The Episcopal Church USA Presiding Bishop's Inspiring Easter Message(Not)

By the way I am not trying to pick on Episcopalians here in the USA. I have heard loony things as I am bout to post from Catholic Bishops. However they were not in such an authority.

I have posted before that the Anglican Faith(American USA version) was a part of my road to Rome. I very much love the Book of Common Prayer and their Liturgy. The Episcopalians are a important part of American History also. Every Time I see the Methodist George Bush or back then the Baptist Bill Clinton attending St Johns across the street from the White House, I am happy they maintain that link with one of America's oldest faiths.

I , along with a group of Catholics , would attend the weekly Wednesday night service(we did not take communion) followed up by Canterbury that was held by some of the finest Christian people I knew. The wonderful service was much more worthy of the worship of God than the "student Mass" we would attend at our Church later that night. It seems that most of my Experience has been with more Catholic Oriented Anglicans or High Church. Low Church Anglicans in the USA I guess I have no contact with.

In any event what happens there affects Catholics in many ways. I am not alone in thinking that. A few years back American Episcopalians that had enough gathered in Texas. Their meeting was started by reading this letter that got a standing ovation:

October 9, 2003
From Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
The Vatican, on behalf of Pope John Paul II
I hasten to assure you of my heartfelt prayers for all those taking part in this convocation. The significance of your meeting is sensed far beyond Plano, and even in this City from which Saint Augustine of Canterbury was sent to confirm and strengthen the preaching of Christ’s Gospel in England. Nor can I fail to recall that barely 120 years later, Saint Boniface brought that same Christian faith from England to my own forebears in Germany.

The lives of these saints show us how in the Church of Christ there is a unity in truth and a communion of grace which transcend the borders of any nation. With this in mind, I pray in particular that God’s will may be done by all those who seek that unity in the truth, the gift of Christ himself.
With fraternal regards, I remain
Sincerely yours in Christ,
+Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger


Back in my college days some of the more radical Campus Ministers would always point to the American Episcopal Church as where we should be going. Note they were not talking about adapting to their liturgy( like kneeling for Communion , Good music, not changing the liturgy at whim, actually kneeling at an Altar rail, etc etc) but more as to their emerging theological ideas.

I suppose I was the only 20 year old Catholic on campus to read "The Living Church" which is the official media organ for Episcopal USA. Well even at that age after reading what was happening copying their example seemed a very bad idea. Well the Chickens have come home to Roost

In case you did not notice the Episcopal Church USA is going off the rails. One would not get this from Louisiana papers that seem to have a amazing lack of interest in the story. Despite the fact that one of the major players in this drama (one of the good guys in my eyes) is the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Louisiana. I learn more about what he doing from UK Papers than the Shreveport Times that is right down the street from his Cathedral!!!!

How this happen is a warning signs to Catholics and others. I was often quite amazed how well educated Episcopalians were not getting involved to put a end to the extreme elements. It was almost like they were resigned to what was coming and they would stay in their Cocoon of the local Church. However that was bound to fail when your Church is a Hierarchy and based on Communion with other Anglicans. What you do has effects on the entire Anglican Communion as a whole. Just as a lot of Pesky African and Middle Eastern Bishops are pointing out right now to the American Church.

Well I think the Following Easter Message by the Presiding "Bishop" shows why so many Episcopalians are fleeing to African Bishops, and some Jurisdiction called the Southern Cone and other things. Once they get united perhaps this Christian community that is ancient in American terms will be saved.

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori offers the following message for Easter 2008, which is also included in the March 23 (Easter Sunday) bulletin inserts available here.

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts SchoriPresiding Bishop The Episcopal Church

Your Easter celebration undoubtedly has included lots of physical signs of new life -- eggs, flowers, new green growth. As the Easter season continues, consider how your daily living can be an act of greater life for other creatures. How can you enact the new life we know in Jesus the Christ? In other words, how can you be the sacrament, the outward and visible sign, of the grace that you know in the resurrected Christ? How can your living let others live more abundantly?


The Judaeo-Christian tradition has been famously blamed for much of the current environmental crisis, particularly for our misreading of Genesis 1:28 as a charge to "fill the earth and subdue it." Our forebears were so eager to distinguish their faith from the surrounding Canaanite religion and its concern for fertility that some of them worked overtime to separate us from an awareness of "the hand of God in the world about us," especially in a reverence for creation. How can we love God if we do not love what God has made?
We base much of our approach to loving God and our neighbors in this world on our baptismal covenant. Yet our latest prayer book was written just a bit too early to include caring for creation among those explicit baptismal promises. I would invite you to explore those promises a bit more deeply -- where and how do they imply caring for the rest of creation?

We are beginning to be aware of the ways in which our lack of concern for the rest of creation results in death and destruction for our neighbors. We cannot love our neighbors unless we care for the creation that supports all our earthly lives. We are not respecting the dignity of our fellow creatures if our sewage or garbage fouls their living space. When atmospheric warming, due in part to the methane output of the millions of cows we raise each year to produce hamburger, begins to slowly drown the island homes of our neighbors in the South Pacific, are we truly sharing good news?

The food we eat, the energy we use, the goods and foods we buy, the ways in which we travel, are all opportunities -- choices and decisions -- to be for others, both human and other. Our Christian commitment is for this -- that we might live that more abundant life, and that we might do it in a way that is for the whole world.

Abundant blessings this Easter, and may those blessings abound through the coming days and years.

Good Grief. I let this fine Louisiana Anglican bloggerRED STICK RANT give his take atEaster Greetings from Greenpeace The Episcopal Church ™ . Oh be sure to check out his link to the Mid Western Journal and their good analysis of this.