September 21, 2008 by PD.

I was recently invited to another event intended to bring together conservative and inclusive churches over the issues of GLBT sexuality and the Christian message. One of the sponsoring conservative organizations has on its web site a statement about “the authority and power of the Bible.”

I would probably use the phrase “authority and applicability” to discuss the Scriptures in terms of most contemporary issues. While we like to hold to the idea that the Bible is eternally valid and timeless, it has been almost two thousand years since the writers’ ink was dry, and let’s face it, much of the Scriptures seem irrelevant to the world. I spend a huge portion of my Bible Study teaching time simply trying to explain the context, language, history, culture and curiosities of the Bible so that people are not completely lost or baffled.

But it is easy to get snared in all that stuff to the extent that people are still not fed spiritually because year after year the Jewish and Christian scriptures slip further into history. Dedicated scholars — God bless ‘em— devote their lives to unearthing and bringing forward that both the details and the divine message in the Bible. But there are millions of people on this planet who will never give the Bible that kind of attention, and if we quibble and quarrel over every last word of it we are still failing to communicate God’s message to all humanity.

Then there is the problem of human sexuality which doesn’t fit the picture of either sexuality or love portrayed in either Testament. Christians are dividing from other Christians over issues of human sexuality, when all that should truly unite us is our trust and faith in God’s promises.

I always insert the term “applicability” into conversations about “authority” and “infallibility.” The Bible has the highest authority, but not every word is useful to us today. the best example is that much of the Hebrews scriptures are written to address the terms of the covenant between God and the Hebrew people as an ancient nation. None of us—not even the Jewish people—today are part of that nation. Can we therefore insist that every Christian must recognize every word of the Hebrew Scriptures as authoritative for us today? That would mean that we would have to require circumcision, and also take rebellious teenagers and stone them to death.

The list is long of things which no Christian today would in his or her right mind say is applicable to our life in Christ. Obviously there are different lists which we all maintain. But to flatly insist in the totality of the Scripture being authoritative is untruthful, and to reject other Christians because they will not obediently sign on to this view is disingenuous and itself disobedient to Christ who commanded us to love one another and to abide in his love.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Sex, Doctrine, Bible & Interpretation, Fundamentalism, LGBT Christian | Print | No Comments »

August 7, 2008 by PD.

Lutherans and Catholics remain far apart on many religious issues, and the reality of same-sex marriage in California is proving to be yet another one of those issues.

On August 1, the Catholic Bishops in California endorsed Proposition 8 — the proposed constitutional amendment that would take away civil rights form gay and lesbian people which the Supreme Court has established.  it was not enough for the Catholic Bishops to oppose same-sex marriage on theological principle — according to their medieval theology which includes the teaching that marriage is a sacrament — but no, they had to actually endorse the right-wing efforts to deny civil rights and roll them back.

So the Catholic Church in California contributes to the muddle which has been created by other “Religious Reich” folks — ripping into the wall of separation between church and state.  The Catholic leaders in California are trying to tear this wall down, by imposing fundamentalist, medieval Roman Catholic views of marriage on all citizens of this state.

Lutherans have so far avoided such bad politics and bad theology.  The three ELCA Lutheran Bishops in California have issued advisory letters to their pastors which discuss and wrestle with the issue of same-sex marriage, but they remained silent about Proposition 8.  In addition, the Lutheran Office of Public Policy has decided to take no position on Proposition 8, even after a face-to-face discussion with one of the Lutheran bishops.

While the national ELCA Bishops in 1996 said that marriage is between a man and a woman, it was indeed only that, when the statement was drafted.  Such a statement is of course no longer accurate, because “gay marriage” does indeed exist, whether Christians like it or not.

Interestingly, the most conservative of California’s three Lutheran bishops, the Rev. Murray Fink in Orange County, took the trouble to cited Martin Luther’s views of marriage, in his advisory letter.  Finck, who was present at the LOPP Policy Council meeting on July 26, said in his letter,

From the time of the Reformation, Lutherans have regarded marriage primarily as a civil matter. Martin Luther said, “Marriage is outside the church, is a civil matter, and therefore should belong to the government” (Table Talk No. 4716, Luther’s Works, Volume 54 [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1967]).

