Bienvenidos a la Iglesia Episcopal! Please bring condoms!

Man-whore.

But dig that tough gal in the teal blazer and pectoral cross, looking over his shoulder, getting her magnificent self onto television!

I assume she’s a bishop?

Anyhow, I opine three things:

1. Most RC’s in that area are saying “good riddance,” because many in that church still retain a sense that fame in man’s eyes isn’t the same as fame in God’s eyes;

2. TEC has just hired another pathological narcissist, because like attracts like; and our good people are in for a bad trip;

3. Come tomorrow morning, the crowds ain’t showing up.

Wait: one more:

4. Cutie doesn’t know what he’s getting into. Like most RC’s he thinks that TEC is “the same” as the RCC, except for the aspects he doesn’t like.

That’s it…

“In the end, the message of Father Alberto’s decision to join the Episcopal Church is the very message that is central to our Church, its teachings, and its opportunities for growth and evangelism in the future.”

Yeah – you might want to cool it a bit on that, Leo. If the message that is “central to our Church, its teachings” is one that goes ‘vows? we don’t need no stinking vows!’, that is.

“I have had several phone calls from newspapers and many emails from people all over asking about how they can join the Episcopal Church. My guess is that this Sunday many of our churches will be visited by people who are just learning about us.”

So what you’re saying is being The Big Inclusive Church with the Simple Country Bishop didn’t result in the anticipated floods of new seekers, but because a straight guy who wants to marry a woman – oh, the heteronormativity of it! – and who just happens to be a Roman Catholic priest is interested… that grabs the attention.

Eh, I’m laughing in between crying, honestly.

“Roman Catholic Church? If you’re reading this, and I know you are, I have one question. Why do you still talk to these people about anything at all?”

Christopher, my guess is that the guys in the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity are asking that right now, and Cardinal Kasper is shrugging and saying “Hey, I told you what Lambeth was like, and you didn’t believe me”

Episcopal, what is this Episcopal Church of which he speaks. Please send me some promotional materials and a handy pocket guide to this never before known about wonderful freeing inclusive church. For which I poor sinner would be most humbly glad to join since it is so modern and understanding about the snares of the flesh. Oh I want the damn steak knives, too.

“I know you will agree that the Episcopal Church, with our message of inclusiveness and reconciliation …”

I just ruined my keyboard with a Coke shower on that one!

Thanks for the warning, Leo. I’ll try to stay off the roads Sunday morning to avoid the huge number of people headed to the nearest Episcopo building to join up. “Wowee! Dig this! The ‘You Can Have Your Cake and Eat It, Too Church’ just signed up Cutie and his cutie! Load the kids in the car, Mamma! This looks like our kinda place!”

Alberto Cutie just wants to belong to a ‘church’ that will not interfere with his sex life…which is exactly what the TEC is.
Unfortunately, so many of the laity are ignorant and will see the Catholic Church as the villian and the Episcopal ‘church’ as the do-gooder.

For any Catholics who follow Cutie into his new ‘church’, this situation illustrates the dangers of having a personality-based pastor and his surrounding ‘cult’. There has to be a way of stopping the personality from being the end-all to a parish or church.

Here in Houston, Cardinal DiNardo transferred a very popular priest from the plush and prominent co Cathedral to an out-of-the way, run of the mill parish and when the parishioner uproar and withholding-money threats followed (with subtle complaints from the priest himself, who seemed to be egging the parishioners on) , DiNardo pressed on with what he needed to do and transferred that priest right out of there and rightly so.

In the end, the message of Father Alberto’s decision to join the Episcopal Church is the very message that is central to our Church, wink wink, its teachings, nudge nudge, and its opportunities for growth and evangelism in the future, knowwhatimean? Say no more! Our central mission in the days ahead will be of course to welcome Father Alberto, wink wink nudge nudge, and to support him on his path, knowwhatimean, but we recognize as well that his very personal and spiritual decision, nudge nudge wink wink, offers a window into our own story – the story of the Episcopal Church, wink wink nudge nudge, say no more!

