IS THE AUTHOR OF THE MACON TELEGRAPH'S SUNDAY COMMENTARY PELAGIAN, GNOSTIC, HETERODOX OR POST-CHRISTIAN? YOU READ, YOU REPORT!

DR. CUMMINGS: Who am I to judge?
(Dr. Bill Cummings - Special to The [Macon] Telegraph)

Bill Cummings is a Catholic who some have told me was either a seminarian who studied in Rome and left the seminary, or was ordained a priest and left the priesthood. I do not know. But I will let you judge, and, yes Virginia, we can judge what people believe and do, although we cannot judge their salvation or that they are not created in the image and likeness of God and have no hope whatsoever of conversion or "reversion" and turning to the actual truth of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church:

I tend to think his commentary in Sunday's Macon Telegraph's editorial section is actually the new heresy which evolves from the Enlightenment which can be called "POST CHRISTIAN" or "POST CATHOLIC" and thus falls into the category of Gnosticism as Pope Francis would use the term. And it is this way of thinking that is a greater threat to our Catholics than the so-called restorationism of the "TRAD CATHOLICS":

HERE'S HIS SUNDAY COMMENTARY! ENJOY!

Last week, Pope Francis I, walked to the back of his Papal Airplane on his way back from dancing on the beach in Brazil and surprised all the reporters with his statements about gay priests. “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?”

What?

Surely, Francis was joking. The pope of the Holy Roman Catholic Church always judges; that’s his job. For 2,000 years, the man who wears the papal tiara has always been the supreme judge of good and evil, and surely he knows that all these “gay priests” are evil. Why, his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI, called homosexuality “an intrinsic moral evil” and the Church has always made gay men and women feel like outsiders. Catholic bishops have even confused homosexuality with pedophilia and condemned both as if they were the same. No, the judgment has been made, believe me. And yet here we have Francis saying: “Who am I to judge?”

I feel like I’m standing on top of a snow-capped mountain in Colorado, breathing in the fresh cool air of a new day. Pope Francis has brought new life to a stagnant church; new thinking to a smug infallible theology; new hope for millions. I know all you Baptists can’t appreciate the significance of this event, but let me give you an example. It’s like Dr. Kirby Godsey when he was the President of Mercer, publishing a book entitled: “When we talk about God, let’s be honest.” Or his recent one: “Is God a Christian?” Francis and Gosey would be great friends; both of them are absolutely fearless.

Of course, the Vatican newspapers launched an immediate “explanation” of the pope’s words: “Well, he didn’t really veer away from the Church’s teaching on homosexuality, he just struck a more compassionate tone.” And the Italian daily La Repubblica said: “Francis would probably agree with Benedict’s writings on homosexuality -- but they really don’t interest him.” I doubt that Francis would agree with Benedict, but I do agree that those old shaggy ideas do not interest him in the least.

What does interest Francis is something that will shock many of the men who are walking around in black cassocks. Francis is interested in helping people to live in “the light of God.” It reminds me of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., quote: Let’s judge each other by the “content of our character,” not by the color of our skin or our sexual preferences.

Francis also told those reporters on the plane that while Pope John Paul II had closed the door to female priests, he, Francis, sought a “theology of women” and a greater role for them in Catholic life. This “feminine theology” has nowhere to go if it doesn’t open up that John Paul door. If Francis is not going to “judge against” gay priests, he certainly is not going to “judge against” women priests.

I’m sure many critics will jump on Francis and wave a copy of the Bible in his face. “Look at Leviticus 20:13” they will scream, “God judges gays.” And sure enough, it says: “If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death.” It’s the death penalty for homosexuality. But let’s not skip verse 10: “If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife -- both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death.” Whoops! Let’s not get carried away with all this Old Testament stuff; remember: Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone.

I think there is too much “stone-casting.” We judge -- as bad -- everyone who does not look like us. Race, religion and politics. We are a divided country and a divided community. The Russian Communists taught us during the Cold War in the ’50s and ’60s that this was quickest way to kill the enemy. They spent millions infiltrating our universities and our government trying to generate distrust and hatred of the “other guy.” They preached: “Judge that guy!”

Francis preaches: “Who am I to judge? Search for the Lord and have good will.” This could just be a change “in tone” as some are saying, but I have a strong feeling that before long, this tone will become substance, and --like the Brazilians at Copacabana last Sunday -- Catholics aLl over the world will be dancing on the beach.

Dr. Bill Cummings is the CEO of Cummings Consolidated Corporation and Cummings Management Consultants. His website is digitallydrc.com.

MY WARNING: Please judge and critique what Bill Cummings writes, not Bill Cummings himself. Denigrating comments of the person will not be printed. Commenters get off track and derail blog comments when they judge the person and not the content of what is written.

I'LL COMMENT FIRST: Poor Bill, he intentionally sets us a straw man and thus critiques and judges not Catholics but many Protestants in Macon who read the Telegraph and are of the evangelical ilk who take the Holy Bible literally. The straw man is the punishment of death due to those who commit adultery. Of course Jesus' and the New Dispensation does away with many Old Testament laws concerning criminal justice. The Catholic Church has always understood this to be true, not only concerning the death penalty of adulterers, but also the strict dietary laws and other Jewish practices, such as circumcision.

Jesus does not change though that adultery and any other illicit sexual practices are immoral, sinful and could earn a person everlasting punishment in the fires of hell. And yes, God can make that judgement and if anyone is in hell, it is not a mistake made by God, they deserve their punishment. Jesus does not do away with God's judgement or retribution but opens the door to that punishment or retribution to be carried by Jesus and His person on the tree of the Cross. But if we don't receive the gift of salvation by knowingly rejecting Jesus with full consent of the will, well, eternal damnation awaits and it is God who makes the determination, not man.

If someone has same sex attractions, or lusts after men or women, or children for that matter, but does not act upon those attractions and lust and strives to live an exemplary life by God's grace and not in a Pelagian way, who are we to judge these persons? But if they act on their impulses or orientation and give into lust and perversion and harm people, their marriages and their children, hell, yes, we can judge those persons and depending on the crime, civil society, not the Church, can condemn them to prison or the death penalty! In some societies, they get a part of their body cut off, either physically or through medication, what some call chemical castration!

Finally, Bill Cummings is disingenuous, because as a Catholic or a priest or a former of both, he knows that the Catholic Church does not base her moral teachings and judgments simply on the Bible. She does so on the Sacred Scriptures, Sacred Tradition and Natural Law. And where new moral dilemmas develop in society that elude Scripture and Tradition, natural law is sufficient in determining the morality and the judging of a wide expanse of modern practices, not the least of which have to do with medical ethics.