So Lutherans divide with Catholics on marriage precisely where they did in the Reformation era 500 years ago.  Although Luther supported the Christian family, and was himself proably what we would classify as “homophobic” today (he repeatedly condemned the “vile practices” which were going on in monasteries at the time without explaining them), he believed that ultimately civil marriage was irrelevant to the church and its Gospel.  He believed priests should be able to get married — which at the time was against the law. 

In 1519 three priests decided to take Luther’s views seriously, and informed him they were about to be married (to women).  He struggled at first with whether or not to participate by preaching for the nuptial mass.  Only several years later Luther himself decided to marry, still in defiance of Roman Catholic canon law but protected from civil penalties only by the power of local German princes who believed Luther was right and the Catholic church was wrong.

Our own bishop here in Los Angeles, Rev. Dean Nelson, has asked his clergy to inform him and discuss the pastoral conditions in their parishes before performing any same-gender weddings.  While this is a far cry from banning the pastoral participation in such marriages, Nelson’s careful and conservative word to his clergy may be having a chilling effect on some pastors in his jurisdiction.  Personally, I am not in his jurisdiction or under his authority.  His office considers my pulpit to be “vacant” and did not even send me his letter of cautious guidance until it was requested.

I have, of course, performed numerous “blessings” or “holy unions” (without the knowledge or the permission of the ELCA), over the last 20 years.  I have done so with absolute confidence in God’s blessing of these relationships.  But now that same-sex marriage is a reality in California (and Massachusetts, Canada and other European countries), I find it kind of fun that the first actual wedding of two lesbians I conducted, on June 17 in West Hollywood, was of two Roman Catholic women who are very much in love.  They are now happily married in the sight of God and in the records of the State of California.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Doctrine, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Ecumenical Issues, Ministry, ELCA, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

April 6, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

For better or worse I am launching another project that has been lurking in my consciousness and blogosphere for more than a year.  Today, a Gay & Christian Catechism is born (www.gaycatechism.net).

In our times, many lesbian and gay people–or really, sexual minorities of all kinds— know the basic teachings of the Christian faith.  We know about God, the Bible, Jesus, salvation, etc.  We grew up with some religious instruction, in many different Christian denominations.

The Gay Catechism has been written with young adults and adults in mind — to help LGBTQ people who have already come to terms with being a sexual minority person, but now want to come to terms with the Christian faith which has harmed us deeply since we came out to ourselves or others.

For even though many of us had Christian instruction or catechesis as children and teenagers, at some point we walked away from the church and from God.  Some of us even fled from the churches in which we were instructed as children and in which we once had found love, comfort and belonging.

After coming to terms with our sexuality and gender identity, feelings of insecurity, unworthiness, fear or even outright terror simply eclipsed all other aspects of the Christian faith.  In the process of coming to awareness about our sexual orientation or gender identity, and the “coming out” process, it didn’t seem to matter that we had once learned and believed that:

• God is love
• all sins can be forgiven
• we are accepted by God because of God’s grace, not because of our good deeds.

The secondary message which was being taught to us both privately and publicly, was that we are unloved, worthless, and damned.  And this secondary message seemed to erase everything loving, everything good and hopeful and reassuring we had once learned.

Because of this tragedy, two other even worse effects have captivated many sexual minority persons:  many have abandoned all forms of spirituality, thinking that the only thing real is material—wealth, power, pleasure, food, drugs and good times.  And others have simply committed suicide because of the profound suffering they experienced in their spiritually dystonic state:  “God loves everybody, except me.”

From my Mission Statement:

The mission of the Gay Catechism project and this site is to provide a simple framework in which LGBTQ Christians can re-understand their faith with honesty and integrity, and to enable more of God’s children to come home to their faith.

The mission of the Gay Catechism is not to convince hateful, rejective and punitive Christians to change their mind about LGBTQ Christians, although this occasionally happens.  Sadly, most of them have their answers and their answer books, well-rehearsed and cemented into their consciousness so rigidly that they cannot hear a new truth or listen to a different voice.

