You couldn't make it up dept no.87: the sermon will not be televised

[fpb]

From www.floridatoday.com:
A church giving sermons about sex may have to find a new home. Brevard Public School District's risk-management department has threatened to boot New Hope Church out of Sherwood Elementary because of a worship series titled "Great Sex for You."

Church leaders mailed 25,000 fliers, asking residents "Is Your Sex Life A Bore?" The three-week program kicked off inside the school auditorium. Pastor Bruce Cadle had said the Christian church has been "shamefully silent" on the taboo topic.

Mark Langdorf, the director of risk management, says the mailers generated complaints, were not appropriate for elementary school children and shouldn't be used to advertise the sermon in the school.

Langdorf says the church's lease contract is under review.

Comments

[stigandnasty919.livejournal.com]

I'm not in contact anymore, and, I have to be honest, I'm not sure I quite understand the question.

I think he would have said that God has a hand in everything, but that sacraments are special because they are the times we make declarations or promises directly to, or explicitly, before God. I would never have discussed the issue in those terms, but I do recall conversations about the difference between Church and State marriages and the purpose of baptism.

Is that different in the Catholic Church? Indeed I now realise that i'm not even sure exactly what all of the sacraments are.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

In general, Catholics and, I think, Orthodox, recognize seven sacraments: Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Confession, Priestly Ordination, Marriage, Last rites. Most Protestants tend to admit only two, Baptism and Marriage. But the really serious and important distinction is one that goes to the core of the difference between the two: that is, that to Catholics, Orthodox, and Eastern churches (Armenian, Copts, etc.), the Sacrament is an action that begins with and centres upon God. The Eucharist is the presence of God Himself in the Host, as the Host, and it is centred upon Jesus' words at the Last Supper: "Take, eat: this is My Body which is given up for you. Take, drink: this is My Blood". The other sacraments likewise go back to God, with the priest acting only as His agent. That is why the space which is dedicated to these sacraments is objectively sacred - rather than, as your pastor said, subjectively held sacred by the use the faithful make of it. You will see in the entrance of some Catholic, Orthodox or Eastern church building, a variant on Jacob's words at Shiloh: "How terrible this place is! This is the house of the Lord." Protestants, on the other hand, place all the emphasis exclusively on prayer. They reject the notion that there is an objective presence of God (although the Lutherans do have a variation on the idea, which I believe they call Consubstantiation) and place the whole emphasis on prayer. That is why the Pope said that Protestant communities cannot be properly called Churches, but rather "communities of prayer". They do not accept one of the cornerstones of Catholic, Orthodox and Eastern theology. That is not to say that their prayer is not acceptable to God - "Wherever two or three of you are gathered together in My name, I am there among you" - but, in the Catholic view, they are cut off from the most powerful and efficacious means of Grace and deification.

[mentalguy.livejournal.com]

To put it another way, the Sacraments, instituted by Christ, aren't merely signs or human acts, but the means by which God directly effects particular graces. They are the tangible aspect of particular spiritual realities. This is not out of absolute necessity; God is in no way limited to the Sacraments as means for conferring grace. However, the Sacraments, simultaneously material and spiritual, are the means most fitting our nature as simultaneously material and spiritual beings, and God has therefore made them the normative means for the reception of the graces associated with them.

(FWIW, these days, Extreme Unction/Last Rites is more typically termed the Anointing of the Sick, at least in the United States, as it is used more widely than it used to be, in situations which do not necessarily involve the immediate danger of death.)

[stigandnasty919.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this. I always thought Communion was described as a sacrament in the Church I attended.

I'm fascinated that you say that Protestants do not believe in the objective presence of God. I'm aware that at communion it was not believed that we were eating the flesh of Christ, or drinking his blood. But i'm equally aware that there was a general belief that God was there, that he was listening. Indeed there was a belief, often stated, that he was everywhere.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you mean by objective?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

The universal presence of God is not something anyone - or at least any Christian - disagrees with. My point is however that, yes, the older Christian churches (bear in mind that this not a Catholic peculiarity) do hold that the consecrated wafer and wine really are God, His flesh and blood. That is what He said and that is what we believe. That was, incidentally, what caused the final break between Luther and Calvin at the notorious Marburg conference. Luther kept repeating: "This-is-my-body!" and argued that if Jesus' words could be held to contain a different meaning than their own plain one, then you might as well read them to mean: "The fox ate the hedge-sparrow".

[fpb.livejournal.com]

To clarify this, when Jesus walked in Galilee, He was God, in the full meaning of the word; "I and the Father are one"; "he who has seen Me has seen the Father". At the same time, you cannot say that God was not, at one and the same time, universally present as He always is; or that, by being incarnate in one physical human body, He had ceased to be everywhere. However, He was also present in a specific place and in a specific way. In the same way, we believe God to be the Host and the Wine, in the manner in which He was (and is) the man Jesus of Nazareth.

[stigandnasty919.livejournal.com]

One final (some hope,,,) question on this. When you say you believe God to be the Host and the Wine (capitals are used because this is now God we are speaking of?) does that mean that the host physically changes into flesh and the wine into blood, or that it stays the same physically but is now (this is very difficult to put) somehow a part of the substance of God?

The wine still tastes like wine and the wafer like wafer, for example?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Thomas Aquinas has made a famous philosophical investigation of the concepts involved, which is at the core of Catholic teaching on the issue - other churches may not agree on it, though, the Orthodox certainly don't. I do not feel up to dealing with the whole concept, but I would say that, yes, the Bread and Wine are God incarnate in them, just as the man Jesus, body and faculties and individuality and all, was also and at the same time God. If you think about it, the one thing is not much more unlikely than the other.

[stigandnasty919.livejournal.com]

Indeed, it makes more sense than what I was told the Catholic Church believed.

Thanks for taking the time, it is appreciated.

[maglors-finch.livejournal.com]

Sorry for barging in (I occasionally read your weblog): the two sacraments most Protestants admit are Baptism and Eucharist. I can't think of any Protestant Church that considers Marriage a sacrament.

Interesting discussion, by the way.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Yeowchh!!!
You are right, of course. Pure stupid carelessness on my part. My apologies to all Protestants.