From the American Thinker:
December 30, 2009
By Robin of Berkeley
As a Jewish child, I never celebrated Christmas. I found out what I was missing on Christmas Eve, 1973.
My high school boyfriend Brian invited me to join his family for their celebration. The event floored me. It wasn't just the illuminated tree, the music, and the pleasure of opening gifts. It was the power of the holiday to transform Brian's ordinary family.
Laughing, singing hymns, praying -- they were absolutely radiant. I had never seen them so joyful. And in their presence, I felt joyful, too.
That was my one and only Christmas experience, and it never occurred to have another one. But this year's Christmas felt different.
I'm now a conservative who has purchased her first Bible. I am blessed with many new conservative friends in person and online, most of whom are religious. Given that God has taken center stage in my life, I decided it was time to celebrate another Christmas.
Having been rejected by the Berkeley Episcopalians, I remained undeterred in my pursuit of a Christmas Eve service. I searched the internet and found a large Catholic church the next town over. My plan: come early and sit inconspicuously in the back row.
For one, I didn't want to make a fool of myself. I'd never been to church, and I had no idea what to do.
Also, I hadn't told my husband Jon that I was going, so I didn't want to bump into anyone we knew. While I felt bad not telling him, Jon rolls his eyes every time he sees me reading the Bible. I didn't want anyone raining on my parade.
With my plan firmly in place, I was as excited as a little kid about attending the 5:00 pm Family Mass. I couldn't wait to see the Nativity play, both for the adorable children and because I was a bit fuzzy on the plot.
I arrived, parked, found my way into the chapel (is that what it's called?), and sat down in the last pew. As I watched the immaculately dressed families pouring in, I noticed my first faux pas -- a fashion one. I had dressed all in black, while the other women looked resplendent in festive colors, especially red.
I wear a lot of black. It befits not only my salt-and-pepper hair, but also my somewhat edgy New York Jewish vibe. But here, I looked positively funereal. Luckily, the only witness to my gaffe was a very shy five-year-old girl sitting next to me, who looked pretty in pink.
Needing to use the bathroom, I planned to slip discreetly in and out of the room. After I wandered around aimlessly, the priest himself escorted me to the restroom. I'm sure we were a sight: me in black; him adorned in crisp white robes.
In the bathroom, a woman smiled and introduced herself as Cathy (everyone was so nice and friendly, a radical departure from typical Berkeley life). She asked me whether the other priest was feeling better. The following conversation ensued:
Me: I don't know. I've never been to this church before.
Cathy: Oh, really? Where do you usually worship?
Me (stammering) Well. Actually. I've never been to a church before.
Cathy: (puzzled) Oh. Are you here to see one of the children perform?
Me: No. (I want to give her a clear explanation, but given that I don't know why I'm here, my mind goes blank.)
Cathy: (thinking deeply) So, you've never been in a church but decided to come here on Christmas Eve.
Me: Yes. (Her explanation was simpler than the one I would have given: "I'm a cultural Jew who's never been to a temple and then I practiced Buddhism for twenty years, but that left out the God part. And then I became a conservative and now I have all these beautiful Christians in my life, so I decided to attend a mass, and the Berkeley Episcopalians didn't want me, so here I am.")
Cathy looked at me strangely, but finally uttered an enthusiastic "Good!"
Given that my plan to blend in wasn't working, I headed back to the shelter of my pew. I buried my head in the -- whatever they call it -- the book of songs that's in the wooden cabinet. (Catholics have a name for everything, and I know none of them.)
I was jolted by a tap on my shoulder. A stressed-out woman who looked to be in charge asked, "Will you hand these out?"
Incredulous, I could not speak. She repeated, slowly now, as though addressing a child: "Will you stand in the aisle and hand these out when people come in?" As if in a dream, I rose from my fortress and took the hundred or so pink brochures while she sped away. I opened the booklets and saw that they contained lyrics to the hymns.
Trying not to panic, I thought, "I can do this. I'll just imitate the other ushers." I looked around to observe the others in action. But there were no other ushers. I was the usher.
Given that I had never been in a church, I was clueless about my role. Should I act like a perky WalMart greeter: "Welcome to St. Luke's!"? But how could I, who basically wandered in off the street, welcome parishioners to their own church?
Okay, I thought, don't freak out. I can do this. As a family walked in, I started to say, "Hello, would you like a...?" and then paused. What were these brochures called, anyway?
I racked my brains for words used by my new Catholic friends: Eucharist, Communion, Homily. So, what do they call the music?
Finally I just said, "Hi, would you like the music for today's mass?" which was a mouthful and caused some confused looks, but it was the best I could do.
The next thing I knew, I was the go-to person. People started asking me questions: how long would the mass last? Was that row reserved? Of course, I couldn't answer any of them.
Suddenly, I started laughing at the absurdity of my plight. I realized that God had a playful sense of humor...and that he seemed to be nudging me right into the fold.
I then saw Cathy, from the bathroom, standing in the back watching me with amusement. Wearing some type of robe herself, she clearly was a lay leader in the church. She appeared to find my transformation from clueless visitor to usher quite the mystery.
Just as my gig was winding down, the coordinator returned. With most of the congregation seated, she now wanted me to encircle the entire church, ensuring that everyone had a brochure.
When she saw my look of raw panic, she took the brochures out of my hands and did the job herself.
I decided to go out into the vestibule for a few minutes to get my bearings back. After taking a few deep breaths with my eyes closed, I was already feeling better.
When I opened my eyes, I saw that a crowd had formed in front of me. Someone politely asked me to move. I had no idea what I was doing wrong. I was simply standing in front of a pretty fountain.
I moved away, and observed that the congregants touched the water in the fountain and crossed themselves. Note to self: Blocking the holy water is another church no-no.
The service was about to begin, so I sat down and watched. It was a magical night, as enchanting as Christmas Eve with Brian's family. I especially loved observing the children, adorned in their holiday finest. Rather than squirming and fussing, they were riveted. They, like me, knew that this night was special.
To my amazement, the painfully shy child sitting next to me came out of her shell. She started singing her heart out. She was even praying like a pro.
Beyond the music and pageantry, what moved me the most was being with hundreds of people who loved God. Maybe some were questioning his presence or feeling abandoned. But they showed up, and that's half of life.
It was a stirring night for this wandering Jew who has traveled from east to west, from Left to Right. As the Sufi poet Hafiz wrote, "This moment in time God has carved a place for you," and sitting in the sanctuary, I felt that place.
Even though I didn't know the right words, or the hymns, or how to pray, it didn't matter. All the differences among people -- race, class, politics, even religion -- vanished. Faith, I realized, is the ultimate uniter.
And in a heartbeat, I understood why leaders from Marx to Mao try to keep people away from God, and why they will always fail. I flashed to an image of those mothers who somehow find the superhuman strength to lift up a car and free their children.
On Christmas Eve, I learned that this same unstoppable power exists inside all of us, especially when we stand together. As Jesus himself taught, faith the size of a mustard seed can move a mountain.
A frequent AT contributor, Robin is a psychotherapist and a recovering liberal in Berkeley.
h/t Christopher Pierce
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
CLOSE TO THE EDGE
from Midwest Conservative Journal by The Editor
Certain pejoratives sometimes tend to get used far too frequently. “Racist” probably leads this category although “homophobe,” whatever that might be, is coming hard. These days “sexist,” once a leftist standard, seems to have become “misogynist.”
So I’m reluctant to toss around terms like that. But I couldn’t read this sermon by Katharine Jefferts Schori, apparently delivered in both Bethlehem and Washington, DC, without feeling more than a little queasy:
"I met an Englishwoman this week, and when I mentioned this service, she told me of her visit to Bethlehem several years ago, and her horror when she saw the wall surrounding that city. She said she can no longer see a manger scene without thinking of that wall, complete with bullet holes and graffiti."
Feeling “horror” at the sight of that wall is pretty much a standard reaction among the left. Understanding why that wall was erected in the first place never ever seems to enter the mind of the Presiding Bishop or anyone else on her side. QED, according to Mrs. Schori, murdering Jews is less of a crime than inconveniencing “Palestinians.”
Then Kate actually manages to impress me.
"Could Mary and Joseph even get into Bethlehem today? Their donkey would undoubtedly be stopped, examined for explosives, and probably turned away because of its subversive cargo. Today Mary would likely give birth in another cave beyond the city and outside the wall, once again forbidden home and the shelter of family. Yet that very wall is an enduring reminder of human fear and the frantic quest for safety, not unlike Mary and Joseph’s search for shelter."
For pure, unadulterated stupidity coupled with mind-blowing offensiveness, I can’t remember ever reading anything better. Frank Griswold needed entire sermons to be as idiotic and insulting as that one, single paragraph.
Kate? If Mary and Joseph, who were both Jews last time I checked, approached Bethlehem today, who would be the ones stopping them? Who would examine their donkey for explosives? Who would end up turning them away and forbidding them “home and the shelter of family?”
You guessed it.
I hate having to keep going over this but Mary and Joseph weren’t “forbidden home and the shelter of family” at Bethlehem because they didn’t live in Bethlehem, you dolt. All the hotels were booked up.
And they were only there in the first place because a big, centralized government, the kind you seem enthusiastic about, ordered them to make the trip so that they could be enrolled for tax purposes.
Ironic, isn’t it?
You say “the wall is an enduring reminder of human fear and the frantic quest for safety” like that’s a bad thing, Presiding Bishop. What is wrong with wanting to keep your family or your friends from harm? Don’t you do that yourself? Except that in this case, the people wanting to protect themselves and their families and friends are…
Yup.
Once again, that wall was a last resort. An understandable last resort given the 60 plus years of your neighbors periodically trying to wipe you off the map or kill as many of your citizens as they possibly can as savagely as they possibly can.
Dead Jews don’t matter to you at all, do they, Kate?
Certain pejoratives sometimes tend to get used far too frequently. “Racist” probably leads this category although “homophobe,” whatever that might be, is coming hard. These days “sexist,” once a leftist standard, seems to have become “misogynist.”
So I’m reluctant to toss around terms like that. But I couldn’t read this sermon by Katharine Jefferts Schori, apparently delivered in both Bethlehem and Washington, DC, without feeling more than a little queasy:
"I met an Englishwoman this week, and when I mentioned this service, she told me of her visit to Bethlehem several years ago, and her horror when she saw the wall surrounding that city. She said she can no longer see a manger scene without thinking of that wall, complete with bullet holes and graffiti."
Feeling “horror” at the sight of that wall is pretty much a standard reaction among the left. Understanding why that wall was erected in the first place never ever seems to enter the mind of the Presiding Bishop or anyone else on her side. QED, according to Mrs. Schori, murdering Jews is less of a crime than inconveniencing “Palestinians.”
Then Kate actually manages to impress me.
"Could Mary and Joseph even get into Bethlehem today? Their donkey would undoubtedly be stopped, examined for explosives, and probably turned away because of its subversive cargo. Today Mary would likely give birth in another cave beyond the city and outside the wall, once again forbidden home and the shelter of family. Yet that very wall is an enduring reminder of human fear and the frantic quest for safety, not unlike Mary and Joseph’s search for shelter."
For pure, unadulterated stupidity coupled with mind-blowing offensiveness, I can’t remember ever reading anything better. Frank Griswold needed entire sermons to be as idiotic and insulting as that one, single paragraph.
Kate? If Mary and Joseph, who were both Jews last time I checked, approached Bethlehem today, who would be the ones stopping them? Who would examine their donkey for explosives? Who would end up turning them away and forbidding them “home and the shelter of family?”
You guessed it.
I hate having to keep going over this but Mary and Joseph weren’t “forbidden home and the shelter of family” at Bethlehem because they didn’t live in Bethlehem, you dolt. All the hotels were booked up.
And they were only there in the first place because a big, centralized government, the kind you seem enthusiastic about, ordered them to make the trip so that they could be enrolled for tax purposes.
Ironic, isn’t it?
You say “the wall is an enduring reminder of human fear and the frantic quest for safety” like that’s a bad thing, Presiding Bishop. What is wrong with wanting to keep your family or your friends from harm? Don’t you do that yourself? Except that in this case, the people wanting to protect themselves and their families and friends are…
Yup.
Once again, that wall was a last resort. An understandable last resort given the 60 plus years of your neighbors periodically trying to wipe you off the map or kill as many of your citizens as they possibly can as savagely as they possibly can.
Dead Jews don’t matter to you at all, do they, Kate?
Louie Crew, Idolatry and False Unity: Leading Lay Episcopal Homosexual Blasts Covenant
News Analysis
By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
December 29, 2009
Dr. Louie Crew, the brilliant, post-modern Episcopal Apostle of Sodomy, has written an article condemning the newly minted Covenant designed to bring us all together.
CREW: Jesus said that when you face rival claims of Scripture, test each part against the first and second commandments. All law and all prophecy hang on those two.
VOL: Christianity is not complicated. You simply love God and men with your entire being. If you love God, you'll do what He commands, and if you love men, you'll meet their needs. Verse 40 explains that these two commandments are behind all the other commandments in the Old Testament. If you love God with all your being and love everyone as you love yourself, you don't need any more rules. All the other commandments are simply an extension or practical application of those two commandments.
In an article titled "The Idolatry of Unity, the Law & the Prophets and the Anglican Covenant", Crew opines that when Jesus said that when you face rival claims of Scripture, test each part against the first and second commandments. "All law and all prophecy hang on those two."
Crew cites: Matt: 22:40 "...All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
CREW: For example, those proposing an Anglican Covenant purport to promote unity, but do so at the expense of homosexual persons and their friends. Scripture can seem on their side: Scripture tells us to value unity. But not above all else. First you must love your neighbor as you love yourself.
VOL: To argue that an Anglican Covenant was written "at the expense of homosexual persons" is plain nonsense. First of all the majority of those who had a hand in writing the Covenant were theologically liberal, including the archbishops of NZ ( John Paterson) and Australia (Phillip Aspinall) to name just two. Nearly all the committees involved in this process were stacked with liberals with an odd orthodox person thrown in for good measure. The fact that Section 4 was wrestled with indicates a deeply felt need to make the Covenant as inclusive as possible. Furthermore, the entire "Listening Process" is designed exclusively to broker non-celibate homosexual persons into the communion as painlessly as possible. It is disingenuous of Dr. Crew to claim that the covenant was put together to exclude homosexuals.
The covenant (section 4) talks of "interdependence" and argues that "where a shared mind has not been reached...every effort must be made to facilitate agreement." It is true that the Standing Committee may request a Church to defer a controversial action, say consecrating Mary Glasspool, a lesbian, as the next Suffragan Bishop of Los Angeles, but would not the Covenant also exclude any African Anglican bishop practicing female circumcision? Why infer that homosexuals are the only persons at risk of breaking up the communion.
Furthermore, the 1998 Lambeth Resolution 1:10 still stands and was not rescinded at the 2008 Lambeth Conference. What about marriage between a man and a woman does Dr. Crew not understand? Those who framed the covenant had to consider what was and is already on the table. Dr. Crew should also recognize that while GC2009 resolutions D025 and C056 were passed, B033 was not rescinded and it was Mrs. Jefferts Schori who told the Archbishop of Canterbury that these two resolutions are descriptive not prescriptive
CREW: Yoo-hoo. Hi there. Yes, us, your Queer neighbors, and with you joint heirs of Jesus Christ.
VOL: It is highly presumptuous of Dr. Crew to say that a person living in a non-celibate homosexual relationship specifically condemned in both the Old and New Testaments is "a joint heir with Christ." (Rom. 8:17) He cannot biblically or historically support that. In fact, in the course of 2,000 years of Christian history and Christian interpretation of Scripture, no such ruling by the counsels of the church, the Reformation or Roman Catholic teaching would agree with him.
CREW: Scripture tempted Jesus to hurl himself from a cliff to reveal his power because Scripture promised that he would be rescued by angels. Given his own struggle -- unable to be taken seriously by any but Samaritans, tax-collectors, and drunkards -- he found that prospect very tempting.
VOL: Scripture did not tempt Jesus, SATAN did. The temptations of Jesus by the devil as detailed in each of the Synoptic Gospels (Mt. 4:1-11, Mk. 1: 12-13 and Lk. 4: 1-13) occurred after being baptized. Jesus fasted for forty days and nights in the desert. It was during this time that the devil appeared to Jesus and tempted him to demonstrate his supernatural powers as proof of his deity. Jesus refused each temptation with a quote of scripture. The Gospels then state that having failed, the devil departed and angels came and ministered to him bringing him nourishment for His body.
CREW: "That would show them who I am." Jesus thought, but then he rejected that use of Scripture as satanic, and trumped it with another, "It is written, do not put the Lord to the test." That is, he followed the first commandment: he loved God with all his mind.
VOL: This is plain nonsense. Jesus never rejected Scripture. He rejected the MISUSE of Scripture. He rejected the Pharisaic and Sadducean interpretation of Scriptures that laid heavy burdens on people, but Jesus never rejected scripture, ever. He fulfilled the Law and the Prophets. He did not reject any part of the Old Testament.
CREW: Sola scriptura? Yes, if you test all scripture against the first and second commandments. That requires reason, tradition, and experience.
VOL: The Reformers never placed Scripture on an equal footing with reason, tradition and experience. Scripture always stood above the others.
In the Episcopal Church frequent references are made to what is sometimes called "the three-legged stool" [Scripture, tradition & reason] or "the four-legged stool" [Scripture, tradition, reason & experience] of Richard Hooker. (circa 1600) However, the common belief is at best a half truth.
The reference to "Hooker's threefold, 'Scripture, tradition and reason'" is a 20th century phenomenon with roots in the late 19th century. [See Francis Paget, Introduction to the Fifth Book Of the Laws..., 1899, p.226.] It seems to have been an attempt by high churchmen to make use of the prestige of Hooker to buttress what was later to be called the Anglican theological method ( the 1968 Report of the Lambeth Conference ,)for a reference to the authority of "reason" as a special Anglican tool).
Those who know Hooker's writings know that he did not use this modern expression. There is only one place in his writings where he seems to come near to asserting this 20th century formulation: "What Scripture doth plainly deliver, to that first place both of credit and obedience is due; the next whereunto is whatsoever any man can necessarily conclude by force of reason; after these the voice of the Church succeedeth. That which the Church by her ecclesiastical authority shall probably think and define to be true or good, must in congruity of reason over-rule all other inferior judgments whatsoever" ( Laws, Book V, 8:2; Folger Edition 2:39,8-14).
Hooker then speaks of Scripture, reason and the voice of the Church, in that order. Dr. Crew misuses Hooker's three legged stool to build his own construct and interpretation of Scripture to justify his own behavior.
CREW: But love does not come by Scripture, reason, tradition, or experience. To be able to love, you must be born again. You must get a life -- a life of the spirit.
