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October 27, 2004
Next up for Episcopalians
...idol worship?
Imagine for one moment that you're a leader in the Episcopal Church USA. You know that within the next few days, a global commission is going to release a report on how the global Anglican Communion should respond to your church, and is likely to be critical of the ordination of an actively homosexual man as bishop. You know, and have said yourself, that the debate isn't just about sexuality: It's about how one views the Bible. And you know that all eyes will be on your denomination over the next few weeks. What do you do?What the real leaders of the Episcopal Church did was to take an action that makes ordaining a homosexual man as a bishop almost a non-issue. They started promoting the worship of pagan deities.
This is not a joke nor an overstatement. In all truth and seriousness, leaders of the Episcopal Church USA are promoting pagan rites to pagan deities. And not just any new pagan deities: The Episcopal Church USA, though its Office of Women's Ministries, is actually promoting the worship of idols specifically condemned in Scripture.
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Comments
For some reason, this old Scrappleface article comes to mind:
"Episcopal Church Appoints First Openly-Muslim Bishop"
http://www.scrappleface.com/MT/archives/001110.html
Posted by: jquinby at Oct 27, 2004 10:21:14 AM
I couldn't find anything on the linked page. Was I not looking in the right place?
Cathy
Posted by: Cathy at Oct 27, 2004 10:23:55 AM
Hi, Cathy, I linked it easily. I'm having the trouble you describe elsewhere, however. I wonder if flamers or spammers are getting certain ISP's banned from certain addresses? Anyone else out there getting random misfires from links?
Off Thread, should I apologize...?
Posted by: AH at Oct 27, 2004 10:31:05 AM
No, I think Cathy meant that she got to the page but had trouble finding offensive passages. Not to speak for her--but that's the problem I had. Not that I was very persistent.
Posted by: Christopher Rake at Oct 27, 2004 10:33:31 AM
Notice the reference to "any form of pregnancy loss"? That means post-abortion rituals, which are to be found among Pagans. This stuff has been around a while (he infamous "Reimaging" conference and such books as WOMANSPIRIT RISING)but this has official sponsorship. Want to be the popularity of THE DA VINCI CODE gave this stuff a boost? Does anyone doubt that nutty Catholic nuns do/will do the same?
I feel so sorry for Episopalians.
Posted by: Sandra Miesel at Oct 27, 2004 10:38:20 AM
Makes me very sad. I saw it coming in the year I worshipped with an Episcopal congregation. So much liturgical beauty outwardly but the substance and core of Christianity were beginning to erode. But then the Episcopal Church, at least in the West, never did have the developed theological base that Catholics, Lutherans and the Orthodox have. In the end the Thirty-Nine Articles were not enough to guard the deposit of faith and now the ECUSA is slipping ever so steadily into an eclectic body in which pretty much anything goes.
I hope our Catholic bishops are taking note. Seriously.
Posted by: Christine at Oct 27, 2004 11:08:08 AM
Cathy, the abomination referred to in CT's article may be found here.
Posted by: craig at Oct 27, 2004 11:23:08 AM
This is, alas, nothing new. Terry Mattingly writes here about attending a 1993 liturgical service at the ECUSA Cathedral of St. John the Divine in NYC, at which they openly prayed to pagan gods. Seriously. You really should look at his story. No wonder Terry and his family went to Orthodoxy.
Posted by: Rod Dreher at Oct 27, 2004 11:24:18 AM
Nice flames on the page, reminds one of the fires of hell.
Posted by: stan at Oct 27, 2004 11:54:32 AM
I read that "Women's Eucharist". And speaking as a woman who is normally not grossed out by the facts of her life...I _really_ don't need someone to associate drinking Jesus' blood with menstrual blood. Also, it's not a good analogy.
Now, I do admit that one of the Church's ancient analogies is that Jesus bringing us new life on the Cross is a type for motherhood, and so sometimes you have the blood from his wounds compared to mother's milk. I suppose, if you didn't mind a little grossitude, you could validly compare Christ's suffering and blood to the suffering and blood of childbirth, too.
But menstruation, ultimately, is a sign that new life didn't happen, or isn't there anymore. I suppose you could say it's a symbol of potential...but there's nothing _potential_ about the omnipotent God.
