The Order of Melchizedek…deconstructed

Never mind that Jesus Christ established the priesthood in the Upper Room at the Last Supper on Holy Thursday with the the twelve apostles. It doesn’t work for some modern folks as practiced by the Catholic Church for most of the past 2,000 years.

So they’ve redefined it and put it under new terms and conditions. At their discretion.

The Catholic bishops of England and Wales said they could be at risk of prosecution under a proposed law unless they accept women, sexually active gays and transsexuals as candidates to the priesthood.

They made their claims in a briefing for Catholic members of the House of Lords, Britain’s upper political chamber, ahead of a scheduled Dec. 15 debate on the Equality Bill, which aims to stamp out discrimination in the workplace.

The bishops said the bill defines priests as employees rather than officeholders. Under the terms of the bill, the church would be immune from prosecution only if priests spend more than 51 percent of their time in worship or explaining doctrine.

This is ridiculous. Trouble is, it comes to this when power is concentrated in the hands of a few (which Pope Benedict has called the “tyanny of the majority”) and they rewrite laws according to their whims and fancies.

“This contentious definition was drafted without consultation and has been maintained by the government despite the concerns of the bishops’ conference and representations made by most religious bodies in the U.K.,” the briefing added.

Never mind the majority of the people and religious bodies and tradition and the obvious tortured logic it took to devise this (if it has any logic at all). They are exercising raw power.

An amendment to the bill to protect the liberty of the churches was voted down in the House of Commons in November. The bill is likely to become law early next year…

Neil Addison, a Catholic lawyer who heads the Thomas More Legal Centre, which specializes in religious discrimination law, said that in the worst-case scenario the church could not only be sued but bishops could face imprisonment and unlimited fines and church assets could be sequestered. He said the bill would have the effect of making it impossible for the bishops to discipline clergy who wanted to live “alternative lifestyles.”

Earlier, the bishops said the bill could force Catholic schools and health care institutions to remove crucifixes from their walls in case they offend non-Christian employees.

So, Diogenes notes, this may be the start of a return to penal times.