March 1, 2012 - by Gary DeMar
A lesbian is attacking the Catholic Church because a priest denied her communion at her mother’s funeral. Liberals are outraged that the church would act like a church. Liberals denounce churches when they speak out on social issues, but these same liberals don’t have any problem poking their noses into the jurisdictional business of the church when something the church does rattles their personal sense of perverted justice.
Liberals keep coming back to the claim that they are for separating church and state as long as they get to make the rules as to what this means and how the principle is applied. They argue that this is a constitutional provision. We aren’t a ‘theocracy,’ they continually remind us. Hogwash. Liberals want to dominate every sphere of society, including what churches teach.
Anyone familiar with the Constitution knows the words “separation of church and state” are not found in the Constitution. While the phrase was made popular in an 1802 letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to a group of Baptists, it was not unique to him.
Keeping the civil and ecclesiastical spheres jurisdictionally separate is a biblical idea that Protestant Reformers Martin Luther (1483–1546), John Calvin (1509–1564), and other expounded up. There are laws that apply to church government and laws that apply to civil government. For example, while murder is wrong in both church and state, only the state has the jurisdictional authority to punish a murderer since it has the power of the sword (Rom. 13:1–4). On the other hand, the state does not have jurisdiction over the church in the areas of church doctrine and discipline.
If a church member sins, the church has the jurisdictional authority to discipline that person, to the point of removal from the assembly (1 Cor. 5:1–13; see Matt. 18:15–18). The sin in Corinth was of a consensual sexual nature, “that someone has his father’s wife” (v. 1), similar to homosexuality which the Bible condemns in a number of places (Lev. 18:22; 20:13; Rom. 1:24–27; 1 Cor. 6:9–11; 1 Tim. 1:8–10). Removing someone from the assembly by definition includes barring that person from the Lord’s Table, or in Roman Catholic parlance, from receiving “Holy Communion.”
Barbara Johnson, a self-admitted lesbian who is living with another woman and engaging in sex with her, is living in open sin. The church has every right to bar her from taking Communion. I don’t know if the church has officially excommunicated her, but if it hasn’t, it should begin the process to make it official. Paul writes, “clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump” (1 Cor. 5:7). He goes on to say, “I wrote to you not to associate with any so-called brother if he is an immoral person . . . not even to eat with such a one” (v. 11).
I will agree that the barring should not have taken place during a funeral. If there is any rebuke to the church it’s not for handling this discipline issue earlier, first, privately, and second, with a formal and public excommunication . The church might extend the procedure to Nancy Pelosi as well, a pro-homosexual and pro-abortion congresswoman who openly flaunts her support for these sins.
A lesbian is attacking the Catholic Church because a priest denied her communion at her mother’s funeral. Liberals are outraged that the church would act like a church. Liberals denounce churches when they speak out on social issues, but these same liberals don’t have any problem poking their noses into the jurisdictional business of the church when something the church does rattles their personal sense of perverted justice.
Liberals keep coming back to the claim that they are for separating church and state as long as they get to make the rules as to what this means and how the principle is applied. They argue that this is a constitutional provision. We aren’t a ‘theocracy,’ they continually remind us. Hogwash. Liberals want to dominate every sphere of society, including what churches teach.
Anyone familiar with the Constitution knows the words “separation of church and state” are not found in the Constitution. While the phrase was made popular in an 1802 letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to a group of Baptists, it was not unique to him.
Keeping the civil and ecclesiastical spheres jurisdictionally separate is a biblical idea that Protestant Reformers Martin Luther (1483–1546), John Calvin (1509–1564), and other expounded up. There are laws that apply to church government and laws that apply to civil government. For example, while murder is wrong in both church and state, only the state has the jurisdictional authority to punish a murderer since it has the power of the sword (Rom. 13:1–4). On the other hand, the state does not have jurisdiction over the church in the areas of church doctrine and discipline.
If a church member sins, the church has the jurisdictional authority to discipline that person, to the point of removal from the assembly (1 Cor. 5:1–13; see Matt. 18:15–18). The sin in Corinth was of a consensual sexual nature, “that someone has his father’s wife” (v. 1), similar to homosexuality which the Bible condemns in a number of places (Lev. 18:22; 20:13; Rom. 1:24–27; 1 Cor. 6:9–11; 1 Tim. 1:8–10). Removing someone from the assembly by definition includes barring that person from the Lord’s Table, or in Roman Catholic parlance, from receiving “Holy Communion.”
Barbara Johnson, a self-admitted lesbian who is living with another woman and engaging in sex with her, is living in open sin. The church has every right to bar her from taking Communion. I don’t know if the church has officially excommunicated her, but if it hasn’t, it should begin the process to make it official. Paul writes, “clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump” (1 Cor. 5:7). He goes on to say, “I wrote to you not to associate with any so-called brother if he is an immoral person . . . not even to eat with such a one” (v. 11).
I will agree that the barring should not have taken place during a funeral. If there is any rebuke to the church it’s not for handling this discipline issue earlier, first, privately, and second, with a formal and public excommunication . The church might extend the procedure to Nancy Pelosi as well, a pro-homosexual and pro-abortion congresswoman who openly flaunts her support for these sins.
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