That doesn't matter much in a pagan ceremony, of course. But it's stupid, all the same.
Posted by: Maureen at Oct 27, 2004 12:35:51 PM
Well, the epsicopals have provided a home for former catholic Priest (thank you, Rome) Matthew Fox's Techno Masses
http://www.technocosmicmass.org/
In an online forum, we asked him why the Anglicans, rather than the UU's when the "evil German Mafia" in Rome made him leave, he said they gave him "more support".
Someone responded "They have more money than the UU's"
Posted by: TK at Oct 27, 2004 12:45:19 PM
I left the Episcopal Church for Rome back in 1992. It was far gone back then, but not as far gone as it is now. I do truly miss the good church music and never had to suffer through Haugen and Haas musin in ECUSA. But if what does it matter if the liturgy is beautiful if it masks an empty shell of apostasy?
That whirling sound is people like CS Lewis, John Keble and George Herbert spinning in their graves!!!
Posted by: Marty at Oct 27, 2004 1:03:12 PM
There are endless peculiar prayers and rituals collected in Episcopal and Catholic liturgy resources, most never heard in church. Moast are academic exercises. Doubt sky is falling.
There is long tradition of dialogue between Druid and Anglican/Episcopal church, even for Archbishop of Canterbury.
I think it mostly a regional cultural matter, like American Indian ritual coming to Catholic liturgy in US. From the Blessed Sacrament Newsletter, 2003:
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The steady beat of a drum and the scent of burning sage permeated an emotional liturgy May 17 at St. Martin de Porres Church. The Native American community sad farewell to Blessed Sacrament Father Dana Pelotte, who will leave the Diocese of Salt Lake City June 16 to take a new assignment for his order in Houston, Texas.
Fr. Dana was surrounded throughout the Mass by Native American traditions, symbols, and music.
The Blessed Sacrament Fathers and Brothers are leaving the diocese after 22 years of ministry here.
The liturgy began with a simple Native American chant, which drew involvement from Native Americans, Hispanics, and Anglos alike. Fr. Dana walked in procession to the altar with Native American men. Women in traditional dress offered a prayer with the sacred pipe and the blessing of the directions, presented the offertory gifts, and performed a special gift-bearing dance.
Drawing from the readings of the day, Fr. Dana spoke of our responsibility to Mother Earth, the water, and the other gifts of nature God the Great Spirit, has created for the use of his people.
Speaking to a congregation that included representatives of many Western tribes, Fr Dana, a descendent of Abenaki-Penobscot Indians, used the words of St. John.
Children, let us love one another in heart and deed, he said. "The native people coming together for this liturgy remind us of the sacredness of Mother Earth, and the need to care for what God has entrusted to us.
The earth is our deepest connection to him. He is the vine; we are the branches, bearing good fruit to the world. Our words and our actions reflect the vine that gives us life."
Actions speak louder than words, Fr. Dana said. AWe are practical people who appreciate things that work and people who get things done. Sadly, our hurried society leaves little time for reflection and contemplation. God calls us to be contemplative people. The contemplative life is deep inside us, but society makes us feel busy like Martha and a little suspicions of Mary.
Fr. Dana reminded the congregation that love is a verb, not just a feeling, Aand love becomes concreteCit becomes flesh. The deeds of love are truth, and talk loses value without action.
He called on those present to live and preach fearlessly, as St. Paul did.
" Remember who we belong to," he said. "He is the vine and we are the branches."
At the close of the Mass the Native American community presented Fr. Dana with a gift of
an eagle feather. Obviously moved, he said, "to a Native American like me, this gift is
priceless."
Posted by: Zhou De-Ming 周德明 at Oct 27, 2004 2:41:41 PM
Isn't it fair to say that these pagan/secular rituals are rare in most Episcopal dioceses? Such has been my limited experience. For example, I don't think you could find such a liturgy/experience in most liberal Episcopal dioceses, including New York, Washington and Boston (Massachusetts). San Francisco (California) is an exception.
Part of the problem with the Episcopal Church is that in the U.S. it is squeezed between the most successful Catholic Church in the English-speaking world on one side, and dynamic evangelicalism, especially the Southern Baptists, on the other side.
