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TOM LAMPRECHT: Harry, I’d like to take you to a Fox News story out of Georgetown University. A Catholic student group at that university could be stripped of its funding and its ability to meet on campus for its belief in traditional marriage. Love Saxa, a group that advocates marriage between a man and a woman, is under fire from the LGBTQ groups on campus, according to the student newspaper, The Hoya.
Love Saxa’s definition of marriage does not include same-sex couples, as they say they believe that marriage is a conjugal union on every level — emotional, spiritual, physical and mental — directed toward caring for biological children. “To us marriage is much more than commitment of love between two consenting adults.”
The student newspaper then targeted the group in an editorial titled “Defund Intolerance.”
DR. REEDER: What they promoted is marriage and basically affirmed the Roman Catholic view, which the historic Biblical doctrine for thousands of years as the Gospel of Jesus Christ extended from Jerusalem.
As it moved north, south, east and west, it encountered barbarian tribes with barbarian cultures, including barbarian definitions of marriage and family such as bigamy and polygamy. When Christianity came, lives were changed and the structure of marriage and family was changed.
What’s really interesting is, as it was changed, it was then ordered Biblically. We see the ordering of marriage of one man and one woman for one life.
Even, by the way, you see the same trajectory in the Bible, don’t you? That, when sin came into the world, it attacked marriage: there, you have just subsequent to the generation of Cain, and Abel, and Seth, you then have polygamy.
Sin attacks all of God’s creation ordinances and it attacks marriage, and that attacks family and then attacks all of those things that are affirmed by God as sacred and sanctified.
What’s interesting, today, is we have a culture that is descending back into paganism in our so-called “tolerant society,” which tolerates fabrication and mythology in that you call a same-sex relationship, marriage.
Well, by definition, it can’t be marriage. You can call it what you want to, but it’s not marriage, and that’s what this organization said. Marriage is one man, one woman, committed for one life in a conjugal, covenantal, heterosexual, monogamous relationship.
God made the man and the woman to be one. He made them different in order to unite them. Now, we’re equal before God, but we are different. Equality is not interchangeability. Marriage also allows for procreation so monogamous, covenantal, conjugal, heterosexual relationship of one man, one woman, for one life.
Well, that’s what this organization embraces. Guess what? It’s a Roman Catholic University. Guess what the Roman Catholic canons affirm? The historic, Biblical definition of marriage.
Therefore, you have a student organization that is designed to uphold a Roman Catholic tenant, which is a Biblical tenant common to all Biblical Christianity and, now, you have a student group that says you can’t believe that, on this campus, because it is intolerant.
Yes, it is intolerant. For instance, I would uphold the sanctity of life on a Roman Catholic university. I would be intolerant of abortion and I would bring the ideas to bear upon the insidious and undeniable chaos, destruction and violence of the abortion industry. Well, they have done the same thing concerning marriage.
Now, here’s what usually happens: when you can’t match the argument intellectually, what you then do is try to shame the opponent, marginalize the opponent and, if at all possible, silence them because you can’t uphold the debate with them and that’s what is being done here by those who embrace the LGBTQ agenda affirming the same-sex marriage mythology and fabrication.
There is no ability to actually, by definition of what a marriage is, to actually bring into reality a same-sex marriage — a same-sex marriage is not heterosexual, it is not monogamous, and it cannot be conjugal, and it is not established for procreation.
TOM LAMPRECHT: Harry, let me give you the statement released by the university and get your response to it. The university said, “As a Catholic and Jesuit institution, Georgetown listens deeply and discerningly to the plurality of voices that exist among our students, faculty and staff and is committed to the care of each member of our community.”
It went on to say, “As the students on the Student Activities Commission review the complaint formally submitted by individual students, we encourage all students to follow our community commitment to open dialogue and mutual respect.”
DR. REEDER: What you’re assuring is open dialogue to a group of people who don’t want open dialogue. They don’t want to debate what a marriage actually is. They want to silence those they cannot answer.
I am sure that it’s appropriate to say, “Well, we respect everybody here and their civil rights, etc., etc.,” and that certainly ought to be done, but this doesn’t require a lot of thought. This just very clearly states, “We’re Roman Catholic. We have certain tenets and certain things that we embrace. One of those things that we embrace is marriage. We expect our priests to teach it and we expect our communicants to embrace it.
Therefore, in an educational institution that we support through the Jesuit order, there is no reason for us to outlaw an organization that upholds one of our canon tenets and one of our statements of dogma concerning what marriage is.
On the contrary, we would see that as a success in our educational enterprise that we have students that embrace a Biblical view of marriage and have moved into the public square to contend for it and to defend it in the midst of this intellectual and moral chaos surrounding quote/unquote, ‘same-sex marriage,’ which is a legal, and biological and functional fabrication.
And it is a culturally destructive movement within society because it destroys the one basic unit of society, the family rooted in a marriage, so that children all have the opportunity to have a father and a mother because the marriage from which they came had a husband and a wife.”
TOM LAMPRECHT: Harry, what does this say about these larger institutions that sometimes can lose their moral bearings? This is a university that’s been around for a number of years and, certainly, it’s going to continue to embrace the Catholic dogma of traditional marriage and, yet, we find that, perhaps, they need some accountability, too.
DR. REEDER: Tom, I know you’ve heard the term “entropy.” That’s the second law of thermodynamics that, when things are left alone, they run down. Well, they not only run down, they run away spiritually.
A denomination, or a movement or a church can have wonderful agencies and wonderful ministries in place but, if they’re left alone and not properly guided, and not properly governed, and not properly held accountable, they can run off.
Now, the Roman Catholic Church, the bishops and their structure, are going to have to take a look at these questions: How does Georgetown University deal with this issue? Will they be consistent to the Georgetown University tenets? Your accountability is not to the students that are bringing this charge and that
The university’s accountability is not to the students that are bringing this charge and that are attempting to silence those who hold to what we believe. The accountability is to the church and they may say, ‘If you don’t uphold what we say we believe, then this university cannot be a part of the Roman Catholic Church.’
I applaud the students who are contending for a Biblical view of marriage and, of course, I am hoping that the university defends the students that are being consistent with the tenets of the university concerning marriage.
But here’s what I do know: we’ve got to get out there with the Gospel of saving grace in Christ because the problem here is that people are looking for salvation and meaning in life by embracing a cultural revolution that stands in opposition to the glory of God. And, in reality, that salvation that is sought in opposition to the glory of God only brings the demise of the individual and the culture.
Contend for the truth in the public square. God will use you not only for redeeming grace, but also common grace; redeeming grace that transforms sinner and common grace that restrains sin in society.
Dr. Harry L. Reeder III is the Senior Pastor of Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham.
This podcast was transcribed by Jessica Havin. Jessica is editorial assistant for Yellowhammer News. Jessica has transcribed some of the top podcasts in the country and her work has been featured in a New York Times Bestseller.
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