VOL: No one ever said "love comes by Scripture" this is to strangle and distort Scripture so Dr. Crew doesn't have to obey its clear teaching about sodomy. Finally Dr Crew should try being "born again" until he gets it right. As far as "a life of the spirit" is concerned, VOL is glad he used spirit with a lower case "s". To have put it in upper case would have been to disembowel the Holy Spirit of his proper job which is to point us to Jesus (not our sexual proclivities)...a Jesus whose atoning death has the power to liberate Dr. Crew from the bondage of homosexuality that has wrecked The Episcopal Church and brought it to its knees.
END
By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
December 29, 2009
Dr. Louie Crew, the brilliant, post-modern Episcopal Apostle of Sodomy, has written an article condemning the newly minted Covenant designed to bring us all together.
CREW: Jesus said that when you face rival claims of Scripture, test each part against the first and second commandments. All law and all prophecy hang on those two.
VOL: Christianity is not complicated. You simply love God and men with your entire being. If you love God, you'll do what He commands, and if you love men, you'll meet their needs. Verse 40 explains that these two commandments are behind all the other commandments in the Old Testament. If you love God with all your being and love everyone as you love yourself, you don't need any more rules. All the other commandments are simply an extension or practical application of those two commandments.
In an article titled "The Idolatry of Unity, the Law & the Prophets and the Anglican Covenant", Crew opines that when Jesus said that when you face rival claims of Scripture, test each part against the first and second commandments. "All law and all prophecy hang on those two."
Crew cites: Matt: 22:40 "...All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
CREW: For example, those proposing an Anglican Covenant purport to promote unity, but do so at the expense of homosexual persons and their friends. Scripture can seem on their side: Scripture tells us to value unity. But not above all else. First you must love your neighbor as you love yourself.
VOL: To argue that an Anglican Covenant was written "at the expense of homosexual persons" is plain nonsense. First of all the majority of those who had a hand in writing the Covenant were theologically liberal, including the archbishops of NZ ( John Paterson) and Australia (Phillip Aspinall) to name just two. Nearly all the committees involved in this process were stacked with liberals with an odd orthodox person thrown in for good measure. The fact that Section 4 was wrestled with indicates a deeply felt need to make the Covenant as inclusive as possible. Furthermore, the entire "Listening Process" is designed exclusively to broker non-celibate homosexual persons into the communion as painlessly as possible. It is disingenuous of Dr. Crew to claim that the covenant was put together to exclude homosexuals.
The covenant (section 4) talks of "interdependence" and argues that "where a shared mind has not been reached...every effort must be made to facilitate agreement." It is true that the Standing Committee may request a Church to defer a controversial action, say consecrating Mary Glasspool, a lesbian, as the next Suffragan Bishop of Los Angeles, but would not the Covenant also exclude any African Anglican bishop practicing female circumcision? Why infer that homosexuals are the only persons at risk of breaking up the communion.
Furthermore, the 1998 Lambeth Resolution 1:10 still stands and was not rescinded at the 2008 Lambeth Conference. What about marriage between a man and a woman does Dr. Crew not understand? Those who framed the covenant had to consider what was and is already on the table. Dr. Crew should also recognize that while GC2009 resolutions D025 and C056 were passed, B033 was not rescinded and it was Mrs. Jefferts Schori who told the Archbishop of Canterbury that these two resolutions are descriptive not prescriptive
CREW: Yoo-hoo. Hi there. Yes, us, your Queer neighbors, and with you joint heirs of Jesus Christ.
VOL: It is highly presumptuous of Dr. Crew to say that a person living in a non-celibate homosexual relationship specifically condemned in both the Old and New Testaments is "a joint heir with Christ." (Rom. 8:17) He cannot biblically or historically support that. In fact, in the course of 2,000 years of Christian history and Christian interpretation of Scripture, no such ruling by the counsels of the church, the Reformation or Roman Catholic teaching would agree with him.
CREW: Scripture tempted Jesus to hurl himself from a cliff to reveal his power because Scripture promised that he would be rescued by angels. Given his own struggle -- unable to be taken seriously by any but Samaritans, tax-collectors, and drunkards -- he found that prospect very tempting.
VOL: Scripture did not tempt Jesus, SATAN did. The temptations of Jesus by the devil as detailed in each of the Synoptic Gospels (Mt. 4:1-11, Mk. 1: 12-13 and Lk. 4: 1-13) occurred after being baptized. Jesus fasted for forty days and nights in the desert. It was during this time that the devil appeared to Jesus and tempted him to demonstrate his supernatural powers as proof of his deity. Jesus refused each temptation with a quote of scripture. The Gospels then state that having failed, the devil departed and angels came and ministered to him bringing him nourishment for His body.
CREW: "That would show them who I am." Jesus thought, but then he rejected that use of Scripture as satanic, and trumped it with another, "It is written, do not put the Lord to the test." That is, he followed the first commandment: he loved God with all his mind.
VOL: This is plain nonsense. Jesus never rejected Scripture. He rejected the MISUSE of Scripture. He rejected the Pharisaic and Sadducean interpretation of Scriptures that laid heavy burdens on people, but Jesus never rejected scripture, ever. He fulfilled the Law and the Prophets. He did not reject any part of the Old Testament.
CREW: Sola scriptura? Yes, if you test all scripture against the first and second commandments. That requires reason, tradition, and experience.
VOL: The Reformers never placed Scripture on an equal footing with reason, tradition and experience. Scripture always stood above the others.
In the Episcopal Church frequent references are made to what is sometimes called "the three-legged stool" [Scripture, tradition & reason] or "the four-legged stool" [Scripture, tradition, reason & experience] of Richard Hooker. (circa 1600) However, the common belief is at best a half truth.
The reference to "Hooker's threefold, 'Scripture, tradition and reason'" is a 20th century phenomenon with roots in the late 19th century. [See Francis Paget, Introduction to the Fifth Book Of the Laws..., 1899, p.226.] It seems to have been an attempt by high churchmen to make use of the prestige of Hooker to buttress what was later to be called the Anglican theological method ( the 1968 Report of the Lambeth Conference ,)for a reference to the authority of "reason" as a special Anglican tool).
Those who know Hooker's writings know that he did not use this modern expression. There is only one place in his writings where he seems to come near to asserting this 20th century formulation: "What Scripture doth plainly deliver, to that first place both of credit and obedience is due; the next whereunto is whatsoever any man can necessarily conclude by force of reason; after these the voice of the Church succeedeth. That which the Church by her ecclesiastical authority shall probably think and define to be true or good, must in congruity of reason over-rule all other inferior judgments whatsoever" ( Laws, Book V, 8:2; Folger Edition 2:39,8-14).
Hooker then speaks of Scripture, reason and the voice of the Church, in that order. Dr. Crew misuses Hooker's three legged stool to build his own construct and interpretation of Scripture to justify his own behavior.
CREW: But love does not come by Scripture, reason, tradition, or experience. To be able to love, you must be born again. You must get a life -- a life of the spirit.
VOL: No one ever said "love comes by Scripture" this is to strangle and distort Scripture so Dr. Crew doesn't have to obey its clear teaching about sodomy. Finally Dr Crew should try being "born again" until he gets it right. As far as "a life of the spirit" is concerned, VOL is glad he used spirit with a lower case "s". To have put it in upper case would have been to disembowel the Holy Spirit of his proper job which is to point us to Jesus (not our sexual proclivities)...a Jesus whose atoning death has the power to liberate Dr. Crew from the bondage of homosexuality that has wrecked The Episcopal Church and brought it to its knees.
END
Episcopal Incompetence: Bishop Oversees Massive Losses in Western New York
By Sarah Hey from Stand Firm:
Tuesday, December 29, 2009 • 9:02 am
It's hard really to grasp the weight - the sheer tonnage - of the displays of massive incompetence from Bishop Garrison over the past six years. The mind boggles, and then slows, struggling to come up with the words to describe what has happened.
I called this "Episcopal Incompetence" in large part in order to feature just one example under the category of General Bishop Incompetence in The Episcopal Church.
In this brief overview of the massive incompetence of yet another Episcopal bishop, we begin with this simple act of malice by Bishop Garrison of Western New York in April of 2004. April of 2004 -- eight months after the act by The Episcopal Church that was going to be insignificant in its repercussions, and "all over by Christmas," not to mention bring in new members by the drove, creating a new era for our church of thriving and flourishing, flourishing and thriving. At any rate, skipping to this particular bishop's incompetence and malice, we have this description from Religious Intelligence:
"In 2004, St Bartholomew’s was one of the first American parishes to petition for Delegated Episcopal Pastoral Oversight (DEPO) after the scheme was approved by the US House of Bishops.
"Mr Ward wrote Bishop Garrison on April 6, 2004, asking a bishop sympathetic to the parish’s evangelical views be exercise pastoral oversight for the congregation. Bishop Garrison declined the request and forbad the parish for issuing an invitation to any other bishop to take services.
"The bishop asked for a review of the parish finances and asked Mr Ward to prepare three sermons to be preached to the parish “on the Heresy of Donatism and its application in the current crises with reference to Article XXVI of the Articles of Religion.”
Let us pass lightly over the ensuing four years after this brilliant initial sally of negotiatory and diplomatic skill and "skip to the end" of the festivities -- October 2008 -- and an article in the Tonawanda News:
"St. Bartholomew’s is leaving the Episcopal church and taking it’s more than 1,000 members with it. ...
"... Now, after 53 years in its current location, the congregation is pulling up roots and moving on. The congregation’s leaders began exploring its options early this year, and found that negotiation for the church’s property at 1064 Brighton Road and litigation to take it weren’t likely to succeed. Moving was the only viable option for separation, so the church held a meeting with its members on May 4 to distribute a survey asking whether they would support relocating. Ward said that turned out with unanimous support for a move.
“That’s not to say everyone agreed, but everyone who returned the survey agreed,” Ward said. ...
"... The congregation’s leaders explored several options for a new location and eventually settled on the recently-vacated building at 2368 Eggert Road formerly occupied by the Jewish Temple Beth El. The leaders polled the congregation again in September to see if they would be behind a move to the Beth El site, again with unanimous approval, Ward said.
“That building is much larger and less than a mile away,” Ward said. “Even though it’s difficult to leave the building after 53 years, principle is more important than property.”
So let's see. Bishop Garrison denies a parish DEPO in 2004, and reveals his own poor theological training by claiming that the rector and parish's position was "donatist" -- evidencing that he had heard that word somewhere sometime and decided it must have something to do with heretical unrepentant false teachers in the church and how laity and clergy must pretend as if they are not. Or something. And then engages in one of the most spiteful, hectoring, childish acts I have seen in a long time by one adult "leader" [sic] to another.
Then he succeeds in losing the largest parish in his diocese.
But oh, the trend continues.
We next see Bishop Garrison making this portentous announcement on the Diocesan website in October 08:
“People may come and go, but St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church in Tonawanda will continue,” state Bishop Garrison. “We are ready and able to carry on with worship, pastoral care and administration. We stand ready to support and work with continuing Episcopalians who have been a part of St. Bartholomew’s, as well as those who have felt disenfranchised by the position of its leadership."
"St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church in Tonawanda will continue."
But wait. Didn't the responses to the two surveys of St. Bart's come back unanimous?
That's okay. We are assured by Bishop Garrison in the same announcement that ...
"[the rector] informed Bishop Garrison of his desire to disaffiliate himself from the Diocese of Western New York, and to transfer from the jurisdiction of The Episcopal Church to a different Anglican entity.
He also declared that other clergy affiliated with St. Bartholomew’s and some portion of the congregation also intend to leave the Episcopal Church. Ward and others who share his convictions plan to vacate the property at Brighton and Fries Roads before the end of this year.
Wow. So you mean ... it's just the clergy and "some portion of the congregation" who are leaving?
Whew -- what a relief! That makes it all sound definitely much better.
January 2009: Enter stage right, the requisite female progressive priest [often these clergy appointments by bishops are the people who have been hanging around needing a job because for some strange reason parish search processes haven't selected them -- but I have no way of knowing that about this particular priest] who, according to one commenter's gander at her Facebook page, is a fan of Marcus Borg's and whose Facebook friend is Louie Crew.
Here's what she has to say about the Pride march:
":It was great to see so many people whose t-shirts and outfits proclaimed they were exploring their own sexuality in healthy ways mingling around with families, kids, the religious, non-profits, for-profits – as if to say, ‘God made me like this – whether or not you want to accept it is moot.’
"I was part of a twitter conversation between some people who had divergent views on whether or not the Pride festivities should be family friendly, and one person said yes, the other no. I understand where the ‘No’ vote was coming from – he was on the Marcella’s float, which always has many beautiful people wearing not so much clothing, but my view is this: God made us beautiful, and beautifully. If more children got a chance to witness more people secure in their sexuality, in their bodies… well, in the words of one my parishioners, ‘maybe we’d have fewer gay teens trying to commit suicide.’ Indeed. Maybe we’d have few straight teens committing suicide as well, to say nothing about our culture’s serious issues with eating disorders."
Ah . . . you can script these things by now, can't you? Garden variety Episcopal progressive, and we already can predict the outcome too.
Anyway, we learn that the remaining parishioners number about a dozen. The plan, according to the new vicar, is "to grow an inclusive and challenging Christian community at Holy Apostles, firmly rooted in an atmosphere of openness and safety…"
Not to worry, though -- the vicar will receive help.
"Canon Tori Duncan, in her role as Canon for the Development of Mission & Ministry, has arranged for the Rev. Thomas Brackett to come to Buffalo later this month to provide Sarah an intensive day of training. Brackett serves as The Episcopal Church’s program officer for church planting and redevelopment. After their meeting, he’ll continue mentoring Sarah and connect her with others around the country pursuing similar ministries."
Thank goodness that an Episcopal expert in "church planting and redevelopment" will be assisting -- no doubt he has done much good over the past six years of church planting and redevelopment within TEC and his expertise should do the trick for the new vicar.
Let us, again, pass lightly over the next eight months to the inevitable end -- which is announced in Bishop Garrison's cheery diocesan convention address.
He starts off reminding the assembled admirers of St. Bartholomew's departure the few clergy and parishioners' departures from a certain congregation named St. Bartholomews in TEC. He then throws in -- quite casually -- the announcement of yet another congregation's departure, St. Peter's, Forestville. Then he proceeds to explain that it is the fault of the clergy of those two parishes that they were inhibited and deposed. The he goes on to describe the fate of the church that just 12 months earlier he had said "will continue."
"My hope was that a remnant from St. Bartholomew’s would want to remain with The Episcopal Church. For the most part, this did not happen. A new community, called Holy Apostles has been meeting in the church, but due to our diocesan financial constraints, the support we can provide for this community is limited.
"The trustees of the diocese have called for a task force to develop a plan for the use of the building. If you would be willing to serve on such a Task Force, please let me know, by sending me a note or an email within a week from today. The trustees want to move swiftly with this discernment."
Yes -- I'm guessing that the trustees wish to "move swiftly with this discernment" too!
From that opening bang, the bishop toddles on through the rest of the Inspiring Convention Address. Here are a few nuggets:
"At Diocesan Convention two years ago we approved a plan for revitalization that included the creation of a number of teams of people to work in various identified areas. The Deanery Structure Team did not jell and has been dissolved; however, the need for deaneries to be more and more central in the work of our congregations in supporting one another is more needed than ever. I ask our deans and deanery councils to continue to consider how best to share the resources that we have with one another."
There is exciting news, though.
"The Mission Leadership and Management Team is planning a diocesan day to celebrate mission. This will take place on Saturday, May 15, 2010. The Rev. Titus Pressler, former dean of the Seminary of the Southwest, and a leader in Episcopal Global Mission will be the keynoter for that day."
I'm sure that Father Presler will explain to the clergy and laity on that diocesan day to celebrate mission how they too can lead their diocese to grow and thrive as he led the Seminary of the Southwest to new vitality and growth.
With this heartening news, Bishop Garrison then explains that the assembled should "continue to study the vitality of our congregations," and evangelize and practice stewardship. After that instruction, we are given this refreshing news:
"In the last few months I have met with vestries and leaders of a number of our parishes who are experiencing financial difficulties. The financial crisis we experience in our nation and world exacerbates and highlights this difficulty. In many parishes the trouble has been brought on by an over dependence on endowments. The leadership of our congregations need to be wise and prudent in these matters. All of us are called upon to live within our means.
"We also need to ask ourselves over the next few years, if we can any longer support the number of church buildings in which our community worships. This will be very difficult for, as I travel about the diocese, I know the devotion and hard work that generations of our people have invested in our churches in Western New York. I know and experience the strong sense of community in places where generations of our people have worshiped."
He then enjoins the assembled to read the latest report developed by The College for Bishops of The Episcopal Church and CREDO.
And closes with the repetition of the diocesan mission and vision.
...
...
...
... It's hard really to grasp the weight -- the sheer tonnage -- of the displays of massive incompetence from Bishop Garrison over the past six years. The mind boggles, and then slows, struggling to come up with the words to describe what has happened: immense losses in people and funding, displays of childish spite and clueless denial, the dull recitation of failures and losses in seeming oblivious serenity as to the leader's responsibility, the casual usage -- and then tossing aside -- of the remnant congregation, not to mention the callousness of throwing a new priest into an artificial "church plant" situation, blaming others for his punitive actions, then passing the buck when convenient to other diocesan entities . . . and all with a bright and breezy disregard for what he has done to his diocese.
This man has been bishop for 11 years. In that time, his diocese has lost some 2000 in average Sunday attendance, and some 6000 members. It has been a steady stairstep of decline, culminating in 2008 with the loss of the largest parish in the diocese, after a display of pettish spite that vastly damaged what "relationship" he had mustered in the previous years. [So you'll need to bump up those losses since the church stats only measure through 2008 currently.]
Imagine such a recitation of boring failures made by a CEO in front of shareholders.
Imagine such a Presidential address made in front of Congress.
Imagine such a report from a commanding officer to a superior in the military.
Is this guy for real?
This is not a Bennison, or Chane, or Schori, or Bruno or any other of that array of tyrants and dictators that The Episcopal Church has come to know and love so well. This is an average bishop of a small diocese, trundling along through displays of ineptitude and boorish immaturity that stagger the mind.
And to watch him behave or read his words is like watching a train wreck happen right in front of your horrified eyes -- and to observe that the conductor does not appear to notice the grinding wheels, the shock of the impact, the shrieking twisting metal, the smoke and heat, the cries of the dying passengers... he is smiling and waving at the crowd in the crushed little cab of his locomotive and offering to toot the whistle for anyone who'd like to hear.
And of course, this represents just one bishop of The Episcopal Church.