“our message of inclusiveness and reconciliation …”

to wit as long as you don’t get tied up with faith and stuff, “goodness knows, anything goes”
as long as you don’t commit the One True Sin aka lack of hospitality or as some say homophobia

Did not Martin Luther marry Katharine von Bora? But by that time he had been excommunicated by Leo X.

“The diocese said Thursday’s ceremony culminates a “two year discernment process” for Cutie, indicating that he had considered converting long before photos revealing his relationship with the woman were published by Spanish-language media earlier this month.”

right….

Has +Frade never read the advice about whet to do when you have dug yourself a hole?

With all due respect to his office (which he seems to care very little about), +Frade sounds like a blithering idiot.

I hope the “real” Oprah has this ex-Catholic priest and his sweetie on real soon.

What a circus!! Where the heck is Clown Celebrant when you need him?

Why do you still talk to these people about anything at all?

A fair question, but you have to remember that the present pope has set an example of meeting with all sorts of people: Fr. Hans Kung, some well-known Italian atheist, and others. He gave less time to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Speak of the House of Representatives, but it’s arguable they didn’t come to discuss, but for validation through a photo op (in the latter case, at least).

We talk because you never know what the Holy Spirit will do as the Word goes forth. That sounds pompous, I know, but it’s really what’s going on. You never know…

Come on, enough tongue in cheek silliness. You know VERY WELL why Rome still talks to Anglicans. How else do they get rid of folks like this and Matthew Fox? If ECUSA wasn’t occasionally on the radar, Rome would have ever more nutburgers to deal with. The newly minted Anglican postulant might be comforted that in his new church he can potentially marry….Anyone. And I mean, anyone. Or not. When was the last time a clergyman in ECUSA was scolded for shacking up? About the last time a layman was?

Absolutely null and utterly void (couldn’t put it better)may be Anglican orders to Rome, but pretty good pay til the organization implodes. Not to mention airtime on Big O.

Frade, you already threw it in the face of the RC’s, el stupido. The public knows and this is not good publicity or public relations. It is, however, on your timing, certainly pubic relations in the Episcopal “Church”.

Follow the shield; see where it gets ya’! who it gets ya’? Do you REALLY want that?

Cutie’s statement in the video is a lot more humble and appropriate than anything Frade has said. Did Frade have to position an ordained woman right in the camera’s field of vision? Frade is an embarrassment.

Diane

” For any Catholics who follow Cutie into his new ‘church’, this situation illustrates the dangers of having a personality-based pastor and his surrounding ‘cult’. ”

This is a good observation. Those who would follow the man into another church by definition do not have much consideration for the integrity of truth. TEC will not experience growth because of this. Instead it will a see a flow of people who would follow Cutie out of TEC as fast as they follow him in. Highly unstable. Plus, he has his own access to the media. TEC should understand that it might get more than it bargained for with this man. As the trite cliche says “Be careful what you ask for, because you just might get it.”

carl

This should not be considered a feathger in the cap of TEC since he was apparently violating his vows over the past several years (or at least at some point he was having sex with his girlfriend). The reason why it gets such media attention is several things-the fact that he’s an attractive man, the fact that his name is “cutie” (A fornicating priest with such a name is a media gift) and because the media likes anything that’s a slap in the face to anything to do with Christianity-particularly Catholicism.

And yes, Martin Luther left a religious order to marry a woman who had also left a religious order. Martin Luther was also a scholar with theological depth. Cutie wants to have sex, it appears . Yawn. How earth shaking. Yawn. He’s no Martin Luther.

“Our central mission in the days ahead will be of course to welcome Father Alberto, and to support him on his path, but we recognize as well that his very personal and spiritual decision ……..offers a window into our own story – the story of the Episcopal Church.”

“For I am Henry the 8th I am
Henry the 8th I am I am.”

Spot On.!!!

Paula:

Steak knives???? Not in OUR church! All right thinking Episcopalians are committed vegetarians.

