Should the church take in Episcopalians who believe in injustice?

"Should the church take in Episcopalians who believe in injustice?"

In a word, no, and despite the wojo-ratzo totalitarian putsch and pogroms (or rather as a result of these), the Church should take away Catholics who believe in injustice, whether in war, in economics (which is war as now practiced), in society, in gender, in health care, in jobs, in housing, in immigration, in education, in nutrition, in communication, in compassion, in peace, in the rest. Only thus may Our Holy Mother Church restore our greatest tradition and orthopraxis of our Faith.

The Church on the other hand, must this March 24 take in our greatest martyr of the Americas, our most courageous confessor of our Faith, The Blessed Monseñor Oscar Arnulfo Romero, upon the anniversary of his assassination by the hands of the wealthy monopolists, rather than sitting sipping tequila shots with the oligarch Calderon who has massacred the poor inexorably and created greater unjust monopolies, leaving the masses without hope, with nothing, destitute, during his six years in office. This political papal tour of Mexico during a presidential election year serves no interests but the ruling PAN party, and must be condemned as perverting the papacy to political ends, imagine that. Meanwhile the receiving bishops publicly announce they cannot say that no drug money is going to the fund the tour. That says it all. They Church must not receive these criminals, burt must go to El Salvador and declare Romero a SAINT.

"refusing to ordain women or refusing to recognize the equal humanity of gays and lesbians is a denial of basic human equality"!

I wonder if Maureen Fiedler understands the difference between transparency and transcendency?

This is a example of why I have my doubts that the Roman Catholic Church can exist much longer.

"Most of the disaffected Episcopalians are unhappy with the ordination of women as priests and bishops, the welcoming of openly gay/lesbian clergy and the blessing of same-sex unions. Many of them believe that such practices violate the basic teachings of Christianity."
- And the teaching of the Catholic Church agrees with them.

You insinuation that the moral teaching of the Church is unjust is what is causing your perception problem here.

As I see, the Episcopalians and many of the other main line protestant denominations are starting to simply float in whatever direction secular culture pushes them. Floating with the stream is usually the mark of a thing that is dead or dying.

The Episcopal church is in full schism because of ordaining women and sanctioning same sex marriage. In fact, the Episcopal Church in the USA is on the brink of extinction, Is that what you desire for the Catholic Church. You know very well that the Catholic Church will never ordain woman or sanction same sex mariage. I wonder if you are disappointed thet there has been a surge in seminary enrollment?

They can't be coming over just because they don't want women priests or gay marriage. If that were all, they could go to any of the Orthodox Churches and keep ordaining married priests. And they'd still be in communion with us.

More likely, they just see their own churches as being on a losing trajectory and our Church as being on a winning one. And they want to play for the winning team.

This is well said. Yes, failing to recognize the basic human equality of women and gays is the same as failing to recognize the basic humanity of people of color. I am perplexed by those who cannot see the same kind of prejudice at work in all three situations. What I do believe is that the Holy Spirit moved the world to finally understand the evil of slavery. And, that the Holy Spirit is at work in helping us see that women and gays are as fully human, fully blessed in all ways, fully capably in all aspects of life, as white men who wear skirts and little red hats.

It is not injustice to deny women access to the priesthood. There are such a thing as gender sensitive roles for example I was looking a job website and saw an advert for a "female care assistant" the fact I cannot ally for that role does not make it an injustice. The same applies to the priesthood.

Maureen,there is a fundamental flaw in your view of ordination. Holy Orders is not a matter of justice and right,but rather of a gift grom God. No one can demand ordination from the church, and that includes males,

The One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church stands for something. It is why today's cultural elites wish to destroy it in every way.

Once again, read Ordinatio Sacerdotalis. It has been definitively declared that the Church cannot ordain women to the priesthood. If you wish to become a priest and you are a women, go to Canterbury.

With regard to openly homosexual men applying to the priesthood, their unchastity should disqualiy them at the outset. As I suggested in the prior paragraph - Go to Canterbury.

The Church should not have to give in to every whim of the Zeitgeist.

Arianism, simply defined, is the belief that Jesus Christ was not equal with God the Father, but was a created being. In the fourth century the Cappadocian fathers, St Basil and St Gregory of Nazianzus (along with Basil's brother Gregory of Nyssa and John Chrysostom), fought against Arianism.