Just one.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009 • 9:02 am
It's hard really to grasp the weight - the sheer tonnage - of the displays of massive incompetence from Bishop Garrison over the past six years. The mind boggles, and then slows, struggling to come up with the words to describe what has happened.
I called this "Episcopal Incompetence" in large part in order to feature just one example under the category of General Bishop Incompetence in The Episcopal Church.
In this brief overview of the massive incompetence of yet another Episcopal bishop, we begin with this simple act of malice by Bishop Garrison of Western New York in April of 2004. April of 2004 -- eight months after the act by The Episcopal Church that was going to be insignificant in its repercussions, and "all over by Christmas," not to mention bring in new members by the drove, creating a new era for our church of thriving and flourishing, flourishing and thriving. At any rate, skipping to this particular bishop's incompetence and malice, we have this description from Religious Intelligence:
"In 2004, St Bartholomew’s was one of the first American parishes to petition for Delegated Episcopal Pastoral Oversight (DEPO) after the scheme was approved by the US House of Bishops.
"Mr Ward wrote Bishop Garrison on April 6, 2004, asking a bishop sympathetic to the parish’s evangelical views be exercise pastoral oversight for the congregation. Bishop Garrison declined the request and forbad the parish for issuing an invitation to any other bishop to take services.
"The bishop asked for a review of the parish finances and asked Mr Ward to prepare three sermons to be preached to the parish “on the Heresy of Donatism and its application in the current crises with reference to Article XXVI of the Articles of Religion.”
Let us pass lightly over the ensuing four years after this brilliant initial sally of negotiatory and diplomatic skill and "skip to the end" of the festivities -- October 2008 -- and an article in the Tonawanda News:
"St. Bartholomew’s is leaving the Episcopal church and taking it’s more than 1,000 members with it. ...
"... Now, after 53 years in its current location, the congregation is pulling up roots and moving on. The congregation’s leaders began exploring its options early this year, and found that negotiation for the church’s property at 1064 Brighton Road and litigation to take it weren’t likely to succeed. Moving was the only viable option for separation, so the church held a meeting with its members on May 4 to distribute a survey asking whether they would support relocating. Ward said that turned out with unanimous support for a move.
“That’s not to say everyone agreed, but everyone who returned the survey agreed,” Ward said. ...
"... The congregation’s leaders explored several options for a new location and eventually settled on the recently-vacated building at 2368 Eggert Road formerly occupied by the Jewish Temple Beth El. The leaders polled the congregation again in September to see if they would be behind a move to the Beth El site, again with unanimous approval, Ward said.
“That building is much larger and less than a mile away,” Ward said. “Even though it’s difficult to leave the building after 53 years, principle is more important than property.”
So let's see. Bishop Garrison denies a parish DEPO in 2004, and reveals his own poor theological training by claiming that the rector and parish's position was "donatist" -- evidencing that he had heard that word somewhere sometime and decided it must have something to do with heretical unrepentant false teachers in the church and how laity and clergy must pretend as if they are not. Or something. And then engages in one of the most spiteful, hectoring, childish acts I have seen in a long time by one adult "leader" [sic] to another.
Then he succeeds in losing the largest parish in his diocese.
But oh, the trend continues.
We next see Bishop Garrison making this portentous announcement on the Diocesan website in October 08:
“People may come and go, but St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church in Tonawanda will continue,” state Bishop Garrison. “We are ready and able to carry on with worship, pastoral care and administration. We stand ready to support and work with continuing Episcopalians who have been a part of St. Bartholomew’s, as well as those who have felt disenfranchised by the position of its leadership."
"St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church in Tonawanda will continue."
But wait. Didn't the responses to the two surveys of St. Bart's come back unanimous?
That's okay. We are assured by Bishop Garrison in the same announcement that ...
"[the rector] informed Bishop Garrison of his desire to disaffiliate himself from the Diocese of Western New York, and to transfer from the jurisdiction of The Episcopal Church to a different Anglican entity.
He also declared that other clergy affiliated with St. Bartholomew’s and some portion of the congregation also intend to leave the Episcopal Church. Ward and others who share his convictions plan to vacate the property at Brighton and Fries Roads before the end of this year.
Wow. So you mean ... it's just the clergy and "some portion of the congregation" who are leaving?
Whew -- what a relief! That makes it all sound definitely much better.
January 2009: Enter stage right, the requisite female progressive priest [often these clergy appointments by bishops are the people who have been hanging around needing a job because for some strange reason parish search processes haven't selected them -- but I have no way of knowing that about this particular priest] who, according to one commenter's gander at her Facebook page, is a fan of Marcus Borg's and whose Facebook friend is Louie Crew.
Here's what she has to say about the Pride march:
":It was great to see so many people whose t-shirts and outfits proclaimed they were exploring their own sexuality in healthy ways mingling around with families, kids, the religious, non-profits, for-profits – as if to say, ‘God made me like this – whether or not you want to accept it is moot.’
"I was part of a twitter conversation between some people who had divergent views on whether or not the Pride festivities should be family friendly, and one person said yes, the other no. I understand where the ‘No’ vote was coming from – he was on the Marcella’s float, which always has many beautiful people wearing not so much clothing, but my view is this: God made us beautiful, and beautifully. If more children got a chance to witness more people secure in their sexuality, in their bodies… well, in the words of one my parishioners, ‘maybe we’d have fewer gay teens trying to commit suicide.’ Indeed. Maybe we’d have few straight teens committing suicide as well, to say nothing about our culture’s serious issues with eating disorders."
Ah . . . you can script these things by now, can't you? Garden variety Episcopal progressive, and we already can predict the outcome too.
Anyway, we learn that the remaining parishioners number about a dozen. The plan, according to the new vicar, is "to grow an inclusive and challenging Christian community at Holy Apostles, firmly rooted in an atmosphere of openness and safety…"
Not to worry, though -- the vicar will receive help.
"Canon Tori Duncan, in her role as Canon for the Development of Mission & Ministry, has arranged for the Rev. Thomas Brackett to come to Buffalo later this month to provide Sarah an intensive day of training. Brackett serves as The Episcopal Church’s program officer for church planting and redevelopment. After their meeting, he’ll continue mentoring Sarah and connect her with others around the country pursuing similar ministries."
Thank goodness that an Episcopal expert in "church planting and redevelopment" will be assisting -- no doubt he has done much good over the past six years of church planting and redevelopment within TEC and his expertise should do the trick for the new vicar.
Let us, again, pass lightly over the next eight months to the inevitable end -- which is announced in Bishop Garrison's cheery diocesan convention address.
He starts off reminding the assembled admirers of St. Bartholomew's departure the few clergy and parishioners' departures from a certain congregation named St. Bartholomews in TEC. He then throws in -- quite casually -- the announcement of yet another congregation's departure, St. Peter's, Forestville. Then he proceeds to explain that it is the fault of the clergy of those two parishes that they were inhibited and deposed. The he goes on to describe the fate of the church that just 12 months earlier he had said "will continue."
"My hope was that a remnant from St. Bartholomew’s would want to remain with The Episcopal Church. For the most part, this did not happen. A new community, called Holy Apostles has been meeting in the church, but due to our diocesan financial constraints, the support we can provide for this community is limited.
"The trustees of the diocese have called for a task force to develop a plan for the use of the building. If you would be willing to serve on such a Task Force, please let me know, by sending me a note or an email within a week from today. The trustees want to move swiftly with this discernment."
Yes -- I'm guessing that the trustees wish to "move swiftly with this discernment" too!
From that opening bang, the bishop toddles on through the rest of the Inspiring Convention Address. Here are a few nuggets:
"At Diocesan Convention two years ago we approved a plan for revitalization that included the creation of a number of teams of people to work in various identified areas. The Deanery Structure Team did not jell and has been dissolved; however, the need for deaneries to be more and more central in the work of our congregations in supporting one another is more needed than ever. I ask our deans and deanery councils to continue to consider how best to share the resources that we have with one another."
There is exciting news, though.
"The Mission Leadership and Management Team is planning a diocesan day to celebrate mission. This will take place on Saturday, May 15, 2010. The Rev. Titus Pressler, former dean of the Seminary of the Southwest, and a leader in Episcopal Global Mission will be the keynoter for that day."
I'm sure that Father Presler will explain to the clergy and laity on that diocesan day to celebrate mission how they too can lead their diocese to grow and thrive as he led the Seminary of the Southwest to new vitality and growth.
With this heartening news, Bishop Garrison then explains that the assembled should "continue to study the vitality of our congregations," and evangelize and practice stewardship. After that instruction, we are given this refreshing news:
"In the last few months I have met with vestries and leaders of a number of our parishes who are experiencing financial difficulties. The financial crisis we experience in our nation and world exacerbates and highlights this difficulty. In many parishes the trouble has been brought on by an over dependence on endowments. The leadership of our congregations need to be wise and prudent in these matters. All of us are called upon to live within our means.
"We also need to ask ourselves over the next few years, if we can any longer support the number of church buildings in which our community worships. This will be very difficult for, as I travel about the diocese, I know the devotion and hard work that generations of our people have invested in our churches in Western New York. I know and experience the strong sense of community in places where generations of our people have worshiped."
He then enjoins the assembled to read the latest report developed by The College for Bishops of The Episcopal Church and CREDO.
And closes with the repetition of the diocesan mission and vision.
...
...
...
... It's hard really to grasp the weight -- the sheer tonnage -- of the displays of massive incompetence from Bishop Garrison over the past six years. The mind boggles, and then slows, struggling to come up with the words to describe what has happened: immense losses in people and funding, displays of childish spite and clueless denial, the dull recitation of failures and losses in seeming oblivious serenity as to the leader's responsibility, the casual usage -- and then tossing aside -- of the remnant congregation, not to mention the callousness of throwing a new priest into an artificial "church plant" situation, blaming others for his punitive actions, then passing the buck when convenient to other diocesan entities . . . and all with a bright and breezy disregard for what he has done to his diocese.
This man has been bishop for 11 years. In that time, his diocese has lost some 2000 in average Sunday attendance, and some 6000 members. It has been a steady stairstep of decline, culminating in 2008 with the loss of the largest parish in the diocese, after a display of pettish spite that vastly damaged what "relationship" he had mustered in the previous years. [So you'll need to bump up those losses since the church stats only measure through 2008 currently.]
Imagine such a recitation of boring failures made by a CEO in front of shareholders.
Imagine such a Presidential address made in front of Congress.
Imagine such a report from a commanding officer to a superior in the military.
Is this guy for real?
This is not a Bennison, or Chane, or Schori, or Bruno or any other of that array of tyrants and dictators that The Episcopal Church has come to know and love so well. This is an average bishop of a small diocese, trundling along through displays of ineptitude and boorish immaturity that stagger the mind.
And to watch him behave or read his words is like watching a train wreck happen right in front of your horrified eyes -- and to observe that the conductor does not appear to notice the grinding wheels, the shock of the impact, the shrieking twisting metal, the smoke and heat, the cries of the dying passengers... he is smiling and waving at the crowd in the crushed little cab of his locomotive and offering to toot the whistle for anyone who'd like to hear.
And of course, this represents just one bishop of The Episcopal Church.
Just one.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
The Hypocrisy of the Left
From American Thinker:
December 28, 2009
By Robin of Berkeley
I have been looking for God my whole life. I first recognized Him in the black foster parents I worked with who manifested Christ-consciousness.
I then found him four years ago, when my parents died three weeks apart and I was carried by a force stronger than myself. And more recently, as I've gone from left to right, I have discovered him in the many conservatives guiding me, such as AT readers.
Given my spiritual longing, I decided it was time to explore places of worship. Being a secular Jew, my first step should have been a temple. However, the synagogues around here are practically recruitment stations for Obama (aside from the Orthodox ones, but I don't speak a word of Hebrew). So I decided to experience church on Christmas Eve.
Checking out churches online, I found almost none that offered political neutrality. Most heralded their progressive credentials, welcoming the transgendered, but not conservatives.
I was pleased to find an Episcopal church whose website focused on religion, not ObamaCare. I left a message for the priest that I was looking for a church that didn't press a political agenda because I wasn't a liberal.
I received an icy reply from the priest, the Reverend Lucy, who said with barely-contained disgust, "I don't think you should check us out."
Her response left me shaken and angry. I understand that leftists despise conservatives. I have seen that creepy look of pure hatred when I naïvely told a leftist friend about my political conversion.
But an Episcopal priest rejecting me during the holiest time of year? Isn't anything or anyone sacred?
In shunning me, the Reverend Lucy exposed not only her own hypocrisy, but the duplicity of the left itself. She unveiled the left's dirty little secret -- that their doctrines are as bogus as global warming.
I used to believe it all. But when I removed one piece -- that the left protects women -- the whole house of cards came tumbling down.
Obama and his friends preach tolerance, but there is bigotry at their group's core. As displayed by the Reverend Lucy, this is a spiritually vacuous ideology. While they fashion themselves as human saviors, they clearly don't like people very much, and they despise conservatives.
Why do they hate us, even during the season to be merry? I think it's because we see right through their elaborate disguises.
We know who they are -- the Audacity of Obama. Dreams from his Marxist Father. Before us, the Emperor has no clothes. Even the left's priests are no true servants of God.
The left can easily dupe the masses who are still congratulating themselves for electing a biracial president. Obama sneers, glares, and gestures dismissively. He castigates Sgt. Crowley for supposed racism, pals around with dictators, and chuckles while millions are out of work.
Yet half the country is convinced that he's the nicest guy around.
There's a resonant story about Suzuki Roshi, the beloved 60s-era Zen master. A visiting teacher asked Suzuki Roshi whether his students had mastered a particular Buddhist scripture. Suzuki responded that he didn't know.
Aghast, the visitor demanded, "Then how do you evaluate the students' progress?"
Suzuki answered quietly, "I observe how they treat each other."
To know everything about the "progressives," just observe how people have been treating each other since Obama came on the scene. For one, the misogyny has been despicable.
Then there's the surge of attacks on law enforcement, from the murders of police officers in Seattle and Oakland to the slaughter of soldiers at Ft. Hood. Obama is sending out a "question authority" vibe -- everyone's authority, that is, except his.
In the Berkeley area, there appears to be a skyrocketing of black-on-white crimes. I'm hearing stories from clients of even more brazen street crimes and harassment.
I've written about two horrendous crimes at local schools the last few months: the gang-rape and beating of a teenage girl at Richmond High School and the stoning of a middle-school teacher during her class.
Just two weeks ago, there was another horrific assault at the same middle school: a fourteen-year-old boy raped a twelve-year-old girl during the school day. While the politically correct media refuses to tell, the word on the street is that these recent crimes have been racially motivated.
We are a country in rapid decline -- another red flag that leftist ideology is destructive. Not only is the value of the dollar sinking, but our moral fiber is unraveling before our eyes.
Gandhi taught that a civilization's greatness can be measured by how it treats its weakest citizens. So how are society's most vulnerable doing?
Medical care may be withheld from the elderly, children are being sexualized and "queered" in public schools, and conservative women are subject to degradation and rape threats.
Another measure of a nation: whether political opponents can speak freely. In Obama's America, prepare to be labeled a racist should you question "The Man." Find yourself ostracized by liberal friends, colleagues, and even churches should you not pass the political litmus test.
No wonder the left doesn't want us anywhere near their bully pulpits. We can see right through their media-orchestrated charade.
I decided to confront the Reverend Lucy about her un-Christian behavior and challenge her to do better. I e-mailed her the following:
Dear Reverend:
I inquired about whether I would feel comfortable at your church because I am not politically liberal. You left me a message with barely contained hostility. You stated, "I don't think you should check us out."
The fact that you responded to me in such an uncharitable manner makes me terribly sad. Has politics divided people so much that even a minister will treat someone unkindly for having a different political ideology?
In this holiest of seasons, I wish for you a change of heart, an opening of the heart, to those who come to your door. Because when someone makes a phone call to you -- which isn't easy -- they are in need of God. Don't you, as a minister, have a sacred duty to respond with God's infinite love and mercy?
With the blessings of the season,
Robin
No, she didn't write back.
A frequent AT contributor, Robin is a psychotherapist and a recovering liberal in Berkeley. She enjoyed a beautiful Catholic mass on Christmas Eve.
h/t Fr. Drew Collins
December 28, 2009
By Robin of Berkeley
I have been looking for God my whole life. I first recognized Him in the black foster parents I worked with who manifested Christ-consciousness.
I then found him four years ago, when my parents died three weeks apart and I was carried by a force stronger than myself. And more recently, as I've gone from left to right, I have discovered him in the many conservatives guiding me, such as AT readers.
Given my spiritual longing, I decided it was time to explore places of worship. Being a secular Jew, my first step should have been a temple. However, the synagogues around here are practically recruitment stations for Obama (aside from the Orthodox ones, but I don't speak a word of Hebrew). So I decided to experience church on Christmas Eve.
Checking out churches online, I found almost none that offered political neutrality. Most heralded their progressive credentials, welcoming the transgendered, but not conservatives.
I was pleased to find an Episcopal church whose website focused on religion, not ObamaCare. I left a message for the priest that I was looking for a church that didn't press a political agenda because I wasn't a liberal.
I received an icy reply from the priest, the Reverend Lucy, who said with barely-contained disgust, "I don't think you should check us out."
Her response left me shaken and angry. I understand that leftists despise conservatives. I have seen that creepy look of pure hatred when I naïvely told a leftist friend about my political conversion.
But an Episcopal priest rejecting me during the holiest time of year? Isn't anything or anyone sacred?
In shunning me, the Reverend Lucy exposed not only her own hypocrisy, but the duplicity of the left itself. She unveiled the left's dirty little secret -- that their doctrines are as bogus as global warming.
I used to believe it all. But when I removed one piece -- that the left protects women -- the whole house of cards came tumbling down.
Obama and his friends preach tolerance, but there is bigotry at their group's core. As displayed by the Reverend Lucy, this is a spiritually vacuous ideology. While they fashion themselves as human saviors, they clearly don't like people very much, and they despise conservatives.
Why do they hate us, even during the season to be merry? I think it's because we see right through their elaborate disguises.
We know who they are -- the Audacity of Obama. Dreams from his Marxist Father. Before us, the Emperor has no clothes. Even the left's priests are no true servants of God.
The left can easily dupe the masses who are still congratulating themselves for electing a biracial president. Obama sneers, glares, and gestures dismissively. He castigates Sgt. Crowley for supposed racism, pals around with dictators, and chuckles while millions are out of work.
Yet half the country is convinced that he's the nicest guy around.
There's a resonant story about Suzuki Roshi, the beloved 60s-era Zen master. A visiting teacher asked Suzuki Roshi whether his students had mastered a particular Buddhist scripture. Suzuki responded that he didn't know.
Aghast, the visitor demanded, "Then how do you evaluate the students' progress?"
Suzuki answered quietly, "I observe how they treat each other."
