Really important point by Diogenesister - DA is harsher in the sense that there’s no procedure for appeal in that outcome compared with DFing.
Accepting blood transfusions. By which instrument it ceased to be a disfellowshipping offense to become cause for disassociation?
by EdenOne 16 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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TonusOH
Especially when they are saying the individual initiated it. It sounds like one of those dishonest disclaimers that scammers like to use: "by taking this action, you agree to the following terms..."
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EdenOne
Mind you, the Catholic Church has a similar provision known as latae sententiae. Actually it almost seems as if the GB lifted the policy from the Apostolic Constitution "Sacrae Disciplina Leges". It's quite a vague text, buried under a ton of verbose, but basically it is the practice of a serious offense that has been previously deemed a sin by the church, and the practice of that sin doesn't require a decision from an ecclesiastical judge, for being self-evident. It is said that it is to be administrated very sparsely.
It's interesting that the WT had to resort to Catholic Church's tactics to try to shield themselves from liability.
Heck, without even saying so, they resorted to Saint Augustine to find an argument to condemn oral and anal sex .... imagine my shock one day, when reading Augustine of Hippo and seeing there that oral and anal sex were wrong 'because these were practices common in brothels' ... word by word the same reasoning that the Watchtower provided to condemn it back in the day. I guess a faithful Witness would reason that Augustine surely had a Watchtower magazine mail subscription.
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slimboyfat
Having said that, I think the practice of JW elders on the ground has softened markedly in recent decades. I know from experience there was a very light touch from elders around “assistance” to avoid blood, and also a degree of respect for privacy. I don’t know if that’s a result of direct instructions or just the approach of local elders, but I suspect that, as with many things in JW culture, the attitude of ordinary JW has become less hardline, or more apathetic to the blood teaching, to put it in more negative terms. The days of kidnapping children from hospitals and spying on fellow believers and leaking medical documents by JW hospital workers are all long gone.
The GB may never come out and reverse the blood ban but they do seem to be loosening the grip on enforcement. People who take blood seem more likely to be viewed as having made a mistake due to weakness, and need shepherding, rather than automatically DAed. This is my impression anyway, I’d be interested to know if others have observed this. The situation where they would still take a tough stance is probably where somebody takes blood and makes it known to others in the congregation they think they are doing the right thing. In that case they’d probably get DAed or DFed more for apostasy than for taking blood as such.
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Wonderment
SB,
Good observation!
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EdenOne
I agree in general with you, Slim, in what seems to be a more apathetic disposition towards blood observance.
However, I have personally witnessed how the WT branch office in Portugal personally monitored (in real time!) how an old sister from my congregation agreed to take a blood transfusion for a heart surgery. She was promptly disassociated. (reinstated one year later) This must have been some 10 years ago.
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Bill Covert
For years I write my letters centering on the 2013 RNWT revision of Leviticus 5:1 and the Sept.1 1987 Wt. article "A Time to Speak When?" starting after the Barbara Anderson essay "Flawed Decrees Conceal Criminals". They go to publishers homes [ although no more as in June I got call from US Postal Inspector and local police, that they were threats, once the shunning issue brought up they realized that I was just fucking with the minds], Kingdom Hall doors, AMA, Pennsylvania DA, Jewish University, local Bible university, etc, just what you would expect from a religious kook.
I post here, just a religious kook.
The point I TRY to make is that the Sept.1 1987 Wt. article "A Time to Speak When?" is unique among the many deceptions has authored in that this article was a highly engineered deception designed to fabricate a Gestapo informant hunting license for the purpose of ferreting out apostates. But the 2013 revision of Lev.5:1 has been cloaked in silence [as indeed it is new light] . I The argument I put forth is that Gestapo informant policy is a major engineered deception hence the question. When set along side of the blood policy what degree of murder is the church guilty of by their withholding from families of whom forfeiture of human life is enforced by being being DAed and loss of family by the shunning policy the information that the church uses deception as a means to create policy?
In business fraud is defined as "the falsification of a fact OR the omission of a fact. So for the church to revise Lev.5:1 in 2013 and keep that "new light" secret, what moral, ethical or legal responsibility do they have to inform families that are being confronted by dire medical decisions that the church uses deceptions to fabricate a non biblical informant policy in light of the sanctions of loss of family by means of being DAed and shunned?
The Wt. article "A Time to Speak When?" was written in 1987!!! It was part of a package deal which was brought into being in 1984. That package consisted of and started with; the obedience to the Organization mantra, the emergence of a brand new enemy "the apostate", the brand new sanction "shunning". These new policies were completely foreign in the pre1975 church. This package was the transition from the Matt. 24: 34 singular era to the "sacred mystery" era of Matt. 24: 34 and "master delayed" slave transition Matt. 24: 48-51.
Barbra Anderson's essay "Flawed Decrees Conceal Criminals" is a major research paper that sheds light on the 2013 revision of Lev.5:1! It is under appreciated. I am NOT taking anything away from Barbara's reputation [I personally view her molestation work to be the cornerstone of the fall of the JW church] but Barbara has a wart, she will mine a male for information to advance her position as #1 Apostate, then hang the source of information out to dry and twist in the wind.
To stand the DAing and shunning blood transfusion policy next to the 2013 RNWT revision of Lev.5:1 is a much greater revelation than Deut. 22:25-27 stood next to the "two witness policy" of Deut. 19:15!
The issue is MURDER!
Yours truly a "kook" Eccl.9:13-16