Westboro Baptists Ignore Holy Scripture
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
http://vivificat1.blogspot.com/2011/01/westboro-baptists-ignore-holy-scripture.html
Apologetic Bible Study and
News Commentary
This is a
great irony here, in which a Roman Catholic Apologetics group, rightly judge a pseudo
bible believing Baptist Church who’s members are filled with all the darkness
of hell, and hatred of satan.
Brethren, the leader of the Westboro
Baptist Church, a Kansas-based crackpot outfit calling themselves “Christian”
and known for their inflammatory pickets at the funeral of fallen military
service members, has announced that his flock will picket the funeral of
9-year-old Christina Green, killed during the rampage that also killed a
federal judge, a 76-year-old man who died saving his injured wife from more
bullets and three others during the shooting that also gravely wounded Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in
"God
hates Catholics!" the flier, posted on the church's "God Hates
Fags" website, says. "God calls your religion 'vain,' as it's empty
of His truth; you worship idols!"
Now, I tried to access their
site to verify the quote but, mercifully, it appears to be under a
Denial-of-Service attack and was unreachable at about noon EDT.
Let me borrow a line from Billy
Graham. The Bible says: But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,
longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such
there is no law. (Galatians 5:22-23).
If we’re to apply this standard
it will be evident for all to see that these Westboro
Baptists folks are devoid of the Holy Spirit, empty completely of the Presence
of God and of sanctifying grace in their lives, souls, and “church.” Consider
the “fruits” or the “works of the flesh”
The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual
immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft;
hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions,
factions 21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you,
as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the
Now, what is it that the Apostle equates to the
sexual immorality so often condemned by these folks? Hatred, discord,
jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions.
In
Inasmuch as these are mortal sins
due to their grave matter, and provided they are engaged freely and with full
knowledge, granting that only God can see into the consciences of the Westboro Baptist folks, suffer from the following effects
from their mortal sins:
The first effect of mortal sin in man
is to avert him from his true
last end, and deprive his soul
of sanctifying
grace. The sinful act
passes, and the sinner is left in a state of habitual aversion from God.
The sinful state is voluntary
and imputable to the sinner, because it necessarily follows from the act
of sin he freely placed, and it remains until satisfaction is made (see
PENANCE). This state of sin is called by theologians
habitual sin, not in the sense that habitual sin implies a vicious
habit, but in the sense that it signifies a state of aversion from God
depending on the preceding actual sin, consequently voluntary
and imputable. This state of aversion carries with it necessarily in the
present order of God's
providence the privation of grace and charity by means of
which man
is ordered to his supernatural
end. The privation of grace is the "macula peccati"
(St. Thomas,
I-II.86),
the stain of sin spoken of in Scripture
(Joshua
22:17; Isaiah 4:4;
1
Corinthians 6:11). It is not anything positive, a quality
or disposition, an obligation
to suffer, an extrinsic denomination coming from sin, but is solely the
privation of sanctifying
grace. There is not a real but only a conceptual distinction
between habitual sin (reatus culpæ)
and the stain of sin (macula peccati). One and the
same privation considered as destroying the due order of man
to God
is habitual sin, considered as depriving the soul
of the beauty of grace is the stain or "macula" of sin.
The second effect of sin is to entail the
penalty of undergoing suffering (reatus pænæ). Sin (reatus culpæ) is the cause
of this obligation
(reatus pænæ ). The suffering may be inflicted in this life through the
medium of medicinal punishments, calamities, sickness, temporal evils, which
tend to withdraw from sin; or it may be inflicted in the life to come by the justice
of God
as vindictive punishment. The punishments of the future life are proportioned
to the sin committed, and it is the obligation
of undergoing this punishment for unrepented sin that
is signified by the "reatus poenæ"
of the theologians.
The penalty to be undergone in the future life is divided into the pain of loss
(pæna damni) and the pain
of sense (pæna sensus). The
pain of loss is the privation of the beatific vision of God
in punishment of turning away from Him. The pain of sense is suffering in
punishment of the conversion to some created
thing in place of God.
This two-fold pain in punishment of mortal sin is eternal
(1
Corinthians 6:9; Matthew 25:41;
Mark 9:45).
One mortal sin suffices to incur punishment. (See HELL.)
Other effects of sins are: remorse of conscience
(Wisdom
5:2-13); an inclination towards evil,
as habits are formed by a repetition of similar acts; a darkening of the intelligence,
a hardening of the will (Matthew 13:14-15;
Romans
11:8); a general vitiating of nature,
which does not however totally destroy the substance
and faculties
of the soul
but merely weakens the right exercise of its faculties.
(Source)
To conclude, the
Let us then return good for evil, love for hatred,
mercy for judgment. Let us pray for these poor lost souls
whose eternal salvation is seriously endangered, and let us humbly pray
for own faith, hope, love, and final perseverance.
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