Your free tofu press is in the mail.

Well, in this affair, there’s enough embarrassment to go round for everyone.

I think both our churches are going “D’oh!” over this one.

Carl – quick! Hurry over to Harvard and save the business graduates from unBiblical practices of binding their consciences with oaths and vows that God tells us nothing about!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/30/business/30oath.html?_r=1&em

“Nearly 20 percent of the graduating class have signed “The M.B.A. Oath,” a voluntary student-led pledge that the goal of a business manager is to “serve the greater good.” It promises that Harvard M.B.A.’s will act responsibly, ethically and refrain from advancing their “own narrow ambitions” at the expense of others.”

Wow – the Pope gets in everywhere, doesn’t he?

I feel sad for Fr. Cutie’s girl friend. If she ever considers that this man has broken a solemn vow (one of chastity and celibacy) to God, she might want to reconsider marrying him. He has already broken one solemn vow of chastity. What makes her think he would not do it again? The Episcopal Church is certainly not going to worry about outmoded concepts such as chastity, no matter what it says. To understand that, just look at the Bennison brothers and their antics.

What a mess that poor woman is walking into. We should pray for wisdom on her part.

To boot, it was several years after his excommunication and the Diet of Worms (1520-21) that Herr Professor-Doktor Martin Luther met Frau Katherina von Bora (she was no raving beauty and yet was seeking one of two potential candidates, of whom Luther was the 2nd choice – the 1st had already turned her down…), married her and had a number of children with her.

Also, history records his being a good father and – beneath a surface of misogynistic sayings – a decent husband. Will Mr. Alberto Cutié prove to be anything of the sort (not to mention that theologically, pædagogically, intellectually and in so many other ways, he’s far below the man who wrote “Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott”!!!)??

In the interests of accuracy and justice, but I believe that Father Cutie took a vow of celibacy as a diocesan priest, not chastity as a religious. It’s a fine distinction, but it means that sins against purity are not compounded with the sacrilege that would ensue were he a member of an order or congregation that DID vow chastity.

Also, she should remember the aphorism that a man who marries his mistress creates a job vacancy. This man’s spouse was Holy Mother Church.

Quoth Allen Lewis:
“I feel sad for Fr. Cutie’s girl friend. If she ever considers that this man has broken a solemn vow (one of chastity and celibacy) to God, she might want to reconsider marrying him. He has already broken one solemn vow of chastity. What makes her think he would not do it again?”

As she is a divorcee, she may have her own history of broken vows.

i’d never heard of “Father Oprah” before this became a big news story, so i don’t know what to think other than it’s a shame that he didn’t consider his vows to be binding.

As a Roman Catholic, I am having a hard time understanding this as a significant story. We (RCs) have way bigger problems. If a person (clergy, religious, or lay) no longer hold the foundational beliefs of his or her church, he or she does much less damage to the church (any church) to go rather than to stay. Ex-Fr. Cutie has done the

oops, cut off in the middle of the thought. Alberto Cutie has done the best thing for the RCC … not sure for TEC but that is not my call.

I am more disturbed about Cutie’s lack of moral development as a Christian and a Catholic. It is just sad … and humiliating as a RC to see this level of behavior… again. It has nothing to do with being a priest … it has everything to do with how one deals with changes in belief and knowledge about oneself.

Am I judgemental? Yes. I have no idea about his spiritual life and I have no idea about his future … or even how God looks at all of this. I do have an idea of what constitutes basic moral behavior (even outside of religion). We all fail … certainly I have and do … but there are issues of choices made over a long time and with time to consider and seek guidance and support. (I am not talking about his choice to leave the RCC.) I am talking about integrity, discipline and sacrafice. Seems to be missing at the most basic level.

I know something of the single life; a single lay person has many of the same requirements that an RC priest has. While challenging, it does not require super-human strength to live up to these basic requirements.

If he wanted to marry, he absolutely knew what steps he had to take. Many other priests have done this … but in an honorable way.