Page 181: For hundreds of years, Protestants stood firmly with traditional Christian orthodoxy on all issues of morality. But in the past century, many Protestant denominations have altered (in some cases, reversed) their teachings not just on sex but also on other important moral subjects such as abortion and the indissolubility of marriage. As with sexual morality, these Protestants have employed a democratic model for discerning Christian teaching, implying that Christ’s moral teachings can change with the spirit of the age.
Note: Pope elections were influenced by secular monarchs from 418 to 1903 or almost 1,500 years.
For a significant part of its history, the Church was influenced in the choice of its leaders by powerful monarchs and governments. For example, the Roman emperors once held considerable sway in the elections of popes. In 418, Honorius settled a controversial election, upholding Pope Boniface I over the challenger Antipope Eulalius. The last exercise of the veto was in 1903, when Prince Jan Puzyna de Kosielsko informed the College of Cardinals that Austria opposed the election of Mariano Rampolla. Consequently, the College elected Giuseppe Sarto as Pope Pius X, who issued the papal bull Commissum nobis six months later declaring that any cardinal who communicated his government's veto in the future would suffer excommunication latae sententiae. Wikipedia Encyclopedia.
Note: Social issues should not replace the testimony of Jesus Christ.

Pages 181-182: From the Reformation until the 1960s, all Protestant groups condemned abortion as evil, but as the winds of modern society began to shift, so did Protestant teachings. It began with the Episcopal Church in 1967, when its General Convention voted to approve abortions in certain situations. The dominoes continued to fall over the next five years, with the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) reversing its pro-life positions to support unrestricted access to abortion, the Lutheran Church in America (a precursor to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) declaring it was the decision of the woman, and the United Methodists, the United Church of Christ, the Disciples of Christ, and even the Southern Baptist Convention following suit.
Note: Main-line Protestant denominations are fading away due to sinful advocacy.
Since the 1960s, however, mainline groups have shrunk as a percentage of the American population as increasing numbers of American Protestants have come to affiliate instead with fundamentalist, evangelical, or charismatic churches, or with no church at all. Mainline denominations peaked in membership in the 1950s and have declined steadily in the last half century. From 1965 to 1988, mainline church membership declined from 31 million to 25 million, then fell to 21 million in 2005. While in 1970 the mainline churches claimed most Protestants and more than 30 percent of the population as members, today they are a minority among American Protestants, claiming approximately 15 percent of American adults among their adherents in 2009. Wikipedia Encyclopedia.
Note: Social issues should not replace the testimony of Jesus Christ.

Page 182: Some Protestants even use the Bible in an attempt to prove that life does not begin at conception. One verse used to argue for when life begins, even by Evangelicals, is Leviticus 17:11: “For the life of the flesh is in the blood.” Since it takes weeks after conception for the baby to pump blood, an argument is made that abortion before this time is acceptable.
Note: Abortion is evil and selfish as it may delay the plan of God.
But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace, to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately confer with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but I went to Arabia, and returned again to Damascus. Galatians 1:15-17.
Note: Social issues should not replace the testimony of Jesus Christ.

Page 182: Other Protestants go further and argue from the Bible that life does not begin until breath is drawn: Many people think that a human being is created at the time of conception but this belief is not supported by the bible. According to the bible, a fetus is not a living person with a soul until after drawing its first breath. After God formed man in Genesis 2:7, He “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and it was then that the man became a living being.” Although the man was fully formed by God in all respects, he was not a living being until after taking his first breath.
Note: Abortion is evil and selfish as it may delay the plan of God.
And the Lord said to her: “Two nations are in your womb, two peoples shall be separated from your body; One people shall be stronger than the other, and the older shall serve the younger.” Genesis 25:23.
Note: Social issues should not replace the testimony of Jesus Christ.

Pages 182-183: All of Christianity likewise once considered marriage to be an indissoluble bond, but today most Protestant communities have reversed their past teachings and permit their members to divorce and remarry. Tellingly, the first Protestants laid the shaky foundation for undermining marriage, beginning with Martin Luther and King Henry VIII. Luther was a Catholic priest, which means he had “married” the Church. Yet he broke in schism from her and then chose to marry a nun who had herself broken her vows (religious sisters are seen as being spiritually “married” to Christ).
Note: The original Apostles believed in being married.
Am I not an apostle? Am I not free? Have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord? Are you not my work in the Lord? If I am not an apostle to others, yet doubtless I am to you. For you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord. My defense to those who examine me is this: Do we have no right to eat and drink? Do we have no right to take along a believing wife, as do also the other apostles, the brothers of the Lord, and Cephas? 1 Corinthians 9:1-5.
Note: Social issues should not replace the testimony of Jesus Christ.

