After lo these many pages of arguments, I can’t begin to see any point in forcing any spiritual or religious organization to offer a religious marriage ceremony to non-members, or to violate the tenets of their faith to try to apply their particular rite to people who basically don’t believe in that sort of rigmarole.
One might reasonably say, though, that if a ‘minister’ benefits by the state decreeing that the minister’s marriage ceremony is adequate to say that it takes the place of a civil one…then that minister, if asked to by two otherwise qualified adults (not married already, old enough by law, not being compelled) should be required to perform as a sort of JP, confirming the license, checking the qualifications, and allowing them to sign the register that they agree to be married. They should never be required to afford anyone with whom they disagree, a religious service or rite – marriage, communion, baptism, burial in consecrated ground, etc. etc…
How about the opposite of marriage? Divorce? As best I know, no religion offers a divorce ritual…and divorce is completely a civil matter.
It’s based on the understanding churches have no profit. Indeed, I believe the 501(c)3 status makes it illegal to even have a distributable profit. That was my point earlier about punishing churches by allowing them to be profitable.
Eastern Orthodox remarriage services (they permit up to two remarriages, in special circumstances) apparently include a penitential portion where they acknowledge the failure of the previous marriage, so they do sort of ritualize the ‘divorce’.
Incorrect. It’s based on the understand that non-profits provide the community with a common good, and that society chooses to incentivize such organizations with certain benefits in the form of tax-exemptions. You are correct that distributable profits are prohibited - all excess funds generated must go back into the organization.
The catholic church doesn’t “require” anything but they suggest you either donate one hour’s wages or volunteer for one hour a week.
So just so we’re clear, the anti-gay marriage objection to gay marriage on the grounds that clergy might be forced to perform gay marriage is not totally unjustified. There are actually gay rights activists like Steophan that want to force priests to perform gay marriages.
“Unjustified” might be the wrong word. It still doesn’t work since it’s an overreaching argument. We’d also have to take into account whether those few gay rights activists would actually succeed; if, say, 10% of all voters were in favour of forcing priests to perform gay marriages, that’s still not enough to make it likely to occur as an obvious roll-on effect.
Sure they fill out the same form but on that form they ask for the nature of your orginization coorect. You can be a charity, religious, educational, etc You don’t just put non p[rofit right?
It seems obvious to me that religious and charity or educational are not the same thing. IMHO if the group is only a religious gathering they should not be tax exempt.
That said I do realize that many churches do charity work. If I have a home business I get tax deductions for home office. I think churches that actually do charitable work should get tax breaks.
Here’s the form for recognition of non-profit status. Your organizing documents (Articles of Incorporation) delineate what type of non-profit organization you are, or rather, what your specific mission is.
And yet the federal government lumps them all into the same category and gives them all the same benefits. There’s a reason for that. Which I’ve mentioned on several occasions.
And I’ll ask again - for what purpose? The level of disentangling churches from other 501(c)(3) would be burdensome to the Nth degree, even if you could provide a reasonable motive for doing so that doesn’t run afoul of the 1st Amendment, or even the 14th (as I’d argue the equal protection clause would be far more meaningful when trying to treat churches differently from other non-profits).
Misconstruing “charity work” with “non-profit organization” is common. Doing “charity work” is not what the non-profit status is for, as I have laid out numerous times in this thread. Would you care to actually address any of those reasons that I have pointed out to you?
I don’t think it’s justified. People would not accept the fact that a small fraction of Christians would like to institute a theocratic dictatorship as a justifiable reason to discriminate against Christians in general.
It’s not really a matter of what is popular or being more permissive. It’s a matter of doctrine seeming reasonable and just. And please don’t pretend that the Catholic church hasn’t changed with the times. Inqusition much? Forbid people to read the Bible lately? The entire preotestant movement was born from challenging the doctrine of the Catholic church. btw; Does the church still forbid men and women to use contraceptives? How agressively are they enforcing that doctrine?
Yes there are churches who still do not ordain women, but the fact remains that is changing, which is my point. Doctrine which seem inherently unjust and unfair{not just unpopular} doesn’t resonate well with people looking for spiritual growth.
