful in hiding his identity from the Hobbits at Bree? Were the twin boys Cor and Corin in C.S. Lewis's <i>The Horse and His Boy </i>sinning for masquerading for a good part of the story? All of the great stories of heroes masking their true identity now need to be banned? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">When Jesus tells us to hide the fact that we are subjecting ourselves to the rigors of fasting by oiling our hair and washing our face, is he asking us to do something sinful? When the Christians let Paul escape down the walls of Damascus they did so at night, very much hiding their actions from the eye of the authorities. Isn't that deceptive? Does one really think they were obliged, if asked, to tell the authorities which direction he went? Or . . . they needed to have command of verbal trickery to tell a truth that does not help the authorities find him? Really? Where does this end?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">To me it appears that lying to protect the life of the innocent, far from being sinful, can even be </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">virtuous.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">When it comes to "sting operation" journalism such as Lila Rose's I am not at all convinced that </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">it is intrinsically evil. The attempts to do end up like those defending absolute pacifism. They do not work.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Tom in Ohio</span></div>tom in ohiohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14204732406904344969noreply@blogger.com6