Jesus said, “Let the dead bury their own dead” (Matthew 8:22) and he was speaking about those who were so stuck in spiritual concrete that they could not accept his teaching and follow his lead.  Those who believe that their view of Christ’s teaching is so complete, so perfect, so flawless, are actually in danger of missing his teaching, for he speaks to us in the Bible as a spiritual teacher of enormous openness and flexibility.

So, here goes.  I will keep updating the new site, adding topics according to an outline I’m developing, with bits from Luther’s Small Catechism, from biblical, contemporary and even secular sources.  I would appreciate your feedback.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Gay Catechism, Doctrine, Bible & Interpretation, LGBT Christian, Faith | Print | No Comments »

March 28, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

I am in the midst of preparing for a gay wedding, the joining of two lives together at the heart—a wedding at which, along with friends and families, I will bless God for the gift of love which two men have found in one another.

This is heresy to the world’s conservative Christians, and it is troubling to those who are out in the middle on this spectrum of love and hate.  As I mentioned recently, we are not considered to even be Christian in the eyes of the right wing (the “religious reich”).

Who or what is a “Christian”?

Dr. Rembert Truluck offers a simple suggestion in his essay, “A Gay Christian Response to Southern Baptists”:  a Christian is one who is Christ-like.  Truluck is not picking on the Southern Baptists.  He has the credentials to take them on as an insider, not an outsider.  He received his Doctor of Theology degree from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky; he was a Southern Baptist pastor, and even served as a writer of the Southern Baptist Sunday School Lessons for six years.

So when Dr. Truluck suggests that “Southern Baptists ceased to be Christian (Christ-like)” it is worth paying attention to his reasoning.

This is not a stretch, but fundamentally good Bible study: Jesus began his teaching and healing ministry by including people who had previously been left out by his faith tradition. In Luke 4:18–19, we see that Jesus read from the prophet Isaiah in the synagogue in Nazareth, his boyhood home.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Curiously, the passage goes on to say that “the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.”  Meaning that people were watching, and wondering what he meant to imply.  From the very outset, there were those who held Jesus in suspicion because he included people whom others excluded from their faith communities.

Jesus went on to welcome women into circles reserved for men, to praise Samaritans who were hated by Jews, to preach tolerance for the leper, the foreigner, and the eunuch (a sexual misfit if ever there was one).

“Jesus in the Gospels defined his ministry by those he included that previously had been left out,” says Dr. Truluck. “When the people rejected the inclusive message of Jesus, he left town. When Southern Baptists defined themselves by who they left out (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people) in changing the bylaws of the Southern Baptist Convention to exclude any church that accepted openly gay and lesbian members, Southern Baptists ceased to be Christian (Christ-like).”

When I first read this I almost whistled out loud—as if to say that was a brave or even dangerous comment to be so critical of the second-largest Christian body in the U.S., and one that must still believe it has hegemony in political circles.  But as an insider, Truluck is entitled to be severe with that denomination.  More importantly, he is right that one important definition of who is a Christian, or what is Christian behavior, is to make the comparison with Christ and his behavior.  If Christ included those whom others exclude or “preclude” (the ELCA), they are at variance with Jesus Christ.

Of course (if you could ever have a civil discussion with them!), the conservatives would argue that Jesus never included homosexuals.

But that becomes a matter of heated debate over the “dangerous memories” (Dr. Theodore Jennings, The Man Jesus Loved), and somewhat obscure passages of the New Testament.  [See Joe Perez’s review of Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ.]

It can be fiercely argued that Jesus and the Beloved Disciple were not gay (John 13:21–26; 19:25–27; 21:20–24); that Cleopas and his companion sharing a home in the village of Emmaus (Luke 24:13–32) were not gay, that the centurion and his pais (lad or boy; Matthew 8:5–13) were not gay. It can also be fiercely—and responsibly—argued that those of us who are LGBT are given clues in these places in the Gospels to “read between the lines”: Jesus means include us, too, who formerly were excluded.