Because we celebrate the memorial of Basil and Gregory Nazianzen today it is worth examining the heresy of Arianism today. Heresies are like weeds. They keep coming back. The thing is, they come back in different guises. In the fourth century Arianism was part of the great debate over the divinity of Christ and therefore the definition of the Holy Trinity.

Today Arianism takes a different form, and comes to us in the guise of humanism. By 'humanism' I mean that belief system that takes man as the measure of all things. This humanism is a conglomeration of different modernistic beliefs, but the summary of it all is materialism-- that this physical world is all there is, human history is all that matters and the advancement of the human race in this physical realm is the only thing fighting for.

Arianism today is an interpretation of Christianity according to this whole materialistic, humanistic philosophy. Clearly, Jesus Christ as the Divine Son of God and the co-eternal second person of the Holy Trinity doesn't really fit. Instead Jesus is a good teacher, a wise rabbi, a beautiful example, a martyr for a noble cause. At most he is a human being who is "so fulfilled and self actualized that he has 'become divine'." To put it another way, "Jesus is so complete a human being that he reveals to us the divine image in which we were all created--and therefore shows us what God is like." There is a sense in which this "divinization" happened to Jesus as a result of the graces he received from God, the life he led and the sufferings he endured.

This watered down Christianity is our modern form of Arianism. The cultural context of the heresy and it's expression is different, but the essence of the heresy is the same as it always was: "Jesus Christ is a created being. His 'divinity' is something that developed or was added to his humanity by God."

The difference between Arius and the modern heretics is that Arius was actually explicit in his teaching. The modern heretics are not. They inhabit our seminaries, our monasteries, our rectories and presbyteries. They are the modernist clergy who dominate the mainstream Protestant denominations and who are too many in number within the Catholic Church as well.

Many of them don't even know they are heretics. They have been poorly catechized from the start. Their beliefs about Jesus Christ have remained fuzzy and out of focus. They hold their beliefs in a sentimental haze in which they vaguely feel that what they believe is
"Christian" but would not want to pin it down too much. This is because they have been taught that dogma is "divisive". They deliberately keep their beliefs vague, and focus on "pastoral concerns" in order to avoid the difficult questions. They have been taught that dogma is part of an earlier age in the church and that we have matured and moved on from such nit picky sort of questions. "God, after all, can't be put into a box. He's bigger than all that..."

Nevertheless, they feel totally at ease reciting the Nicene Creed every week and celebrating the Nativity of the Son of God and the great Paschal Triduum--using all the words of traditional Nicene Christianity, while re-interpreting those words in a way that would please Arius. So when they speak of Jesus Christ the Divine Son of God they really mean what I wrote above--"That in some beautiful way he was such a perfect human being that he reveals to us what God is like."

The Virgin Mary then becomes "A good and pure Jewish girl who dealt with her unplanned pregnancy with great courage and faith." The crucifixion becomes "The tragic death of a young and courageous fighter for peace and justice". The resurrection means that, "In some mysterious way, by following his teachings, the disciples of Jesus continued to believe that he was alive within their hearts and within history."

Now what really interests me is that these modern day Arians (and I'm sure the same could be said of the fourth century version) are not wicked and filthy sinners. They're nice people. They're articulate, educated people. They're well off people. They're well connected people. They're good, solid respectable "Christian" people. Heck, even the emperors were Arians in their day. They're the people on top of the socio economic pecking order. Furthermore, their Arian version of the faith seems so much more reasonable and sensible and credible than the intellectually scandalous orthodoxy of Basil and Gregory and the historic church down through the ages.

But I'm with Basil and Gregory today. I recognize these heretics for what they are: wolves in sheep's clothing. They might present as nice, respectable, prayerful and sincere Christians. That's OK. But they're heretics. They're liars, and the people who believe their lies the most are themselves. If they have their way, and if their subtle heresies prevail they will destroy the faith. Therefore they are my enemies.

I want to hold to the historic Nicene faith with Basil and Gregory and with the saints and martyrs down the ages. I don't mind a bit if the world thinks this faith is "antique" or "quaint" or "unfortunately rigid" or "too dogmatic" or "inaccessible to modern Christians". The Arians probably made all those same arguments too.

I affirm the Nicene Creed and I don't mind saying "consubstantial with the Father" and I hold to the clarity and simplicity of the words and don't think they need to be "re-interpreted."
Posted by Fr Longenecker at Monday, January 02, 2012

http://gkupsidedown.blogspot.com/2012/01/arianism-today.html

Please show me in the scriptures where God speaks about justice in terms of same-sex marriage and LGBT issues. I believe the word used in scripture is "abomination." You, of course, have your own scriptures. So go invent your own religion and leave Christianity to those who believe.

