August 30, 2007
That's My Church!
You may or may not have seen the nooz articles of the past few days about the nominees to fill the seat of the Bishop of Chicago, among whom is one Rev. Tracey Lind, who very much plays for the other team.
I wasn't going to post on it, because frankly I think that battle is lost. TEC has made it abundantely clear that it does not consider homosexual activity to be at odds with spiritual teachings and nothing, not the Bible, the Anglican Communion, Peter Akinola or anything else is going to alter that. Deal with it.
However, alert reader Mike sent me this article from the Catholic World News that got me all riled up again, primarily because the last paragraph hits absolutely on the head the insidious iron-fist-in-the-velvet-glove way in which TEC pushes its progressivist reeduction agenda on us backward holdouts:
The Bishop for Chicago site also includes a Bishop Search Prayer that deals graces off the bottom of the deck. An excerpt:Give to our search committee inquiring and discerning hearts, that they may clearly see your will. Give us all the courage to dream and the will to persevere to make those dreams a reality. Fill us with your Holy Spirit and ground us in the knowledge and love of you. Empower us with the gifts of joy and wonder as we seek out the special ministry you have for us together in our diocese; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
"Give us the courage to dream ..." Methinks anyone who offers that particular prayer has all his dreams quite in order, thank you very much, and is not so much beseeching the Lord for a favor as obliquely chiding his more cautious brethren to accept the progressive vision of the future as God's will. I mean, suppose for the sake of argument God gave you the "courage" to dream that the Church should return in every respect to the way it was in 1957 -- would you have the courage to end your career by saying it?
Heh. Not bloody likely.
I see and hear this kind of language all the time these days, coming from the local parish right on up to Her Supreme Bishopressness herself. And every time I do, I have the curious sensation of being trapped in a sticky, clinging web of spun-sugar.
Sorry, but I've been in rayther a dudgeon about all this recently. Aside from the impending schism within the Anglican Communion, we're gearing up for the start of the new liturgical year and our annual church homecoming. But the only message I'm getting (and being expected to pass along) is "be nice to each other, dream your dreams and be sure to keep sending those checks to the U.N." How am I supposed to get excited when I perceive the message to be about a mile wide but about an inch deep? And when I know that any effort on my part to push for a deeper meaning will be met only by more spun-sugar?
Feh.
Well, I do know that this is the year something is going to happen vis a vis Robbo's spiritual journey. Just don't know what it is yet.
I'm more incined to identify the U.N. with the beast in Revelations 13:1, myself. :-)
I think TEC making themselves a servant of a power that is as worldly and corrupt as the UN is worse than any of their various other heresies and apostasies. Anyone who has read any of Claudia Rosett's articles would shudder in horror and cross themselves at the very idea of sending those kleptocrats any money and pronouncing it Christian charity.
If I were you, I'd head for a 1928 Book of Common Prayer denomination -- not that I believe that you will ultimately escape the gravitational pull of Rome, where all those roads eventually lead. No one who even considers it can resist -- it is, to use a Lord of the Rings analogy, like looking into the Palantir. (Insert track of Benedict XVI saying "Mwa ha ha" here).
But to me, if you start to consider the question "where did my church go astray" I'd say I'd have to think that the Anglican faith was remarkably consistent in its beliefs until the second half of the twentieth century. I'd then retrace my ecclesial steps to a point before that.
Well, before 1930 Lambeth anyway. To me, the Anglican church's problem with divergence from the faith on matters of human sexuality does not begin with gay bishops, but began with something seemingly much smaller and less controversial. That's when the camel's nose first poked under the tent, if you will.
Posted by: The Colossus at August 30, 2007 12:41 PMYes, I agree that the whole gay bishop thing is more a symptom than anything else. I once listened in on a conversation in which a very "progressive" clergyman was musing that Leviticus could be read as not actually prohibit the doinking of the livestock, but rather instructing that one who did so needed to purify himself before going anywhere near the tabernacle.
But I think what really bugs me is that TEC has swallowed the notion of the Perfectability of Mankind, that all we need to do is to adjust our senses a bit, throw overboard all our old traditions, prejudices and assumptions, and bango! usher in the Millenium. Jesus is no longer the one and only key to salvation, the sole Advocate keeping us from being banished to eternal nothingness (because after all, who really believes in that Heaven stuff anyway?), but instead is just a kind of socially conscious life-coach.
Posted by: Robbo the LB at August 30, 2007 01:45 PMAw, c'mon. You know you want to join my family in Popery.
Posted by: Jordana at August 30, 2007 02:37 PMYeah, I'm beginning to get that vibe again. But I don't think it's going to be a straight path. The Colossus is probably on to something....
Posted by: Robbo the LB at August 30, 2007 04:53 PMRobbo--my views on this subject are well-know. The RCC went through its own touch-feely phase and there are far too many parishes who stick to the Hallmark greeting sort of ministry but that breed is dying out. Benedict's election will only accelerate the course correction John Paul II instituted.
Posted by: LMC at August 30, 2007 11:00 PMWell, since you're all interested in the New Year, swim the Bosporus instead. Tomorrow is our New Year.
Posted by: Jeff at September 1, 2007 01:32 AMThe Tiber is much warmer and clearer this time of year...
Posted by: Christine at September 4, 2007 11:20 PM
Image courtesy of the lovely and talented 