I saw it, too. How much moral blindness was needed for this line:

"That is, both choices were choices for life: in the first instance, I chose for the life of the unborn child; in the second, I chose for my own vocational life, my economic stability, and my mental and emotional health and wholeness."

So I guess it is OK for me to cause someone's death if it advances my career, helps me financially, or makes me feel good. Good to know! I'll file that away as my Get Out of Hell Free Card should I ever have to knock some inconvenient person off.

So remind me again, why was it that God was so offended by the priests of Ba'al? It seems to me that they could have made these exact same arguments. I don't doubt that they sincerely believed that throwing babies into the furnace would help the crop cycle, and given the real poverty of ancient times, surely their economic and well-being argument was much stronger than that of the current day priestess.

women should make the choice - a month or more before an abortion becomes an option.

If this guy wasn't husband or father material, why the heck was she sleeping with him, obviously without protection (or with failed protection)? A perfect example of abortion as birth control. Sad, really.

"I don't see this exclusively as an Episcopal Church problem, but rayther more an example of unrepentant Boomer hedonism, which is not confined to the ranks of TEC"

On one level this is true. But I must take serious issue with you..

This is a priest who has admitted to the murder of her own child. Murder. A priest who has murdered an innocent for the sake of her "vocation".

That is a blasphemous statement. It is a sin against the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit leads priests through the process of discerning their vocations.

When does the Holy Spirit tell someone, anyone, to murder?

More than that, you can bet just by the law of averages, she's not the only female priest who has done this. This is why the Episcopal church health insurances provides for abortions for both their female priests and the wives of the male priests.

Abortion as birth control has been going on among the priesthood in the Episcopal Church since Roe v. Wade.

And no one in the highest levels of the Episcopate has stopped it. (Presiding Bishop -Archbishop of Canterbury)

As a contrast, do we recall how up in arms the world (rightfully) was over Catholic priests molesting children? Molesting, not murdering.

The American Catholic Church was warned by the Vatican in the early '60's to not let homosexuals into the priesthood. The American Church did not listen. They let them in. Since the '60's, the entire American Church, and the victims, have paid the price of that disobedience.

Thankfully, since the scandal errupted, the Catholic Church has worked very hard to prevent any future abuse.

It must be noted that the majority of victims in the Catholic Church scandal were post-pubescent (sp?)...

Pedophiles go after pre-pubescent children.

Gays go after post-pubescent (sp?) boys.

I'm wondering when all this changed. I've been looking at Lambethconference dot org.

Lambeth 1930: "The Conference further records its abhorrence of the sinful practice of abortion."

Lambeth 1978: "2. The need for programmes at diocesan level, involving both men and women . . . (c) to emphasise the sacredness of all human life, the moral issues inherent in clinical abortion, and the possible implications of genetic engineering."

I don't see anything in Lambeth specifically allowing abortion, though in a mere 48 years, it went from being 100% sinful to being something needing a diocesan program to deal with moral issues when the abortion was done clinically -- which suggests that there is consderable waffling going on. The 1978 wording isn't exactly a model of clarity if the church is opposed to it.

But still -- no endorsement. If the rule wasn't changed, it still holds, right?

The issue of women's ordination aside, would our priestess be able to write her article in 1930 without being excommunicated? I seriously doubt it. And if so, what's changed about abortion itself? The anesthetic being used in the procedure (and in the conscience of the paticipant), perhaps, but certainly not the instruments or the subjects. A scalpel is still a scalpel, a life is still a life.

In the span of one human lifetime, it has gone from being an abhorrent, sinful thing to being a line item in the health care benefits.

Not to hammer my Episcopal friends, but while Rome may wax inconsistent on things like meat on Fridays, but it's still got a functioning institutional memory.

Oh Abbott... let's hammer away..it's Christmas...Jesus was a carpenter...

Ok, look up NOEL - National Organization of Episcopalians For Life -used to be out of Sewickly PA...see why they are no longer in the Episcopal Church...

Couldn't get a vote at one of the General Conventions (out of commitee -not floor vote) on abortion being a bad thing...or wording like that...

Mrs. P: Well, that's what He asked Abraham to do to Issac.

Somewhere, Nathaniel Hawthorne is rolling in his grave.

In fairness to God, he did substitute a ram . . .

As for NOEL, I did find an article on it on Virtue online which the spam filter won't let me link. Thanks.

I used to be an Episcopalian. Then I became a Presbyterian so the family could all go to church together. Presbyterianity didn't work for me spiritually, and I thought about going back to the Episcopal Church. Instead I became a Catholic. The article above is a good illustration of why I couldn't return to my roots.

I do so love it when people walk into my traps...

(Abbot, some technical assistance may be required as the old bean is a bit rusty on some terms...)

