Thank you Richard for continuing to patiently articulate what is clear to many, but unclear to others. Our very humanness means that we can never know “the truth” in all its fullness, but must continuously strive - all of us- to seek and to understand. It is our moral obligation and responsibility as adult Christians, even if it means sometimes questioning conclusions reached by the fallible human beings who lead the institution we call the church.

It continually amazes me that intelligent, thoughtful people can be aware of the Church’s history and the evolution of its understanding as reflected in its teaching and actions through millenia, and yet still think that whatever is current thought at any particular snapshot moment in time (the early 21st century for our generation), is literally never changing “truth”. I am also amazed at how some can reinterpret, and even twist, some of these historical realities in almost desparate ways in order to justify some of the Church’s past teachings and actions.

This actually makes me wonder about the strength of their “faith”, because so much of it seems to be faith in the fallible, human institution that we call church, rather than faith in God. They are not the same thing. As you note, God IS truth. The church attempts to understand that truth and explain it, but it will always fall short, as do all of us. That is why the Holy Spirit is ALWAYS with us, because it takes human beings a very long time to understand. Those who do not place their faith in the institution, and accept its fallibilty, can also look at its checkered history with somewhat less clouded eyes, and even accept and forgive much of it, because these problematic teachings and actions were NOT from God, but from well-meaning, but sometimes misguided human beings whose ideas were (understandably) formed by the cultural and societal norms of their times; formed also by incomplete scientific understanding, which, like our understanding of God and Truth, will never be exactly right.

Human beings must be humble, and remain open to new understanding and interpretations of what we may have once believed to be “unchangeable.” Many people feel secure in having someone else tell them what is true and what isn’t. They have trouble with ambiguity, and with gray, finding it far easier to simply accept the type of black-and-white answers provided by institutions such as the church than to struggle with these issues in light of their own lives and knowledge and conscience. This is true in civil society as well. Some of those who live in the new democracies of the former Soviet Union would like to go back to the simplicity of the “old” ways, when they did not have to take as much individual responsibility for their lives.

Peace