If LGBT people don't like the way they're being treated, maybe they should stop.

Maureen, I have no idea what "most Episcopalians" or members of the much broader Anglican communion consider their reasons for seeking full communion with the Roman Catholic Church, but some of the very few I have talked to have first mentioned that the Roman church rests on bedrock principles that are not subject to change by the next majority vote of the Lambeth Conference, and that especially includes the Roman Catholic principle of Eucharist, to which they are dynamically attracted.

Second, the path between the two religions is two-way, and I am sure that some, though I have no idea how many, Roman Catholics have joined the Anglican tradition precisely because that tradition now allows women priests.

If it is wrong for the Roman Church to accept former Anglicans over the issue of women priests, is it not also wrong for the Anglican Church to do the same?

If one were to ask priests ordained after 1980 their opinion of celibacy, most would say that it is a gift, which allows them to totally devote their lives to God. Why does an elderly woman constantly question this?

The wave of disaffected Anglicans coming into the Catholic Church shouldn't come as a surprise. Christianity has been divided across rather than along confessional lines for some time. And although every body of main line Protestantism has members who would call themselves "orthodox," the extent to which many Protestant bodies have rewritten their creeds to conform 20th century social trends (e.g. radical feminism, homosexual activism, sexual liberation, etc.) should have caused their members to ask themselves whether their community was really the Church that Christ founded two thousand years ago. For many, who recognize that Christ's truth has to be unchanging, their realization was that it was not.

If we truly believe what we profess every Sunday, that the Church is "one, holy, catholic and apostolic," then we should be welcoming our returning brothers and sisters with open arms.

Just because someone leaves one denomination does not necessarily mean it is a negative reflection on the church they are leaving and a positive reflection on the church they are joining.....everyone is bound to follow his/her conscience just as some of the disciples of Jesus left Him because His message was too difficult for them to accept....see John 6:66, essentially they did not agree with His teachings. We as a Church need to lose this arrogant notion that we are the only true Church and outside of us there is no salvation, how absolutely absurd, as if we have the market cornered on TRUTH.

Open and unabashed descrimination has been an integral part of the American culture since the founding fathers allowed only free, white, landholding men to vote. Slavery and the aftermath of Jim Crow laws was an acceptable way to treat blacks. Women couldn't have thier own credit as recently as the 1950's. Nurse or secretary were the only professions available to women. Homosexuality was only spoken of as "confirmed bachelors" or relegated to religious life as the only option. Our culture has a rich history of discrimination for the most recent wave of immigrants. Irish, Italian, Polish and now Latino. And how have all those injustices been reversed? Through grass roots human rights campaigns, both peaceful and violent. Mercifully society does evolve and changes to recognize injustices that were once seen as acceptable. Most enlightened and educated Catholics recognize the existing injustices we graple with today, and call for awareness and change. Thank you NCR for continuing to raise these issues and your readers' awareness of injustices. Awareness is the first step towards change.

The examples of John Henry Newman, Elizabeth Anne Seton, Thomas Merton and especially Dorothy Day are much more important to me as reasons to convert than the presence of women or gays I'm the Episcopal Church priesthood. Actually, I've worked closely with and for gay and women priests. For me and at least some of my fellow converts, including priests women priests and gay priests are pretty far down out concern list. We are not what you progressives project on us.

To understand what's going in the Episcopal Church, we need, at least to try to hear what the ones insideHer have to say about it:

http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/dojustice/j325.html

TEC was, and indeed is seemed as an elitist Church for the rich and powerful people (some of the US Presidents were Episcopailians at their Election day, including Bush and Bush JR) and for descendents of British and north European immigrants.

More: It seems that TEC was, and indeed is a Church placed to its current members and not to the evangelism of the whole community. This is perharps why they have difficulty in capture new members... For example they rarely have Latino ministries with Spanish Masses in common parishes. To not mention that they have a quite rigid methodology, not beeing very modern in ways of worship, Church organization, youth ministies and many more aspects.

And what about the Ordinariates? It is politics as the usual. Our Church is the leader of Christianity, and Anglicanism is a relatively small group as a whole. To divide them is a way to try to not let their progressive forces to grow as they expected... But it's quite a fail with relatively small reception. Even their small Anglican conservative splinter groups are struggling. Why they don't have statistics with large figures than that they had 3 years ago when they started?

Have a good journey!