I’m all for more accurately describing the political divide on Bible-based matters.
Strike “Liberal” and use the words “wrong.”
Replace “conservative” with the word “right.”
It should be a mortal sin just to be registered Democrat.
That is if the Bible is important in the “right versus wrong.”

AND, are we forgetting “David,” what would happen to Catholic Clergy AND politicians if they actually were to “go” to Iraq and stand against the violence while trying to end the war that the Muslim Jihadists are waging against other Muslims and EVERYONE ELSE that are NOT Muslims?
There is no Iraq War.
There are just Muslim terrorists doing what Muslim terrorists do. Only in Iraq they get to do it daily with the typical non-opposition from other Muslims – that do not want to use murder for Islam – and non-Muslims that never uses murder to live out their way of worship.
Democrats use the deaths in Iraq to spread their secular-humanist ideology (SHI should replace “Liberal”) coupled with high taxation and socialism and now they are asking Catholic Clergy to join them in that.
We see what the fruits of their anti-war sixties rhetoric has brought to fruition and it’s far worse than just gay marriage and slaughtering the inconvenient unborn. We are just steps away from being a socialist nation with only a few more Democrats needed to snuff out the American dream, and replace it with a Marxist nightmare.
These Democrats will have to wait until there is another Pope if they want to sell-out Christianity. Right now there is a real Christian as Pontiff. Benedict holds to the truths that are evident in the New Testament’s Apostolic authenticity. So these Democrats led by the likes Kennedy and Pelosi are delusional if they think that Christians are going to join them in cutting and pasting Biblical truth and replacing it with a lie to support the Democrat agenda.
Yes, yes, let’s replace “Liberal” and “Conservative” with more truthful labeling. It has always been a right versus wrong struggle anyway.
David, how does it feel to “have to” get your daughter inoculated against HPV? Never forget that Liberals want to mandate it. (I do not wonder why.)
It is not conservative “values” that has brought us to the point where virginity and chaste morality is so rare that “every” girl child needs to be protected from the diseases of death that promiscuity brings. As is evident of course in the ubiquity of Democrats opposing abstinence promoting education.
Nice world these Liberal-Democrats have built huh?
And they want help “now” from Christian Clergy. What gall, what an effrontery to every Christian that believes the Gospel.
On this topic David, you are on the path to be able to discern who and what is in the wrong, and who and what is in the right.
I cast my vote that Democrats are in the wrong.

Oh, goodness – I don’t think you have gotten what David was talking about at all. And you seem determined not to do so.
The bishops have written many documents on social justice – regarding war, economic justice, nuclear proliferation, the environment, abortion, capital punishment etc. The Vatican has gone on record to oppose this war. It fits non of the criteria for a “just war” and now the discussion among Catholic moral theologians is whether any war with the weapons being used could be considered a just war. I recently read an article decrying all war as immoral and that the idea of a just war no longer exists.
These American bishops have been loud about some subjects and silent on others. I pray that they will speak to this war – immoral as abortion.

No, YOU don’t understand. if you even hint at agreeing in any way with a Liberal ON ANYTHING . . . they take it as a sign of approving every reprehensible “other” thing that they demand to implement on others.
Just a smile towards them can result in horror.
I know this left versus right thing very well. I also know what damage is done to unsuspecting innocent people and to people that let their guard down even for a moment.
Democrats are no joking matter.
And I also do not agree with or support America fighting for Muslim countries to establish more Muslims countries. President Bush was “wrong” about Iraq and Iraqi’s.
Once American soldiers dragged Saddam out of that hole, he should have thrown him to the people of Iraq off of the back of a Humvee as American forces crossed the border out of Iraq.
Not one American should be fighting for an Islamic country. The exact same way that not one American should be supporting Democrats in the Liberal causes.

On the substantive point of your article David, thank you. I think your analysis of the church (and christianity in general) as being beyond (above!) left and right is quite correct.
I’m not sure about your disturbance though – I get the point about hypocrisy and I largely agree, but shouldn’t we want the church to be actively involved in challenging policy that they believe to be wrong. e.g. no-one would condemn Martin Luther Kings leadership of the civil rights movement? Apols if I’m missing your point here.

