Tease!

You want provocative? David Virtue thinks Schori is a little too close to Spong, theologically.

http://www.virtue0nline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=5505

(Replace the 0 in online with o -- your spam filter wouldn't take it).

Per : "David Virtue thinks Schori is a little too close to Spong, theologically."

OK guys, now you've done it. You've demonstrated you don't get the chicks in miters in TEC. The chicks in miters as well as plain old chicks in collars only came about because of a GenCon being held on 200th anniversary of the American Revolution. The Philadephia 7 (I think that was the number ordained) were called at the time "prophetic disobedience" All 7 women should have gone to the scaffold as well a the clowns who "ordained" them. But they didn't.

Thus, the ordiantion of women into the Anglican Communion came through the back door and always the smell about them has been a bit off. This is why the overwhelming majority of female priests have embraced the gay agenda. Active homosexual priests gives female priests legitimacy. This is tricky but try to hang on. If female priests are legitimate, then so are actively gay priests. If female priests are not legitimate, then neither are actively gay priests. The theological arguments --actually lack of theological argument and mere old progressive argument -- are the same for both sets of priests.

Who was the first guy to ordain an openly gay priest? None other than Bishop Spong. Schori has only been a priest for 13 years. She entered the priesthood after Spong had ordained a openly gay priest. Of course she is a follower of Spong. She cannot be and justify her occupying the top spot of the Episcopal Church. It is his arguments from the 13 Theses of Christianity must Change or Die --done in about '93 --or about when old Schori would have been in seminary -- that makes the case for women prelates. The case for female prelates is not literally spelled out. Spong merely deconstructs the whole basis for Christian thought and then makes the case for the church following the course of progress. Spong recently came to town and preached at our old parish. Hundreds showed up and at the end he received a standing ovation. Spong is loved, adored and follwed. Even at parishes that used to be thought conservative.

Spong is a heretic. But unfortunately, people have a way of going with the flow or the direction the wind is blowing. They don't even understand the wind that wind is blowing. Or how stale it is. They just just want to appear to be educated and on what is perceived to be the right side by what is considered to be the right people in this country..

Well said, Mrs. P.

I agree that Spong is a heretic. There is no other way to read those 12 theses. They deny Christ's divinity and the death on the cross as an act of atonement for our sins. This is and always has been heresy -- well, certainly since Niceaea, which, as far as I can tell, is embraced by all the major Catholic, Protestant, and Eastern Orthodox churches. If you cannot recite the Creed without doing all these "yes buts" in your heart, I son't see how one can call oneself a Christian, as that term is historically understood.

What's interesting to me is how the press is spinning this story. The narrative we're given is "KJS is for inclusion of gay people into the church, the Africans are against it." The problem is not the gayness of the parishioner or the priest per se; the problem is that homosexual acts are, in Scripture and in tradition, held to be sinful. One could be gay and be a priest; certainly there are priests who are gay, and priests who engage in homosexual acts. There are priests who engage in illicit heterosexual acts as well (those who violate their oath of chastity, in Churches where it applies). The problem is when the Priest does not admit these acts are sinful (and to be avoided), but instead promotes it as sinless. Scripture and tradition simply don't hold that. And if one throws out Scripture and tradition, what's left? For Protestants of the sola scriptura school, Scripture is the only reliable guide to Christianity. For folks who believe in the teaching magisterium of the Church and/or apostolic succession, it's even a harder problem, because neither Scripture not tradition has regarded gay marriage as legitimate. As far as I can tell, ever.

So for someone advancing the position that gay marriage is legitimate, it rapidly becomes
"let's throw out all/most/the inconvenient parts of Scripture and tradition, and hope that the sacraments alone are good enough."

This leads inexorably to schism, as Churches will fracture over which parts of Scripture and Tradition to keep, and which to throw out. I look at it and I can't see how this doesn't just inexorably lead to the destruction of Christianity through death from a thousand cuts.

To me, that's a very, very high price to pay for political correctness. As a Catholic, I look at the Anglican communion and I say (hopefully not too smugly) "there but for the grace of God go I . . . " -- because in the 1970s, the Catholic church seemed to be inexorably moving along the same doctrinal road the Anglicans have walked. I think the example of the fracturing of the Anglican communion has made Rome take a very hard look at it and halted the process in its tracks.

Thank you Colossus. We had a priest at our old parish who once gave an elated sermon about how you did not have to believe everything contained in the Creeds. He was also married, on the board of Planned Parenthood and sexually indiscreet with female parishoners...

I believe that it was not the Anglican Church's stumble that caused the Catholic Church to halt from traveling down the progressive low road, but the Truth contained in the Eucharist. The Anglican Church by denying this most central Truth, cut itself off. If you chart a course that is one degree off, 500 miles later, you will be hundreds of miles off course. In 1662, the Anglican Church charted its course with the 39 Articles. 450+ years later, look at the direction those Articles have taken them...

They stayed pretty close to Catholicism for many years; I have not abandoned hope that the schism between Canterbury and Rome might someday be healed. I think the path that Newman walked was, at the time, a short one -- but the path from where the Anglican communion is now is appreciably longer. From where Spong starts it is an impossible journey, I fear, unless he were knocked off his horse a la Saul of Tarsus.

I think that in our lifetimes we will see the Lutheran and Orthodox churches move closer and closer to Rome, although in some respects the Catholic faith has moved further down the road in a way that makes it difficult -- the infallibility of the pope in 1870, and the doctrine of the assumption of Mary in 1950.

Of the two, I think the Assumption might be the easier for the Lutherans and the Orthodox to embrace. Papal infallibility is going to be very tough to overcome. I say this while, as a Catholic, I believe in it.

I think the Anglican church needs a traditionalist revivial or else it risks accepting the theology of Spong by default. They do that, and there's no way back. I think KJS is walknig the Spong route now, and I only hope and pray she turns back. The Global South may end up being the best hope for an Anglican/Catholic rapprochement.

I say this as a lay person, and with no theological training, so naturally, my views may speak from ignorance.

I too am a layperson with no theological training which is why I always favor burning herectics...

As for coming to Rome now versus, when Newman did, it's hard anytime to come to Rome because you are ultimately admitting you do not know better how to run your life. Reading Eminent Victorians will not help you to think kindly of Rome.

We came home 7 1/2 years ago. It was not easy. But it has been easy since. Whenever anyone starts complaining of the problems in the Catholic Church, I laugh at them. Right in their faces. (not very Christian I know) I then tell them they haven't a clue how bad it is outside of the Catholic Church...