Deacon Jim Russell Gazes Out Over a Church Ravaged by Sin and Disobedience

…and with the unerring anti-charism of discernment of the Thing That Used to Be Conservatism, once again manages to fix his gimlet eye on faithful, chaste people who are same sex attracted, screw in his amateur psychologist monocle, squint, and make them the special focus of his fears and suspicions, helping to encourage the readers of Crisis to continue their tradition of regarding him and all SSA folk as fifth columnists, and makinig super duper clear to all same sex attracted persons that Jesus judges straight people by our acts, but he judges gay people by their temptations and so they will therefore never be good enough for his love.

For some reason, many gay people despair of the hope of salvation because of people like Deacon Jim and his fanboi at Crisis.

Ron Belgau, the subject of the Deacon’s latest Inquisition responds here.

The Deacon sea-lions his way over to Ron’s blog to register his dismay at Ron for thinking the Deacon’s endless hermaneutic of suspicion directed at innocent people is somehow unjust. He makes a show of “challenging” Belgau to discuss this while ignoring the fact that Belgau challenged the Deacon to have a face to face conversation about all this with Bishop Rice of St. Louis, Deacon Jim’s bishop, moderating. That request was refused by the Deacon and remains ignored at this hour.

I think Ron Belgau is a gift to the Church and I, for one, would like to add my voice to his in urging the Deacon to face him and bring his unjust complaint and hermaneutic of suspicion to the table with his bishop there.