There are increasing numbers of protestant clergymen who are returning to the Roman Catholic Church because of issues like these...

Time to go home...*s*

Christianity Today: A Finnish district court prosecutor today convicted a pastor with criminal discrimination for refusing to work with a female pastor.

I fail to see how this is discrimination, let alone criminal discrimination. He clearly was not in a superior position to the female pastor. Moreover, he did not discriminate; rather, he refused to engage in or complete certain work that required working with the female pastor.

Christianity Today: Two other church leaders were also fined for not preventing the violation.

How could they prevent the pastor from refusing to perform work, other than to 'fire' him after the incident.

Christianity Today: The pastor was fined the equivalent of 20 days of his salary, according to a Finnish news report.

I suppose the court prosecutor is going to stock the man's fridge then is he? Or will he be left to support himself off the tax revenues of his fellow citizens, while Helsinki seizes the funds for use in programmes furthering feminism.

Christianity Today: Finland’s laws prohibit discrimination in the workplace or in public based on factors like sex, race, religion, and sexual orientation.

I suppose they prevent non-performance of work also?

Christianity Today: Pastors within the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, the country’s state church, disagree on whether women should serve as pastors. However, this is the first time that a church disagreement was brought before law enforcement. Pastor Ari Norro and the two church members were tried November 16 and convicted today.

Exactly. The matter is really an internal organizational dispute, without any executive capable of forcing the issue.

Christianity Today: Johan Candelin, director of World Evangelical Alliance's Religious Liberty Commission and Finland resident, […] said the fine is equivalent to the fine a burglar receives, and the three church members will have a criminal record. […] Norro is a member of the Lutheran Evangelical Association in Finland, a group that believes the Bible prohibits women from serving as pastors.

Unless the Finnish government is prepared to ban and suppress the Association, Norro was merely abiding by his membership obligations.

This is upsetting, considering all that Lutheranism has done for the Finns i.e. the Protestant work ethic. I suppose Finns leftists want to obliterate Lutheranism and seize credit for its successful economy, welfare state, social cohesion, etc., etc.

The issue here is not protestantism as such, but the fault line in the conflict lies between the ones who take the message of the Finnish Lutheran Church seriously and those who believe in today's fashionable ideas of statism, feminism and multiculturalism. The Finnish Lutheran Church is not the only protestant church in the West that has bowed to the secular leftist ideologies.

It would, perhaps, be wise for the Finnish church to properly separate itself from the state. This would, however, lead to a loss of tax revenue that would be an inevitable result of declining membership numbers.

You are right. The problem of Protestants is that how they started their protests long time ago  they cannot stop to this day. This is why they are divided for nobody know how many branches and every each less Christian.

For me it is the sign of degradation: only one priest in a whole country had principles and courage. For example, in Russia, which you guys so much hate, thousands or tens of thousands of priests suffered and died because they did not accept communists. The priests in Finland (and else) rather resemble communists themselves in 1930th. Those communists died from the hands of their own party but could not rebel, because it was their own creation. Isn't PC also the creation of christians with their misinterpreted "do good" conception?

Where is the separation of the church and the state? Typical "Byzantinism", where state need the church as long as the latter follow all its instructions.