We have learned to view all issues on the false continuum of left/right. There are posters here who worry me with their rather viscious view of the left. The fact is – we are human beings – all of us – beloved of God by virtue of creation and we are to love all others as outselves. The most revolutionary thing Jesus said was to love our enemies. The single most original moral statement ever. We live in a world where powers and principalities manipulate our fears in order to distract us from what they are doing. But, it eventually comes down to loving my neighbor, loving my enemy, feeding the poor, being a peacemaker, and being in relationship with this Creator who calls me toward a Kingdom of peace. The left/right divisions are created by media for the most part and the fear imposed on all sides is creating people who believe one side or the other is evil. Such people are broken and must be loved like any other. However, we do not have an obligation to read or acknowledge such nonsense.

Thinker’s last post is a good one. Donny clearly has a passion for Jesus, and that is good to see. However, it seems to me to be the zeal of someone like the apostle Peter…often incorrect though not failing. But just as Jesus commanded the sword be put away, so must we insist the sharp tongues be put away.

It seems that lately David has had to work as hard at cleaning up the comments as he does in putting out the original blog!
We notice your efforts, David. Thank you.

I suppose the question becomes – what is political versus what is teaching of the church based on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I find more to support nonviolence, feeding the hungry, visiting the prisoner and living in communion with one another than I do about abortion or gay marriage.
At the time of the early church it was a tradition to put out children who were deformed or perhaps femalle or inconvenient to die. Quite early on Christians stopped this practice which waas culturally accepted and even sought out the children who had been abandoned,. In the church of the early middle ages there were even ceremonies which joined couples of same sex together – unbelievable.
The early Christians did not allow members to be part of the Roman army and if a soldier decided to become Christian, that solder left the army because he could not kill another. Constantine of course was instrumental in ending that practice. The early church was non violenct, cared for those who had been cast out – including infants,. We know when we became violent. Orders of religious began to care for those cast out and the joining of two of the same sex was a rather subtle and silent tradition. I am not sure when the church turned on gay people. I just know that Jesus had nothing to say about it. He did die a death of the utter victim – and did not return in vengeance. It did not matter. We were to live rather than die. But first we had to die to ourselves, our biases, our hatreds and love one another. See those Christians – how they love one another. That’s kind of hard to live out. We saw it lived out in the deaths of 7 little Amish girls last winter. I have seen it lived out in the mother of a murdered child. To pretend that some things are holy aand some profane is to almost spit in the face of a God who created everything and everyone out of love. it’s either all holy or non of it is. Some of it becomes broken, but in creation, God is love.
We have created a sort of civil religion iin this country – one in which patriotism and faith get all mixed up together. They were never meant to be one. They should be in tension with one another. The last few years that tension has become loosened in some places and tightened in others. it is not the way to either civil or religious progress.

Very interesting information, Thinker. Obviously you have studied history. I have been trying to study more first century(and thereabouts) history in order to better understand Christ’s life and message. I keep coming back to the idea that he was truly a pacifist, but that he also understood the limited ability of most people to really comprehend the long view of that idea, that ultimately the only way humanity can survive, much less evolve, is to live in peace. Yet we keep trying to instill peace by blowing up each other.I think we first must learn to love and live in peace with our neighbors, regardless of their color, sexual orientation, politics, etc, before we can even begin to learn to broaden our horizons and live in peace with people half way around the world. We have a long way to go.

