The most important thing to me is my faith.  But not a faith in any human institution but my faith in God according to scripture. 

Obama did the right thing.  If a pastor or priest is preaching heresy it's not God's church.  God is not going to bless this.  Just because these men are preaching from a church pulpit doesn't make them one of God's ambassadors.  Many use the platform for their own agendas completely bypassing God's agenda which is to preach his word not their own. 

In order to know if something is heretical or not is to be familiar with the real thing.  If we know the truth well enough we'll be able to spot the lie in an instance and should either try to correct the error by speaking against it or flee from it if they will not listen to sound reasoning. 

Thanks lulapilgrim for responding to responding to timothy's question. References to worshipping in community are found throughout the New Testament, beginning with Jesus' assembling of twelve apostles and continuing with the Great Comission, where Jesus sent the disciples out to establish faith communities throughout the world. Lastly, Jesus said "where two or three have come together in my name, I am there among them." (Matthew 18:20)

Well, I had nearly finished a long reply to timothy_sfker’s comment, but I lost it…that will teach me not to type long entries directly into the JU window. Let me do my best to reproduce my reply.

First let me say that, while we are getting a bit off topic from my original post, I’ve found this discussion very interesting, and I appreciate everyone’s comments. I agree to some extent with almost everyone’s comments, but on some items I have some very serious issues. Of course, that doesn’t take away from how much I appreciate you and your feedback to my post!

No problem. That’s what I thought you might be getting at. I won’t argue with you here. Certainly our redemption is not dependent on our actions before or after our life on Earth (or in space, if you’re an astronaut or cosmonaut).

On this point, I couldn’t disagree with you more. Lulapilgrim already provided ample evidence from Scriptures that this is not the case. What Paul said regarding the Church and Lulapilgrim alluded to, is that using anatomy as a metaphor Jesus is the head of the Church and we are the body (Colossians 1:18, 24; Romans 12:5; Ephesians 3:6, 5:23; and most famously in 1 Corinthians 12:12-27). The Church cannot exist without the head or without the body. And Jesus is forever married to the Church, which is one of His great gifts to us on Earth.

I respect the fact that there are many people who support Jesus’s ethical teachings, such as “love your neighbor”, but do not wish to be associated with an institutionalized religion. I sympathize with you because I have been in that very same place during my personal faith journey. But if you really delve into Scripture and the historical record of the years immediately following Jesus’s death, I believe you can only form one conclusion regarding what Jesus desired for the role of the Church in the lives of his followers—that is, that Jesus intended the Church to play a central, pivotal role in every Christian’s life.

If after careful study, you do not see this in Jesus’s teaching, I ask you to answer one simple question: Do you really think that Jesus—that is, God—who knows humanity far better than any human—would send his only Son to the world and leave us with *only* written word for us to interpret and understand His most important teachings on how He desires us to live our lives?

This is not met in any way to disrespect the great value that Scripture has, which I believe is the inspired Word of God. Anything we suppose to be the will of God must be firmly backed by the whole of this great gift we have in the Bible. But God knows how we humans are and how our minds work. God knows how we can manipulate any set of words and interpret them to mean just about anything we want. That’s why He gave us the Holy Spirit! That’s why He gave us the Church! That’s why He gave us the lives of the saints! Because we humans are so prone to selfishness and manipulation of God’s gifts for our own purposes, in His infinite wisdom, He gave us an unbroken line of His followers, set aflame with passion by the Holy Spirit, all the way back to Jesus and His Apostles. That is the Church!!!

I can understand when some people look at religion, they see a great deal of shame. It is easy to find if you look for it, and the devil is working very hard to tear down the Church, so there are many examples where people have fallen to his temptations and brought shame upon the Church. But if you look at the whole of the 2000 year history of the Church, there are literally tens of thousands of examples of Holy men and women who have brought great glory to the Church. There are countless examples of the Church encountering some challenge to its authority or some scandal or heresy, only to arise from it with even greater glory.

If you do not agree with me about how wonderful the Church is and you do not see the great works it has done in the world, I invite you to study the lives of the saints. St. Francis of Assisi, whom I quoted in my article, is a good person with whom to start. He lived in a time of great scandal in the Church, and he worked very hard to change the Church for the better, even though other Christians even threatened his life for it. And ultimately he prevailed. Still, despite the Church’s flaws, he NEVER condemned the Church or left its side. He continued throughout to praise its glory and majesty because he saw God’s work in the Church.