To know everything about the "progressives," just observe how people have been treating each other since Obama came on the scene. For one, the misogyny has been despicable.
Then there's the surge of attacks on law enforcement, from the murders of police officers in Seattle and Oakland to the slaughter of soldiers at Ft. Hood. Obama is sending out a "question authority" vibe -- everyone's authority, that is, except his.
In the Berkeley area, there appears to be a skyrocketing of black-on-white crimes. I'm hearing stories from clients of even more brazen street crimes and harassment.
I've written about two horrendous crimes at local schools the last few months: the gang-rape and beating of a teenage girl at Richmond High School and the stoning of a middle-school teacher during her class.
Just two weeks ago, there was another horrific assault at the same middle school: a fourteen-year-old boy raped a twelve-year-old girl during the school day. While the politically correct media refuses to tell, the word on the street is that these recent crimes have been racially motivated.
We are a country in rapid decline -- another red flag that leftist ideology is destructive. Not only is the value of the dollar sinking, but our moral fiber is unraveling before our eyes.
Gandhi taught that a civilization's greatness can be measured by how it treats its weakest citizens. So how are society's most vulnerable doing?
Medical care may be withheld from the elderly, children are being sexualized and "queered" in public schools, and conservative women are subject to degradation and rape threats.
Another measure of a nation: whether political opponents can speak freely. In Obama's America, prepare to be labeled a racist should you question "The Man." Find yourself ostracized by liberal friends, colleagues, and even churches should you not pass the political litmus test.
No wonder the left doesn't want us anywhere near their bully pulpits. We can see right through their media-orchestrated charade.
I decided to confront the Reverend Lucy about her un-Christian behavior and challenge her to do better. I e-mailed her the following:
Dear Reverend:
I inquired about whether I would feel comfortable at your church because I am not politically liberal. You left me a message with barely contained hostility. You stated, "I don't think you should check us out."
The fact that you responded to me in such an uncharitable manner makes me terribly sad. Has politics divided people so much that even a minister will treat someone unkindly for having a different political ideology?
In this holiest of seasons, I wish for you a change of heart, an opening of the heart, to those who come to your door. Because when someone makes a phone call to you -- which isn't easy -- they are in need of God. Don't you, as a minister, have a sacred duty to respond with God's infinite love and mercy?
With the blessings of the season,
Robin
No, she didn't write back.
A frequent AT contributor, Robin is a psychotherapist and a recovering liberal in Berkeley. She enjoyed a beautiful Catholic mass on Christmas Eve.
h/t Fr. Drew Collins
2009: The Anglican Year of Living Dangerously
COMMENTARY
By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
12/28/2009
It was a year that Anglican leaders might well breathe a sigh of relief has passed.
It was a year of turmoil and upheaval that included two resolutions on sexuality passed at The Episcopal Church's 76th annual General Convention that promise to further isolate The Episcopal Church from the Anglican mainstream. It was the year the birth took place of a new Anglican province on North American soil; a lesbian was elected bishop in an ultra-liberal Episcopal diocese; litigation increased over property in the US and Canada; a pope offered a "safe haven" for traditionalist Anglicans across the world; and a Covenant was finalized that many believe holds little promise of keeping an increasingly feuding and fractured communion together.
Queen Elizabeth II made famous the phrase "annus horribilis" to describe her own personal travails in 1992. Dr. Rowan Williams might well echo those two words as he looks back on the year that has passed from the walls of Lambeth Palace. His personal cry might well be, "Nevertheless, let this cup pass from me...."
The Anglican Communion followed the bell curve of a worldwide economic recession with its own spiritual and ecclesiastical recession. The Episcopal Church's $141 million budget (down some $23 million and possibly more), described by Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori as "death", was reflected in church program and budget cuts that saw 37 of its 180 staff eliminated. If TEC were a publicly traded company, it would be a penny stock bearing in mind that its 109 dioceses failed to show any growth (with the notable exception of South Carolina) with diocese after diocese reporting lost income, closing parishes and aging congregants. Some experienced added legal costs fighting to retain properties.
With no discernible gospel to proclaim, there seems little likelihood that the lost ground will ever be made up. Couple that with the increasing flight of mega evangelical parishes from both liberal and orthodox dioceses, the church seems bent on isolating and destroying the very wing that can make it grow. Millions of dollars were racked up in legal fees as orthodox parishes from coast to coast fled their revisionist task masters, at the same time pushing their ownership claims from local courts to ever higher courts in the hopes they might be vindicated.
All Saints' Pawleys Island claimed victory over the Diocese of South Carolina. A dozen orthodox parishes in the Diocese of Virginia seem ready to run up the victory flag as they win one legal battle after another in their desire to keep their properties. But cases in Southern California, New York, Georgia and Pennsylvania moved in the opposite direction with the diocese and national church claiming victory. The Dennis Canon seems invulnerable to legal challenge it would seem. Three whole dioceses still remain in legal limbo ready to do battle in 2010, promising a legal blood bath. The battle for the Diocese of Ft. Worth promises to be the bloodiest.
One attorney privately admitted to VOL that when all is said and done (and no one knows when that will be as new property battles erupt almost weekly), the total legal bill for both sides could be well over $100 million. The Diocese of Colorado spent over $3 million out of its treasury to go after Fr. Don Armstrong while his side spent over $1 million. Extrapolate that out in some 60 lawsuits and it doesn't take brain surgery to know where "mission" money is being spent. The enormously well-endowed Church Pension Fund failed to give a cost of living increase, leaving one to wonder it the church isn't self destructing in its sexual obsessions.
The ecclesiastical rough housing began in February when the Primates met in Alexandria, Egypt. The Windsor Continuation Group Report asked the obvious question as to whether the Anglican Communion suffers from an "ecclesial deficit." In other words, do we have the necessary theological, structural and cultural foundations to sustain the life of the Communion? The primates argued that they needed "to move to communion with autonomy and accountability" and to develop the capacity to address divisive issues in a timely and effective way, while learning "the responsibilities and obligations of interdependence". Of course asking the obvious question does not guarantee getting the obvious answer.
At the end, the meeting proved a bust. Archbishop Gregory Venables of the Southern Cone told VOL that the orthodox Primates had a peace and clarity about them. Then he said, "The liberal expression of the faith hasn't got life and truth. We were all agreed. There are two very different understandings of the Christian Faith now living together, indeed at war with one another in the Anglican Communion and the situation has no long term resolution. It would take a miracle to keep it together and Dr. Rowan Williams understands that. He will try and keep it together for as long as he can under his watch." It was a truthful but sad indictment on the state of affairs in the Anglican Communion. As the year progressed events only got worse.
The Anglican Consultative Council (ACC), aka as the Anglican Communion Office (ACO), met in May in Jamaica to hammer out a draft for an Anglican Communion Covenant, in particular, the Ridley Cambridge Draft, and also to appoint a small working group to consider and consult with the Provinces on section 4 and its possible revision, and to report to the next meeting of the Joint Standing Committee. What took place in Jamaica had little to do with property, ecclesiology or theology. It had everything to do with politics. The political maneuvering saw Archbishop Williams personally intervening four times. In the end, over massive objections from liberal archbishops and others, the ABC was asked to appoint a small working group to consider and consult with the provinces on Section 4. The ABC urged delegates not to "put off discussion of the covenant simply because of that detail we are finalizing."
As they departed, Williams mournfully noted that there "may or may not be lasting division" in the Communion. "Before we say goodbye to each other in the Communion, we owe it to the Lord of the Church to have those conversations and to undertake that effort at listening to one another and taking one another seriously in the gospel."
"Have we manufactured a large stone called 'an Anglican covenant' that will seal off creative, faithful life in the communion?" asked ACC chairman and Diocese of Auckland Bishop John Paterson, referring to the stone closing off Jesus' tomb and the council's work on the proposed Anglican covenant, in his sermon at the ACC's closing Eucharist. "I trust not."
In late May, VOL broke the news that The Rev. Thew Forrester would not be the next Bishop of Northern Michigan. Some 50 bishops and 52 Standing Committees who gave him the thumbs down believed that the single candidate, though elected by his diocese, practiced Buddhism, which informed his Christian teaching. He also confirmed that that his congregation often used locally written Eucharistic rites rather than those found and used in the Book of Common Prayer. A number of bishops voting "no" went public with their disagreement with him and said why they were withholding consents.
A majority of The House of Bishops have turned its collective back on The Rev. Thew Forrester. While some 25 bishops have yet to declare their hand, he would need more than that to turn it around.
In June, Anglicanism in North America took a right turn. In Plano, Texas, Archbishop Robert Duncan of the Anglican Church in North America rose up before several thousand mostly former Episcopalians and announced to the entire world that he was now the archbishop of the newly formed Anglican Church in North America. He told a press conference that the church he would now lead will "reunite a significant portion of our Anglican Church family here in North America.
"We are uniting 700 congregations, (and 28 dioceses) and more importantly committed Anglican believers, in the north (Arctic) and in the south, on the west coast and the east coast. We are oriented toward a hopeful future again. We are not turning back to the hurts of our past. We are moving forward together in Christian mission. The main thing is Jesus Christ."
Duncan drew a wide net saying that God isn't just bringing Anglican Christians together, "across the church people are re-embracing Scripture's authority. Christians are rediscovering the grace of our 2,000 year-old tradition." At year's end, Duncan called for the planting and raising up of 1000 churches during his ministry.
July saw the triennial gathering of The Episcopal Church's General Convention in Anaheim, California, where Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori acknowledged that there was indeed a crisis in the church. She put her best spin on it by saying "crisis is always a remarkable opportunity. General Convention is always a time of critical decision-making."
Sex was on the mind of delegates as they gathered near the Disney fantasy-world. Two crucial resolutions - D025 and C056 - passed. The first called for affirming God's call to gay and lesbian persons in all orders of ministry. The second called for the church to collect and develop "theological resources and liturgies for the blessing of same-gender relationships." Both the houses of bishops and deputies passed the resolutions by wide margins even though the Archbishop of Canterbury had urged the HOB to reject the measure. His call went unheeded.
One small item stood in the way -- Resolution B033, a controversial resolution passed at GC2006, which called on "standing committees and bishops with jurisdiction to exercise restraint by not consenting to the consecration of any candidate whose "manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on the communion."
Following the passage of D025 and C056, Jefferts Schori sent a hurried note off to Dr. Williams assuring him that B033 had not been rescinded and the two resolutions were merely descriptive and not prescriptive.
The Presiding Bishop admitted in her letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury that she views the Communion moratorium on gay and lesbian bishops as merely advisory at best. In defending the passage of D025, she digs a bigger hole for TEC by describing D025 as "more descriptive than prescriptive." She goes on to say that "Some within our Church may understand Resolution D025 to give Standing Committees...and Bishops with jurisdiction more latitude in consenting to episcopal elections."
At least 36 bishops were not convinced and they endorsed the "Anaheim Statement" which pledged to honor requests made by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the 2008 Lambeth conference, the Primates' meetings and the Anglican Consultative Council to observe the Windsor Report's moratoria on same-sex blessings, as well as cross-border interventions and the ordination of gay and lesbian people to the episcopate. They also reaffirmed their commitment to the Anglican Communion covenant process.
Shockwaves continued when it was revealed that the church was in a deep financial hole. Firings began almost immediately at GC2009. A bigger bombshell was dropped however when, in her opening address, the Presiding Bishop declared personal and confessional faith in Jesus Christ to be a heresy, and described Jesus Christ's death on Calvary as merely "a waypoint" to God's "greater dream," and not the endpoint of salvation.
Her musings sent shockwaves throughout the Anglican Communion, sending evangelicals in particular, into apoplectic fits, confirming their worst fears that the woman running the show was a bishop in name only and not a believer. The worse it all got, the clearer it all became. Nobody was in any doubt any more. Global South archbishops winced wondering what alarm bells it would set off in their own countries among Islamic fundamentalists now that TEC had fully ratified sodomy and declared her unbelief.
Other TEC resolution actions seemed milder by comparison. Among the 400 pieces of legislation both houses did pass was a resolution to "consider the Anglican Covenant proposed draft as a document to inform their understanding of and commitment to our common life in the Anglican Communion." They also agreed to approve a partnership with the Moravian Church.
Following General Convention, a number of dioceses said they would not permit clergy to sign marriage licenses for same-sex couples, but the die had been cast. There would be no going back.
One of the most liberal dioceses, Massachusetts announced in late November through its bishop Tom Shaw that he would allow clergy to celebrate same-sex marriage ceremonies, including signing marriage certificates.
A number of diocesan elections followed General Convention.
Minnesota placed a lesbian nominee, The Rev. Dr. Bonnie Perry, rector of All Saints', Chicago, on a short list, but withdrew when it was clear she didn't have a prayer of winning.
Then lightning struck. A few weeks later, The Rev. Canon Mary Glasspool, an activist lesbian, was one of two women selected to be bishop-elect of the Diocese of Los Angeles, becoming the second woman elected as Suffragan Bishop, paving the way for an international crisis.
Within hours, the Archbishop of Canterbury issued a statement, surprising many with his speed, saying Glasspool's election "raises very serious questions not just for The Episcopal Church and its place in the Anglican Communion, but for the Communion as a whole."
In October, The Diocese of South Carolina held a special convention and passed a resolution, at the behest of their bishop Mark Lawrence, to withdraw from "all bodies of governance of TEC that have assented to actions contrary to Holy Scripture and the church's received doctrine and worship until such bodies show a willingness to repent of such actions." Delegates passed a resolution affirming the Ridley Cambridge draft of the covenant.
Many of the orthodox parish priests found the conclusions of the diocese uncongenial and in December, the largest diocesan parish, St. Andrew's with 1,300 members, went into a 40-day discernment period. On December 18, the church voted overwhelmingly to leave the diocese and join with the emerging Anglican Church of North America. To date the diocese has not reacted, but Lawrence is on record as saying that he will not litigate against fleeing parishes. It remains to be seen what officials at national church headquarters have to say and what pressure they exert on Lawrence.
On October 20, Cardinal William Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, announced a new provision responding to the many requests that have been submitted to the Holy See from groups of Anglican clergy and faithful in different parts of the world who wish to enter into full visible communion with the Catholic Church.
The Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus introduced a canonical structure that provides for such corporate reunion by establishing Personal Ordinariates, which will allow those groups to enter full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving elements of the distinctive Anglican spiritual and liturgical patrimony.
It was a bitter and unexpected blow to Archbishop Rowan Williams as it seemed to put a crimp on 40 years of ARCIC (unity) talks. It also took him by surprise. To date, no one has officially taken up the offer in England or the U.S., but the Traditional Anglican Communion with its Australian-based Archbishop John Hepworth seems ready to accept the offer.
In a strange turn of events, the archbishop got back at the Pontiff when he visited Rome in November. He had a 20-minute meeting with Pope Benedict, which was later described as "cordial". The Vatican acknowledged that discussions "focused on recent events between the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion".
In a lecture he gave in Rome prior to meeting the Pope, Williams said the ordination of women is a secondary issue that does not amount to much and the Vatican would just have to get used to it. That seems very unlikely. The twin issues of the ordination of women as priests and bishops and Dr. Williams' liberal attitude to homosexuality remain cutting edge issues that will not go away in the foreseeable future. The ordination of women to the episcopacy in the Church of England will only create greater stumbling blocks and fore traditionalists to this seriously about the Pope's offer.
On December 18 Canon Kenneth Kearon announced that the final text of The Anglican Communion Covenant had been approved for distribution by the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion and was on its way to the 38 Provinces for them to examine and vote on.
"The Covenant represents a further step in these relationships, building on and giving expression to the bonds of affection which shapes our common life," he wrote.
Within a matter of days, scrutiny of the revised Ridley Cambridge Covenant with a modestly revised Section 4 came under criticism from orthodox and liberals alike. Nobody seems to think it will draw the Anglican Communion together. Few seemed to think The Episcopal Church would even sign off on it. Time will tell.
Whatever the future holds, what ultimately emerged in 2009 was that the Anglican Communion is now permanently fractured and a worldwide realignment already begun will not be turned around now or in the foreseeable future. In the words of the hymn writer "no turning back, no turning back."
END
By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
12/28/2009
It was a year that Anglican leaders might well breathe a sigh of relief has passed.
It was a year of turmoil and upheaval that included two resolutions on sexuality passed at The Episcopal Church's 76th annual General Convention that promise to further isolate The Episcopal Church from the Anglican mainstream. It was the year the birth took place of a new Anglican province on North American soil; a lesbian was elected bishop in an ultra-liberal Episcopal diocese; litigation increased over property in the US and Canada; a pope offered a "safe haven" for traditionalist Anglicans across the world; and a Covenant was finalized that many believe holds little promise of keeping an increasingly feuding and fractured communion together.
Queen Elizabeth II made famous the phrase "annus horribilis" to describe her own personal travails in 1992. Dr. Rowan Williams might well echo those two words as he looks back on the year that has passed from the walls of Lambeth Palace. His personal cry might well be, "Nevertheless, let this cup pass from me...."
The Anglican Communion followed the bell curve of a worldwide economic recession with its own spiritual and ecclesiastical recession. The Episcopal Church's $141 million budget (down some $23 million and possibly more), described by Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori as "death", was reflected in church program and budget cuts that saw 37 of its 180 staff eliminated. If TEC were a publicly traded company, it would be a penny stock bearing in mind that its 109 dioceses failed to show any growth (with the notable exception of South Carolina) with diocese after diocese reporting lost income, closing parishes and aging congregants. Some experienced added legal costs fighting to retain properties.
With no discernible gospel to proclaim, there seems little likelihood that the lost ground will ever be made up. Couple that with the increasing flight of mega evangelical parishes from both liberal and orthodox dioceses, the church seems bent on isolating and destroying the very wing that can make it grow. Millions of dollars were racked up in legal fees as orthodox parishes from coast to coast fled their revisionist task masters, at the same time pushing their ownership claims from local courts to ever higher courts in the hopes they might be vindicated.
All Saints' Pawleys Island claimed victory over the Diocese of South Carolina. A dozen orthodox parishes in the Diocese of Virginia seem ready to run up the victory flag as they win one legal battle after another in their desire to keep their properties. But cases in Southern California, New York, Georgia and Pennsylvania moved in the opposite direction with the diocese and national church claiming victory. The Dennis Canon seems invulnerable to legal challenge it would seem. Three whole dioceses still remain in legal limbo ready to do battle in 2010, promising a legal blood bath. The battle for the Diocese of Ft. Worth promises to be the bloodiest.
