AHH Progress. See MCJ's post WITH GOOD INTENTIONS.
The thing is I think this might actually happen. I am beyond being shocked. Catholics had to endure this nonsense of course at various retreat centers where we were told this was the "Spirit of Vatican II".Thankfully Rome saw fit that these folks never got into authority and needless to say did not become Successors of the Apostles. The silly season has pretty much started to pass for us.
I must say this post made me go back and look at a post the Pontificator did in 2004 that I guess is legend in the Anglican net world. See“Fly You Fools!” on Father Al’s Anglicanism page on his new blog: http://pontifications.wordpress.com/anglicanism/
See entry #IV.
Again I think this "Inside Strategy" that some have is nonsense. If individual Episcopalians decide not to make the jump to Catholic or Orthodox then I think this new American Anglican Provence is the last true hope.
The "inside strategy" that seems to be view of some more TEC Orthodox Dioceses in the USA is to stay in the current TEC framework and be a witness. I think this is doomed too failure because well it has not worked out well the last twenty years.
What I don't think is being thought of enough by the Anglican powers that be is how this effects the worldwide Body of Christ. Especially as to the Catholic and Orthodox. At one time this was deemed was important.
Catholic Commentator Amy Welborn put the problem this way
I officially give up…
February 26, 2008 by Amy
…trying to understand the crisis in the Anglican communion.
The acronyms have finally done it. I read Christopher Johnson and Kendall and Thinking Anglicans and Stand Firm and Captain Yips and follow their links, and it all just gets murkier and murkier to me, because it’s finally dawning on me that there isn’t a united front on the “reasserter” side of the coin and so now, besides the basic divide I have to try understand the divisions within the divisions?
And now they’ve added some sort of anti-missile defense system or whatnot called GAFCON to the mix?
I tried people. I really did. But GAFCON just broke my brain.
I think I would be for one more group though- This Catholic proposes Anglicans Against Acronyms (AAA)
Cardinal Kasper is the Vatican's head Guy on relations with all non Catholic Communities ( a job that is not easy) and if you recall went to the big worldwide Anglican meeting last August and laid some blunt comments to the Anglican Bishops. See At Lambeth, Cardinal Kasper Calls for Another Newman .He echoed Amy's comments when he said:
The fragmentation within the Anglican Communion is so serious that Casper asks:
"In such a scenario, [...] who will our dialogue partner be? Should we, and how can we, appropriately and honestly engage in conversations also with those who share Catholic perspectives on the points currently in dispute, and who disagree with some developments within the Anglican Communion or particular Anglican provinces?"
Basically the Vatican , that views the Anglican disintegration with great alarm, is asking who do we talk too? The fact that in the next 20 years there will be much need for Christians to come together as we all become under attack makes this more than some academic exercise.
This oddly seems not to be of a big concern in Anglican land. However the longer people do not make a definite united move the more individual Episcopal Churches will moves off into a thousand different directions. So for all the good intentions of trying to maintain unity they are in fact creating disunity that multiplies by the year.And as experience shows when Humpty Dumpty is broken in a thousand pieces well you can not put him back together. This goes especially true for Anglicanism where there some important Doctrines that are already quite fluid and in tension with each other in the same communion
Update-
6 comments:
Life immitating comedy ... there's an old joke that goes like this:
As the priestess placed the statue of Buddah on the altar, one Episcopalian whispered to another, “One more change and I’m out of here.”
LOL
This might be helpful: An awful lot of current Episcopalians, including the leader, are former Catholics. A smaller, but equally large number, are former fundamentalists.
They left Christianity but could not bear to leave behind attending church. Human nature being what it is, they like to think they bettered themselves when they made the move from faith to unbelief. This large segment of a shrinking denomination has absolutely no interest in ecumenism.
For which you should be thankful.
I would disagree with the comments of fragmentation among the orthodox Anglicans. While there are issues that need to be discussed, what is uniting them is the Episcopal Church's headlong rush into universalism and indifference to biblical doctrine. More have left the Episcopal Church - the orthodox remaining are an insigificant minority. Inside strategy - we'll, I haven't seen one in years.
Chris Johnson's Law is that it is impossible to make a joke about The Episcopal Church that will not eventually come true. This is just the latest example. I was "out of here/there" a few years ago, after a Liturgical Unitarian was elected Presiding Bishop. And yes, I am a slow learner.
I would comment that after reaching maximum entrophy, that the various traditional groups are slowly coming together. It will take time, certainly more years than I have left, but that the healing and forced reform of Anglicanism is beginning.
Has it really passed in the Catholic Church. I was aware 20 year ago that the Trappist monks of Our Lady of Guadelupe Abbey in Oregan did an hour of zen mediation before their 4am Vigils. The website doesn't include that in their current horarium, but a "First Saturday Sitting" at the abbey, led by a Redemptorist priest who studied under a Benedictine priest, described as "a Benedictine monk and Zen master".
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