Civil Commotion

Sarah Huckabee Sanders Warns Michael Cohen
to Leave Lying to Professionals

Though the average Southern Baptist will tell you that Methodists are bed-wetting liberals and practically atheists, the denomination upheld Tuesday, and strengthened, its longstanding ban on LGBTQ clergy and conducting same-sex weddings.

The United Methodist Church on Tuesday voted to strengthen its ban on gay and lesbian clergy and same-sex marriages, a decision that could split the nation’s second-largest Protestant church.

After three days of intense debate at a conference in St. Louis, the vote by church officials and lay members from around the world doubled down on current church policy, which states that “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.” The vote served as a rejection of a push by progressive members and leaders to open the church to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

Feel the love-love-love.

So, inevitably, the Methodists will split, which is what has happened to every other denomination once it has confronted the question of gays in the life of the church.

How could it be otherwise? Some people remain children all their lives, and they need the comfort of unambiguous and unchanging rules to follow; when they do so, they are “good.” Other people can’t stop learning and growing, and Bronze Age imbecilities aren’t going to stick with them for a lifetime. This is why social change takes so long; literally, the traditionalists all have to die off before a bad idea or behavior loses its influence.

The New York Times published last evening a copy of Michael Cohen’s prepared opening statement for today’s House testimony. Cohen confirms what we already knew — Trump is virulently racist, and a conman — and what we suspected: Trump knew what Wikileaks was up to.

I am ashamed that I chose to take part in concealing Mr. Trump’s illicit acts rather than listening to my own conscience.

I am ashamed because I know what Mr. Trump is.

He is a racist.

He is a conman.

He is a cheat.

He was a presidential candidate who knew that Roger Stone was talking with Julian Assange about a WikiLeaks drop of Democratic National Committee emails.

I doubt that the Deplorable One-third will be much affected; they are sympathetic to his racism, believe that everybody with money is an unethical conman, and have already discounted his association with Wikileaks. The rest of us should be alarmed, though, and frantic to put him out of our shared public life.

Cardinal George Pell has been convicted of sexually abusing children.

Cardinal George Pell has joined the ranks of other shamed Catholic priests who betrayed the trust of children who believed they were men of God.

The Vatican treasurer, now a convicted pedophile, was a close adviser to the Pope, personally appointed by Francis as the Vatican’s minister of Economy and, until October, was a member of the Pope’s Council of nine advisers.

As a victim of sex abuse, his accuser can’t be named under Australian law, but his testimony will be felt at the very heart of the Vatican, which for decades has been accused of ignoring, covering up and denying sex abuse was committed within its ranks.

Meantime …

A top Catholic cardinal admitted Saturday that Church files on priests who sexually abused children were destroyed or never even drawn up, a move which allowed pedophiles to prey on others.

“Files that could have documented the terrible deeds and named those responsible were destroyed, or not even created,” German Cardinal Reinhard Marx said in a speech to a landmark Vatican summit on tackling pedophilia in the clergy.

“Instead of the perpetrators, the victims were regulated and silence imposed on them. The stipulated procedures and processes for the prosecution of offenses were deliberately not complied with, but instead cancelled or overridden,” he said.

Saint Peter Damian wrote a letter to the Pope in the 11^th-Century that is now known as The Book of Gomorrah, in which he railed, futilely, against clerical sexual abuse of children; this is nothing new.

What has changed is that the accusers can no longer be silenced — and that is all. The clergy are not a somehow ‘better’ class of men who have access to special cosmic knowledge that is unavailable to the rest of us; many, in fact, are deeply troubled and took the collar as a form of self-therapy, expecting to overcome their nature or, at least, be in an environment where their sexual interests could not be indulged. Proportionally, there are undoubtedly more troubled men standing behind the pulpit than there are sitting in the pews.

According to Christian teaching, The Invisible Wizard is totally capable of finding you and giving you instruction when you’re sitting on a park bench. So take the spouse and kids and dog to the park Sunday morning instead of listening to some red-faced moron howl and bellow about SIN-SIN-SIN, and trust Him to let you know if He has something that concerns you on His mind.

The United Methodists are meeting this week to consider whether it should conduct same-sex weddings, and whether gays should be ordained. Though there is a lot of pressure to support both, observers on the scene seem to think that those who are opposed have the upper hand.

The church is considering a proposal to end its prohibitions on same-sex marriage and ordaining gays and lesbians, but a rival plan to keep those policies in place appears to have more support.

The United Methodist Church is meeting in St. Louis this week to vote on whether to strengthen or end its prohibitions on same-sex marriage and ordaining gays and lesbians — a decision that could splinter the church.

The denomination has been grappling for years with how to respond to social changes that have buffeted other mainline Protestant congregations, with individual United Methodist churches adopting contradictory — and sometimes competing — practices. At some churches, clergy members have come out as gay or lesbian from the pulpit, while other pastors have preached that homosexuality is a sin.

You can see the problem: The Bible is Inerrant, its condemnation of homosexuality is unambiguous, and Godly people aren’t supposed to go around having their very own thoughts.

The naysayers can point to 2000-years of unbroken tradition, and the rest have nothing going for them but … science and ordinary human decency — neither of which has ever had much influence in religious affairs.

Almost certainly, the Methodists will end up going the route of every other denomination that has sought a solution that makes everybody happy; they will fail, because the differences are irreconcilable, and split into ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ Methodist denominations. They will then spend years fighting over the ownership of church property and assets et cetera, as the Presbyterians and Episcopalians did.

This is a good thing. When they’re battling each other they aren’t busy evangelizing and screwing-up children’s minds with a lot of sewage about how they’re no damn good. Keep your fingers crossed.