One attorney privately admitted to VOL that when all is said and done (and no one knows when that will be as new property battles erupt almost weekly), the total legal bill for both sides could be well over $100 million. The Diocese of Colorado spent over $3 million out of its treasury to go after Fr. Don Armstrong while his side spent over $1 million. Extrapolate that out in some 60 lawsuits and it doesn't take brain surgery to know where "mission" money is being spent. The enormously well-endowed Church Pension Fund failed to give a cost of living increase, leaving one to wonder it the church isn't self destructing in its sexual obsessions.
The ecclesiastical rough housing began in February when the Primates met in Alexandria, Egypt. The Windsor Continuation Group Report asked the obvious question as to whether the Anglican Communion suffers from an "ecclesial deficit." In other words, do we have the necessary theological, structural and cultural foundations to sustain the life of the Communion? The primates argued that they needed "to move to communion with autonomy and accountability" and to develop the capacity to address divisive issues in a timely and effective way, while learning "the responsibilities and obligations of interdependence". Of course asking the obvious question does not guarantee getting the obvious answer.
At the end, the meeting proved a bust. Archbishop Gregory Venables of the Southern Cone told VOL that the orthodox Primates had a peace and clarity about them. Then he said, "The liberal expression of the faith hasn't got life and truth. We were all agreed. There are two very different understandings of the Christian Faith now living together, indeed at war with one another in the Anglican Communion and the situation has no long term resolution. It would take a miracle to keep it together and Dr. Rowan Williams understands that. He will try and keep it together for as long as he can under his watch." It was a truthful but sad indictment on the state of affairs in the Anglican Communion. As the year progressed events only got worse.
The Anglican Consultative Council (ACC), aka as the Anglican Communion Office (ACO), met in May in Jamaica to hammer out a draft for an Anglican Communion Covenant, in particular, the Ridley Cambridge Draft, and also to appoint a small working group to consider and consult with the Provinces on section 4 and its possible revision, and to report to the next meeting of the Joint Standing Committee. What took place in Jamaica had little to do with property, ecclesiology or theology. It had everything to do with politics. The political maneuvering saw Archbishop Williams personally intervening four times. In the end, over massive objections from liberal archbishops and others, the ABC was asked to appoint a small working group to consider and consult with the provinces on Section 4. The ABC urged delegates not to "put off discussion of the covenant simply because of that detail we are finalizing."
As they departed, Williams mournfully noted that there "may or may not be lasting division" in the Communion. "Before we say goodbye to each other in the Communion, we owe it to the Lord of the Church to have those conversations and to undertake that effort at listening to one another and taking one another seriously in the gospel."
"Have we manufactured a large stone called 'an Anglican covenant' that will seal off creative, faithful life in the communion?" asked ACC chairman and Diocese of Auckland Bishop John Paterson, referring to the stone closing off Jesus' tomb and the council's work on the proposed Anglican covenant, in his sermon at the ACC's closing Eucharist. "I trust not."
In late May, VOL broke the news that The Rev. Thew Forrester would not be the next Bishop of Northern Michigan. Some 50 bishops and 52 Standing Committees who gave him the thumbs down believed that the single candidate, though elected by his diocese, practiced Buddhism, which informed his Christian teaching. He also confirmed that that his congregation often used locally written Eucharistic rites rather than those found and used in the Book of Common Prayer. A number of bishops voting "no" went public with their disagreement with him and said why they were withholding consents.
A majority of The House of Bishops have turned its collective back on The Rev. Thew Forrester. While some 25 bishops have yet to declare their hand, he would need more than that to turn it around.
In June, Anglicanism in North America took a right turn. In Plano, Texas, Archbishop Robert Duncan of the Anglican Church in North America rose up before several thousand mostly former Episcopalians and announced to the entire world that he was now the archbishop of the newly formed Anglican Church in North America. He told a press conference that the church he would now lead will "reunite a significant portion of our Anglican Church family here in North America.
"We are uniting 700 congregations, (and 28 dioceses) and more importantly committed Anglican believers, in the north (Arctic) and in the south, on the west coast and the east coast. We are oriented toward a hopeful future again. We are not turning back to the hurts of our past. We are moving forward together in Christian mission. The main thing is Jesus Christ."
Duncan drew a wide net saying that God isn't just bringing Anglican Christians together, "across the church people are re-embracing Scripture's authority. Christians are rediscovering the grace of our 2,000 year-old tradition." At year's end, Duncan called for the planting and raising up of 1000 churches during his ministry.
July saw the triennial gathering of The Episcopal Church's General Convention in Anaheim, California, where Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori acknowledged that there was indeed a crisis in the church. She put her best spin on it by saying "crisis is always a remarkable opportunity. General Convention is always a time of critical decision-making."
Sex was on the mind of delegates as they gathered near the Disney fantasy-world. Two crucial resolutions - D025 and C056 - passed. The first called for affirming God's call to gay and lesbian persons in all orders of ministry. The second called for the church to collect and develop "theological resources and liturgies for the blessing of same-gender relationships." Both the houses of bishops and deputies passed the resolutions by wide margins even though the Archbishop of Canterbury had urged the HOB to reject the measure. His call went unheeded.
One small item stood in the way -- Resolution B033, a controversial resolution passed at GC2006, which called on "standing committees and bishops with jurisdiction to exercise restraint by not consenting to the consecration of any candidate whose "manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on the communion."
Following the passage of D025 and C056, Jefferts Schori sent a hurried note off to Dr. Williams assuring him that B033 had not been rescinded and the two resolutions were merely descriptive and not prescriptive.
The Presiding Bishop admitted in her letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury that she views the Communion moratorium on gay and lesbian bishops as merely advisory at best. In defending the passage of D025, she digs a bigger hole for TEC by describing D025 as "more descriptive than prescriptive." She goes on to say that "Some within our Church may understand Resolution D025 to give Standing Committees...and Bishops with jurisdiction more latitude in consenting to episcopal elections."
At least 36 bishops were not convinced and they endorsed the "Anaheim Statement" which pledged to honor requests made by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the 2008 Lambeth conference, the Primates' meetings and the Anglican Consultative Council to observe the Windsor Report's moratoria on same-sex blessings, as well as cross-border interventions and the ordination of gay and lesbian people to the episcopate. They also reaffirmed their commitment to the Anglican Communion covenant process.
Shockwaves continued when it was revealed that the church was in a deep financial hole. Firings began almost immediately at GC2009. A bigger bombshell was dropped however when, in her opening address, the Presiding Bishop declared personal and confessional faith in Jesus Christ to be a heresy, and described Jesus Christ's death on Calvary as merely "a waypoint" to God's "greater dream," and not the endpoint of salvation.
Her musings sent shockwaves throughout the Anglican Communion, sending evangelicals in particular, into apoplectic fits, confirming their worst fears that the woman running the show was a bishop in name only and not a believer. The worse it all got, the clearer it all became. Nobody was in any doubt any more. Global South archbishops winced wondering what alarm bells it would set off in their own countries among Islamic fundamentalists now that TEC had fully ratified sodomy and declared her unbelief.
Other TEC resolution actions seemed milder by comparison. Among the 400 pieces of legislation both houses did pass was a resolution to "consider the Anglican Covenant proposed draft as a document to inform their understanding of and commitment to our common life in the Anglican Communion." They also agreed to approve a partnership with the Moravian Church.
Following General Convention, a number of dioceses said they would not permit clergy to sign marriage licenses for same-sex couples, but the die had been cast. There would be no going back.
One of the most liberal dioceses, Massachusetts announced in late November through its bishop Tom Shaw that he would allow clergy to celebrate same-sex marriage ceremonies, including signing marriage certificates.
A number of diocesan elections followed General Convention.
Minnesota placed a lesbian nominee, The Rev. Dr. Bonnie Perry, rector of All Saints', Chicago, on a short list, but withdrew when it was clear she didn't have a prayer of winning.
Then lightning struck. A few weeks later, The Rev. Canon Mary Glasspool, an activist lesbian, was one of two women selected to be bishop-elect of the Diocese of Los Angeles, becoming the second woman elected as Suffragan Bishop, paving the way for an international crisis.
Within hours, the Archbishop of Canterbury issued a statement, surprising many with his speed, saying Glasspool's election "raises very serious questions not just for The Episcopal Church and its place in the Anglican Communion, but for the Communion as a whole."
In October, The Diocese of South Carolina held a special convention and passed a resolution, at the behest of their bishop Mark Lawrence, to withdraw from "all bodies of governance of TEC that have assented to actions contrary to Holy Scripture and the church's received doctrine and worship until such bodies show a willingness to repent of such actions." Delegates passed a resolution affirming the Ridley Cambridge draft of the covenant.
Many of the orthodox parish priests found the conclusions of the diocese uncongenial and in December, the largest diocesan parish, St. Andrew's with 1,300 members, went into a 40-day discernment period. On December 18, the church voted overwhelmingly to leave the diocese and join with the emerging Anglican Church of North America. To date the diocese has not reacted, but Lawrence is on record as saying that he will not litigate against fleeing parishes. It remains to be seen what officials at national church headquarters have to say and what pressure they exert on Lawrence.
On October 20, Cardinal William Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, announced a new provision responding to the many requests that have been submitted to the Holy See from groups of Anglican clergy and faithful in different parts of the world who wish to enter into full visible communion with the Catholic Church.
The Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus introduced a canonical structure that provides for such corporate reunion by establishing Personal Ordinariates, which will allow those groups to enter full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving elements of the distinctive Anglican spiritual and liturgical patrimony.
It was a bitter and unexpected blow to Archbishop Rowan Williams as it seemed to put a crimp on 40 years of ARCIC (unity) talks. It also took him by surprise. To date, no one has officially taken up the offer in England or the U.S., but the Traditional Anglican Communion with its Australian-based Archbishop John Hepworth seems ready to accept the offer.
In a strange turn of events, the archbishop got back at the Pontiff when he visited Rome in November. He had a 20-minute meeting with Pope Benedict, which was later described as "cordial". The Vatican acknowledged that discussions "focused on recent events between the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion".
In a lecture he gave in Rome prior to meeting the Pope, Williams said the ordination of women is a secondary issue that does not amount to much and the Vatican would just have to get used to it. That seems very unlikely. The twin issues of the ordination of women as priests and bishops and Dr. Williams' liberal attitude to homosexuality remain cutting edge issues that will not go away in the foreseeable future. The ordination of women to the episcopacy in the Church of England will only create greater stumbling blocks and fore traditionalists to this seriously about the Pope's offer.
On December 18 Canon Kenneth Kearon announced that the final text of The Anglican Communion Covenant had been approved for distribution by the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion and was on its way to the 38 Provinces for them to examine and vote on.
"The Covenant represents a further step in these relationships, building on and giving expression to the bonds of affection which shapes our common life," he wrote.
Within a matter of days, scrutiny of the revised Ridley Cambridge Covenant with a modestly revised Section 4 came under criticism from orthodox and liberals alike. Nobody seems to think it will draw the Anglican Communion together. Few seemed to think The Episcopal Church would even sign off on it. Time will tell.
Whatever the future holds, what ultimately emerged in 2009 was that the Anglican Communion is now permanently fractured and a worldwide realignment already begun will not be turned around now or in the foreseeable future. In the words of the hymn writer "no turning back, no turning back."
END
BLOWED UP REAL GOOD
from Midwest Conservative Journal by The Editor
The Rev. Leo Joseph of St. John’s Episcopal Church of Lakeport, California really gets hacked off when people say Episcopalians aren’t Christian. So much so that he recently wrote an op-ed about it for the local paper:
"It used to be fashionable at cocktail parties, if you wanted to get a chuckle, to quip “to be a good Episcopalian only a slight belief in God is required.”"
Since you mentioned cocktail parties, the line actually was, “Wherever you find four Episcopalians, you’ll always find a fifth.” Carry on.
"Others liked to characterize the Episcopal Church as “the country club at prayer” and even assert that we are “not really a Christian church.”"
Because you’re…not?
"All kidding aside, those of us who are active and devout members of the Episcopal Church know just how untrue those popular perceptions are yet, as an organization and as individuals, we have frankly done little to counter these misconceptions."
But one hell of a lot to encourage them. If it walks like a duck, Leo.
"For the past quarter century or so it seems that the only time our church get any press is when the word “sex” can be coupled in the headline with the word “church”: “women priests” then “women bishops” and now a woman presiding bishop, along with talk of blessing “same sex marriages,” priests and even a bishop in a “same sex relationships.” (The word “gender” would be more correct, but let’s face it, “sex” sells papers, “gender” doesn’t.)"
Well, lah dee dah, Mr. hoity-toity grammar cop. Is the Episcopal Organization going to have to call a special GenCon in order to make its resolutions state that “genderal orientation/genderal identity” is no bar to ordination?
Will parents now have to sit down with their kids and urge them not to have gender outside of wedlock? If I marry some really hot woman, will my friend elbow me some time and quietly but leeringly ask me how good the gender is?
But I digress. Leo goes on to quote Pete Whalon:
"The Rt. Rev. Pierre Welte Whalon D.D., the bishop of the Convocation of American Episcopal Churches in Europe (who I had the privilege of meeting at a theological conference in Germany three years ago), noted this in a reflection on the wrap up of General Convention. I’d like to share his words with you all:
“Finally, a very significant theological statement on interreligious dialogue passed the bishops unanimously, and by a large majority in the House of Deputies (with 888 voting deputies, unanimity is extremely rare). For those who wonder about the orthodoxy of our church, here are some excerpts:"
Pete then includes a few orthodox-sounding phrases. Both Pete and Leo believe that this next part clinches their case.
And these paragraphs from Section V are worth quoting in full:
“24. The Christian scriptures proclaim that Jesus is ‘the Word made flesh’ (John 1:14) and as such he is ‘the Way and the Truth and the Life’ (John 14:6). As stated in our creeds (Apostles’, and Nicene) and liturgy, Jesus Christ is the full revelation of God. Since God has chosen to share our life, we affirm that God is intensely concerned about every human life."
You’re getting that vibe, aren’t you? Wait for it.
"Among Christians, Episcopalians have a particular appreciation of this teaching, in that we believe that the coming of God in Christ has already begun to transform all of creation."
Wait for it.
“25. The human response to God’s incarnate love was ‘to crucify the Lord of Glory’ (1 Corinthians 2:8). The cross is the Christian symbol and act of self-emptying, humility, redemptive suffering, sacrificial self-giving and unvanquished love. We believe that we have been reconciled to God through the cross."
Wait for it.
“26. In the resurrection we believe ‘Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and giving life to those in the tomb’ (BCP, p. 483). By our baptism into Christ’s death and resurrection we enjoy new life as members of the Body of Christ, called therefore to become ourselves ambassadors of reconciliation (Romans 6:4; 2 Corinthians 5:14-20)."
Now.
“27. Professing salvation in Christ is not a matter of competing with other religious traditions with the imperative of converting one another. Each tradition brings its own understanding of the goal of human life to the interreligious conversation. Christians bring their particular profession of confidence in God’s intentions as they are seen in and through the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.”
In other words, we claim to profess all that dying-on-the Cross and Resurrection stuff but if you’re not down with all that, believe whatever feels right to you. One, because it doesn’t really matter either way(many roads to God and all that) and two, because we Christians have a lot to learn from people who flatly deny what we say we believe.
That, Leo, my man, is what is known as dynamiting your own argument.
from Midwest Conservative Journal by The Editor
The Rev. Leo Joseph of St. John’s Episcopal Church of Lakeport, California really gets hacked off when people say Episcopalians aren’t Christian. So much so that he recently wrote an op-ed about it for the local paper:
"It used to be fashionable at cocktail parties, if you wanted to get a chuckle, to quip “to be a good Episcopalian only a slight belief in God is required.”"
Since you mentioned cocktail parties, the line actually was, “Wherever you find four Episcopalians, you’ll always find a fifth.” Carry on.
"Others liked to characterize the Episcopal Church as “the country club at prayer” and even assert that we are “not really a Christian church.”"
Because you’re…not?
"All kidding aside, those of us who are active and devout members of the Episcopal Church know just how untrue those popular perceptions are yet, as an organization and as individuals, we have frankly done little to counter these misconceptions."
But one hell of a lot to encourage them. If it walks like a duck, Leo.
"For the past quarter century or so it seems that the only time our church get any press is when the word “sex” can be coupled in the headline with the word “church”: “women priests” then “women bishops” and now a woman presiding bishop, along with talk of blessing “same sex marriages,” priests and even a bishop in a “same sex relationships.” (The word “gender” would be more correct, but let’s face it, “sex” sells papers, “gender” doesn’t.)"
Well, lah dee dah, Mr. hoity-toity grammar cop. Is the Episcopal Organization going to have to call a special GenCon in order to make its resolutions state that “genderal orientation/genderal identity” is no bar to ordination?
Will parents now have to sit down with their kids and urge them not to have gender outside of wedlock? If I marry some really hot woman, will my friend elbow me some time and quietly but leeringly ask me how good the gender is?
But I digress. Leo goes on to quote Pete Whalon:
"The Rt. Rev. Pierre Welte Whalon D.D., the bishop of the Convocation of American Episcopal Churches in Europe (who I had the privilege of meeting at a theological conference in Germany three years ago), noted this in a reflection on the wrap up of General Convention. I’d like to share his words with you all:
“Finally, a very significant theological statement on interreligious dialogue passed the bishops unanimously, and by a large majority in the House of Deputies (with 888 voting deputies, unanimity is extremely rare). For those who wonder about the orthodoxy of our church, here are some excerpts:"
Pete then includes a few orthodox-sounding phrases. Both Pete and Leo believe that this next part clinches their case.
And these paragraphs from Section V are worth quoting in full:
“24. The Christian scriptures proclaim that Jesus is ‘the Word made flesh’ (John 1:14) and as such he is ‘the Way and the Truth and the Life’ (John 14:6). As stated in our creeds (Apostles’, and Nicene) and liturgy, Jesus Christ is the full revelation of God. Since God has chosen to share our life, we affirm that God is intensely concerned about every human life."
You’re getting that vibe, aren’t you? Wait for it.
"Among Christians, Episcopalians have a particular appreciation of this teaching, in that we believe that the coming of God in Christ has already begun to transform all of creation."
Wait for it.
“25. The human response to God’s incarnate love was ‘to crucify the Lord of Glory’ (1 Corinthians 2:8). The cross is the Christian symbol and act of self-emptying, humility, redemptive suffering, sacrificial self-giving and unvanquished love. We believe that we have been reconciled to God through the cross."
Wait for it.
“26. In the resurrection we believe ‘Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and giving life to those in the tomb’ (BCP, p. 483). By our baptism into Christ’s death and resurrection we enjoy new life as members of the Body of Christ, called therefore to become ourselves ambassadors of reconciliation (Romans 6:4; 2 Corinthians 5:14-20)."
Now.