It is not merely a little “side issue” of no particular importance, to include LGBT people, if we see that Jesus defined his ministry and his Gospel by those he included who had been excluded before. In fact, his inclusion is fundamental, central and of the highest importance to what it means to be Christ-like.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Doctrine, Bible & Interpretation, Ecumenical Issues, Fundamentalism, ELCA | Print | No Comments »

February 6, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

This caught my eye in the e-mail box recently. I was tempted to scoff at their efforts but at the same time wanted to understand more of why they are profoundly skeptical about matters of faith.

“Sometimes, if you’re trying to find an answer to a problem, finding the edges, and working in from there works quite well — it’s known as approximation. Military gunnery works in the same way, overshoot, undershoot and bingo! In some topics this can be done through opposing statements. Here’s what I and my youngest son came up with—a doubters creed.

“A dubious Credo

“I do not fear God;
I fear mankind.
I do not fear my death;
I fear for my posterity.

I do not believe in Heaven or Hell;
I believe that all sentient life has a spiritual element.
I do not believe in the concept of sin;
I believe that love, in all its forms, is the most vital part of human experience.

I do not know if any religion is “true” or “false”;
I do know that there is a greater presence outside ourselves.
I do not know if God still exists;
I do know that once I did not exist, now I do, and soon I won’t.

I must not harm anyone else;
I must live every minute as if it is my last.
I must not allow the past to cripple the future;
I must make the day of everyone I encounter better.

Amen”

For openers, these Doubters appear to think of a Credo (”I believe”) as a statement of what they observe, rather than what they put their trust in—what they believe about, not what they believe in. For them a “greater presence” is something they are “approximating”—working in from the edges of what they observe, supposing something must be there and letting that suffice.

This view of reality is an inch or two over from the man I met at a New Year’s Eve Party a few weeks ago who thinks that all spirituality is simply “brain chemicals.” He told me he is a practicing Quaker. But he is also a Doubter of one of the higher orders.

Spirituality is something that even doubters, skeptics and secular philosophers acknowledge; yet their rejection or suspicion of religious doctrines really eviscerates human spirituality: it cuts the guts out of it.

With very little effort, as on that proverbial “slippery slope,” spirituality devolves to mere sentiment, limited by consciousness—for example: your trying to live each day “as if it were your last.” (Maybe I should go see The Bucket List while it’s still around.) But I suspect that a lot of loud, young, male, speeding pickup-drivers would be even more self-absorbed and rude and violent if they really believed that today was their “last day.” If you don’t fear death or God, Heaven or Hell, then why not just do whatever brings me instant gratification because, after all, this might be my last day on earth!?

Spiritual uncertainty, or a lack of spiritual consciousness, is clearly expressed here over and over: “I do not know . . .” Perhaps that phrase is offered as a mark of spiritual humility. But it doesn’t nearly approximate human experience. It lets humanity off the hook quite easily. It misses the moral mark by a mile. I do not always know, for example, if my actions today are in fact hurting someone else, rather than making other people’s day “better.” And if I do not know, then I am not responsible, right? Think of the long-term effects of greed, waste, and environmental damage of which generations of moral people were completely unaware while they sentimentalized the act of making somebody’s day better.

The most troubling and naive part of this dubious Credo, in my opinion, is the line “I do not believe in the concept of sin.” Do you really think “sin” does not exist? Or that the “concept” as you understand it is something you can’t subscribe to? If there is no God, then sin defined as an offense against God would not exist. That’s clever! But sin has been understood for thousands of years as also an offense against my neighbor. Most of the Ten Commandments are guidelines to keep us from sinning against—harming or exploiting—other people. The Old Testament is a confusing and quirky collection of moral commands, of actions and consequences (karma), but the majority of its moral wisdom falls in the column of justice, not merely religion.

Or is the “concept of sin” one these writers just associate with a penalty phase? (”Hell”?) In other words, can I simply adopt a personal ethic not to harm my neighbor without having to admit my failure to live up to my own ethic a lot of the time? Or attempt to make amends for the things I inadvertently do which harm others? Or to accept the consequences of my failures?

