Canadian Lutheran (ELCIC) Bishop Joseph Jacobson to become a Catholic Priest

[Eric_Swensson]

You're probably a nice guy Charles, but you missed my point entirely I think. I was not giving my resume, nor was I trying to give a personality profile. Those were a list of responsibilities. They are vocations. And I truly fear for my family, parish, community these days. Liberals would try and make conservatives seem deluded to care so much about sexual morality, however our local paper has at least one front page story of another arrest of someone who sexually abused someone and was arrested.

The point was that I do this forum also out of a sense of responsibility, and that would be to counter the picture that Brian and you were putting forward that our interchange was personal and that somehow we were falling out of fellowship if we argue these points.

I question whether you read what I write very carefully. My take on what you wrote is that you lament that we don't really know each other better. Mine is that I wish we could keep it less personal.

Richard, be mericiful and lock this thread, it has been off topic from page 2.

[scott3]

Richard, be mericiful and lock this thread, it has been off topic from page 2.

Watch out!  You're treading sensitive territory.  Well, our dear omnipotent moderator knows that of which I speak...

[Charles_Austin]

As I mentioned above, I wish Bishop Jacobson well as he translates to the Roman Catholic part of the Church. i understand the move more now than I did when my friend Richard John Neuhaus went over some years ago.

I hope we all wish him well. And I hope that my colleagues in the priesthood will understand when one of their number decides to move into the Lutheran part of the Church. 

[J. Thomas Shelley]

I hope that my colleagues in the priesthood will understand when one of their number decides to move into the Lutheran part of the Church. 

Eighteen years ago, as I was making my transition from the ministry of the United Methodist Church into the ministry of the Evangelical Lutheran Church one of my classmates at Gettysburg, Leonard Shatkus, was making his transition from the Roman Catholic priesthood.  It is interesting that we found common ground in the ELCA; it is validation of Franklin Clark Fry's description of this church as a "bridge church; not truly Catholic but not really Protestant".    It is also quite instructive that both Leonard and I have subscribed to the Rule of the Society of the Holy Trinity.

I do not know what understanding (or lack thereof) his former colleagues conveyed; I do know that those UM colleagues who had considered me (rightly) to be "more Lutheran than Methodist" were somewhat relieved by my departure; my former Bishop was (rightly) affronted by what he considered an ambush when addressed by my soon-to-be ELCA Bishop.  I know that my first and so far only Call process was nearly derailed by a UM colleague, my immediate predecessor in my first and only UM appointment who at the time was serving the charge adjacent to the Lutheran parish.  He stoked the rumor mill with misinformation that I had been "kicked out".  Strangely, he resigned his parish shortly after my Call vote so we never did have any interaction again.