“27. Professing salvation in Christ is not a matter of competing with other religious traditions with the imperative of converting one another. Each tradition brings its own understanding of the goal of human life to the interreligious conversation. Christians bring their particular profession of confidence in God’s intentions as they are seen in and through the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.”
In other words, we claim to profess all that dying-on-the Cross and Resurrection stuff but if you’re not down with all that, believe whatever feels right to you. One, because it doesn’t really matter either way(many roads to God and all that) and two, because we Christians have a lot to learn from people who flatly deny what we say we believe.
That, Leo, my man, is what is known as dynamiting your own argument.
Monday, December 28, 2009
The Impossibility of Same Sex Marriages
Via VirtueOnline:
This article appears in the May 2005 edition of the Catholic Medical Quarterly
William E. May
The Gay Case:
Need For An Intelligent Answer
Advocates of same sex marriage commonly assert that its opponents are intolerant bigots unjustly denying a fundamental human right to individuals attracted to persons of the same sex. They maintain that same-sex couples can live in a committed relationship and have a right to express their affection for one another genitally. Many such couples claim that they can satisfy their sexual urges and natural inclination toward intimate union adequately only by establishing a more or less permanent relationship that includes sexual intimacy. (1)
They emphasize that the actual capacity to generate children is not necessary for a valid marriage; after all, opponents of same-sex marriage acknowledge the validity of the marriages of men and women known to be sterile and hence incapable of having children. Why, then, can they not recognise as valid marriages the union of same-sex who love each other and wish to share their lives together?
Intelligent replies must be given to the challenge these considerations raise. 1 hope to do so here by contrasting marriage and the marital act with same-sex unions and homosexual acts. In doing so I will show that homosexual acts are bad because they violate the good of the persons who engage in them.
I will conclude with an argument to show why same-sex persons simply cannot marry. Marriage is not a merely instrumental good, in the service of procreation, as St. Augustine thought, (2) or of pleasure, as same-sex advocates such as Steven Macedo maintain. (3)
Marriage:
A Fundamental Human Good
It is, rather, an intrinsic, basic good of human persons precisely as males and females, and as such it offers married men and women a reason to engage in the marital act. Vatican Council II indicated this great truth when it declared: "God did not create the human person as a solitary being" and, after citing Genesis 1: 27, "male and female he created them," explains that the companionship of the two sexes "produces the primary form of interpersonal communion. For, by their innermost nature human beings are social, and unless they relate themselves to one another they can neither live nor develop their gifts." (4)
Commenting on this passage, Germain Grisez notes: "This gloss on Gn. 1.27 implies that marriage is not merely an instrumental good: the companionship of man and woman belongs to humankind as image of God and is the primary form of one of the essential, intrinsic aspects of human fulfilment." (5) Moreover, Pope John Paul II clearly teaches in Veritatis splendor that "the communion of persons in marriage" (violated by every act of adultery) "is a fundamental human good" (nos. 13, 48; see also nos. 50, 67, 78, 79).
Marriage is consummated by the marital act, which is far more than a mere genital act between a man and a woman who happen to be married. Men and women are capable of having genital sex because they have genitals, and thus fornicators and adulterers are able to have genital sex. But fornicators and adulterers are not capable of engaging in the conjugal or marital act precisely because they are not married, and it is marriage that capacitates spouses to engage in the marital act, ie. to do what spouses are supposed to do, to become literally one flesh in an act whereby the husband personally gives himself to his wife by entering into her body person, and in doing so receives her; and whereby the wife personally receives her husband into her body person and by doing so gives herself to him.
Fornicators and adulterers cannot give and receive each other bodily; rather they lend themselves and their bodies to one another. The Church consistently and correctly refers to the conjugal act as one "proper and exclusive to spouses"; genital acts are hardly such.
An Act That Is Apt For Love And For Life
The marital act, moreover, is the kind or type of act intrinsically fit or apt both for communicating conjugal love and for receiving the gift of life. (6) This act is and remains a procreative kind of act even if the spouses, because of non-behavioural factors over which they have no control, for example, the temporary or permanent sterility of one of the spouses, are not able to generate human life in it. Their act remains the kind of bodily act in fact, the only kind of bodily act, "apt" for generating human life. (7)
In the marital act, moreover, husband and wife do not use their bodies as instruments to provide them with subjective states of consciousness but rather respect their bodies as intrinsic to themselves as bodily persons. When one trusts one's body as intrinsic to one's self, there is a unitary activity, and various bodily actions share in this activity since they are not directed to an extrinsic purpose.
In activity of this kind, as John Finnis says, the body's "activity is as much the constitutive subject of what one does as one's act of choice is." (8) Thus in the marital act, spouses freely choose to instantiate their communion of persons in one flesh open to the gift of life in and through an act in which their bodily activity is as much the constitutive subject of what they are doing as is their act of choice.
The union of husband and wife in the marital act "really unites them biologically (and their biological reality is part of, not merely an instrument of, their personal reality)...their (bodily) sexual union therefore can actualize and allow them to experience their real common good - their marriage...as an intelligible common good even if, independently of the spouses' will, their capacity for biological parenthood will not be fulfilled by that act of gential union." (9) Their act, as John Paul II puts it, speaks the "language of the body." (10)
How different from this are same-sex unions and homosexual acts. In the precise sense homosexual act comprise anal or oral intercourse chosen by two males, with the intention that at least one of them achieve satisfaction by ejaculating within the other's body. Such acts are acts of sodomy or homosexual intercourse. A lesbian couple can, without engaging intercourse, stimulate each other to orgasm, and such intentional acts can also be regarded as homosexual in a broader sense.
And both male and female homosexuals may choose to masturbate each other as ways of expressing their affection. But are such acts truly "appropriate" means to do so? Do those engaging in them truly become "one flesh"? In such acts "is the body's activity as much the constitutive subject of what one does as one's act of choice is?" Or in such acts is the consciously experiencing subject using his body as an instrument extrinsic to himself?
Homosexual Acts Against Authentic Intimacy
In homosexual behaviour the bodily joining of the practitioners does not unite them biologically as one complete procreative organism. Although they may choose such acts as means of experiencing personal intimacy, the resulting experience is not and cannot be the experience of any real unity between them; it is not and cannot be the experiencing of a common good attained in and through an act of bodily union.
In such acts, each one's experience of intimacy is private and incommunicable, and no more a common good than is the mere experience of sexual arousal and orgasm. "Therefore," as Germain Grisez has said, "the choice to engage in sodomy for the sake of that experience of intimacy in no way contributes to the partners' real common good as committed friends." (11)
Homosexual and mutually masturbatory acts cannot do what those engaging in them may hope and imagine. Their activation of one or even each of the genital organs cannot be an actualising and experiencing of the marital good, as the conjugal act is. Such activation, as Finnis says, "can do no more than provide each partner with an individual gratification. For want of a common good that could be actualised and experienced by and in this bodily union, that conduct involves the partners in treating their bodies as instruments of their consciously experiencing selves."
Their "choice to engage in such conduct," he continues, "thus dis-integrates each of them precisely as acting persons." (12)
Persons choosing homosexual acts are not speaking the "language of the body," in which the body itself is integral to their union as bodily beings. Rather, they use their own and each other's bodies to provide subjectively experienced satisfactions, states of consciousness. Thus the body becomes an instrument used and the conscious subject the user. The conscious self is alienated from the body. The activation of their genital powers is done in order to bring about the satisfaction of a desire.
Thus to choose to engage in homosexual acts is to choose a specific kind of self-disintegrity. The self-integration damaged in this way is the unity of the acting person as conscious subject and sexually functioning body.
But, as Grisez points out, "this specific aspect of self-integration...is precisely the aspect necessary so that the bodily union of sexual intercourse will be a communion of persons, as marital intercourse is." Therefore, homosexual acts damage "the body's capacity for the marital act as an act of self-giving which constitutes a communion of bodily persons." To put this in other words, homosexual acts damage what Pope John Paul II rightly calls the "nuptial meaning of the body." (13)
Homosexual Acts Disintegrate The Body
Choosing to enagage in homosexual acts thus damages or violates the "nuptial meaning of the body" and thereby the capacity of the person to give himself bodily to another in marriage. But in addition, the specific kind of behaviour characteristic of homosexuals, anal intercourse, the sine qua non for male homosexuals." (14) endangers the health and therefore the life of its practitioners. As John R. Diggs, Jr., M.D. points out, human physiology makes it clear that the body was not designed to accommodate this activity. The rectum is significantly different from the vagina with regard to suitability for penetration by a penis... the anus is a delicate mechanism of small muscles that comprise `exit only' passage. With repeated trauma, friction, and stretching, the sphincter loses its tone and its ability to maintain a tight seal. Consequently, anal intercourse leads to leakage of faecal material that can easily become chronic...
The list of diseases found with extraordinary frequency among male homosexual practitioners as a result of anal intercourse is alarming: anal cancer, chlamydia trachomatis, cryptosporidium, giardia lamblia, herpes simplex virus, human immunodeficiency virus, human papilloma virus, isospora belli, microsporidia, gonorrhea, viral hepatitis type B & C, syphilis." (15)
This passage supports the conclusion that anal sex is hardly an appropriate way to express friendship. Added to the reasons already given to show how homosexual acts violate the nuptial meaning of the body and the unity of the human person as a bodily being, respect for the health and life of homosexual males ought to make one realize that anal sex, the characteristic kind of homosexual behaviour, is morally bad.
An Argument Against Same-Sex Marriages
Persons of the same sex cannot marry because they cannot do what married couples can, ie., consummate their union by a bodily act in which they become the common subjects of an act that, precisely as human behaviour, is eminently fit both for the communication of spousal love and for the generation of new human life. How would homosexuals consummate their union? How would they become "one flesh?" It is absurd to think that they become "one flesh" in anal or oral sex or by mutually masturbating each other. It is equally absurd to think that they can marry.
Homosexual Acts Against The Common Good
Moreover, equating same-sex unions with marriage would be a terrible injustice to married men and women, who perform an indispensable service to the common good of society. Genital coition is the only bodily act intrinsically capable of generating new human life. Kissing, holding hands, fondling, and ana/oral sex cannot generate children. They can be generated through acts of fornication and adultery, but it is not good for children to be begotten in this way.
For millennia every human culture has recognized the bond linking sex, marriage, and the generation of human life, and frowned on begetting children out of wedlock. Although many today think it fitting to generate children outside of marriage, the tragic situations accompanying phenomena such as fatherless children, undisciplined youth, and abandoned women show the shallowness of such thinking.
The marital union of a man and a woman who have given themselves unreservedly in marriage and who can consummate their union in a beautiful bodily act of conjugal intercourse is the best place to serve as a "home" for new human life, as the "place" where this life can take root and grow in love and service to others. A marriage of this kind contributes uniquely to the common good. It merits legal protection. Same-sex unions are not the same and sadly merely mimic the real thing. They can in no way be regarded as marriages in the true sense.
References
1.
See, for instance, Steven Macedo, "Sexuality and Liberty: Making Room for Nature and Traditions?" in Sex, Preference, and Family: Essays on Law and Nature, ed. David M. Estlund and Martha Nussbaum (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), pp. 86-101 at. pp. 90-97
2.
"Surely we must see that God gives us some goods which are to be sought for their own sake, such as wisdom, health, friendship; others which are necessary for something else, such as learning, food, drink, sleep, marriage, sexual intercourse." De bono coniugali 9.9; translated by Charles T. Wilcox et al. in Saint Augustine: Treatises on Marriage and Other Subjects (New York: Fathers of the Church, 1955), pp. 21-22
3.
Steven Macedo, "Homosexuality and the Conservative Mind," Georgetown University Law Journal 84 (1995) 278.
4.
Vatican Council II, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes), no,12
5.
See Germain Grisez, Living a Christian Life (Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press, 1993), p.557, footnote 5. Moreover, Gaudium et Spes speaks of marriage as "a community of love" (no. 48) and indeed as an "intimate community of conjugal life and love" (no. 49). On marriage as a fundamental or basic good see Grisez,pp. 553-569.
6.
Indeed, in Humanae Vitae Pope Paul VI declared: "Because of its intrinsic nature the conjugal act, while closely uniting husband and wife in the most intimate of bonds, also makes them fit (Latin text: eos idoneos tacit) to bring forth new life according to laws written into their very nature as male and female." Most English translations have "makes them capable"where I have "makes them fit," a translation more faithful to the Latin idoneos. On this see my essays. "La 'communio personarum' e Patto coniugale," in Morale coniugale e Sacramento della Penitenza: Riflessioni sul "Vademecum per i confessori" (citta del Vatican; Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1998) pp 135-150; "Marriage and the Complementarity of Male and Female," in my Marriage: The Rock On Which The Family Is Built (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995), pp. 48-49. See also Robert Joyce, Human Sexual Ecology: A Philosophy of Man and Woman (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America,1980), pp 63-85
7.
This is precisely the teaching of Pope Paul VI in Humanae Vitae, no. 11 where he affirms that "each conjugal act (matrimonii usus) must remain ordained in itself (per se aptus) to the procreation of human life." Here 1 translated per se aptus as "ordained in itself."Many English translations, made from the Italian, have "open to human life" for "ordained in itself." On this see Germain Grisez, Joseph Boyle, John Finnis and William E. May, "Every Marital Act Ought To Be Open to New Life: Toward a Clearer Understanding," The Thomist 52 (t988) 365-366. See also Roben George and Gerard V. Bradley, "Marriage and the Liberal Imagination, Georgetown Law Journal 84 (1995) 305.
8.
John Finnis, "Personal Integrity, Sexual Morality, and Responsible Parenthood" Anthropos: Rivista sulfa Persona e la Famiglia 1.1 (1985) 46.
9.
John Finnis, "Law, Morality, and 'Sexual Orientation," Notre Dame Law Review 69 (1994) 1066.
10.
See for example John Paul II, General Audience of January 26, 1.983: "The Language of the Body Strengthens the Marital Covenant," in John Paul II The Theology of the Body: Human Love in the Divine Plan (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 1997), pp. 363-366
11.
Grisez, Living a Christian Life, p.653
12.
Finnis, "Law, Morality, and 'Sexual Orientation." 1067. See Patrick Lee and Robert George, "What Sex Can Be: Self-Alienation, Illusion, or One Flesh Union,: American Journal of Jurisprudence 42 (1997) 147.
13.
Grisez, Living a Christian Life, p. 650. At this point in his text Grisez is specifically addressing masturbation, but his analysis applies to homosexual acts as well. It is in note 190 on p. 650 that Grisez identifies the capacity violated by masturbatory and homosexual acts with the "nuptial meaning" of the body.
14.
Gabriel Rotello, Sexual Ecology: AIDS and the Destiny of Gay Men (New York; Penguin, 1998), p.92. Note that Rotello is himself an active homosexual.
15.
John R. Diggs, Jr. M.D., "The Health Risks of Gay Sex" (working paper, Corporate Resource Council, 2002, p.3.) In note 29, p. 12 Diggs provides the scientific sources for the list of diseases associated with anal intercourse: Anne Rompalo, "Sexually Transmitted Causes of Gastrointestinal Symptoms in Homosexual Men," Medical Clinics of North America 74.6: 1633-1645 (November 1990); "Anal Health for Men and Women," LGBTHealthChannel, "Safer Sex (MSM) for Men Who Have Sex with Men," LGBTHealthChannel www.gayhealthchannel.com/stdmsm/
Reproduced from "Faith" volume 36 number 5, with grateful acknowledgement.
This article appears in the May 2005 edition of the Catholic Medical Quarterly
William E. May
The Gay Case:
Need For An Intelligent Answer
Advocates of same sex marriage commonly assert that its opponents are intolerant bigots unjustly denying a fundamental human right to individuals attracted to persons of the same sex. They maintain that same-sex couples can live in a committed relationship and have a right to express their affection for one another genitally. Many such couples claim that they can satisfy their sexual urges and natural inclination toward intimate union adequately only by establishing a more or less permanent relationship that includes sexual intimacy. (1)
They emphasize that the actual capacity to generate children is not necessary for a valid marriage; after all, opponents of same-sex marriage acknowledge the validity of the marriages of men and women known to be sterile and hence incapable of having children. Why, then, can they not recognise as valid marriages the union of same-sex who love each other and wish to share their lives together?
Intelligent replies must be given to the challenge these considerations raise. 1 hope to do so here by contrasting marriage and the marital act with same-sex unions and homosexual acts. In doing so I will show that homosexual acts are bad because they violate the good of the persons who engage in them.
I will conclude with an argument to show why same-sex persons simply cannot marry. Marriage is not a merely instrumental good, in the service of procreation, as St. Augustine thought, (2) or of pleasure, as same-sex advocates such as Steven Macedo maintain. (3)
Marriage:
A Fundamental Human Good
It is, rather, an intrinsic, basic good of human persons precisely as males and females, and as such it offers married men and women a reason to engage in the marital act. Vatican Council II indicated this great truth when it declared: "God did not create the human person as a solitary being" and, after citing Genesis 1: 27, "male and female he created them," explains that the companionship of the two sexes "produces the primary form of interpersonal communion. For, by their innermost nature human beings are social, and unless they relate themselves to one another they can neither live nor develop their gifts." (4)
Commenting on this passage, Germain Grisez notes: "This gloss on Gn. 1.27 implies that marriage is not merely an instrumental good: the companionship of man and woman belongs to humankind as image of God and is the primary form of one of the essential, intrinsic aspects of human fulfilment." (5) Moreover, Pope John Paul II clearly teaches in Veritatis splendor that "the communion of persons in marriage" (violated by every act of adultery) "is a fundamental human good" (nos. 13, 48; see also nos. 50, 67, 78, 79).
Marriage is consummated by the marital act, which is far more than a mere genital act between a man and a woman who happen to be married. Men and women are capable of having genital sex because they have genitals, and thus fornicators and adulterers are able to have genital sex. But fornicators and adulterers are not capable of engaging in the conjugal or marital act precisely because they are not married, and it is marriage that capacitates spouses to engage in the marital act, ie. to do what spouses are supposed to do, to become literally one flesh in an act whereby the husband personally gives himself to his wife by entering into her body person, and in doing so receives her; and whereby the wife personally receives her husband into her body person and by doing so gives herself to him.
Fornicators and adulterers cannot give and receive each other bodily; rather they lend themselves and their bodies to one another. The Church consistently and correctly refers to the conjugal act as one "proper and exclusive to spouses"; genital acts are hardly such.
An Act That Is Apt For Love And For Life
The marital act, moreover, is the kind or type of act intrinsically fit or apt both for communicating conjugal love and for receiving the gift of life. (6) This act is and remains a procreative kind of act even if the spouses, because of non-behavioural factors over which they have no control, for example, the temporary or permanent sterility of one of the spouses, are not able to generate human life in it. Their act remains the kind of bodily act in fact, the only kind of bodily act, "apt" for generating human life. (7)
In the marital act, moreover, husband and wife do not use their bodies as instruments to provide them with subjective states of consciousness but rather respect their bodies as intrinsic to themselves as bodily persons. When one trusts one's body as intrinsic to one's self, there is a unitary activity, and various bodily actions share in this activity since they are not directed to an extrinsic purpose.