Someone wise remarked that “Sin is the one Christian doctrine which is empirically verifiable.” You can see it and document it, even if some doubter simply says “I do not believe in the concept of sin.” Was the Nazi extermination of six million Jews and unnumbered homosexuals and gypsies not sin? Or does the Doubter have a different term for it if the word sin isn’t used? Is “I do not believe” the escape line for the men who gutted the assets of Enron, including the retirement savings of thousands of their own employees? For the sub-prime lenders who have manipulated millions into Option-ARM loans no one could possibly afford, and has now left them homeless, bankrupted and with terrible credit scores? For Iraq war independent contractors who are bleeding the American government and therefore the American people for billions of dollars? For mass-murderers in our malls and schools? For men who mercilessly kill their wives and children before turning the gun on themselves? For drive-by shooters? For those who write computer viruses, or devise Ponzi and pyramid schemes, who defraud gullible senior citizens through phoney “investments”? All of those obvious examples are not “sin”? Then what are they? If there is no “sin” then what is it these Doubters fear in mankind?

To borrow a phrase from a well-known bumper sticker, “If you don’t believe that sin is real, you haven’t been paying attention.” If you can’t “buy into” a lot of religious talk, well okay. But the “spiritual element” of human life includes a sense of personal responsibility, self-examination, self-discipline, consciousness, humility, and an openness to change oneself and one’s life when confronted with the error of one’s ways. See, for example, the accusation of the prophet Nathan against King David, “You are the man!” (2 Samuel 12:7)

Ash Wednesday is the Christian acknowledgment not only of our sinful predicament—our sinful nature—but also our finite nature. As the liturgical phrase has it, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Or as the Doubter puts it, “I do know that once I did not exist, now I do, and soon I won’t.”

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Doctrine, Environment, Faith, Public Affairs, Spirituality | Print | No Comments »

December 9, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney finally made his “religion speech” last week. http://www.getreligion.org/ notes that Romney basically wrote the speech. Certainly this is a big enough issue for a sizeable block of the American people he had better take responsibility for his words, and choose them carefully.

For many Christians – at least those in an official position where they represent the teachings and doctrines of their faith— the Latter Day Saints are not Christian. I know this causes these people great pain – and that they see it as a form of prejudice and bigotry.

(And who shouldn’t be against prejudice and bigotry? In the last 40 years we have seen Christians at many levels in society reject conversation and collegiality with the Metropolitan Community Church, for example because it is the denomination that unequivocally welcomes sexual minorities and is served primarily by lesbian and gay clergy. But is the M.C.C. not Christian?)  Is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints not Christian?  Logically it is only fair to conclude that Mormons do not share many of the same essential beliefs about the person of Jesus that other Christians do.  Mitt Romney tried to massage this fact in his speech, here quoted from www.getreligion.org: 

“What do I believe about Jesus Christ? I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind.  My church’s beliefs about Christ may not all be the same as those of other faiths. Each religion has its own unique doctrines and history.  These are not bases for criticism but rather a test of our tolerance.  Religious tolerance would be a shallow principle indeed if it were reserved only for faiths with which we agree.”

I note in this passage that Romney is deflecting the religious doctrine question and trying to make it a social tolerance issue. And perhaps in terms of serving in the high office of President it is. “He seized the opportunity to connect his candidacy to something larger and transcendent: the history of religious freedom in America,” said Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal. “He made a virtue of necessity.” But he sidesteps the core question (sidestepping = “spin” = political necessity) which Christian voters are still curious and unnerved about:  Are Mormons to be considered Christian—either by other Christians (a very subjective measure), or by some objective standard? Is there such a thing as an objective test for using the term “Christian” anyway?

