There was a cartoon a long time ago which showed the Hand of God reaching down to a football huddle. The caption was, “It looks like Concordia is getting a play.” I think the current LCMS regime is getting theirs not from above but from the across the sea, the holy see of Rome.
Witness the December 23, 2013 Time article on their Person of the Year, Pope Francis. It is amazing how the popular press is agog over this man, this Antichrist if you confess our Confessions. There plaudit is to a Medieval degree.
His position on abortion, homosexuality, and women is followed? copied? parroted by LCMS, Inc. According to Time his position is “the church needs to do a better job of caring for women who turn to abortion, especially in ‘painful situations’ such as rape or poverty” (68). The latter two are touchstones of the Pro-Choice movement. His approach to dealing with homosexuality “is first about compassion not condemnation….’Who am I to judge’” (60). Paraphrasing Chesterton, the whole world can die from compassion such as this. As for women, Pope Francis wants what LCMS, Inc. does. “Francis wants women to have a stronger role in church decisionmaking….’It is necessary to broaden the opportunities for a stronger presence of women in the church…The feminine genius is needed wherever we make important decisions’” (53). Again paraphrasing Chesterton, by virtue of being born, i.e. by our genesis from women, ever man is feminized.
My problem with the Pope’s play book is that it makes the Church more of a problem than the only solution. It’s akin to St. Paul saying, “I see you have an altar to the Unknown God, and I’m sorry that we haven’t done a better job of telling you who it is.” It would be as if rather than righteous Lot’s soul being vexed by Sodom’s sins he was vexed by his own. The Pope’s playbook being followed, copied, mimicked, parroted by LCMS, Inc. is the equivalent of Elijah giving gasoline to the prophets of Baal and Noah apologizing for not adding lifeboats to the Ark.
We don’t answer people’s unwillingness to confess their sins by confessing our own. Even Moses and Aaron when falling on their faces before the rebellious Old Testament Church didn’t confess their sins against them but begged them not to continue on the path of rebellion that could only end in their judgment.
