new church life: march/april 2015
came still later than that.
The time is now for the Church to take a thoughtful and merciful approach
to a change that would serve and include women now feeling unserved or
excluded. I now see no doctrinally compelling reason for not ordaining female
clergy. In my opinion any further delay damages the Church’s mission in a
culturally rebalancing world.
To the minds of many thinking inquirers a policy that excludes women
from the clergy is now archaic and no longer culturally tenable in 2015. I now
believe that theologically trained women can lead to the good of life equally
as well as men, but from their own enlightenment as women, not trying to be
like men.
C. John Parker
Etobicoke, Ontario, Canada
Heaven is a Habit
To The Editors:
I was reading Bishop Peter Buss Jr.’s article, What is New Church Education and
Why Should We Care?, in the January-February 2015 New Church Life, where
he quoted Arcana Coelestia 3843: “Everyone acquires a disposition or nature
from frequent practice or habit, and that practice or habit from the things he
or she has learned.”
But that’s it! From birth to death, everyone becomes a habit based on what
he or she has learned and made into an automatic way of life. Want to go to
heaven? Choose what you have learned as being good and force yourself to do
it, over and over and over, until it has become such a habit that it cannot be
broken!
What a secret that is! Just make it a habit!
Martin Klein
Palm Beach, Florida
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