Divorce and abortion are offences in the sight of God, Pope Benedict XVI charged Saturday, while calling on the Catholic Church to be merciful to those who had experienced such events.
“The ethical judgement of the Church on divorce and abortion is clear and well-known,” he told participants in a Catholic congress on marriage and the family.
“They are serious offences… which violate human dignity, inflict deep injustice on human and social relations and offend God himself, guarantor of conjugal peace and origin of life,” he said.
The PECUSA’s acceptance of divorce and continued service of divorced clergy was its step onto the algae covered rocks that doomed it to irrelevance. On our slide down we added the approval of abortion. We added other wonderful stuff since.
Of this I agree with Benedict XVI. In Malachi, I believe, God said that He hates divorce. Also, all the way back to Exodus when God gave Moses the Ten Commandments we were told “Thou shalt not murder.” This means not to kill innocent blood. Abortion fits in this category. I can say that this pope is a thoughtful man.
D. Hamilton, you’ll have to look at the arguments for contraception in order to see where the first step down that proverbial road began.
No longer Roman… but I do like this Pope. He is correct that abortion is (almost) always wrong and that divorce is at the very least a manifestation of sin and in some cases a sin in itself. That said I disagree with the Roman Catholic blanket prohibition against divorce. This is not consistent with the practice of the early Church which discourgaed divorce but generally tolerated it in some situations.
ICXC
John
#4, the Church does permit separation and allows for civil divorce. It’s just that whole re-marriage thing it has an issue with.