Unhappily, the Christian church has slugged that one out for 2,000 years. In the earliest centuries it excommunicated dissenters.  By the 4^th century, with new-found civil power, it had heretics put to death over theological disagreements– something which even St. Martin of Tour found to be odious.  A hundred years before Luther, the Catholic Church was still killing off dissenters such as John Hus, Michael Servetus and of course the Jews; Martin Luther survived only because his politically well-placed friends helped him hide (and later supported capital punishment for heresy!).  When the 16^th Reformers argued their case, they bent over backwards to show the Roman authorities that, by objective standards, they had not departed from the true Christian faith.  In the Lutheran confessional document, the Augsburg Confession, written in 1530 as a trial brief, for example, the core Christian dogmas are incorporated by reference:  the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed, the doctrines embedded in the Old and New Testaments about God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit and the Church.  If by no other measure, over 2,000 years these key elements (”symbols”) have come to define what “Christian” means.

Then why is there such fragmentation in the Christian Church, and isn’t the Mormon church just another expression, or denomination or tradition or fragmentation within the larger Christian Church?

By the way, it seems that another piece of “Christian” teaching which has deep tap roots in the Jewish/Christian Bible, is that once a doctrine is thoroughly defined, the Christian faith holds that anyone who holds different views (even slightly varied views) is wrong.  In talking about the great Councils of Christian history, where doctrines were hammered out, the late John Boswell, author of Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, once remarked: “Before the vote is taken, there is a majority and a minority. After the vote is taken, the minority is dead wrong.”  (The Athanasian Creed makes the rejection of other points of view a matter of dogma, which many Christians including me find very unsettling and choose to selectively ignore!)

Objectively speaking, Romney’s faith tradition is not Christian, or it is at best quasi-Christian, because, as he says, “My church’s beliefs about Christ may not all be the same as those of other faiths.” [Emphasis added.]

Be honest, Mitt. They are not the same as the beliefs of the Christian churches.  The LDS Church does not sign on to the Apostles, Nicene (and here is a very fascinating link for theological discussion!) and Athanasian Creeds, for example.   LDS founder Joseph Smith built his following on the premise that a heavenly angel revealed to him the right stuff and that all the other Christian churches were wrong.  Smith and many other 19^th century splinter and reformist groups carved out their “market share” (as we would call it now) by dropping some core Christian beliefs and adding others which are rejected by Christian churches.

Although it took from the year 1530 to 1999, the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran Church worldwide are now in agreement about the essential issues of justification by faith which are at the heart of the Augsburg Confession.  The Lutherans and the Orthodox now see almost eye to eye on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. 

Do not look for the Mormon Church to sign on any time soon to these Christian teachings. For what they teach about Jesus and salvation, etc., are expressly and decisively opposed to these core Christian teachings.

Technically, the argument over who is a Christian, or what objective tests can be use to decide that, are irrelevant in the race for the Presidency. Romney is hoping that American tolerance of differences will not be an impediment to his election as President. But if the pollsters are correct, for the Christian evangelical crowd (the religious “right” wing), Baptist Rev. Mike Huckabee looks a lot more acceptable than ex-Governor Romney.

In my personal perspective, neither one of them would get my vote but not because of their particular theological views, or the official teachings of their church traditions and doctrines (Christian or not). I don’t agree with their social values, and I would worry more than a little that they would use those faith-influenced social values to enforce a particular, prejudicial and unjust agenda on this nation. (CNN’s sound-byte: “Romney: ‘My convictions will indeed inform my presidency’”.) From what I have read about Romney, while he appeals to American tolerance, he is not likely to promote the view that all the laws of this land be broadened to guarantee equal tolerance for the views of others. He does not support the legalization of same-gender marriage, for example, as the tolerant, American, thing to do.

It is pretty clear that George W. Bush used his own religious faith as a big factor to get himself into the White House. It is clear that the votes of his co-religionists counted heavily (even if they don’t know how to count in the state of Florida) in the last two general elections. Now a man equally as socially-conservative as Bush wants the America people not to count his religion against him. Is it any wonder that fundagelicals are finding this hard to do?

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Fundamentalism, Doctrine, LGBT Rights, History, Public Affairs, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

April 25, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

Well, one of the great eternal conundrums of all time has resolved itself happily–one of those things that important minds have struggled with for centuries.

I don’t mean the question of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Rather, I refer to that other important theological problem of where un-baptized babies will spend eternity.

