Vapidity thy name is Katharine Jefferts Schori.

Oh, hey, the person in charge of us Catholics talked about solidarity too in his Lenten message!

“Sometimes we tend, in fact, to reduce the term “charity” to solidarity or simply humanitarian aid. It is important, however, to remember that the greatest work of charity is evangelization, which is the “ministry of the word”.”

To take up the Presiding Bishop’s point about fasting, she is correct that it involves more than merely ‘giving up’ some treat or luxury for a short while; Catholic teaching in recent years has suggested that you could supplement or even substitute other works of corporal and spiritual mercy (such as visiting the sick, elderly neighbours, offering time to help others, etc.) and the traditional idea of almsgiving, which is that when you’re living on your $4 a day food budget, you take the money you would otherwise have spent on food and give it to the poor.

So if you decide to give up cigarettes during Lent (and people do use this time when they want to quit), then you don’t keep the money you would otherwise have spent on tobacco, you give it to charity.

I would love to know how the PB arrived at that $4 per day figure on food stamps. Looks like I will have to do some research, but, if memory serves, I believe the amounts are higher than that.

But it is a shame that Jefferts Schori cannot seem to work in any type of Christian message here.

Wonder if she was contemplating a Taco Bell Cheesy Potato Burrito during her next bong-induced case of munchies while writing this cr*p.

She sounds more like a union steward than a Christian bishop.

At our little Anglican church, we express solidarity with the poor by collecting food and giving it to the Food Bank; we do it all year round and we’ve given tons of food. We also give money there.

If she really wants to help the poor world-wide she could consider political action. Write to Congress and her President to insist that we stop putting 40% of our corn crop into our gasoline tanks. And she could promote genetically modified crops which have the potential to increase food supplies and reduce waste and disease.

Fuinseoig and Katherine, AMEN!

Katherine, she could write to the food companies and supermarket chains here and tell them to stop putting horse into beefburgers!

Oh, well: Lent is coming next week, looks like a good time to go vegetarian.

I have found a farm which produces and sells beef, pork, and chicken within twenty miles of my home. I think I’ll give them an order. Eat lots of eggs and cheese on that vegetarian diet, Fuinseoig. Vegan diets are short on complete proteins. I suppose seven straight weeks of it won’t kill you, though.

Fuinseoig, do Catholic bishops in Ireland call for a no-meat-during-Lent regimen? Here in the U.S. Catholic bishops don’t even ask for meatless Fridays for their flocks. The times, they have changed.

Katherine must have a squishop. Our Chicago-area bishops require us to follow the tradition of meatless Fridays *in Lent,* and no meat on Ash Wednesday, along with fasting on Ash F and Good F. We are starting to hear hints of meatless Fridays all year round, and I hope it comes.

Schori is so far removed from the idea of charity, it’s kind of astonishing. We MIGHT eat less because of solidarity and it MIGHT suggest that we “share” our largesse. Such misplaced sensitivity to the feelings of the poor. They’ll starve, but they’ll starve with their dignity intact, if you let her run the soup kitchen.

If we fast, does that mean we have to park our spork?
(blast from the past)

Therese Z, thanks. I don’t keep up, evidently, and actually I don’t know what the Catholic bishop here is asking. My husband and I began meatless Fridays year-round after his close brush with death about eighteen months ago, and my Anglican rector recommends fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.

I’ve been darkly amused by the green lobby talking about Meatless Mondays for the environment. Far better to do meatless Fridays in remembrance of the Lord’s sacrifice for us on the cross, and give the price of the meat to the poor.

I thought +Schori was writing the letter for the annual ECUSA Appeal.

Dr. Schori’s mother, a convert to Russian Orthodoxy, could’ve given her a lot of good advice about fasting. The Orthodox fast for seven weeks in Lent, six weeks in Advent, two weeks in August and a variable length of time for the Apostle’s Fast, usually in June. Plus almost every Wednesday and Friday. No meat,including fish (basically anything with a backbone, shellfish is allowed.) No dairy, no oil or wine. It adds up to almost half the year. This used to be “normal” for the whole Church.
(I should add that due to age, health and living situation I am not able to keep this fasting rule right now.)

Miss Sippi, the Coptic Orthodox (Oriental Orthodox) in Egypt add, to your list of fasts, that while fasting they eat and drink nothing from sunup to sundown, and then consume a meal within the limits you mention. Typically, the Muslim fast is a distorted version of the Orthodox fast. In Ramadan, they eat and drink nothing during the day and then gorge on rich food every night.

So, Johnson, sitting up puking the other night was a foreshadowing of this message.

Yours is a truly prophetic ministry.

We form people in a sense that God dreams of a healed world, a world restored to peace with justice. Was she going for a triple word score with this ‘sentence’?

Why would anyone worship a god who only “dreams of a healed world?” A god who is no more powerful than we ourselves? This sounds like the Star Trek V type of god, one made in our own image.

She speaks of solidarity. She has connections with the Polish
Labor union?

She speaks of solidarity. She has connections with the Polish
Labor union?

Fasting, in regards to lent, should be primarily about exercising self control and about penance. Penance first and foremost for one’s very own personal sins, and it should be done as a act for God with no expectation of praise from one’s fellow creatures.

Turning Lent into a means to do penance for the acts of other is missing the point. Whether those on food stamps are or are not justly treated, or if justice has anything to do with it at all, is besides the issue. If a husband wrongs his wife, should he seek her forgiveness, or should he busy himself by doing some public act to make up for what one neighbor down the street did to another a few years past? Sort of missing the whole point.

