Posts tagged “Roman Catholicism”

McClean on Kieschnick on the Papacy as Antichrist

Posted on April 4th, 2013

My colleague and friend, Charles McClean (who will be installed as Pastor of Our Saviour Church in Baltimore next month) wrote a lengthy reply to a previous post on Esgetology highlighting Gerald Kieschnick’s remarks on the papacy. You can read the original post here. Once again Dr. Kieschnick demonstrates ignorance of the Lutheran Symbols when he deplores the emphasis on private confession and suggests that the perpetual virginity of the Mother of God is purely Roman Catholic doctrine. Confessional Lutherans differ on the latter but, given the fact that Lutherans from Luther through Pieper to this very day (e.g. John Stephenson, Charles McClean) have accepted the perpetual virginity, it can scarcely be seen as uniquely Roman Catholic teaching. Confessional Lutherans have also differed on the identification…

Categories: Theology

Tagged: Antichrist, Blessed Virgin Mary, Charles McClean, Gerald Kieschnick, Lutheran Confessions, Missouri Synod, Papacy, Private Confession, Roman Catholicism, Semper virgo

Kieschnick on the Papacy

Posted on March 15th, 2013

LCMS President Emeritus Gerald Kieschnick recently commented on newly-elected Pope Francis and the papacy in general. Writing in his blog/email newsletter Perspectives, Kieschnick said two things of particular interest. The first deals with the date of Easter: During my days in office I had hoped to be able to visit with the pope, primarily to enlist his assistance in persuading the Christian Church to establish a fixed Sunday of the year for Easter, the first Sunday in April. Alas, that hope will not be fulfilled, unless what Dr. Paul Maier writes in his historical novel Constantine Codex actually becomes fact. Check it out. Given the very long-standing controversy over the date of Easter, that President Kieschnick would have such a hope is very surprising. The second…

Categories: Theology

Tagged: Antichrist, Easter, Easter (date of), Gerald Kieschnick, Lutheran Confessions, Papacy, Pope Francis, Roman Catholicism

“You will pay”: Lesbian judges priest who judged her

Posted on February 29th, 2012

The trouble with playing the Judgment Card is that you have to make a judgment yourself to play it. Here’s a story from the Washington Post about a lesbian denied communion at her mother’s funeral: “You brought your politics, not your God into that Church yesterday, and you will pay dearly on the day of judgment for judging me,” she wrote in a letter to Guarnizo. “I will pray for your soul, but first I will do everything in my power to see that you are removed from parish life so that you will not be permitted to harm any more families.” Late Tuesday, Johnson received a letter of apology from the Rev. Barry Knestout, one of the archdiocese’s highest-ranking administrators, who said the lack of…

Categories: Liturgy, Religion

Tagged: Closed Communion, Homosexuality, Judgment, Judgment Day, Lesbian, Roman Catholicism

Attacks on religious liberty rebranded as defending women’s “health”

Posted on February 18th, 2012

In the aftermath of the Obama administration’s assault on religious liberty, the media have presented doctored statistics and deflected the issue into a general spin of “women’s health” (as if chemicals designed to alter the natural functioning of a woman’s body, or the outright murder of little girls, is somehow in the interest of women’s “health”). Here’s a sample of Mollie Hemingway’s analysis (“Media ignore women, for women”) at GetReligion: My church body never engages in politics, for doctrinal reasons. But here even when we are compelled to speak out, the words that our elected President spoke aren’t important because he’s male? By falling for partisan spin about gender inequality, reporters have completely marginalized me and the millions of women who were being represented…

Categories: Politics, Theology

Tagged: Abortifacients, Abortion, Contraception, Democrats, First Amendment, GetReligion, HHS, Maggie Karner, Mollie Ziegler Hemingway, Nancy Pelosi, Obama, Obamacare, Planned Parenthood, Religious Liberty, Roman Catholicism, United States Constitution

The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist (Brief Reviews)

Posted on September 28th, 2011

Rarely can books dealing with demons or the supernatural be accused of being overly mundane. Matt Baglio’s The Rite is the first book I’ve read on exorcism or demonology that falls into that category. The book wasn’t entirely boring, although it took me awhile to finish; there simply wasn’t the eagerness to turn the page and discover what happens next. Baglio, a journalist, tells the story of an American Priest of the Roman Church who is trained in Rome to perform exorcisms. He pulls back the mystery surrounding how exorcists are trained. Far from unthinking superstition, the priests hear lectures from psychologists, medical doctors, and law enforcement, among others. Instead of finding demons under every knock of a shutter or mewing cat in a…

Categories: Books, Theology

Tagged: Brief Reviews, Devil, Exorcism, Malachi Martin, Matt Baglio, Roman Catholicism

