Sorry to be OT, but I cannot help myself –

Obama: “I Am Not A Dictator”

Anyone here old enough to remember a presidential “I am not a crook.”?

our church has traveled on (a) pilgrimage

Thanks to BXVI that word will now become the buzzword of choice.

Words, words, words! As I’ve noted previously, episcopos always use so many words to make quite minor points.

I didn’t understand most of this gibberish. Something about tradition always changing – which would make it novelty, not tradition. The something about God mispeaking from time to time. Then on to ongoing revelation, apparently only to a select few, which is Gnosticism, and then finally something about a dog marrying a transgendered bishopess or something. (Query: If a female has herself surgically mutilated to become a “man,” and then takes up wearing women’s clothing, is he/she/it a transvestite? Discuss.)

Finally, I agree with our esteemed Host – this wacko got it right when referring to the short future for the C of E. Have fun while it lasts, fellers!

Oh, Bishop Andrus! I haven’t heard anything from him in what seems like forever!

I can’t track down whether it was the Rev. Walter Inge, Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, or G.K. Chesterton who said “He who marries the Spirit of the Age will soon find himself a widower” (it also seems to be given in “The Church that marries the Spirit of the Age will find herself a widow” and “He who marries the spirit of one age will find himself a widower in the next”), but you get my drift.

Today, TEC is at the forefront of the progressive cutting-edge Spirit-driven theological advancement for agitating for same-sex marriage. But it’s already starting to look a bit “So what?” in regards to gay and lesbian rights, so the transgender population is beginning to make demands at General Convention, as we have seen.

And in twenty years or so, TEC will be positively quaint if it refuses to recognise polyamorous families and create a rite of blessing for Jill and her primary Sam and his secondary Amy and her co-spouse Sarah who is married to Joe…

It’s tough keeping ahead of the posse, I do acknowledge that, Bishop Andrus. In comparison, us Catholics have it positively easy. Every time there’s a conclave for a new pope, the media asks “Will this guy permit divorce and re-marriage?” (and nowadays “gay marriage” gets thrown in, too) and the answer is “No” and then our progressives say “Next time for sure!” and we’ll go on doing this at intervals for the foreseeable future, just as we’ve done it at intervals for the past fifty years and more.

So we’ll still be saying “No” when it comes to questions of “Can uplifted sentient canines marry cyborg vat-grown humans of mixed hominoid genetic material?” while your successor, Bishop Andrus, will be trying to use Genesis 4: 16-17 as a precedent for permitting the ceremony on the grounds of ‘pastoral provision’ and ‘inclusiveness’ (after all, if Adam and Eve and their offspring were the first humans, then can we say for certain that Cain’s wife was not a non-human? And besides, that bestiality verse in Leviticus 18:23 is easily countered with the shellfish argument!)

Maybe the bish could write for SNL? This seems a definite “Hey, I’ve got a cool idea for entertaining people.” on the other hand, the draw factor is a proven “no go”!

Just gonna ride that Titanic all the way to the bottom aren’t ya Marc?

I am very glad that they are only throwing away “tradition” and not The Word of The Living God.

Of course if they are only a tradition and not followers of a god why do they call those buildings churches instead of gathering places? or um ah no I better stop there.

“Progressive revelation: Episcopalians are leftist Mormons.” Precisely, Christopher.

And did you all catch the line about ECUSA’s social prominence? Everybody watches the cool kids.

Katherine, that line was particularly piquant when paired with what he said further on about “We traded our cultural privilege and hegemony as a largely Anglo denomination for the wealthy and have deliberately become more and more consciously a church for all.”

So, um, it’s the church of the wealthy white elite movers and shakers, which means it can use its influence for good, now that it has cast off the wealthy white elite movers and shakers and embraced the minorities, ethnicities and lower classes.

So basically he’s saying “We are the church of The Man and we Fight The Man” at the same time?

Don Janousek,
“Finally, I agree with our esteemed Host – this wacko got it right when referring to the short future for the C of E. Have fun while it lasts, fellers!” Don, C.S. Lewis got it right not Marc Andrus.

The last I read, TEC was about 86% white. They are doing well among hispanics around here, but other than that, they are mighty white. It should be remembered that gay rights is a mostly white movement, and rather liberal black leaders have been known to reject gay identification as the new civil rights movement.

In any case, Andrus’ dioceses is losing about half a percent in average Sunday attendance per year and more than that in membership. So who cares what he says about inclusiveness. Facts don’t support his rhetoric.

It should be noted that gospel faithfulness can run people off, leading to sorry-term

short-term loss, but the long-term generally picks up. TEC had been declining for nearly 40 years.

“Missionary to the priests of one’s own church is an embarrassing role”

Having had to play that role a couple of times in the last few years, I have to agree. It is embarrassing. And frustrating.