Actually, the per diem is closer to $5 than $4, from what I can find online. FWIW, I just started, at the first of the year, tracking what I spend at the grocery and Costco. For January, I spent about $17/day, for 2 adults, 3 cats, and 2 dogs. That wss including TP, soap, shampoo, detergent, cleaning supplies, and other “incidentals”. I must not be buying the same cask of Amontillado each month as does Her Squidness. Then again, I’m not drinking the same Koolaid, either.

Agree with Jacob. I think the PB has missed the whole idea of Lent. Besides she is not even very original. She must like to watch the Chew. Awhile back, Mario Batali made some meals on the Chew when he and his family were buying groceries on a welfare budget for a week. Down here in the south, it is closer to $50/month for a single person. So between $1-2/day.

Dale Matson, J. Stuart Little, this “living God’s dream” language is the nauseating stuff people who stay in TEC parishes in North Carolina hear all the time. According to Bp. Michael Curry, poor old God has dreams about what God wants the world to be like but God can’t do anything about it without Episcopalians’ help.

Almsgiving is also a required part of Lent (prayer, fasting and almsgiving) so I presume she is screwing up TWO of the parts – fasting for solidarity and charity as optional only if the solidarity seems to suggest it.

Katherine, the Irish bishops do remind everyone of the mandatory fast and abstinence for Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, and they remind us (unsuccessfully) that we are supposed to do penance on Fridays – which in practice means that, once the compulsory “no meat on Fridays” rule was changed to “decide what you will do yourself”, everyone (and I’m as bad) did nothing extra at all and started eating meat.

They haven’t gone back to the “no meat on Friday” rule, but our next door neighbours, the bishops in England and Wales, have done so which both surprised and heartened me. And yes, in the past year I have been trying to go back to the “fish on Friday” rule because I know darn well I won’t say an extra decade of the rosary or do Scripture reading or the likes, so this much I can do.

I find it a useful exercise, Fuinseoig, and that’s especially interesting since I’ve always been a Protestant. Besides the weekly church attendance, I now remember, by doing something about my habits, the Lord’s death every Friday. Gosh, maybe those Catholics knew something! Practically speaking, though, it’s not as if fish were now less expensive than beef, or cheese either.

Writing well is often difficult. But, if you cannot do it well, but must do it because of your job, get help,establish an editorial board, go back to school, find something well written and tell us why you like it, or just stop and try something else, like teaching oceanography.

Want to know how the food stamp allotment is set? Well, it is based on the USDA food basket budget which figures out based on RDA servings how much it costs to feed a family on a nutritious diet. So guess what it is the US Government that tells us how much it costs to eat. So go knock on their door Katikins.

Hey, at least KJS mentioned Jesus!

One other thought on the “god dreamed” perfect world. Since the Bible indicates that gays will not be in the perfect world why is the Episcopal group so accepting of them and gay um ah shared addresses? If the “good” Bishop doesn’t care about gays and their salvation why should I believe that this whole letter is nothing more hot air?

Food stamps in Texas are $200 per month for a single person. That’s a bit less that $6.60 pet day. Texas its generally the lowest in welfare payouts.

Y’all are challenging me on the impending start of Lent. hmmmmm…

It is said that we have a God shaped hole in our heart. I believe this creature has an ass shaped hole in her heart and that it has been filled to the brim and is flowing over.

Is this some sort of contest to see who can use the word “solidarity” the most times in one message?

Also, Advent is the time of preparation and anticipation. Lent is the time of confession, repentance and willingness to accept the Sacrifice of Christ and, ultimately, the joy of the rising from the dead of Christ, the First Born of the Dead.

Of course, where a homosexual cult like the Episcopo “church” is concerned, Lent would mean recognition of sodomy as a sin, repentance of sodomite acts and prayer for redemption.

However, in today’s world, “giving up” chocolate for Forty Days (Fifty if you are Orthodox – we are “hard core”) and Easter bunnies are the important things for “adult” Christians.

And when the Easter Bunny comes out of his tomb on Easter morning and sees his shadow, we will have six more weeks of Winter. Or something like that.

I imagine the TEC elite will spend their Fridays “fasting” at some NY eatery specializing in scallops and lobster.

“I must not be buying the same cask of Amontillado each month as does Her Squidness”- I doubt she buys casks of Amontillado- her CDSP training never exposed her to traditional Anglicanism. At the rate she’s going, don’t be surprised if kelp and banana smoothies are adopted for communion at GC2015.

BTW, what is the current betting line on whether she decides to reappoint herself to the PBship now that ABoC is going to be tied up for a few years?

Doesn’t matter if KJS letter doesn’t make sense to anyone with a logical mind; she’s used the newest collectivist code word (solidarity) and used it often. Bet she gets points when the missive is forwarded to Obama headquarters to earn TEC big $$$ for repairing the National Mosquedral and PC Propaganda Center.

tjmcmahon,

No doubt at all that KJS and BHO do not intend to step down from their exalted states. None whatever.

A crisis will be manufactured to ensure their perpetual exaltation and reign.

Obama was profiled by professionals before his coronation in 2008 as a dictatorial type narcissist.

“…God dreams of a healed world…”

Gee…I didn’t even know he was asleep!

Glad he’s not dead!