Yes, yes, and a resounding yes. God did ask Abraham to kill Issac. And Abraham consented and walked Issac up the mountain with all of the intention in the world to kill his grown son...

Then God provided a before unseen ram in the thicket for the blood sacrafice he required...

God was testing Abraham's obedience to Him...To His word...

The big but is God did not allow Abraham to kill his son for the blood sacrifice...God knew He was going to provide His own as the blood sacrifice.

This priest to claim she made a blood sacrifice of her unborn child for the sake of her vocation has acted as if she were God. In her demented, evi,l and incredibly stupid mind, she believes she, like God, killed her child, for the furthering of the Gospel...

A complete ass at best. Evil queen at worst.

Abbot, which is the heresy that believes we are in some way divine?

That's the heresy she's wrapped up in.

Forgive the saltiness of my language.

Stoo-pid me! Totally forgot one of the most important facts. Abraham came way before Moses. Meaning Abraham came way before God's commandment : Thou Shalt Not Kill.

Had Abraham known of this commandment, he would have had quite a struggle when God told him to sacrifice Issac. There may have even been a shouting match between the two.

The Rev. Fowler (got to love God's humor there) came way, way after Moses and Thou Shalt Not Kill.

Though as the Episcopal/Anglican Church will openly say, that commandment does not apply to abortion or euthanasia.

Mrs. P--Respectfully, you said it would never happen, but it did. Abraham was commanded to kill his son. The fact that it was a test doesn't dilute that it did happen, and that if Abraham knew it was a test and that he would have an out, then it loses all meaning as a test of faith to begin with. Which is beside the point for this poor, sad, and I believe misguided woman, but that's the essence and extreme craziness of grace: we are commanded to forgive and to love no matter what as we are ourselves forgiven, not to spite and condescend. What words can be written before our feet in the sand? That's the sheer lunacy of the concept of grace that turned away people then as well as now.

As to the accounts of the sexual predator scandals that plagued the Roman Church in America in the 1990s, you don't really have anything in there about the heterosexual priests who abused young women (not as common an incidence as the other combination, but which happened alarmingly enough), not to mention to me the real essence of the scandal: the bishops (such as the "honorable" Daniel P. Reilly, retired Archbishop of Worcester, former Bishop of Norwich, who knowingly moved a pedophile into my old parish the year after I stopped being an altar boy) who looked the other way or refused to act in the face of incontrovertable evidence and yet are somehow not serving time in jail. They are moral monsters in many ways worse than the sad woman in the article because what she did to the body and soul of one, they abetted being done to the souls and faith and bodies of countless other children.

http://www.bishop-accountability.org/news/2002_09_01_Shaw_WhatDid_MULTIPLE.htm

The more that emerges about this it's pretty clear that it was not a one generational thing, but rather something only discovered now. And comb through rules of the Episcopal church, do, for the Canons of the Roman Church on many issues are also free of such hypocrisy? How many bastards have been created through annulment of marriages? They are both human institutions, and so are subject to error, corruption, and hubris.

The concept of forgiveness does not exclude accountability to the civil authorities: just as "Cardinal" Law and Bishop Reilly should be in jail, they also deserve mercy, forgiveness, and compassion for the crimes they committed, which is a very difficult thing for one of their former targets to do, yet it is something we are commanded to do nonetheless if we hope to be forgiven ourselves.

We must love, not hate, no matter how hard or irrational.

Churches are human things, and so they sometimes break our hearts, sometimes in a way so awful that makes it impossible to stay, and if we are lucky the Spirit can guide us to a place where we can find a place of quiet to worship God and find forgiveness and healing. When this happens it is important then to not hold onto bitterness, anger, and sorrow at where we have left behind, because these are horrible emotions that poison the gifts of the spirit, whether these gifts be emotional or rational.

When my wife and were were engaged, the Episcopal priest who married us spelled out the teaching (in his view) was "...you will not procreate children you cannot feed, cloth, or educate, or becomes wards of the State. That's the closest the Episcopal Church comes to Planned Parenthood".

Apparently the subject of the above article felt otherwise...

Steve is right, we are commanded to forgive. But a necessary element is contrition.

Steve-O,

You are spot on. We must pray for Rev. Fowler. I will say a Rosary for her, as I can think of no devotion in my arsenal of prayer more appropriate for opening a person's heart to the value of one's own child than the intercession of the one of whom Simeon said that a sword would pierce her heart when the world rejected him. I will ask that She pray to her son for mercy, who is a far better intercessor than I could ever be.

But I will pray for her, too.

But where I draw the line is where she wears the collar. She is a sinner, like all of us. But she does not regard her sin -- which the church has explicitly regarded as a sin since at least the writing of the Didache in the late first century/early second century (and has upheld as such for nearly two millenia, including the first four hundred years of the Anglican church) -- as a sin. She is, in fact, teaching others that her sin is not a sin. She is not filled with remorse, in fact her own words are "I have not the slightest regret about either of these decisions, nor the slightest guilt." Her own words are the testimony she will face.