Of course, you shouldn’t judge any man or woman, and I really and truly am trying not to judge Senator Obama. My goal has been to look at the action of leaving one’s church because one disagrees with one of its leaders or invited speakers. In particular, I wanted to investigate what it may signify to leave one’s church, resign after 20 years of membership, at the very moment when one’s membership became politically unpopular. While I try not to criticize Senator Obama personally, we cannot escape our God-given duty to carefully judge his candidacy for President—such a powerful position for so many issues important to Christians, and we can only make these judgments based on what we know about his past and most current choices. Based on this, I reaffirm what I originally stated: If someone leaves his or her church of 20 years at the moment when that church became politically unpopular, then it is a good sign the faith he claims to have found in that very church is firmly engrained in his every bone.

If he truly loved his faith and his faith community, then why not remain in the church and try to rid it of any bigotry or hatred that he sees there? How much more powerful would it have been if he took some time out from his busy presidential campaign, went to Trinity church, and made a speech there denouncing hatred and divisiveness? How much more fruit could he bear, by using the relationship he’s established with the pastor and the church’s members, to ask them not to tolerate hate within the Church’s walls? Instead he chose to cut himself from the vine at the very moment that the clouds began to cover the skies.

[quote]I sympathise with you here, as I also believe that Jesus Christ wanted communities of Christians to be established. To me, this is what he meant by the coming kingdom of God and the ethics of these communities of people were spelled out in the sermon on the mount. However, no such community exists today. I have no faith in any of the institutionalised church systems, and so it is very easy for me to not place much emphasis on church attendance.[\quote]

I invite you to come to my home parish (St. Paul the Apostle Church) in Houston, Texas. I wish you could see how vibrant and loving this church community is. We are literally bursting the walls with attendance. Every night of the week that I show up to the church, the parking lot is literally full of cars. Someone is there 24-hours a day / 7 days a week, worshipping the Lord (in Perpetual Adoration). We are not perfect, nor are any of our members perfect, but I truly see God every time I interact with someone from my parish.

And we are not the only parish like this. Sure, some parishes are more active than others. Some communities are more committed to Jesus’s teachings than others. (This was true in the early Christian communities as well, by the way). But I believe within every parish, you can find the hand of God. Again, Jesus said “where there are two or three gathered in my name, I am there.”

Lastly, let me say this regarding church communities that are not in communion with the universal Church. As sad as I am about the fragmentation that has existed among Christians (from the very earliest of times), and as much as I love the Catholic Church and believe that it is possesses the unbroken authority of Jesus, handed down from Him to Peter and his successors…all of this is not to say that the Catholic Church has a monopoly on God. God is present in many places, in many churches, and in many places outside of Church (in fact, all places). Jesus’s message is alive and well in many Christian denominations throughout the world, and in some places, Protestants or Orthodox Christians can outdo their neighbor Catholics a hundred fold in their fervor for Christ. But look at the history of every church that has broken off from the Apostolic Church. Do any of them equal in size, unity, or majesty the Church founded upon Peter by Jesus? Why has every church that broke off from the Catholic Church continued to fraction into more and more denominations? There are literally hundreds of thousands of churches, based on different interpretations of the Bible, so many that you wonder if there is a church for every possible permutation interpretations of the Bible possible (but God knows we’re capable of many more…)

For those feel they can know God without any church, you are absolutely correct. You can even know God without Jesus. God has given us prayer. God has given us nature. God has given us many fascinating faith and expressions of spirituality. One can know God from a variety of different sources at a variety of different levels.

Yet, God has also given us Jesus, and Jesus has given us the Church. Most importantly, Jesus has given us his very Body and Blood for us to experience His Divinity. One cannot possibly know God more fully than by consuming Him and sharing in His Divinity. I admit it must sound strange to those who haven’t experienced God’s Sacraments! But Christians have been doing this very act since the very beginning, based on Jesus’ words to the very first Christians: “This is my Body. This is my Blood.” And *that* is what the Church offers each one of us today!

How did I misquote the Scripture? You are right to point to the context around that verse, but the difficulty of using Scripture quotes to back up a claim is that sometimes you have to understand the context of the entire Bible to understand a single verse or chapter. And one cannot prudently rely on one's own interpretation alone, but rather one should seek the counsel of the many great Biblical scholars that came before us.

Matthew 18 is interweaving many important messages about the authority of the Church and the presence of Christ among the ministry of the Church. That's what's so amazing about the Bible, but also what makes it so challenging to interpret on our own! Matthew 18:18 contains an almost word-for-word not-so-subtle reference to Matthew 16:19...the very same verse that where Jesus gives the authority of the Church to Peter!