In activity of this kind, as John Finnis says, the body's "activity is as much the constitutive subject of what one does as one's act of choice is." (8) Thus in the marital act, spouses freely choose to instantiate their communion of persons in one flesh open to the gift of life in and through an act in which their bodily activity is as much the constitutive subject of what they are doing as is their act of choice.
The union of husband and wife in the marital act "really unites them biologically (and their biological reality is part of, not merely an instrument of, their personal reality)...their (bodily) sexual union therefore can actualize and allow them to experience their real common good - their marriage...as an intelligible common good even if, independently of the spouses' will, their capacity for biological parenthood will not be fulfilled by that act of gential union." (9) Their act, as John Paul II puts it, speaks the "language of the body." (10)
How different from this are same-sex unions and homosexual acts. In the precise sense homosexual act comprise anal or oral intercourse chosen by two males, with the intention that at least one of them achieve satisfaction by ejaculating within the other's body. Such acts are acts of sodomy or homosexual intercourse. A lesbian couple can, without engaging intercourse, stimulate each other to orgasm, and such intentional acts can also be regarded as homosexual in a broader sense.
And both male and female homosexuals may choose to masturbate each other as ways of expressing their affection. But are such acts truly "appropriate" means to do so? Do those engaging in them truly become "one flesh"? In such acts "is the body's activity as much the constitutive subject of what one does as one's act of choice is?" Or in such acts is the consciously experiencing subject using his body as an instrument extrinsic to himself?
Homosexual Acts Against Authentic Intimacy
In homosexual behaviour the bodily joining of the practitioners does not unite them biologically as one complete procreative organism. Although they may choose such acts as means of experiencing personal intimacy, the resulting experience is not and cannot be the experience of any real unity between them; it is not and cannot be the experiencing of a common good attained in and through an act of bodily union.
In such acts, each one's experience of intimacy is private and incommunicable, and no more a common good than is the mere experience of sexual arousal and orgasm. "Therefore," as Germain Grisez has said, "the choice to engage in sodomy for the sake of that experience of intimacy in no way contributes to the partners' real common good as committed friends." (11)
Homosexual and mutually masturbatory acts cannot do what those engaging in them may hope and imagine. Their activation of one or even each of the genital organs cannot be an actualising and experiencing of the marital good, as the conjugal act is. Such activation, as Finnis says, "can do no more than provide each partner with an individual gratification. For want of a common good that could be actualised and experienced by and in this bodily union, that conduct involves the partners in treating their bodies as instruments of their consciously experiencing selves."
Their "choice to engage in such conduct," he continues, "thus dis-integrates each of them precisely as acting persons." (12)
Persons choosing homosexual acts are not speaking the "language of the body," in which the body itself is integral to their union as bodily beings. Rather, they use their own and each other's bodies to provide subjectively experienced satisfactions, states of consciousness. Thus the body becomes an instrument used and the conscious subject the user. The conscious self is alienated from the body. The activation of their genital powers is done in order to bring about the satisfaction of a desire.
Thus to choose to engage in homosexual acts is to choose a specific kind of self-disintegrity. The self-integration damaged in this way is the unity of the acting person as conscious subject and sexually functioning body.
But, as Grisez points out, "this specific aspect of self-integration...is precisely the aspect necessary so that the bodily union of sexual intercourse will be a communion of persons, as marital intercourse is." Therefore, homosexual acts damage "the body's capacity for the marital act as an act of self-giving which constitutes a communion of bodily persons." To put this in other words, homosexual acts damage what Pope John Paul II rightly calls the "nuptial meaning of the body." (13)
Homosexual Acts Disintegrate The Body
Choosing to enagage in homosexual acts thus damages or violates the "nuptial meaning of the body" and thereby the capacity of the person to give himself bodily to another in marriage. But in addition, the specific kind of behaviour characteristic of homosexuals, anal intercourse, the sine qua non for male homosexuals." (14) endangers the health and therefore the life of its practitioners. As John R. Diggs, Jr., M.D. points out, human physiology makes it clear that the body was not designed to accommodate this activity. The rectum is significantly different from the vagina with regard to suitability for penetration by a penis... the anus is a delicate mechanism of small muscles that comprise `exit only' passage. With repeated trauma, friction, and stretching, the sphincter loses its tone and its ability to maintain a tight seal. Consequently, anal intercourse leads to leakage of faecal material that can easily become chronic...
The list of diseases found with extraordinary frequency among male homosexual practitioners as a result of anal intercourse is alarming: anal cancer, chlamydia trachomatis, cryptosporidium, giardia lamblia, herpes simplex virus, human immunodeficiency virus, human papilloma virus, isospora belli, microsporidia, gonorrhea, viral hepatitis type B & C, syphilis." (15)
This passage supports the conclusion that anal sex is hardly an appropriate way to express friendship. Added to the reasons already given to show how homosexual acts violate the nuptial meaning of the body and the unity of the human person as a bodily being, respect for the health and life of homosexual males ought to make one realize that anal sex, the characteristic kind of homosexual behaviour, is morally bad.
An Argument Against Same-Sex Marriages
Persons of the same sex cannot marry because they cannot do what married couples can, ie., consummate their union by a bodily act in which they become the common subjects of an act that, precisely as human behaviour, is eminently fit both for the communication of spousal love and for the generation of new human life. How would homosexuals consummate their union? How would they become "one flesh?" It is absurd to think that they become "one flesh" in anal or oral sex or by mutually masturbating each other. It is equally absurd to think that they can marry.
Homosexual Acts Against The Common Good
Moreover, equating same-sex unions with marriage would be a terrible injustice to married men and women, who perform an indispensable service to the common good of society. Genital coition is the only bodily act intrinsically capable of generating new human life. Kissing, holding hands, fondling, and ana/oral sex cannot generate children. They can be generated through acts of fornication and adultery, but it is not good for children to be begotten in this way.
For millennia every human culture has recognized the bond linking sex, marriage, and the generation of human life, and frowned on begetting children out of wedlock. Although many today think it fitting to generate children outside of marriage, the tragic situations accompanying phenomena such as fatherless children, undisciplined youth, and abandoned women show the shallowness of such thinking.
The marital union of a man and a woman who have given themselves unreservedly in marriage and who can consummate their union in a beautiful bodily act of conjugal intercourse is the best place to serve as a "home" for new human life, as the "place" where this life can take root and grow in love and service to others. A marriage of this kind contributes uniquely to the common good. It merits legal protection. Same-sex unions are not the same and sadly merely mimic the real thing. They can in no way be regarded as marriages in the true sense.
References
1.
See, for instance, Steven Macedo, "Sexuality and Liberty: Making Room for Nature and Traditions?" in Sex, Preference, and Family: Essays on Law and Nature, ed. David M. Estlund and Martha Nussbaum (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), pp. 86-101 at. pp. 90-97
2.
"Surely we must see that God gives us some goods which are to be sought for their own sake, such as wisdom, health, friendship; others which are necessary for something else, such as learning, food, drink, sleep, marriage, sexual intercourse." De bono coniugali 9.9; translated by Charles T. Wilcox et al. in Saint Augustine: Treatises on Marriage and Other Subjects (New York: Fathers of the Church, 1955), pp. 21-22
3.
Steven Macedo, "Homosexuality and the Conservative Mind," Georgetown University Law Journal 84 (1995) 278.
4.
Vatican Council II, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes), no,12
5.
See Germain Grisez, Living a Christian Life (Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press, 1993), p.557, footnote 5. Moreover, Gaudium et Spes speaks of marriage as "a community of love" (no. 48) and indeed as an "intimate community of conjugal life and love" (no. 49). On marriage as a fundamental or basic good see Grisez,pp. 553-569.
6.
Indeed, in Humanae Vitae Pope Paul VI declared: "Because of its intrinsic nature the conjugal act, while closely uniting husband and wife in the most intimate of bonds, also makes them fit (Latin text: eos idoneos tacit) to bring forth new life according to laws written into their very nature as male and female." Most English translations have "makes them capable"where I have "makes them fit," a translation more faithful to the Latin idoneos. On this see my essays. "La 'communio personarum' e Patto coniugale," in Morale coniugale e Sacramento della Penitenza: Riflessioni sul "Vademecum per i confessori" (citta del Vatican; Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1998) pp 135-150; "Marriage and the Complementarity of Male and Female," in my Marriage: The Rock On Which The Family Is Built (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995), pp. 48-49. See also Robert Joyce, Human Sexual Ecology: A Philosophy of Man and Woman (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America,1980), pp 63-85
7.
This is precisely the teaching of Pope Paul VI in Humanae Vitae, no. 11 where he affirms that "each conjugal act (matrimonii usus) must remain ordained in itself (per se aptus) to the procreation of human life." Here 1 translated per se aptus as "ordained in itself."Many English translations, made from the Italian, have "open to human life" for "ordained in itself." On this see Germain Grisez, Joseph Boyle, John Finnis and William E. May, "Every Marital Act Ought To Be Open to New Life: Toward a Clearer Understanding," The Thomist 52 (t988) 365-366. See also Roben George and Gerard V. Bradley, "Marriage and the Liberal Imagination, Georgetown Law Journal 84 (1995) 305.
8.
John Finnis, "Personal Integrity, Sexual Morality, and Responsible Parenthood" Anthropos: Rivista sulfa Persona e la Famiglia 1.1 (1985) 46.
9.
John Finnis, "Law, Morality, and 'Sexual Orientation," Notre Dame Law Review 69 (1994) 1066.
10.
See for example John Paul II, General Audience of January 26, 1.983: "The Language of the Body Strengthens the Marital Covenant," in John Paul II The Theology of the Body: Human Love in the Divine Plan (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 1997), pp. 363-366
11.
Grisez, Living a Christian Life, p.653
12.
Finnis, "Law, Morality, and 'Sexual Orientation." 1067. See Patrick Lee and Robert George, "What Sex Can Be: Self-Alienation, Illusion, or One Flesh Union,: American Journal of Jurisprudence 42 (1997) 147.
13.
Grisez, Living a Christian Life, p. 650. At this point in his text Grisez is specifically addressing masturbation, but his analysis applies to homosexual acts as well. It is in note 190 on p. 650 that Grisez identifies the capacity violated by masturbatory and homosexual acts with the "nuptial meaning" of the body.
14.
Gabriel Rotello, Sexual Ecology: AIDS and the Destiny of Gay Men (New York; Penguin, 1998), p.92. Note that Rotello is himself an active homosexual.
15.
John R. Diggs, Jr. M.D., "The Health Risks of Gay Sex" (working paper, Corporate Resource Council, 2002, p.3.) In note 29, p. 12 Diggs provides the scientific sources for the list of diseases associated with anal intercourse: Anne Rompalo, "Sexually Transmitted Causes of Gastrointestinal Symptoms in Homosexual Men," Medical Clinics of North America 74.6: 1633-1645 (November 1990); "Anal Health for Men and Women," LGBTHealthChannel, "Safer Sex (MSM) for Men Who Have Sex with Men," LGBTHealthChannel www.gayhealthchannel.com/stdmsm/
Reproduced from "Faith" volume 36 number 5, with grateful acknowledgement.
Covenant Will Not Stop Worldwide Realignment of Anglican Communion
News Analysis
By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
12/26/2009
A longed for Covenant that millions of Anglicans hoped would draw the Anglican Communion together as a family is looking increasingly like the Munich Agreement with a policy of appeasement to keep The Episcopal Church in the family without disavowel of her behavior.
The following things, however, will not change:
* GAFCON will not be reversed or go out of business.
* The Fellowship of Continuing Anglicans (FCA) groupings around the world will continue to grow and expand.
* ACNA is a done deal and will not be reversed. Ditto for the Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC).
* Those Anglican provinces in impaired or broken communion with The Episcopal Church will continue to be so and will not change their relationship with The Episcopal Church.
* Lawsuits in North America will not suddenly cease, in fact they will only escalate as hitherto subservient parishes and dioceses flex their ecclesiastical muscles and fight for their properties as they see The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada continue their downward spiral. If a lesbian is duly consecrated a bishop in Los Angeles, it will heighten tensions, anxieties and more lawsuits.
* The Episcopal Church will continue to ordain and consecrate non-celibate pansexuals to all orders of ministry including the highest level of bishop. Katharine Jefferts Schori has said she will officiate at any and all such ceremonies when called upon. The Episcopal Church will not reverse itself on pansexual behaviors either now or in the foreseeable future. Its gadarene slide will continue.
* The Archbishop of ACNA, Robert Duncan will not rescind his call for 1000 new Anglican churches to be raised up in North America.
* The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada will both continue to wither and die because they have no message separate from the culture. Pansexual behavior, now openly proclaimed, endorsed and blessed by TEC and now recognizably an aspect of the narcissistic culture of death, will continue to escalate. The call to accept, indeed proclaim abortion by those such as the new president of Episcopal Divinity School will only fan the fires of division among Anglicans.
* Global South Anglican provinces like Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and West Africa will continue to grow driven by their evangelical concern to save souls. Their leaders will continue to cry out against political corruption in their respective countries while keeping pressure on their priests to grow the church through vigorous evangelism.
* Anglo-Catholics in the US and Church of England will continue to be marginalized over Women's Ordination and, regardless of whether they accept the Pope's offer, their form of worship is looking increasingly anachronistic in a post-modern world. Women's ordination will still be a lightning rod issue for traditionalists and will not go away.
In his carefully calibrated response to the covenant (which comes only weeks after the Pope offered a 'haven of refuge' for Anglo-Catholics), Archbishop Rowan Williams offered up the following statement.
"The Covenant is not going to solve all our problems, it's not going to be a constitution, and it's certainly not a penal code for punishing people who don't comply."
Note the code language regarding punishment. This is a direct reference to The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada. What he is saying (and it is always important to read the subtext in anything Dr. Williams says) is that life with TEC will continue even if Mrs. Jefferts Schori lays hands on Mary Glasspool to become the next Suffragan Bishop of the Diocese Los Angeles. TEC's leaders will not be excluded from Primatial gatherings and councils of the church backed by the Anglican Communion Office, aka the Anglican Consultative Council. Basically the message from Williams is "get over it" Africa, Asia and Latin America. In short, there will be no discipline.
In a different forum, the same message was recently delivered to the Pope in Rome about future women bishops. It's a done deal, "get over it" said Williams. The Pope was not amused. Despite polite language that ARCIC talks will continue, all such talks are as dead as yesterday's half eaten turkeys and empty wine bottles. They have achieved little or nothing in 40 years. The same trajectory will only continue.
Liberals are not singing the Hallelujah Chorus over the Covenant's passage either. Layman Jim Naughton from the Diocese of Washington and a shrewd observer of all things Anglican ripped Dr. Williams over the Covenant saying, "I think we need to stop thinking of Rowan Williams as a gentle, scholarly soul caught between warring parties, doing his best to make peace. He exacerbated the crisis in the Communion by convening the emergency Primates Meeting in October of 2003; he has coddled and abetted the most virulent homophobes in the Communion throughout his tenure as archbishop, and he has used this crisis to ram through a centralized Communion structure that departs significantly from traditional Anglicanism, places much more power in his own hands, and dramatically reduces the influence of the people in the pews on the policies of the Church. I think he knew what he was doing every step of the way. Get past the beard. Get over the eyebrows. The man knew what he wanted--an Anglicanism that the Vatican would take seriously--and he has moved shrewdly and skillfully to get it."
The controversial Section Four, which disappeared after Tanzania and got resurrected briefly in Jamaica, is in again with the working party explaining their guiding principles as having "minimal revision", but having some "clearer definition" and "change of tone in language."
Four key questions are now answered: The first is that while the Covenant is designed primarily for "Provinces of the Anglican Communion", dioceses are included in the phrase "any ecclesial body" and some dioceses, for instance Communion Partner dioceses in the Episcopal Church, which may wish to commit themselves to the Covenant if their provinces do not, will be allowed to do so.
Secondly, churches which are not yet current members of the Anglican Consultative Council can affirm the Covenant (e.g. the Anglican Church in North America), but this would throw a real monkey wrench into the Anglican Communion as Rowan Williams will be forced to recognize Archbishop Robert Duncan, an act that will stick in the craw of Katharine Jefferts Schori.
Of course this will not automatically make them members of the ACC. If they want future membership, they will have to follow due process (section 4.1.5). We all know that Canon Kenneth Kearon will never grant status to ACNA because he will not go against The Episcopal Church which pays 60% of the Anglican Communion Office's tab. ACNA has not applied and probably won't. Why try for the front door of rejection when you can go in by the back door with the help of the Church of England Synod which meets in February and may well consider recognizing ACNA.
Thirdly, what of Churches who choose not to enter into the Covenant? While the text deliberately does not deal with this matter, the Instruments of Communion will determine an appropriate response. Now you should know that Mrs. Jefferts Schori and bishop-elect Ian Douglas (Connecticut) were in London to talk about the possibility of lesbian Mary Glasspool obtaining consents to be the next Suffragan Bishop of Los Angeles. After a closed door meeting with the ABC, they left without saying a word even to their own official ENS press. This speaks volumes. Talk of "gracious restraint" clearly was on the table, but Jefferts Schori has no interest in exercising it when it comes to consecrating Glasspool. She has said she will proceed. Gracious restraint is history and has been so since the Windsor Report which also had built in disciplinary measures that were never enforced.
Fourthly, who will monitor the implementation of the Covenant? We are told that the "Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion," which is bit like letting the fox guard the hen house. Nobody is prepared to upset the delicate relationships between the ABC, TEC, the Primates of the Anglican Communion and the ACO. The ABC is totally committed to unity at any price, but the price is the very faith itself and the Global South will have none of it.
Canon Kenneth Kearon, secretary general of the Anglican Communion Office, has opined that the presentation of the Covenant to the Provinces of the Anglican Communion represents an invitation to deepening of relationships among those Provinces. "We have a long history of friendship, affinities and collaboration between Provinces, dioceses, parishes and people across the globe, and we celebrate these manifold expressions of our oneness in Christ. The Covenant represents a further step in these relationships, building on and giving expression to the bonds of affection which shape our common life."
This is pure spin. With the advent of GAFCON, the bonds of fellowship and unity were demonstrably shattered. Many see a rival communion in the making. Unless the GAFCON primates publicly shut down the movement, it will only continue to grow.
A Church of England observer stated, "It would appear, then, that there are no longer any fundamental doctrines within the Anglican Communion-all is now adiaphora. The historic creeds are still recited, but by many within Anglo-Anglicanism they are not believed."