She is preaching something contrary to the faith revealed to the apostles, and promulgated by those who learned at their very feet. What is her scriptural basis for doing this? What church father does she cite who speaks favorably of abortion? Which of the first seven ecumenical councils which the Anglican church recognizes sanctions her act? What is her argument against the teachings of her own church council, promulgated as recently as 1930? SHE OFFERS NONE.

It is one thing to say "I have sinned." It is another to say "I have no sin, and what the Church teaches as sin is no sin, as it is at variance with my own will." The collar she wears around her neck is her oath of servitude and obedience to Christ and his church, and yet she says "Non serviam."

She is not the first to say these words.

I do not condemn her, I do not judge her. I do not have the authority, as I did not descend into hell and bring forth the keys of death itself.

But if I do not rebuke her words, I sanction them, and the Church instructs me that I must offer fraternal correction. I also pity her enough that I will not be silent. If she does not recognize her sin, confess it, and ask for forgiveness from Him who has that authority, she will face testimony far worse than any impolite words of mine. Murder is a sin which cries to heaven for justice, and Christ's mercy certainly extends far enough to hear the voice of the child whose life she extinguished because she found him or her inconvenient. If she does not appeal to Him as savior, she will face him as judge.

I do not know the state of her soul. But I know that what she is teaching His sheep is wrong, and though she is not of my own sect, she is still a Christian, regarded by her own church as a priest, and therefore presumed worthy by those to whom she preaches of being listened to, until she starts saying things that clearly contravene the age-old teachings of the church.

And as for the abuse of children by priests in the Catholic church, though I am ashamed by the priests and am ashamed by the response of the bishops who did not look first to their sheep and who were complicit in hiding the crimes of the shepherds, at least I can say that the church still recognizes that the acts were sinful, and does not try to advance a doctrine teaching that pederasty is a Christian virtue.

That's the difference.

Mrs. P,

I'm thinking the closest to that heresy (humans are actually divine) is Pelagianism, which believes we are perfectible on our own; that Christ led by example, but that his sacrifice was not redemptive, per se. He was a teacher, not a savior. It tends to go hand in hand with Gnosticism (if we become illuminated through learning, we can become divine), and is at heart, ultimately, a kind of animism.

Pelagianism is certainly a rife heresy in our time, across all sects of Christianity, even though it was definitively refuted in the 4th century. No one in theology class studies St. Paul or St. Augustine, who used to be loved by Protestant theologians until this century (now, of course, they are hopelessly patriarchal).

In fairness to the Pelagians, I don't think that even they would embrace what she is preaching. They didn't embrace selfishness as a divine virtue.

And the sins of Cardinal Law and his ilk....? The families destroyed, faith shattered, doubt spread, hearts broken, for lies and protection of privilege and to hide cowardice? These are somehow in line with the teachings of doctrine? I hope not. Because if the Church really did believe what they did was wrong, they would not let the good Cardinal and those who knew and did nothing hide from the civil authorities. A Church worthy of the name universal would not hide criminals in its midst behind the silent privileges of a purple sash or red hat, while spinning sophistries worthy of a Pharisee calling out the doctrinal flaws of others.

If the Church truly believed it was sinful, if they realized the scandal was the actions of the bishops and cardinals and not the public revalation of these things, they would not continue to hide and obstruct, and wait for Law and his ilk to die. A prevent defense (while maliciously slandering the accusers) is good litigation strategy but lousy as a spiritual strategy.

Dan---You will be relieved to know I checked your comment and indeed St. Paul and Augustine are still well represented in the curriculum at least at Virginia Theological and Sewannee.

Steve,

I thought my last 2 paragraphs discussed it.

"And as for the abuse of children by priests in the Catholic church, though I am ashamed by the priests and am ashamed by the response of the bishops who did not look first to their sheep and who were complicit in hiding the crimes of the shepherds, at least I can say that the church still recognizes that the acts were sinful, and does not try to advance a doctrine teaching that pederasty is a Christian virtue.

That's the difference."

I think that the Church has made some progress in the last few years in cleaning out the bishops and priests responsible.

Not nearly enough -- and not nearly harsh enough for my tastes, which admittedly run toward the Dominican.

I would excommunicate every last one and refuse them burial in hallowed ground.

Their example has cost many souls who are embittered by the shameful example they have set, and so have deprived themselves of the teaching, which remains as true as it always has, and of the sacraments, which are as effective as they've always been. I may never trust a priest or a bishop personally as a person again.

But neither am I a Donatist.

Steve-o, I am of two minds here. Two minds on how to answer this. I wish we were face to face because then I would know how to.

