{"id":2393,"date":"2016-10-22T15:39:00","date_gmt":"2016-10-22T04:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kmgit.com\/testbuzz\/?p=2393"},"modified":"2016-10-22T15:39:00","modified_gmt":"2016-10-22T04:39:00","slug":"church-and-division","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/kmgit.com\/testbuzz\/church-and-division\/","title":{"rendered":"Church And Division"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Jesuit<\/a>
Jesuit Priest Frank Brennan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

THE scripture for last Thursday was the gospel from Luke 12, on Christ coming to bring division on earth – placing father against son and son against father and so on. It is often found to be a confusing message and, more so, because it is one of several gospel texts that point to division with the coming of Jesus.<\/p>\n

The first, most obvious and accurate, interpretation (exegesis) of these texts is that they point to a situation where several members, but not all, of a family are converted to Christ. The consequence being that families were divided by religion.<\/p>\n

However, it seems that the lens of today reveals a different interpretation, namely the division, even within families, when some accept Jesus Christ, his values and the church way of life and faith that follows.<\/p>\n

Another, less obvious, division is that between the Catholic Church and contemporary society.<\/p>\n

This is shown most clearly in the matter of personal morality, marriage and the Catholic identity of church institutions, including schools, hospitals, aged care, adoption agencies and overseas outreach.<\/p>\n

It is often the case that these ministries of the Church are faced with the difficult choice of remaining faithful to church teaching and practice while living and functioning in a totally pluralistic society where a variety of lifestyles and values demand equal rights, including those regarding employment and access.<\/p>\n

This leads to a ‘conflict of rights’ that is increasingly pressuring Catholic ministries to compromise their values.<\/p>\n

For example, in the UK today, the law insists that all registered adoption agencies, including Catholic ones, provide a service that does not discriminate based on same-sex couples and heterosexual couples.<\/p>\n

But a Catholic agency, acting in what it deems the best interests of the child, will prefer to adopt to heterosexual couples.<\/p>\n

The point, now a matter of law, is whether this constitutes discrimination against gay and lesbian couples. The church suggests that it does not.<\/p>\n

There will still be other adoption agencies that will adopt to same-sex couples. This is also the opinion of Jesuit Father Frank Brennan.<\/p>\n

“It is legislative overreach for the state to insist on uniform non-discrimination for all adoption agencies. If all schools or even the majority of schools were faith-based, there would be a stronger case for anti-discrimination provisions applying more broadly in employment situations for teachers. With the present mix, I thought the Victorian Parliament got the law right in 2011.”<\/p>\n

So it seems that division has never entirely left Christianity. On these issues and many more the Church will find itself increasingly at odds with a fast secularising society that seeks to expand its own boundaries and limit those of what are sometimes considered an out-dated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THE scripture for last Thursday was the gospel from Luke 12, on Christ coming to bring division on earth – placing father against son and son against father and so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-notices"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/kmgit.com\/testbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/kmgit.com\/testbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/kmgit.com\/testbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kmgit.com\/testbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kmgit.com\/testbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2393"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/kmgit.com\/testbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2395,"href":"http:\/\/kmgit.com\/testbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2393\/revisions\/2395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/kmgit.com\/testbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kmgit.com\/testbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kmgit.com\/testbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}