AND NOW…IDIOTS

Wednesday, May 9th, 2012 | Uncategorized

Since the Anglican controversy has largely receded from public attention, there don’t seem to be as many vile public Anglicans around as there used to be.  All those lawsuits put Mrs. Schori in the conversation but she’s just about the only one left.  Spong’s in his dotage, I still can’t take Rowan Williams seriously while Frank Griswold is retired and Frank was never a bad guy anyway.  He was just wrong practically all the time.

That’s why I was delighted to see this interview with retired Episcopal bishop George Packard who thinks that the filthy Occupy hippies are the FUTURE, baby, and that Christians need to get out of their FREAKING barns and start breaking some FREAKING bank windows because Jesus was all about sticking it to the Man, baby:

”Arrests are not arrests anymore,” Packard said as we talked Friday in a restaurant overlooking Zuccotti Park in New York. ”They are badges of honor. They are, as you are taken away with your comrades, exhilarating. The spirit is calling us now into the streets, calling us to reject the old institutional orders. There is no going back. You can’t sit anymore in churches listening to stodgy liturgies. They put you to sleep. Most of these churches are museums with floorshows. They are a caricature of what Jesus intended. Jesus would be turning over the money-changing tables in their vestibules. Those in the church may be good-hearted and even well-meaning, but they are ignoring the urgent, beckoning call to engage with the world. It is only outside the church that you will find the spirit of God and Christ. And with the rise of the Occupy movement it has become clear that the institutional church has failed. It mouths hollow statements. It publishes pale Lenten study tracts. It observes from a distance without getting its hands dirty. It makes itself feel good by doing marginal charitable works, like making cocoa for Occupy protesters or providing bathrooms from 9 to 5 at Trinity Church’s Charlotte’s Place. We don’t need these little acts of charity. We need the church to have a real presence on the Jericho Road. We need people in the church to leave their comfort zones, to turn away from the hierarchy, and this is still terrifying to a lot of people in the church and especially the church leadership.”

“Hey!!  You!!  What did you just do?!!”

“I gave a thirsty disciple a cup of cold water, Bishop.”

“Is that all?!!  Well, la de freakin’ da!!  Do you seriously think that punkass crap like that means anything any more, you pathetic loser?!!”

“I’m sorry, Bishop, but I just thought that…”

“SHUT THE HELL UP!!  YOU MAKE ME SICK!!  Now either start putting your SORRY ASS on the line by doing something that ACTUALLY MAKES A DIFFERENCE or just keep going to the shows in your stupid little stained-glass CLUBHOUSE and stay THE HELL out of our way!!”

“Bishop, that’s not a very nice thing to…”

“I’m trying to be prophetic here so STICK A SOCK IN IT!!”

Some of Naughton’s entourage had interesting reactions to Bishop Douchebag.  They were almost uniformly negative, sometimes fiercely so.  These two are typical.

One might compare the remarks reported here with Martin Luther King, I doubt that King verbally spit in the faces of his enemies and I am certain he didn’t do that to his allies.  In this case [Packard's] remarks spit on the work of multitudes of faithful Christians who struggle every day to live out the Gospel. 

This should offend just about anyone who pledges, sits in a pew, or does anything within the four walls of a church building, including the clergy. An otherwise prophetic call to action was scuttled with that one statement. The fact that it was uttered by a bishop who owes his livelihood to a church he now has no use for simply adds to the tragedy. Call the moribund church to action, yes, but not be essentially saying that God has left the building.

As Jesus told us, any service to God, however small, is acceptable in His sight and will have its reward.  That the old fraud scorns this idea and apparently thinks that the only truly Christian thing to do is to camp out, beat drums, hold up cliche-riddled signs, chant brain-dead slogans, defecate in the public streets and uncover a chalice of whoopass on some “rich” person or their business suggests to me that he doesn’t know the first thing about the religion that gave him a pointy hat for some reason.

Those ladies who show up early to put flowers on the altar or make the coffee for coffee hour are serving God, Packard.  And I’ll venture to guess that their service is more important to the Lord than anything you think you’ve done lately, you posturing jackass.

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