The New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia gives this entry for limbo:

In theological usage the name is applied to (a) the temporary place or state of the souls of the just who, although purified from sin, were excluded from the beatific vision until Christ’s triumphant ascension into Heaven (the “limbus patrum”); or (b) to the permanent place or state of those unbaptized children and others who, dying without grievous personal sin, are excluded from the beatific vision on account of original sin alone (the “limbus infantium” or “puerorum”).

It is so nice to hear that an advisory panel in the Vatican, after years of study, has concluded that “limbo” does not exist and that unbaptized infants may go to heaven after all.

Religion News Blog reported last October that the Pope was simply abolishing limbo. More accurately, he is approving a report that abolishes any teaching about limbo. The official Catholic Catechism simply erased it in 1992. Now we have “The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptized,” a 41-page report. Wow!  (Read it in English here straight from the Vatican!)

Apparently this decision in the Vatican has a back story. When still merely Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the office of the inquisition (okay, the contemporary name is the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith), now-Pope Benedict XVI had expressed his view in 2005 that Limbo is a mere “theological hypothesis.”

One cannot help wondering if the Inferno isn’t the same kind of a creature — the invention of over-active human minds who needed to invent the place they would assign their enemies to in order to be as far away as possible. Granted, the Inferno (Hell) has a better pedigree, since it is mentioned under various titles and names in the Bible. But Limbo is a purely medieval fabrication— the work of small minds in the Dark Ages cranking out hypotheses which they felt must be explained in order for everything else in their comprehensive system to mesh together as a well-oiled theological machine.

While the Vatican admits that no teaching about Limbo exists in the Scriptures, it claims there is scriptural authority for Heaven, Hell and Purgatory. That last is such a stretch that I am dumbfounded—but of course I am also not Roman Catholic. All the usual Biblical citations are stretched to produce the same results, a “theological hypothesis” that there has to be some place where people who aren’t perfect can work on themselves before entering heaven.

To which my overly-postmodern mind says with fatigue and exasperation, “oh stop.” I know my thinking is anachronistic, in expressing impatience that medieval minds were so, well, medieval.

But I am also mindful of a scholar’s serious assessment that St. Augustine practically invented the Dark Ages single-handedly. (Augustine believed that un-baptized dead babies go to hell.) That is, thinkers who sent western culture on a dark dead-end path of assigning people to hell, to purgatory and limbo, were themselves very darkly-disposed individuals.

It was Luther, of course, in 1517 who was able to criticize the idea of Purgatory aloud and live to tell about it. Another trait of dark, angry, bitter, narrow minds is that they do not tolerate dissent.  Earlier reformers than Luther simply met with execution. But now the teaching about Limbo is going into perdition, and perhaps so will Purgatory some day.

One online commentary suggests a pastoral reason for all this shocking change of teaching: that the church is encountering places where infant mortality is still quite high, and the teaching about limbo has become an obstacle to converting adults to Christianity, if they are told that their dead baby will never enter heaven to be with them forever.

But isn’t it also an obstacle to faith and spirituality to be told that other people whom we have known, and perhaps loved, will languish in purgatory for thousands of years, or as that Phelps guy in Topeka insists, will go straight to hell?  When will the Pope, or Phelps, ever see that it is an obstacle to faith to declare that lesbian and gay and transgender people, and other sexual minorities, are destined for hell, just for being who we are?

We joke about the unintended consequences of our actions. And we cynically joke that “no good deed goes unpunished” because of unintended consequences. But doesn’t a lot of official Christian teaching fall in the same camp? The unintended consequences of teaching that the human race will be judged and split up in the afterlife—some to go to paradise and some to eternal flames—produces these other odd doctrines that imply people, families, loved ones, will be “separated at death” forever.

We are rubbing up against the anthropomorphism which always saturates spiritual teachings about God. The real unintended consequence of rigid doctrines, and papal advisory panels and solemn theological treatises, just may be that the doctrine of God itself will no longer be accepted by anyone. Who can believe in a divine being who destines souls to eternal torment?

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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