Paraphrasing in modern language he is saying, first to Peter and now to all twelve disciples, "whatever is done by you on Earth will also be done in heaven, and vice versa!" That is another example of why the Apostles--the first Bishops--play such an important role in the Church! ...but again, we have to be very careful about the context of what Jesus is speaking about...specifically he is talking about what has become in Church tradition excommunication, which can only be done by Bishops, i.e. the successors of the Apostles.

The process of using two or three witnesses, described in Matthew 18:15-17, is first a reference to the Old Testament, specifically Deuteronomy 19:15. St. Matthew uses the word "church" in Matthew 18:17, which is actually only one of two places that the word church is used in all of the Gospels....guess what the other instance is? That's right, Matthew 16:18, where Jesus founds his church upon Peter, the rock.

What's absolutely amazing to me (I believe, God's work) is that Jesus is laying out the exact process that I tried to express that Senator Obama should do with respect to things he doesn't agree with in his church. That is, first tell his brother or brothers privately what he doesn't agree with. If that doesn't work, "tell the church". But who has the sole authority to cast members out of the church? The successors of the Apostles, that is, the Bishops. And Jesus said these decisions by the Apostles and their successors will be ratified by God in heaven.

But that's not my personal interpretation of this passage...it's nearly 2000 years of Church tradition!

Certainly, though the Church did not yet use the word "bishop" during his time. There is significant evidence both in Scripture and in early Christian texts and artifacts that (1) Peter was the leader among the Apostles, and (2) that he spent the latter part (25 years) of his ministry in Rome.

First, regarding Scripture, I have already mentioned several times Matthew 16:19, but consider also that Peter was the first of the Apostles that Jesus called to follow Him, and in many places where the Apostles are listed in the Gospels, Peter is named first (e.g.John 21:1;). Also, refer to John 21: 15-17, when Jesus pressed Peter three times to "Feed my sheep." (as a shepherd cares for his flock).

Second, the first Epistle of Peter is believed to have been written from Rome because at the closing, he says "The church in Bablyon...salutes you; and so does my son Mark" (1 Peter 5:14), which scholars tell us was a reference to Rome (the original Babylon was destroyed over a hundred years before Christ), as in other early Christian literature (Revelations, for example).

St. Papias, who was born in the late first century and said to have heard St. John speak, and St. Clement of Alexandria, who lived in the late second century and early third century, both recorded in their writings that St. Mark wrote his Gospel in Rome, so taken together with 1 Peter 5:14, it is pretty clear that Peter was in Rome.

The fact that St. Peter was martyred is well-established, as is the fact that this martyrdom took place in Rome.

Consider, for example, Pope Clement I, who became the fourth Pope after Peter and undoubtedly served the Church of Rome. He wrote in his letter to the Corinthians in about the year 70 A.D.:

“Peter, through unrighteous envy, endured not one or two, but numerous labours; and when he had at length suffered martyrdom, departed to the place of glory due to him.”

Clement is believed to have been ordained by Peter, according to Tertullian, who recorded this Church tradition in about 199 A.D.

Bishop Dionysius wrote in about 170 A.D:

"You have therefore by your urgent exhortation bound close together the sowing of Peter and Paul at Rome and Corinth. For both planted the seed of the Gospel also in Corinth, and together instructed us, just as they likewise taught in the same place in Italy and at the same time suffered martyrdom."

St. Irenaeus described the Church of Rome, in sometime around 177 A.D., as:

"the greatest and most ancient church, known by all, founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious Apostles, Peter and Paul"

Caius, who lived in Rome at the end of the second century, wrote:

"But I can show the trophies of the Apostles. If you care to go to the Vatican or to the road to Ostia, thou shalt find the trophies of those who have founded this Church".

Modern scholars believe “trophies” referred to the places where Sts. Peter and Paul were executed. The Vatican, of course, is where St. Peter’s Basilica was built and is thus believed to be built on the site of St. Peter’s execution. St. Peter’s bones are stored underneath the altar in St. Peter’s Basilica.

Peter, in fact, was not hung, he was crucified, as was common among the Romans at the time. This is supported in early Christian documents as early as the late 2nd century.

It is not known the exact year that this occurred, but the most widely excepted date is 67 A.D., which was supported by the early "doctor" (a special title for reserved for the four most widely respected scholars in Church history) of the Church, St. Jerome and Eusebius, who is considered the "Father of Church History." The range of dates that have been proposed and defended by various scholars range from 55 A.D. to 68 A.D., and the Church holds that it occurred sometime between July of 64 A.D. and early in 68 A.D.

For more online info on Church history, I recommend the website New Advent (http://www.newadvent.org). For a great book on Church history, I recommend A Concise History of the Catholic Church by Thomas Bokenkotter.