Thinker, Thinker, Thinker,
All of that verbiage just to continue the heresy and corruption of Liberal theology.
Christians dealt with sexual immorality (which same-gender sex was classified as) because it poisons the person trying to walk closer with Christ. And certainly the person trying to encourage others to sin was dealt with even more negatively.
And dear Thinker, Jesus left no option about “marriage” but the one His Father implemented “from the beginning” and never to be altered by mankind. Ever read the Gospels? There is no such thing as same-gender marriage on earth and of course there is no such thing as marriage at all in heaven. According to the words we have quoted of Jesus.
Something the people at the start of the Dark Ages wouldn’t have read in the New Testaments they did not, or were not. allowed to read. No doubt corrupted the innocent and ignorant Church body with your alleged same-gender marriages. It was predicted to occur by Christ Jesus and of course His apostles too.
Once the words of Christ Jesus and the Apostles were better known to the populace, then the corruption were better highlighted.
The Church never “turned on gays” Thinker. How 2007 PC is that.
Paul, Peter, Jude, John, James and Luke showed that it was the individual that sought never to repent or follow the Gospel that never faced the Church in the first place. It is a teaching of Jesus that we Christians not force ourselves on people that reject the Gospsl.
Sexual “orientation” is not ignored by the New Testament. In fact Paul goes out of his way to invent his own word to bring no doubt about same gender sexual behavior being reprehensible. Arsenokotai, was Paul creating a neologism to help us deal with spin doctors of the 20th and 21st centuries. People he knew all too well back in his day. Seeing the tactics that gays and lesbians use today to work their way into positions of authority over people and you can see how back in the Dark Ages, same-gender “unions” may have been inflicted on and within the Church.
But the New Testament writers completely rejected same-gender sexuality and more importantly the behavior. If anyone turned on Christians it began with Nero and his legion of Pagan Roman authoritarians. That is just a fact of history. No matter how politely you write in PC jargon Thinker, your views are not shared, nor agreed with, by the people of the New Testament Church.
If you care to study First Century history (outside the Bible), please study Nero’s GLBT life and lifestyle (well at least GBT), and common Roman sexual behaviors and practices and how utterly and absolutely incompatible they were, and still are, propagated into the Christian Church.
Same-gender sexual acts is antithetical to the morality espoused by Christ Jesus (Who left no doubt about proper sexuality in his divorce/marriage preaching) and of course there is not one Apostle giving even a shadow of a doubt about the incompatibilty between those living a same-gender sexual lifestyle and what they needed to repent of and stop doing when becoming a Christian. Christ and His followers were pacifists for sure, completely opposite to the Roman elite and soldier classes. yes, yes, by all means study Roman history.
Living in peace with our neighbors does not mean that Christians give them the impression that we encourage their immorality. Ever read the New Testament? Jesus threatens people with a very drastic and dramatic allegorical warning.
This is the perfect place to reiterate the “adversarial” status of todays current Gay culture and community towards the Christian culture and community where the two cannot be joined, nor ever has been. Thinking about history, compare todays LBGT community to the Roman Empire (and the sexual behaviors of that populace) that persecuted the Christians of Peter and Paul’s day.
If you want to go back a bit further into history, study Sappho. She wrote about it. Though most of her immoral stories were destroyed by the Church (hey! I guess they were not always LGBT fiendly huh?) Oddly though, supposedly Sappho killed herself over a guy she lusted fot and couldn’t have.
History is a wonderful place of enlightening knowledge. Something God says is perilous for His people not to possess. I couldn’t agree more.
Like the Bible has written in it: There is nothing new under the sun.
Oil and water. Ever heard that one too?

Gay people make up under 2% of the population. Methinks thou dost protest too much, Donny….

And they’re in politics, the movies, the news, and on TV so often, you would think the numbers were turned around. And always they’re portrayed as so saintly. Of course. Reality is, a eh-hum, a tad bit more stark and uncomely.
And “Gay people,” are not a minority class. “It” homosexuality, is a behavior and an activity.
Me thinks there is a Gay Agenda. And Massachusetts and California schools systems leave no doubteth.
Methinks me has heard the methinks you protest too much slogan too much. And yet, their agenda moves gruelingly along without ever taking into consideration the indecency of it all. “It” never takes a fast from politics. And never has.

“And they’re in politics, the movies, the news, and on TV …”
AND we live on YOUR street, too, Donny. Scared yet?