Politicians and the Antichrist: Why it matters

Posted on August 1st, 2011

I finally read David Mills’s piece on the Bachmann Antichrist Overdrive flap at First Things (“Michele Bachmann, the Anti-Christ, and the Political Theologian“), and he makes the excellent point that politicians need to tell us more about what they believe, so we can have a better idea of how they’ll approach their office: Religious politicians (on the left and right) are happy to appeal to the religious voter, and many are happy to appeal to culture war divisions, and some to imply that God is on their side without quite saying so. But they want to stay as far away as possible from what Chesterton called philosophy and I’ve called theology, because the clearer they are about their principles and commitments, the less room they have…

Categories: Politics, Theology

Tagged: Antichrist, David Mills, Lutheranism, Michele Bachmann, Roman Catholicism

Michele Bachmann’s Crime

Posted on July 22nd, 2011

Two more good pieces to add to our Bachmann Antichrist Overdrive list: Our own Mollie Hemingway addresses the matter in the Wall Street Journal’s “Houses of Worship” column; here’s a sample: Reporters also missed the distinction between individual popes and the papacy. The Protestant Reformers certainly weren’t fans of Pope Leo X or other individual popes who abused the office’s power. But the Lutheran opposition was and is mainly to the papacy’s claim to speak with authority equal to or surpassing the word of God, and to its claim that membership in the Catholic Church is a condition for salvation. Read the whole thing here. And at Touchstone, Lars Walker asserts that what lies behind the attacks on Bachmann is a hatred of doctrine.…

Categories: Politics, Theology

Tagged: Antichrist, Lars Walker, Lutheranism, Michele Bachmann, Mollie Ziegler Hemingway, Roman Catholicism

Those edgy, dangerous Lutherans

Posted on July 19th, 2011

Another quick Bachmann & the Great Antichrist Smear roundup. CBN’s David Brody clarifies that Michele Bachmann left WELS over preference issues, which makes complete sense. Bachmann never sounded like a Lutheran; her spiritual vocabulary sounded far more like an American pop-Evangelical. Brody then writes a fairly decent summary of the Antichrist issue: There are two common views of the antichrist. Some Christians believe that the antichrist is a particular, Satan-driven end-times person. This is not the view of the Wisconsin Synod Lutherans. They hold to Luther’s 500-year-old view that when the office of the papacy functions in the place of Christ (speaking for God or acting as a mediator that only Christ can be), then it is against Christ. It’s more of a theological…

Categories: Theology

Tagged: Antichrist, Dan Savage, David Brody, GetReligion, Homosexuality, Lutheranism, Michele Bachmann, Mollie Ziegler Hemingway, Roman Catholicism, Wisconsin Synod

Are Protestants disqualified from serving as President? (Bachmann Antichrist roundup)

Posted on July 16th, 2011

While it’s simply smear tactics against a Christian candidate for president, that would be the logical take-away from the latest attacks on Michele Bachmann, erstwhile Lutheran (WELS). Our own Mollie Hemingway has been all over the poorly-crafted hit pieces: Are you now or have you ever been a Lutheran? (GetReligion) Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been … a Lutheran? (Ricochet) Is Bachmann the media’s anti-Christ? (GetReligion) Other interesting takes: Michele Bachmann’s No-Popery Campaign (Anthony Sacramone at First Things) The Left Once Again Races to Defend the Papacy! (Joe Escalante at Ricochet) Catholics shouldn’t fear Michele Bachmann (John Gerardi at The Daily Caller) So what of the matter of the papacy as antichrist? There’s a helpful LCMS FAQ that delves into…

Categories: Politics, Theology

Tagged: Anthony Sacramone, Antichrist, GetReligion, Joe Escalante, John Gerardi, Michele Bachmann, Missouri Synod, Mollie Ziegler Hemingway, Papacy, Ricochet, Roman Catholicism, The Daily Caller, Wisconsin Synod

Litany of the Saints

Posted on April 11th, 2011

Lutheran Service Book introduced to Missouri Synod usage the “Litany of the Resurrection” after the Baptisms and Confirmations at the Easter Vigil. I am uncertain of the origin of this Litany. The Roman usage has the “Litany of the Saints” (see, e.g., here), and it appears that the new Daily Divine Service Book has reproduced this Litany in its form of the Vigil, albeit with the saints entirely omitted. I have revised the Litany of the Saints for Evangelical usage, transforming the petitions to the saints to pray for us into a petition to God, e.g., “God of St. James, have mercy on us” instead of “St. James, pray for us.” I have also omitted some of the lesser-known saints for the sake of…

Categories: Liturgy

Tagged: Daily Divine Service Book, Easter Vigil, Litany, Litany of the Saints, Lutheran Service Book, Roman Catholicism