RCMCatholic,
You wrote:
You said “It appears the church was built with "blood money"!” and you make the strong satisfaction statement in saying “…. my reaction to it: a feeling of satisfaction that justice occurred [regardless of your feelings you were still satisfied]....
But I had written:
And as troubling to me as the whole mess was my reaction to it: a feeling of satisfaction that justice occurred, and thinking that I should not have that feeling.
I am not sure how you get a "strong satisfaction statement" out of that! Tiller was murdered. That is wrong. In my mind Tiller was an evil man. He is responsible for 60,000 babies being dead. He killed babies that could have survived outside the womb. He made millions of dollars doing it. The Lutheran Church he was a
member of took his money and used it to build their building.
You wrote:
I am sorry that I took away from your statements that you the church was built on was built on something less than Christian virtues because your statement appears to be “all encompassing”, dismissing all the good Lutherans that have tithed.
They should have not accepted a penny from Tiller. He should have been kicked out of the church and shunned until he repented. Would your church have taken his money and kept him in fellowship? They are responsible for accepting and using money tiller made by killing babies.
You wrote:
You also said “I made no statement of God's involvement”. Unfortunately, again I must have made a bad assumption in your previous post where you said “….the Babylonians punished the Jews, and God took credit for it, did God, by His "permissive will", punish Tiller through the one who murdered him?” (question) You also said “I made no statement of God's involvement” (statement) I think the question of inference and then the statement can be considered statements hiding under the guise of a question.
You can think whatever you want. I am sure you are unaware of the long discussion we have had under the "miscellaneous" category regarding God's active and permissive involvement in this world. The Calvinist, following Augustine, who you claim as a Catholic, would say Tiller's murder was part of God's plan. At the other end of the spectrum, the open-theist would say God had nothing to do with it. My own view is that God is involved in each of our lives to the extent that there is no such thing as "luck". When He is not actively involved, He is passively involved. Nothing happens that He does not at least allow. He always has a "veto". "Not a sparrow falls apart from the Father".
Believing as I do, I must then face the implication of my belief in the murder of Tiller: God could have prevented it but, for His purpose,
which we can not know, He chose to not intervene.