This statement is true for a vast majority of American Episcopal bishops. More believe Spong's remake of the Faith than don't.
When this lack of doctrinal coherence is pointed out, it is often replied that the Anglican Communion is "comprehensive"-that is celebrates "diversity in unity". This was one of the repeated refrains of Archbishop Carey, and Archbishop Runcie before him. Comprehensiveness demands agreement on fundamentals, while tolerating disagreement on matters in which Christians may differ without feeling the necessity of breaking communion. In the mind of an Anglican, comprehensiveness is not compromise.
CANA Bishop David C. Anderson wrote of the covenant that it is little more than a Potemkin Village. "As the Windsor Report moves the Anglican Communion toward a Covenant, one wonders if it is even possible to craft a Covenant that a) has enough content to matter, b) has a mechanism to enforce compliance or consequences of meaningful magnitude, or c) will have enough of the Anglican Communion willing to sign on to be truly relevant. Some have placed great hope in the Covenant, but it is quite possible that it also is a Potemkin Village just like the Panel of Reference was, and Delegated Episcopal Pastoral Oversight (DEPO), and other creations of the Lambeth wonks."
San Joaquin Canon lawyer Allan S. Haley wrote that the final text of the covenant means ECUSA will walk apart. Certainly the issue will be raised at the very earliest in 2012 and not before, said Jefferts Schori. He may well be right.
AMiA bishop John H. Rodgers noted that the Covenant is too weak to hold the Communion together. "The 1998 Lambeth Conference took a position on the question of human sexuality which was revisited at the 2008 conference and reaffirmed."
Ever the voice of hopeful moderation the Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner admits that a tectonic shift in global Anglicanism and Christianity itself has now taken place. "It is one in which the Episcopal Church in the United States has placed itself on the far side of a widening channel separating the ballast of Christian witness, Catholic and Pentecostal, from marginal spin-offs of liberal Protestantism in decline." http://www.anglicancommunioninstitute.com/
Powerful stuff.
"The moment of the Covenant's finalization and ARCIC's reinvigoration are far from miserable; they betoken new promise," he writes.
He goes on to say, "TEC is simply no longer the church filled with even the strength of purpose we saw only 10 years ago...that church, shimmering still with some of the vibrancy of love spent for the Gospel seen140 years before, even 90 years before, is now gone. And TEC will not survive in any real continuity with this past and its gifts. TEC is no longer a church in any substantive sense.". Strong words indeed.
"I am speaking of an institution as a whole - not even in terms of its legal corporation, but in terms of its character and Christian substance given flesh in the Spirit's mission." Radner cites the usual statistics of decline both in parishioners and finances of a "failing institution. We shall hear of bankruptcies soon enough."
On sexuality, Radner comments, "...from the vantage point of some kind of common sense prudence, what shall we say to this? It is hardly "homophobic" to make this observation: The attempt that the majority of TEC's leaders have made to normalize the sexual behavior of a tiny minority of people, and then to build normative moral and even biological principles upon this behavior designed to restructure the form and character of human relations in general, including marriage, family, and civil order, will surely go down as one of the great follies and social distortions of the late 20th and early 21st centuries."
Could one be clearer than that? Radner also rapped TEC's rapid descent into a morass of public and expensive civil litigation. He concludes with this bald statement, "TEC has no more moral capital in the bank. It is all gone."
Radner nonetheless sees hope amidst the ruins, "To me, this moment, in which the tectonic shift of the Anglican Communion now surfaces into view, is one of enormous hope and a testimony to the grace of God in a continued calling."
"The Anglican Covenant, in its final form, points to the likelihood of a growing core of covenanting Anglican churches - the Covenant becomes "active" as soon as any church adopts it - whose critical mass will soon shift the character of decision-making as a whole among the Instruments. TEC's place in this process, even should she presume to adopt the Covenant (which at present could only be in a posture of already-set disregard of its meaning and purpose), is simply one of entering a current that is now gathering force in another direction than her own insistence on isolated and unrecognized sexual prophecy. She has become irrelevant to Anglicanism's own missionary calling and the rising willingness to meet it."
Radner's hope is in hope itself. "The Covenant, founded on a commitment to mutual care and accountability in the gifts of Christ, will prove a means by which faithful Anglicans, in TEC and elsewhere, will also be able to join in this movement. How exactly that will happen, in terms of structure and institution, is not yet known; but happen it will. That I am willing now to say clearly.
"Anglicans have been through these upheavals before in similar and different ways: 1559; 1658; 1785; 1918; 1960's Africa or 1990's Rwanda. At each stage, an opening up, that emerged from a going down. And at each stage, there emerged a larger breadth in Christian communion, however contradicted by the failings of our apostolic calling. God's grace is bigger and wider - and so Anglicanism, with its evangelical-charismatic and scripturally ordered worship, is now called to enter the mission of reconciling grace the contours of which Catholicism and Pentecostalism have most clearly described for the coming century, with Eastern Orthodoxy offering a parallel vocation."
He concludes, "[While] the legal and institutional aspects of this are less important to nail down, frankly, there is much to cooperate on, as Anglicans even in America become anew missionaries of the Gospel of Jesus in the expanding landscapes of unbelief."
Whatever the new configurations of the Anglican future are they will have to include such movements as ACNA, AMiA and CANA as part of the quickening and awakening of North American Anglicanism. The truth is The Episcopal Church, as we have known it and many have given themselves to it, is over. God can never condone (homo)sexual sin and build something new on the foundations of the open espousal of sexual immorality. It is impossible. It goes against His own character and design for how human beings live in the world He has created. It violates the very doctrine of creation.
While the Gospel is alive, and the Church that is Christ's Body given still stands, it can only do so based on truth; and truth about what the Episcopal Church has become is the one missing ingredient in what remains of a declining denomination that has lost its way.
END
By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
12/26/2009
A longed for Covenant that millions of Anglicans hoped would draw the Anglican Communion together as a family is looking increasingly like the Munich Agreement with a policy of appeasement to keep The Episcopal Church in the family without disavowel of her behavior.
The following things, however, will not change:
* GAFCON will not be reversed or go out of business.
* The Fellowship of Continuing Anglicans (FCA) groupings around the world will continue to grow and expand.
* ACNA is a done deal and will not be reversed. Ditto for the Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC).
* Those Anglican provinces in impaired or broken communion with The Episcopal Church will continue to be so and will not change their relationship with The Episcopal Church.
* Lawsuits in North America will not suddenly cease, in fact they will only escalate as hitherto subservient parishes and dioceses flex their ecclesiastical muscles and fight for their properties as they see The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada continue their downward spiral. If a lesbian is duly consecrated a bishop in Los Angeles, it will heighten tensions, anxieties and more lawsuits.
* The Episcopal Church will continue to ordain and consecrate non-celibate pansexuals to all orders of ministry including the highest level of bishop. Katharine Jefferts Schori has said she will officiate at any and all such ceremonies when called upon. The Episcopal Church will not reverse itself on pansexual behaviors either now or in the foreseeable future. Its gadarene slide will continue.
* The Archbishop of ACNA, Robert Duncan will not rescind his call for 1000 new Anglican churches to be raised up in North America.
* The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada will both continue to wither and die because they have no message separate from the culture. Pansexual behavior, now openly proclaimed, endorsed and blessed by TEC and now recognizably an aspect of the narcissistic culture of death, will continue to escalate. The call to accept, indeed proclaim abortion by those such as the new president of Episcopal Divinity School will only fan the fires of division among Anglicans.
* Global South Anglican provinces like Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and West Africa will continue to grow driven by their evangelical concern to save souls. Their leaders will continue to cry out against political corruption in their respective countries while keeping pressure on their priests to grow the church through vigorous evangelism.
* Anglo-Catholics in the US and Church of England will continue to be marginalized over Women's Ordination and, regardless of whether they accept the Pope's offer, their form of worship is looking increasingly anachronistic in a post-modern world. Women's ordination will still be a lightning rod issue for traditionalists and will not go away.
In his carefully calibrated response to the covenant (which comes only weeks after the Pope offered a 'haven of refuge' for Anglo-Catholics), Archbishop Rowan Williams offered up the following statement.
"The Covenant is not going to solve all our problems, it's not going to be a constitution, and it's certainly not a penal code for punishing people who don't comply."
Note the code language regarding punishment. This is a direct reference to The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada. What he is saying (and it is always important to read the subtext in anything Dr. Williams says) is that life with TEC will continue even if Mrs. Jefferts Schori lays hands on Mary Glasspool to become the next Suffragan Bishop of the Diocese Los Angeles. TEC's leaders will not be excluded from Primatial gatherings and councils of the church backed by the Anglican Communion Office, aka the Anglican Consultative Council. Basically the message from Williams is "get over it" Africa, Asia and Latin America. In short, there will be no discipline.
In a different forum, the same message was recently delivered to the Pope in Rome about future women bishops. It's a done deal, "get over it" said Williams. The Pope was not amused. Despite polite language that ARCIC talks will continue, all such talks are as dead as yesterday's half eaten turkeys and empty wine bottles. They have achieved little or nothing in 40 years. The same trajectory will only continue.
Liberals are not singing the Hallelujah Chorus over the Covenant's passage either. Layman Jim Naughton from the Diocese of Washington and a shrewd observer of all things Anglican ripped Dr. Williams over the Covenant saying, "I think we need to stop thinking of Rowan Williams as a gentle, scholarly soul caught between warring parties, doing his best to make peace. He exacerbated the crisis in the Communion by convening the emergency Primates Meeting in October of 2003; he has coddled and abetted the most virulent homophobes in the Communion throughout his tenure as archbishop, and he has used this crisis to ram through a centralized Communion structure that departs significantly from traditional Anglicanism, places much more power in his own hands, and dramatically reduces the influence of the people in the pews on the policies of the Church. I think he knew what he was doing every step of the way. Get past the beard. Get over the eyebrows. The man knew what he wanted--an Anglicanism that the Vatican would take seriously--and he has moved shrewdly and skillfully to get it."
The controversial Section Four, which disappeared after Tanzania and got resurrected briefly in Jamaica, is in again with the working party explaining their guiding principles as having "minimal revision", but having some "clearer definition" and "change of tone in language."
Four key questions are now answered: The first is that while the Covenant is designed primarily for "Provinces of the Anglican Communion", dioceses are included in the phrase "any ecclesial body" and some dioceses, for instance Communion Partner dioceses in the Episcopal Church, which may wish to commit themselves to the Covenant if their provinces do not, will be allowed to do so.
Secondly, churches which are not yet current members of the Anglican Consultative Council can affirm the Covenant (e.g. the Anglican Church in North America), but this would throw a real monkey wrench into the Anglican Communion as Rowan Williams will be forced to recognize Archbishop Robert Duncan, an act that will stick in the craw of Katharine Jefferts Schori.
Of course this will not automatically make them members of the ACC. If they want future membership, they will have to follow due process (section 4.1.5). We all know that Canon Kenneth Kearon will never grant status to ACNA because he will not go against The Episcopal Church which pays 60% of the Anglican Communion Office's tab. ACNA has not applied and probably won't. Why try for the front door of rejection when you can go in by the back door with the help of the Church of England Synod which meets in February and may well consider recognizing ACNA.
Thirdly, what of Churches who choose not to enter into the Covenant? While the text deliberately does not deal with this matter, the Instruments of Communion will determine an appropriate response. Now you should know that Mrs. Jefferts Schori and bishop-elect Ian Douglas (Connecticut) were in London to talk about the possibility of lesbian Mary Glasspool obtaining consents to be the next Suffragan Bishop of Los Angeles. After a closed door meeting with the ABC, they left without saying a word even to their own official ENS press. This speaks volumes. Talk of "gracious restraint" clearly was on the table, but Jefferts Schori has no interest in exercising it when it comes to consecrating Glasspool. She has said she will proceed. Gracious restraint is history and has been so since the Windsor Report which also had built in disciplinary measures that were never enforced.
Fourthly, who will monitor the implementation of the Covenant? We are told that the "Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion," which is bit like letting the fox guard the hen house. Nobody is prepared to upset the delicate relationships between the ABC, TEC, the Primates of the Anglican Communion and the ACO. The ABC is totally committed to unity at any price, but the price is the very faith itself and the Global South will have none of it.
Canon Kenneth Kearon, secretary general of the Anglican Communion Office, has opined that the presentation of the Covenant to the Provinces of the Anglican Communion represents an invitation to deepening of relationships among those Provinces. "We have a long history of friendship, affinities and collaboration between Provinces, dioceses, parishes and people across the globe, and we celebrate these manifold expressions of our oneness in Christ. The Covenant represents a further step in these relationships, building on and giving expression to the bonds of affection which shape our common life."
This is pure spin. With the advent of GAFCON, the bonds of fellowship and unity were demonstrably shattered. Many see a rival communion in the making. Unless the GAFCON primates publicly shut down the movement, it will only continue to grow.
A Church of England observer stated, "It would appear, then, that there are no longer any fundamental doctrines within the Anglican Communion-all is now adiaphora. The historic creeds are still recited, but by many within Anglo-Anglicanism they are not believed."
This statement is true for a vast majority of American Episcopal bishops. More believe Spong's remake of the Faith than don't.
When this lack of doctrinal coherence is pointed out, it is often replied that the Anglican Communion is "comprehensive"-that is celebrates "diversity in unity". This was one of the repeated refrains of Archbishop Carey, and Archbishop Runcie before him. Comprehensiveness demands agreement on fundamentals, while tolerating disagreement on matters in which Christians may differ without feeling the necessity of breaking communion. In the mind of an Anglican, comprehensiveness is not compromise.
CANA Bishop David C. Anderson wrote of the covenant that it is little more than a Potemkin Village. "As the Windsor Report moves the Anglican Communion toward a Covenant, one wonders if it is even possible to craft a Covenant that a) has enough content to matter, b) has a mechanism to enforce compliance or consequences of meaningful magnitude, or c) will have enough of the Anglican Communion willing to sign on to be truly relevant. Some have placed great hope in the Covenant, but it is quite possible that it also is a Potemkin Village just like the Panel of Reference was, and Delegated Episcopal Pastoral Oversight (DEPO), and other creations of the Lambeth wonks."
San Joaquin Canon lawyer Allan S. Haley wrote that the final text of the covenant means ECUSA will walk apart. Certainly the issue will be raised at the very earliest in 2012 and not before, said Jefferts Schori. He may well be right.
AMiA bishop John H. Rodgers noted that the Covenant is too weak to hold the Communion together. "The 1998 Lambeth Conference took a position on the question of human sexuality which was revisited at the 2008 conference and reaffirmed."
Ever the voice of hopeful moderation the Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner admits that a tectonic shift in global Anglicanism and Christianity itself has now taken place. "It is one in which the Episcopal Church in the United States has placed itself on the far side of a widening channel separating the ballast of Christian witness, Catholic and Pentecostal, from marginal spin-offs of liberal Protestantism in decline." http://www.anglicancommunioninstitute.com/
Powerful stuff.
"The moment of the Covenant's finalization and ARCIC's reinvigoration are far from miserable; they betoken new promise," he writes.
He goes on to say, "TEC is simply no longer the church filled with even the strength of purpose we saw only 10 years ago...that church, shimmering still with some of the vibrancy of love spent for the Gospel seen140 years before, even 90 years before, is now gone. And TEC will not survive in any real continuity with this past and its gifts. TEC is no longer a church in any substantive sense.". Strong words indeed.
"I am speaking of an institution as a whole - not even in terms of its legal corporation, but in terms of its character and Christian substance given flesh in the Spirit's mission." Radner cites the usual statistics of decline both in parishioners and finances of a "failing institution. We shall hear of bankruptcies soon enough."
On sexuality, Radner comments, "...from the vantage point of some kind of common sense prudence, what shall we say to this? It is hardly "homophobic" to make this observation: The attempt that the majority of TEC's leaders have made to normalize the sexual behavior of a tiny minority of people, and then to build normative moral and even biological principles upon this behavior designed to restructure the form and character of human relations in general, including marriage, family, and civil order, will surely go down as one of the great follies and social distortions of the late 20th and early 21st centuries."
Could one be clearer than that? Radner also rapped TEC's rapid descent into a morass of public and expensive civil litigation. He concludes with this bald statement, "TEC has no more moral capital in the bank. It is all gone."
Radner nonetheless sees hope amidst the ruins, "To me, this moment, in which the tectonic shift of the Anglican Communion now surfaces into view, is one of enormous hope and a testimony to the grace of God in a continued calling."
"The Anglican Covenant, in its final form, points to the likelihood of a growing core of covenanting Anglican churches - the Covenant becomes "active" as soon as any church adopts it - whose critical mass will soon shift the character of decision-making as a whole among the Instruments. TEC's place in this process, even should she presume to adopt the Covenant (which at present could only be in a posture of already-set disregard of its meaning and purpose), is simply one of entering a current that is now gathering force in another direction than her own insistence on isolated and unrecognized sexual prophecy. She has become irrelevant to Anglicanism's own missionary calling and the rising willingness to meet it."
Radner's hope is in hope itself. "The Covenant, founded on a commitment to mutual care and accountability in the gifts of Christ, will prove a means by which faithful Anglicans, in TEC and elsewhere, will also be able to join in this movement. How exactly that will happen, in terms of structure and institution, is not yet known; but happen it will. That I am willing now to say clearly.
"Anglicans have been through these upheavals before in similar and different ways: 1559; 1658; 1785; 1918; 1960's Africa or 1990's Rwanda. At each stage, an opening up, that emerged from a going down. And at each stage, there emerged a larger breadth in Christian communion, however contradicted by the failings of our apostolic calling. God's grace is bigger and wider - and so Anglicanism, with its evangelical-charismatic and scripturally ordered worship, is now called to enter the mission of reconciling grace the contours of which Catholicism and Pentecostalism have most clearly described for the coming century, with Eastern Orthodoxy offering a parallel vocation."
He concludes, "[While] the legal and institutional aspects of this are less important to nail down, frankly, there is much to cooperate on, as Anglicans even in America become anew missionaries of the Gospel of Jesus in the expanding landscapes of unbelief."
Whatever the new configurations of the Anglican future are they will have to include such movements as ACNA, AMiA and CANA as part of the quickening and awakening of North American Anglicanism. The truth is The Episcopal Church, as we have known it and many have given themselves to it, is over. God can never condone (homo)sexual sin and build something new on the foundations of the open espousal of sexual immorality. It is impossible. It goes against His own character and design for how human beings live in the world He has created. It violates the very doctrine of creation.
While the Gospel is alive, and the Church that is Christ's Body given still stands, it can only do so based on truth; and truth about what the Episcopal Church has become is the one missing ingredient in what remains of a declining denomination that has lost its way.
END
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