That’s a nice thoery not supported by the actual facts. Church membership in general is not growing which may indicate they are not adjusting quickly enough. Again, IMHO it’s not a matter of of popularity or anything political but a real sense of justice and truth. People are more educated now and as more and more information becaomes readily available and common knowledge churches will have to address it. Holding on to traitions and dogma commonly held as unjust and unfair or untrue, will not attract people. It’s hard for the message of creation united under a loving God to resonate when certain people are excluded.
Seriously, you can’t scroll down more than 2 pages? Now I know why you haven’t been able to address any of the points I’ve repeatedly brought to your attention.
I’m not suggesting anyone be forced to perform anything. It’s clear that people here aren’t content with simply disagreeing with my views, they have to invent additional ones based on nothing so as to disagree even more.
My view is quite simply that religion should not be an excuse for bigotry. It’s all very well to explain where the law allows it to be that, but that simply means that I disagree with the law.
No organisation, whether religious or otherwise, should be allowed to discriminate based on race, gender, sexuality, disability, religion, age (over majority), and quite probably a few other things.
That applying this to religions would seem to be destructive to them simply shows that (some) religions are inherently bigoted, and that their destruction is no bad thing.
I’d struggle to find that many cases where the Catholic Church has ever actually changed a core moral or doctrinal teaching.
There are a couple cases that come close (weakening their definition of usury is one, accepting the legitimacy of religious pluralism is another, accepting the legitimacy of war and the death penalty, and accepting natural family planning are a couple more). A lot of Catholics would argue that these are not actually changes of doctrine, but rather developments. I think that to some degree all of them do represent genuine changes- but still, there aren’t that many of them.
Please give me a cite that the Catholic Church ever forbade common people from reading the Bible (and when I say the Catholic Church, I mean either a pope or an ecumenical council or maybe one of the most authoritative theologians- not some regional meeting or some low-level priest somewhere).
The Catholic Church, yes, still prohibits the use of artificial contraception, as it always has. It categorically prohibits remarriage after divorce, too. They don’t particularly enforce the rule, but then, they don’t particularly enforce their rules against homosexuality either. Neither contraceptors, nor sexually active remarried people, nor sexually active gays are supposed to take communion in a Catholic Church, unless they have genuinely repented with an intention of not continuing that activity. I doubt the Catholic Church will ever accept the legitimacy of condoms, though it’s possible they may eventually accept hormonal contraception.
Do you have any evidence that embracing modernism and liberalism in the realm of sexual ethics would attract more people to Christianity? It’s possible, I suppose, but I consider it quite unlikely. (And for the record, I am not especially traditionalist on sexual ethics, or on homosexuality specifically, myself). ‘Liberal’, pro-gay churches tend to be demographically declining, while evangelical churches are doing a much better job and attracting and keeping people.
Many conservatives would argue that’s because sexual teachings are core to Christianity, and once you gut them, everything else is up for grabs, and you no longer have a strong faith that can draw people in. I think that’s too simplistic. I think the most important reason that the pro-gay churches are declining is that people who tend to be strongly pro-gay (i.e. culturally liberal people), both tend to take a ‘liberal’ approach to the rest of scripture, and also tend to have fewer children. I don’t think there is a causal relationship there- it is perfectly possible to believe that the New Testament is literally historically true, to have a stay at home wife who raises five kids, and also to think that homosexuality is morally OK. Speaking for myself, I have highly traditionalist views about gender roles, and take a pretty much literalist view of the New Testament, and I also think that homosexual acts are probably not always a sin. It’s just a correlation (which may not be true in future- who knows) that people who do the former two are relatively unlikely to do the latter. I don’t know of any positive evidence, though, that a given church would attract more people if it changed its teachings on homosexuality and on marriage. The churches which have taken steps in that direction have generally not seen an influx of people, and are declining faster than conservative evangelical churches.
Since we’re in the realm of personal anecdote here, I would consider very strongly leaving my church if they ever formally embraced the idea that Christian marriage can be extended to same sex couples. To my mind, that would throw out some very core elements of what Christian marriage is.