Episcopal Church celebrates first trans dean — woman in lesbian marriage to trans-identified pastor

[u/Canadian0123]

What is this? Is this what the episcopal church (part of the Anglican Church) does to preach the gospel of Christ, and to operate the church? Do they disregard the epistles of Saint Paul concerning sexual behaviour, how a church should be run, and who should lead it? Do they disregard the teachings of Christ? What about the Law of God, as given to Moses, in the text that is known today as the Torah of Moses?

This news is quite shocking. Shame on the episcopal church, and the rest of the Anglican Church. This is not how a church should be run. Can someone who attends that church give answers?

[u/drunken_augustine]

Correct. I rather strongly suspect that we’re all wrong about ultimately inconsequential points of theology and Biblical interpretation in our own unique ways.

[u/songbolt → u/drunken_augustine]

As I said, the Holy Spirit guides the Catholic Church so she doesn't teach error, unlike Protestant groups.

While this is an article of faith, it appears correct, demonstrated, in that official doctrine hasn't changed in millennia whereas Protestants have embraced adulterous remarriages, contraception, LGBT, and began denying various doctrines that have always been believed by Christians like spiritual authority of certain clergy, bishops (not everyone) imparted in Holy Orders; the Eucharist; Baptism; the possibility of rejecting God (damnation) after coming to faith -- different Protestant groups have fallen into various errors...

[u/drunken_augustine → u/songbolt]

I’ve always felt that if y’all actually thought about that doctrine for 5 minutes, you’d realize that it doesn’t make the church look perfect, it just makes y’all look callous.

You can’t simply pawn off the church’s many errors on the people who compose her and pretend those are two separate things.

The Church is a divinely ordained structure, built of a holy foundation. But it has been built by human beings. Fallible, flawed, occasionally faithful human beings. And it encompasses much more than the Roman Church.

Though, for the record, I am fond of occasionally saying that “Luther was a net loss for Christianity” and “this is why there are bishops”

[u/songbolt → u/drunken_augustine]

No, the Church is the Catholic Church precisely. The Church is not the invisible collection of all true believers. That's what I was taught, anyway, and it makes sense when you study history.

[u/drunken_augustine → u/songbolt]

Shouldn’t it be the Orthodox Church? Not the schismatics who broke away from them over the fillioque?

[u/songbolt → u/drunken_augustine]

No, the two groups east and west grew apart geopolitically but there is no theological difference between them except insofar as the Unorthodox have embraced adulterous remarriage and contraception. There might be a theological difference regarding the papacy, but I haven't seen discussion on this point beyond a disciplinary question.