Dale Matson

Ah, a fan of the great C.S. Bravo!

I just re-read “The Great Divorce” for the umpteenth time.

Always amazes me how Lewis could use “little” words and plain, everyday language to explain complex theological issues.

His book on pain is my all-time favorite.

I think, via The Great Divorce, that the city in perpetual twilight had an episcopo church in it.

Different religion than mine. Don’t recognize it.

FWIW, the “widower” quote is usually attributed to August Everding, a German opera director.

“Historic social prominence” is a “burden” that TEc no longer has to bear, as evidenced by the fact that its leadership (sic) has to continually wheedle their way onto the op-ed pages of the WaPo and the ever-accommodating HuffPo just to stay on anyone’s radar.

Do I have to wait until next week’s sermon to find out if the Catholic lite dog catches up with entirely symbolic tradition……or whatever?

He and Kate must have had the same seminary instructor.

So Episcopal Christianity boils down to: “There goes contemporary culture into the abyss of moral relativity. We had better hasten to catch up and fall into step with it. After all we are commissioned to lead and form it”

“though I have a horrid feeling that if such mission work is not soon undertaken the future history of the Church of England is likely to be short.”

I read that about 35 years ago for the first time. Gets better every year.
Another great one is from St Anthony writing in the late 3rd century: (Saying 25) “A day is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him saying “You are mad, you are not like us”.”

““Can uplifted sentient canines marry cyborg vat-grown humans of mixed hominoid genetic material?”

Everybody, you can stop calling now. We have a winner.

One (of many) maladies from which TEC is suffering is the “Johnny One Note” syndrome. They latched onto the civil rights movement in the 60′s as a broad church issue. They have been attempting to find their ‘Mojo’ again even if it means overgeneralizing the concept of human rights. If they had chosen the unborn instead of the GLBT to champion, they would have remained on the moral high ground. Because of their pro abortion stance, they have shown themselves to be only hypocrites.

Some say the moral high ground was lost in 1930 with the approval of contraception for special medical cases where pregnancy would diminish health of the mother and that it was a slippery slope downward from there.

With the 1930 ruling was born the implication that sex is critical for marital happines and that has evolved to the idea that sexual gratification is a basic human right in the eyes of the Shori/Crew/Robinson/Williams and Obama crowd as well as the step-by-step intentionally and carefully conditioned public conscience according to empirically proved educational psychology heuristics.

We have been warned along the way, but did not heed the watchmen and women and caved to the effective tried and true Alinsky tactics of the left.

So we now have the preposterous, obstreperous Obama and Shori who ignore canons, law, constitutions and usurp power and opponents like Jaba the Hut.

Where’s Luke Skywalker when we need him?

Correction: “as well as *by design, using* the step-by-step intentionally and carefully conditioned public conscience according to empirically proved educational psychology heuristics.”

We are the victims of a ‘vast left-wing conspiracy’ – really.

Pilgrim, this will be a very pressing question for the zoophiliacs attending GenCon of 2057! I merely anticipate the diversity of essence that will be wrought by temporal fluctuations upon the dynamic motion of the force that is tradition, as Bishop Andrus so movingly defines it.

Confessor,
“Where’s Luke Skywalker when we need him?”
We don’t need Luke Skywalker. Princess Leia Organa killed Jabba the Hut.

A friend of mine, Baptist-turned-Anglican-turned-Orthodox, to whom I sent a link to this posting, responded:

“What can I say? I still miss the C of E, its music and its liturgy (Cranmer as was). But how much ‘contradiction’ can be borne before it nullifies everything? Why is no one allowed even to wonder if licensed buggery is necessarily a Good Thing? ‘Once the layman was anxious to hide the fact that he believed so much less than the Vicar: he now tends to hide the fact that he believes so much more.’ Professor Lewis was right. Soon the C of E will be ‘Evensong for Tourists.’ She used to be more.”

It is really sad to watch someone deliberately corrupt and abuse his mind the way Marc Andrus does. I also noticed that little toot about “social prominence’”. I had to smile.

Is that the best you got, Marc? Social prominence? But other than that, the rest was complete gibberish!

This commentary by Andrus makes an interesting juxtaposition to the recent appearance of Monsignor Jeffrey Steenson on EWTN”s The Journey home. Monsignor Steenson, formerly the Episcopal bishop of the Diocese of the Rio Grande and now the Catholic Ordinary for the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, was asked how the Episcopal Church can justify this radical agenda. His response was that the Episcopal Church has now put personal experience on par with Scripture and Tradition. In fact personal experience sometimes trumps Scripture and Tradition. Then as if to prove Monsignor Steenson’s point, Marc Andrus waxes on about the ever-changing tradition of the Episcopal Church. The Journey Home episode with Monsignor Steenson is well worth your time to watch.

