One of the most unpopular aspects of the New Testament is that it contains many gray areas. There are practical reasons for that… you cannot have a monocultural global religion… but more importantly, Christ wants His followers to be transformed into gods. That requires breathing space for initiative and self-determination.
Many people don’t like that. Many people prefer their religion to be a list of rules rather than a fountain of opportunity. Their God is NOT bigger than a bread box, thank you very much. He fits very nicely between Saturday’s nightclub and Sunday’s football game.
Let’s start easy. I don’t disagree with this bishop, but what he didn’t say needs to be said very loudly.
Belgian Bishop Claims Euthanasia Is ‘Not Necessarily’ Morally Wrong
h ttps://www.breitbart.com/faith/2023/10/11/belgian-bishop-claims-euthanasia-is-not-necessarily-morally-wrong/
By Thomas D. Williams, PhD, 11 October 2023
For example, it’s easy to discern that Mr. Williams is an emotionally insecure midwit. He’s smart enough to get a PhD and insecure enough that he wants the world to know.
ROME — Catholic Bishop Johan Bonny of Antwerp, Belgium, has sparked controversy by suggesting that euthanasia is not necessarily morally wrong in all circumstances.
In a recent interview, the progressive Bishop Bonny took aim at the Vatican, asserting that Church leaders are mistaken in teaching that euthanasia is “always an intrinsic evil, whatever the circumstances.”
“This is too simple an answer that leaves no room for discernment,” the bishop said, elaborating, “We will always oppose the wish of some to end a life too prematurely, but we must recognize that a request for euthanasia from a young man of 40 is not equivalent to that of a person of 90 who faces an incurable illness.”
“What do you say to someone who has been affected by an incurable illness for years and who has decided to request euthanasia after talking to their family, their doctor, their loved ones?” Bonny asked.
“We must always refer to the Bible, but nothing is more difficult than interpreting it and applying it to a particular situation without falling into fundamentalism,” he contended. “God relies on our intelligence to fully understand his word.”
That is correct.
The bishop said philosophy has taught him “never to be satisfied with generic black and white answers.”
That is NOT correct. Your philosophy degree and six dollars will buy you a cup of coffee in Kommiefornia, but you still won’t know what a woman is.
“All questions deserve answers adapted to a situation: a moral judgment must always be pronounced according to the concrete situation, the culture, the circumstances, the context,” he said.
The Christian moral judgement on euthanasia, in a vacuum, is that your life belongs to you. God does not want slaves; neither does He want us treating our siblings-in-Christ as slaves. You can choose to live or die. There will be consequences either way, but nowhere in Scripture does God impose a duty to live.
We would, on occasion, have to temporarily renounce Christ, if Christ’s Will for us was longevity.
BUT, that is Christian morality “in a vacuum”.
Saint Pope John Paul II said euthanasia is often accepted out of “misguided pity” but is also “sometimes justified by the utilitarian motive of avoiding costs which bring no return and which weigh heavily on society.”
The boldfaced is where we are in Current Year. In the context of socialized health care, the opportunity to die becomes… very quickly… the duty to die. As soon as government starts paying your medical bills, government will start looking for ways to minimize your medical bills, and cue the Death Panels.
Euthanasia is immoral for the time being, because we are ruled by people who hate us and want us dead and are trying to create as many ways to off us as they can imagine. We should not allow the State to exploit our freedom over death.
That will not always be the situation. And yet, many Christians are so uncomfortable with the spirit of God’s Will that they insist upon the letter of God’s Will. If God was not explicit then Churchian bureaucrats… at the request of the insistently immature… will happily step in to correct God’s mistakes.
This is what they mean, when they say you cannot free a man who was born a slave. Little has changed since Moses wore a veil.
A major cause of church friction is clergy imposing moral codes where God did not, then refusing to change those moral codes as time passes and situations change. Perhaps there was a time when dancing was sexually immoral, but it’s not immoral everywhere and always. Perhaps there was a time when the King James Bible was supernaturally special, but today I can’t hardly read it. I once heard of a promising pro tennis player who decided he was making an idol of tennis, and walked away from the sport. No rule or prophet required him to do that. He simply wanted, to the best of his knowledge, what God wanted.
God will surely reward him for that devotion even if he was mistaken.
But no. Instead of churches being groups of men worshiping God and building up each other, they’re bureaucracies of variable relevance, united only in their certainty that a man should not be permitted to judge his own way through life.
The issue here, is that discernment is DEAD in the Christian Church. Deader than disco. Christians, ESPECIALLY clergy, fail so completely to recognize evil or identify God’s Will in changing situations, that many unbelievers see nothing unique about God.
Do Christians have more stable marriages? No and don’t argue otherwise, because “No” is what they honestly see. Any quoted statistics are secondary. You have not the beginnings of discernment, if when other people think for themselves, your knee-jerk response is “don’t believe your lying eyes”.
Can you tell the difference between a Godly young woman and a Godless young woman without having to ask? No. How often does a “believer” alter his life path specifically because he is a believer? Heh. Unbelievers watch Christians live no differently than non-Christians, and reasonably ask why they should bother with Christ.
I cannot answer them because “come to Jesus, shun His Church” is nearly the same thing as “don’t believe your lying eyes”. The only reason it isn’t, is because the average Christian is lying about being a Christian… but “90% of Christians are faking it” is a hard sell. I myself don’t attend church because I’m a believer. It would be a decent social opportunity; I could make some friends or at least hang out a little; but I would either live the complementarian lie they offer, or be kicked out for denouncing that lie.
And you know me. I’m so quiet. Got no tongue at all.
