New Episcopal bishop inspired by 'progressive Catholics'

I realize if you were to leave the Church, you would lose health care, which you may need as you age. You would lose your housing and clothing stipend from your community. However, it may be worth it for you to join the Episcopal church where you could rise in rank. It is ironic that a whole parish of Episcopalians from DC recently joined the Catholic church because they vehemently disagreed with their church's position on women's ordination and same sex marriage.

Catholics in DC and surround should maintain a close and allied relationship with this bishop. God bless..

Where have you been? There have been women bishops in the Episcopal Church, including the Diocese of Washington, for decades now. There are two women bishops in the Diocese of Los Angeles, and the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church is a woman. There are Methodist women bishops and Lutheran women bishops as well. There is no stained glass ceiling except in the Roman Church. One has to wonder why we won our battles and you folks can't win yours.

Since JPII established that females cannot be ordained as an infallible doctrine, you will have a hard time making the case to ordain women, regardless of your wishes. Under the infallibility doctrine, once something is declared an infallible doctrine, it can never be reversed. So to ordain women, we will have to eliminate the doctrine of infallibility. Of course, Vatican I declared the infallibility of the Pope to be an infallible doctrine itself, so this doesn't seem likely. Nor does it ever seem likely that the Vatican will ever even consider eliminating the infallibility doctrine.

A lot of time can be wasted in a futile effort to change the minds of the hierarchy, or you can spend your time in other areas where there is a better chance of getting into effect.

And before anyone attacks me for being a dinosaur, I personally have no reason to believe that women should not be priests. I am trying to point out the reasons why it is unlikely to ever change within the Catholic Church.

Of course we all know there have been quite a number of bishops in various denominations. Ditto bishops by another name e.g. President of the presbytery for Presbyterians, Minister to th Conference for the UCC etc. The thing we continue to celebrate is the high quality of leaders in these churches who ELECT their bishops. Pastors and administrators, not enforcers.

Reading your article was a delightful experience because I could sense your enthusiasm for Bp. Budde and her accomplishments. I pray that someday in the near future, I will read about an interview you did with an RC woman priest or bishop. Attitudes about women's ordination in the RCC are changing among the laity. If the hierarchy are to have a have a church to "rule", they'll need to get on the bandwagon with the people of God. Otherwise, they'll have to content themselves with a pitifully small group of followers. All this strikes me as odd and incongruous with the image of Christ the King whose feast we'll soon celebrate. Jesus, the incarnate Son of the Father lived as the prototypical servant-leader and should be the model for all clergy, RCC and others. Let us pray that the RCC hierarchy will take notice of Jesus' way of leading and ministering. Only good can come of that!

What caught my attention was this:

"Later in the interview, I asked her about early influences in her life, and it did my heart good to hear her say that "progressive Catholics" were a major influence in her life in the 1980s. She was referring to those who opposed the Reagan wars in Central America and the folks in the Catholic Worker Movement. She actually lived with homeless people at a Catholic Worker house in Rochester, N.Y. She later related to a Catholic Worker community in Tucson, Ariz., a city where she also found local Methodists inspiring. She says she was moved by the willingness of both to identify closely with the poor."

Y would dare to ask: are we using such precious "talents"? On the other hand, we have so much to learn with each others, as Christians. Are we exploiting this kind of dialogue?

Finally, I dont't like at all the idea of "robbing" the other's flocks. I've seen this in Africa, at its worse: people mooving, sometimes in the space of months, from church to church, according to the mood of the moment, promises of bennefits, the priest/pastor personality, etc. I don't think is fair or convenient. I don't apreciate the Vatican initiative to attract Anglicans, as I would not like the sugestion that Catholics could follow the same path.

I have many doubts about the firmness and knoledge of the faith of someone who is ready to change a church as he was chancing a shirt. Every confession has it's high and lows, its strong and weak points. Let's learn to respect, to dialoge, without opening hand of our own tradition and spiritual inheritage. In hard times, and we Catholics are going through real hard times - I know perfectly well that are many people suffering or leaving right now -, we must behave like during a storm: keep our feet firmly on the deck and look at the horizon, to avoid sea-sickness. Hope, after all, is a corner stone of Christian faith.

"and make her views -- and the progressive social justice views of the Episcopal Church -- known" Usually what happens is that these bishops share their new views and the people leave. The Episcopal Church today is almost completely void of children and families. 1 in 4 has left the pews in the last decade. The church lost 54,000 people just in 2010. (Only 20,000 of those were from death.) There are not enough liberal christians in the US to fill the pews of these empty buildings. The worst thing I have ever heard in an Episcopal Church was "every time a gay couple is denied a marriage license Jesus is crucified again". The only possible way that this church will survive is have new, more moderate leadership.

Episcopalians and Progressive catholics. A shared charism

Abortion, mass murder of innocent children, Mao Stalin Pol Pot, general mass murder. The seamless garment, the NCR, Social Justice.

Hard to believe we all read the same article. Maureen Fielder writes that the newly ordained Episcopal bishop was influenced by progressive Catholics and Methodists and Lutherans and what people got out of this sounds like,
"So what. The Episcopal Church is shrinking." Not, "Oh good, another voice for social justice. Yet another person teaching Christ's message.Instead "..the Episcopal Church is in free-fall.." because of they support compassionion and love for LGBT.
Are you serious? Hooray, I say, for another good person in a position of power - however small that power might be perceived to be.

Commentators like David James are ready to tie the decline of the Episcopal Church to it's progressive agenda. Other commentators here have made more or less pointed remarks about growth in numbers of Catholics. What I think these folk fail to understand properly is that if "the Episcopal Church has become a church of aging parishioners and the LGBT and their supporters," then by the same token, increasingly, the Catholic Church has become a church of "family values" (socially-conservative) homophobes. Progressives are increasingly outside the Church.

The "threat" to Xianity is not from the progressive views of Episcopalians. The threat comes rather from the growing abandonment of Christianity by the educated in the affluent First World. Christianity is increasingly the preserve of the most educationally-deprived, most socially conservative, denizens of the Third World and their conservative American supporters. In my view, this places the Church on the brink of a new Dark Ages. Bad for Episcopalians. Bad for Catholics. Bad for the coming of the Kingdom.

No pope has spoken ex cathedra on the issue of the ordination of women. The closest the prohibition has come to being declared to be a doctrine that is irreformable was a published conclusion by the CDF (under Cardinal Ratzinger) declaring that it was so. This, of course, raises the question about the infallibility of the conclusions of the CDF.

But in any case, even if it is not regarded as irreformable, the Church advises us that we should accept a teaching of the Holy Father with great respect and hold it "with religious submission of will and intellect." And it is quite clear that both John Paul and Benedict have taught that the ordination of women is not possible.

This is most definitely not the same as an ex cathedra proclamation, however, so it seems to me that it remains possible in the future for a pope to reverse course. Keep praying!