Page 183: Still, Protestantism maintained a strong respect for marriage, following the broader Christian society’s opinion. But as society changed, so did Protestantism. Without the strong foundation that marriage was an inviolable sacrament, Protestants were primed to be led astray by the spirit of the age. And so they were.
Note: But as Tradition changed, so did the Catholic Church.
Some of the earliest Christian leaders were married men. The mention in Mark 1:30, Luke 4:38, and Matthew 8:14-15 of Saint Peter's mother-in-law indicates that he had married (Matthew 8:14-15: "when Jesus was come into Peter's house, he saw his wife's mother laid, and sick of a fever.") According to Clement of Alexandria (Stromata, III, vi, ed. Dindorf, II, 276), Peter was married and had children and his wife suffered martyrdom. Pope Clement I wrote: "For Peter and Philip begat children". Wikipedia Encyclopedia.
Note: Social issues should not replace the testimony of Jesus Christ.

Page 183: Modern wisdom views personal fulfillment as the highest good. We are encouraged to “follow our bliss,” do what’s “good for us” and recognize that sometimes people “fall out of love.” When a marital relationship is no longer gratifying, divorce is seen as an acceptable and even necessary course. Secular ideologues warn us that it’s unhealthy to keep a life-long promise when we no longer feel fulfilled by it.
Note: Apostolic wisdom recommends marriage for everyone who wants to.
Now concerning the things of which you wrote to me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, because of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband. Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband. 1 Corinthians 7:1-3.
Note: Christians should follow the advice of the Apostle Paul.

Page 184: The Catholic Church stands today virtually alone in recognizing the immorality of contraception and sterilization. Similarly, the Church continues its unchanging witness to the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death by condemning abortion unequivocally.
Note: Christians are to be an unchanging witness for Jesus Christ.
“But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” Acts 1:8.
Note: Social issues should not replace the testimony of Jesus Christ.

Page 184: One does not need to understand or accept the Church’s authority to agree with this condemnation, of course. There are many Protestants who remain pro-life on biblical grounds. In fact, even basic arguments from biology and natural law suffice to establish the immorality and injustice of abortion.
Note: Abortion is evil and selfish as it may delay the plan of God.
For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them. Psalm 139:13-16.
Note: Social issues should not replace the testimony of Jesus Christ.

Page 184: The Catholic Church, on the other hand, has retained the theology of marriage it received from Christ and the apostles: that a true marriage between baptized persons is sacramental and indissoluble (Matt. 19:8-9). That is why it continues to preach the same hard but loving truth that Christ taught: for validly married persons to divorce and marry someone else is to commit adultery.
Note: Christians are to preach Jesus Christ.
Therefore those who were scattered went everywhere preaching the word. Then Philip went down to the city of Samaria and preached Christ to them. Acts 8:4-5.
Note: Social issues should not replace the testimony of Jesus Christ.

Page 185: Our world, so deeply in need of a Christian witness to the sanctity and permanence of marriage, instead sees the rampant divorce and remarriage among Christians as proof that these evils are acceptable, and that God doesn’t seem to help Christians stay married any more than other people. This weakening of marriage has led to the disintegration of the family, which is the fundamental cell of society. Along with contraception, which removed the necessity of children from marriage, it has paved the way for the rise of acceptance of same-sex unions and “marriages.”
Note: Our sin-sick world needs the Christian witness of Jesus Christ.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness of Him and cried out, saying, “This was He of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me is preferred before me, for He was before me.’” And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. John 1:14-17.
Note: Social issues should not replace the testimony of Jesus Christ.

Page 185: It is no coincidence that the Catholic Church has stood like a rock, unmoved and unchanged in its moral teachings against the battering waves of the modern world with its selfish and morally relative agenda. The bishops, priests, and laity of the Catholic Church have not accomplished this feat by their own strength but by the unfailing protection of God’s Spirit.
Note: Our sin-sick world needs the Christian witness of Jesus Christ.
Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud, all passed through the sea, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, all ate the same spiritual food, 4and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ. 1 Corinthians 10:1-4.
Note: Social issues should not replace the testimony of Jesus Christ.

Page 186: If Protestantism is true, then not even the sanctity of human life can be considered non-negotiable Christian teaching. Along with indissolubility of marriage, it’s not an objective moral truth but a mere starting point for negotiation with the secular culture.
Note: Our sin-sick world needs the Christian witness of Jesus Christ.
The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants—things which must shortly take place. And He sent and signified it by His angel to His servant John, who bore witness to the word of God, and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, to all things that he saw. Revelation 1:1-2.
Note: Social issues should not replace the testimony of Jesus Christ.

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