Discernment isn’t hard, or at least, you can start with the easy stuff like “when is self-killing a bad idea?” or “do I go to Hell if I burn with lust but no woman will marry me?” or “is getting involved in yet another Mideastern war, on behalf of foreigners who hate Jesus, something that Jesus would do? Even if we assume, despite the evidence and history, that their cause is legitimate?”
Or how about, “did God mean what He repeatedly said about women submitting to men and wearing head coverings? Nah, we today are smart enough to know that God secretly wanted us to do the exact opposite, just like the God-hating Marxists are teaching us to.”
IT’S NOT DIFFICULT, CHUCKLEHEADS!!!!
I’m not even asking for action. I’m asking you to make smarter choices about what you choose to believe & say, because it’s frustrating to be associated with morons who say God and do Satan. For serious, the typical “Christian” is two steps* away from believing Christ died so we wouldn’t have to sacrifice chickens on the pentagram any longer.
Christ has already covered any spiritual penalty for the inevitable mistakes you’ll make as you begin to actively participate in God’s plans for humanity. You have godhood to gain, and nothing to lose but your flesh.
…
*Step One: discover what your daughter is being taught at the local government school. Step Two: feel sad for the chicken.
This might be the most Protestant post that I’ve ever seen from you, Gunner. I was hoping the Bishop who “sparked controversy” would be Anglican, but no such luck. So this is a good opportunity to highlight one of the significant differences between traditional Catholic thinking (i.e., not modern Catholic thinking such as what the Bishop said), and Protestant thinking.
Yes, “Christ wants His followers to be transformed into gods”. We agree on this. But what does this transformation look like? I was reminded of a discourse by St. Paul, from Philippians chapter 2:
(link here: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Philippians+2&version=NABRE )
” 3 Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory; rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves, 4 each looking out not for his own interests, but [also] everyone for those of others.
5 Have among yourselves the same attitude that is also yours in Christ Jesus,[b]
6 Who,[c] though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.[d]
7 Rather, he emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
coming in human likeness;[e]
and found human in appearance,
8 he humbled himself,
becoming obedient to death,
even death on a cross.[f]
9 Because of this, God greatly exalted him
and bestowed on him the name[g]
that is above every name,
10 that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,[h]
of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord,[i]
to the glory of God the Father.”
The best examples of people living this out are the lives of saints who were willing to suffer “to the glory of God the Father”. Some suffered death. The Catholic Church refers to them as “glorious martyrs”.
Others suffered lives of pain, or hardship, or depravation. Or all three. Willingly. And they also offered up these lives of suffering for the glory of God.
Prudence is the moral virtue of “knowing the means to attain the end”. One of the vices contrary to this virtue is “Inconsideration”, the Vice in Which One Does Not Judge Which Means Is the Best among the Various Means Arrived at During Counsel.” (link here: https://www.sensustraditionis.org/Virtues.pdf )
Euthanasia may, in some cases, seem the best course of action humanly-speaking. But human ways are not God’s ways. Perhaps the best course of action when facing a horrible, incurable disease, is to offer up one’s suffering to the glory of God, as a means to sanctification, so that God’s strength is made manifest through our weakness. Suffering could be either penance for one’s own sins, or in the role of a “victim soul”, who willingly suffers so that God would pour out His grace on other people as a reward.
Is there a better example of doing nothing out of selfishness; humbly regarding others as more important; looking out not for our own interests, but for the interests of others? Becoming obedient even unto bearing a painful cross?
So whose will are we going to do? If God has allowed a horrible, terminal illness, are we going to cooperate with His will, no matter the cost? Or are we going to go with human will, and say “Nah, God. I’m good with just checking out. I’ll take the easy way.”
Bishop Johan Bonny of Antwerp, Belgium appears to be counseling a way that is contrary to the counsel of St. Paul.
I suspected he was being a bad Catholic when he said that, simply because most changes in RCC doctrine today are diabolically motivated. However, I did not mean the post to be denomination-specific, so I used his words at face value.
Meanwhile, your example of ordering all suffering people to endure because God sometimes inflicts suffering on innocent people, is a perfect example of a church bureaucracy making an absolute out of a relative while presuming that a believer should not be a participant in his own life.
“I suspected he was being a bad Catholic when he said that, simply because most changes in RCC doctrine today are diabolically motivated.”
Same here, and for the same reason.
“your example… is a perfect example of a church bureaucracy making an absolute out of a relative”
Well, that really is the crux of the matter, isn’t it? Whether the prohibition is a ‘relative’, or an ‘absolute’. That, and the fact that Catholic Holy Tradition, passed down over 2000 years unchanged from the Apostles, is hardly mere church bureaucracy.
The crux of the matter is whether a man decides for himself, how he should live.
“The crux of the matter is whether a man decides for himself, how he should live.”
Yes, we agree again. You just phrased it differently than I did.
Brining us back to the question of God asking “My will or yours, for your life?” (scripture reference: “Thy will be done” in the Lord’s prayer. [Lord, teach us how to pray.])
Is His will done? yes or no? Will we pick up our crosses, or not?
This is how the Bishop sparked controversy, by promoting man’s will over God’s will. It’s easy to follow God, when everything is kittens and sunshine. The test/cross is, what will we do when it ain’t so easy…. Book of Job and whatnot.
Kentucky Gent, I’m calling you out! I am calling you, according to Revelation 18:4, out of the Roman Catholic Church, Babylon The Great, the Mother of all Harlots, drunk on the saints (the actual saints). I do not want you to share in her sins anymore! Stop being foolish and get out. Let it go. Be free and worship Jesus, your God and your Judge, in Spirit and in Truth.