Doctrine Determines Discipline. Duuh!

That tune might be played in varied ways around the world in different cultures. People might struggle to play the tune and they might hit some dud notes. They might play the tune badly or in many different ways, but if they vary from “one man and one woman for life” it isn’t Christian marriage anymore. It’s something else.

The discipline therefore follows the doctrine. The music teacher tells you off if she said, “Play the Moonlight Sonata” and you come along and play the Maple Leaf Rag.

So why are some of the bishops and cardinals playing this game of “We need to adapt the pastoral disciplines for the reality of where people really are?” Because they want to change the doctrine by changing the discipline first.

The problem is not that they do not understand the principle that doctrine determines discipline.

If they were simply ignorant it would be sad but forgivable.

The fact is, they understand the principle very well, but they disagree with it and they disagree with it at a very profound and disturbing level.

They, and other modernists, disagree with this principle of doctrine determines discipline because they do not actually believe in immutable doctrine revealed by God through his Son Jesus Christ, witnessed to the by Sacred Scriptures and affirmed, explicated and expounded by the Church he founded.

One of the principles of modernism is the relativism that is eating away at the foundations of our church and society like termites in a wooden house.

This relativism says there is no such thing as eternal and immutable truth, and if there is you can’t know it. Instead all truth is variable and adaptable. Truth is evolving and the church must adapt and evolve according to the culture and age in which she lives.

This is a lie. It is a fundamental lie, and it is the lie that lies beneath this idea that the discipline of the church can change while the doctrine might remain the same. It is a lie that says the doctrine is divisive and all that matters is the pastoral situation.

If that is all that matters to hell with it.

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