I make no excuses for the priest scandal. Frankly, you must talk to someone who has been a Catholic longer than me for answers on Cardinal Law etal. Basil or Father M.... They won't hold back.

All i can say is that since the priest scandal has happened, I have had to undergo an FBI background check as well as sexual abuse training to qualify to be a lunchroom mom at our children's Catholic school. If I did not submit to those conditions, I was not allowed to wipe the tables clean...that is a pretty good zero-tolerance policy.

As far as the Rev. Fowler, I honestly believe you are being too nice to her. She is not worthy of forgiveness because of the simple fact she has not asked for it. She believes she has done nothing wrong.

As for St. Paul and Augustine, I'm glad to hear they're still being taught. I didn't mean that statement to come off as harsh as it seems in writing.

I just wish more people would listen to them.

Steve,
How many bastards have been created through annulment of marriages, You asked. Zero. Bastardy is a civil, not ecclesiastical effect. An annulment is simply a declaration that a sacramental component is missing. The Church is not stating that the marriage never existed rather that it was not fully sacramental.

A far higher instance of sexual abuse occurs in the home. Steve, if you are a parent the chances are far higher that you as a father are far more likely to abuse than me as a priest. Further, abuse is far more likely to be hidden in the home.

Mrs. P---Called in the artillery, I see. ;)

Father M.---That is correct. And my employer wouldn't offer me diplomatic immunity to hide from prosecution if I ranked high enough, nor move me to another family for a fresh start, either.

I am in awe of the quality of discourse concerning the most exposive domestic issue of our time. All of you should be on the Sunday morning talk shows.

"And my employer wouldn't offer me diplomatic immunity to hide from prosecution if I ranked high enough, nor move me to another family for a fresh start, either."

A little touchy on old Cardina Law and the Vatican, aren't we? Hmmmn....where to begin...ah yes..

So, Steve-O, here's a question for you, if Father M and I went to the Vatican today and brought Cardinal Law back to the US in to have the book thrown at him, would you then say the Catholic Church is ok?

Is having him prosectuted by civil authorities what it would take to make the teachings of the Church the Truth in your eyes?

Or is Cardinal Law and all that he represents to you a convenience? A convenience that allows you to keep your distance from the Church?

Hall and Oates? ANATHEMA!

:-)

Merry Christmas, Steve-O.

I don't mean to take this down a couple of dozen notches intellectually or theologically, but I'm just a simple country boy. How's this: all churches, since they are run by humans, are flawed. All have made big mistakes, and even aided and abetted heinous crimes. Over the span of history, none have clean hands.

So now what? Follow your heart, and work to improve whatever church you're in.

I'm a lifelong Catholic, and a former alter boy like Steve-O who also managed to miss all the hullabaloo. I'm easily as angry as he is regarding the management of that situation, and I personally like The Abbot's approach. I'm not yet in a sufficiently Christian mindset to forgive, for the simple reason that (as Mrs. P said above) the Church hasn't asked for it yet.

With these warts, I've decided to stay in the fold and work from within. Steve hasn't. He's also got really bad taste in music, as his Hall and Oates clip shows. That's OK.

Steve, Merry Christmas. You heathen swine. (That's a joke, people).

The spam filter ate a long comment of mine; which unfortunately I do not have time at the moment to reconstruct. Here's the short version.

I agree with much of what you say, TDP, but I would add a caveat, which is that Christ's church on Earth is not entirely, or merely, a human institution. Christ made certain promises to St. Peter and to the apostles which transform it into something not merely human, but into something which is also holy. If I believe those promises, I can believe that the sacraments are holy, the doctrine is true, and the Scripture may be trusted -- not because of the flawed people who administer or teach them, but because of He who makes the promise. It is the promise I trust, not the man in the robes, who might well personally be a criminal.

This is why I referred to the Donatists earlier. They believed that a priest's merits influenced his ability to administer the sacraments. Their error is one we are all tempted to fall into when we see the sins of the men in robes. But as we say each Sunday, "look not on our sins but on the faith or your Church." That Church will prevail, though every last priest be a sinner. How could it be otherwise? We are each of us like the crucified thieves on Calvary. Unlike Christ, we all deserve the penalty. Our choice is ultimately a simple one -- we can believe him or we can mock him. Abusers of children and murderers of children choose to mock him, and when He says they face something worse than having a millstone put around their neck, I take Him at His word. When he says that the gates of hell will not prevail against his Church, I also believe Him. Though every man on Earth fail Him, up to and including St. Peter -- thrice apostate, thrice forgiven -- I still believe Him.

This makes the Church unlike every other flawed institution of men. This makes his Church something different.

Kinda late to the party, but I thought I'd ask the obvious question. If she wasn't crazy about this guy, why did she bang him?? Had she not banged him, she wouldn't have gotten pregnant.

Eh, what do I know. I'm neither Catholic or Anglican.