Progressive revelation; Episcopalians are leftist Mormons.

In practice, you bet. (Fun to compare too because the mainliners probably hate the culturally conservative Mormons.)

The Mormons are of the same ethnicity and culture, WASP. The mainliners still have a shell of credal orthodoxy (apostasy, Mormon style, is only a convention or synod vote away, but they’re still Christian for now) but the ‘Enlightenment’ sucked the faith out of them; Methodism for example tried to bring it back but it turned too.

(Tangent: the Anglo-Catholic movement, from theologians reading the Fathers to sincere would-be Catholics, tried to bring back faith too, but ended up as Modernism with bishops and vestments: Episcopalianism. Catholic lite indeed. Which by the way has never appealed to real Catholics, even the ones who don’t practice and bitch about the church. Because they know the church can’t change to suit their fancy. ['I left the one true church; why should I bother with yours?'] Whole parishes of former Episcopal would-be Catholics have been coming into the church [the latest: St Timothy's, Catonsville]; can’t say the same of Catholic parishes becoming Episcopal, even liberal ones. [There were the local Italian immigrant schisms the Episcopalians brought on board in the '20s, but they weren't official Catholic parishes. They were sort of useful for Anglo-Catholics to keep up the fantasy they either were really in or just as good as the Catholic Church. One's left, St Anthony's, Hackensack, to their credit conservative. But they should come home.] Even with the sheep-stealing of ‘Hispanic outreach’. There’s the irony that it’s partly because the Episcopalians are high-church, worshipping too much like us trads to please Catholic liberals. But mostly it’s the Holy Spirit and the reality of the true church vs. the fantasy of a fungible church. Real Catholics don’t buy the fantasy.)

Anyway, the mainline stayed relatively conservative until the Sixties (when the Episcopalians were the Republicans at prayer voting for good guys like Bob Taft and Barry Goldwater); without real faith, all they had to go on was social convention. When that changed, they pigged out on granola and voilà, Bishop Andrus and his aging boomers, the last generation to habitually go to church. Leftist Mormons.

Mormonism’s radical to Christians but they got their conservative rep because, to compensate for their radical theology, they assimilated back when mainstream America was ‘normal’. As a blog I read puts it, that’s why the liberal chic hate them so much, for seeming so normal. The mainline’s just flapping in the breeze, the church of the Zeitgeist as you put it.

Why pick on the Episcopal Church? It’s a free country; they are what they are. (They taught me old-school high church when the official Catholic Church wanted nothing to do with it; thanks.) It’s the mainline’s offspring, the secular left with the real power, that’s scary, trying to force us conservative Christians to redefine reality about marriage, and trying to force us Catholics to fund contraception. The left doesn’t care about First Amendment rights or any other freedom; they’re about power, over you and me.

Maybe the Bishop Andruses want to be the Established Church of that new world order; after all, it’s in Anglican DNA. But the mainstream doesn’t need them anymore. They’ll keep losing people even after they adopt gay marriage outright.

“The historic social prominence of The Episcopal Church lays some extra responsibility on us to use our influence for good.”

HAHAHAHA…(on and on for awhile)

Oohwee, I needed that. Markie Mark and his Funky Bunch need to look around a bit. Even when the Episcopal Church had some “influence” it was just because the rich and powerful of the day were born into it and continued to go because church goin’ was part of being “respectable” until fairly recently. It’s “influence” (as always) came from the World.

Actually, what did radicals think they’d get by infiltrating certain organizations or churches? Our Catholic organizations, parishes, monasteries all suffered a huge downturn in influence and power once they were taken over by the moonbats. Real commies know they don’t need their useful idiots anymore once they have power. The modernists that thought they could forge some sort of union with the world are now on the short end of the stick because they broke their influence over the minds of people because they whored their groups to progressivism. Now they are shells of their former selves and still get some attention from secularists, but their “moral” capital is largely drained. Its not hard to get some epo stooge with a pointy hat to say something stupid about “marriage equality”. Bad boys dump easy girls when the thrill of the chase is over.

Didn’t the real Archbishop torch this guy a few months ago? Dammit, wrong century…

Seriously though, this guy is a vapid fool. Some of the comments at WaPo under this article are just as stupid, only more zealously so.

I really don’t think you can pick up the mantle of “The Little Guy” and appeal to your sat on, dead laurels of being the Church of the Respectable. You cannot say you’re like Jesus in his eating with sinners when you seek to just “ordain” sodomites and various other kooks as the “new normal” blue bloods.

Nope, folks like Markie Marc and his Funky Bunch still thumb their nose at all the prostitutes and tax collectors-they just re-defined who a “sinner” is.