And what is the point of Anglicanism anyway in the cultural and theological context of the U.S.? These are hard, perhaps intractable problems, and account, in part, for the fact that the Roman Church is more than 30 times as large as the Episcopal Church in the U.S.
I think our separated brothers and sisters deserve our Christian charity, not our jeers.
Posted by: George at Oct 27, 2004 2:52:32 PM
The cultural differences between a Maine Indian and those 2000 miles away would be enormous. What's being staged in the above description is a new "pan-Indian" ceremony. No pre-Columbian Indians of what is now the United States and Canada worshipped "Mother Earth. That's a 19th C invention taken up by contemporary Indian activities because it sounds good to ecologists, New Agers, and Pagans. This is syncretism and it's getting commoner.
The Chapter of the Midwestern order who nuns who ran my high school and college (unlikely to have any members of Indian blood) opened with chants and invocations to the Spirits of the Four Directions. (And what spirits might those be?) Smudgy sage smoke is a common accompaniment of "women's liturgies." Trendy and phony but who will cleanse the Temple?
Posted by: Sandra Miesel at Oct 27, 2004 3:40:28 PM
George, I'm truly scratching my head to figure out what size has to do with anything. The Eastern Orthodox Church in the U.S. is considerably smaller than the Catholic Church too but has not abandoned its catholic theology and worship.
The Episcopal Church has chosen a direction which may well lead it down the path to Unitarianism and if it does, it is no act of charity to pretend that a seismic shift in identity has not taken place.
Posted by: Christine at Oct 27, 2004 3:59:10 PM
The ritual has been removed from the ECUSA Women's Ministries web site. Squeaky wheel, I guess.
Posted by: Christopher Johnson at Oct 27, 2004 4:28:18 PM
It is still available on the Druid site, for reference.
Tuatha de Brighid is listed as a North American "Christian and Pagan Druid" group. I guess there are Christian Druids. The named their group after St. Brig(h)id, Patroness of Kildare.
An overview of Druid movements separates them into Ancient (such as those ancient Celtic Christians that interacted with Roma, and perhaps "saved civilization"), the ethnic Revivalists of the 18th and 19th centuries, and the Moderns (since 1930), which seem more religious. While some of the ancient Druids may have been Christian Druids on the way into the Roman Church with some cultural issues, I think the modern Christian Druids are, perhaps, going in the opposite direction.
From a note on Celtic Christian art:
-
The Lindisfarne Gospels was actually the work of a Saxon but Lindisfarne itself was founded by Christian Druids. Christian Druids - this term seems like an oxymoron because anyone would stumble on the word "druid" being used in the same sentence as the word "Christian", but all evidence points to the fact that the Celtic Church and the Roman Church differed in many respects. ... Many of the early Christian churches were erected on pagan religious sites in Ireland, Scotland and Wales by converted Druids. Many of the early Christian Saints of Ireland, Scotland and Wales were in fact Druids, instructed by Druids or the children of Druids. The Christian Druids had the same social function of the Druids in Celtic culture of the pagan past. What is far more important is that the culture saw them as the same and this may explain the bloodless Christian conversion of the Celts of the British Isles. To state it simply, the Druids were a social caste and their conversion to Christianity did not change their social function in Celtic culture. Christ was simply the new Druid in charge!
The druid tonsure and habit of the monks of the Celtic Church was a bone of contention with Pope Gregory and it wasn't until the 8th century that the monks of Iona (Scotland) adopted the tonsure of Saint Peter.
-
Isn't the coming holiday of Halloween a Druid festival which has been welcomed into Catholic life? From a history of Halloween:
-
Primarily, the customs associated with Halloween have been derived from the beliefs of the druids, the Celtic priests of ancient Gaul and Britain. Many of the ancient peoples in Western Europe would celebrate the end of the harvest season with a holiday in late autumn. The most important of these holidays to later influence Halloween customs was the Samhain, which was celebrated by the Celts of Western and Central Europe in the first millennium BC. The Samhain, which occurred on October 31, also marked the beginning of a new year in the ancient Celtic calendar. According to Celtic pagan religion, the druids believed that witches, demons, and spirits roamed the earth on the eve of November 1, which is known as All Saints' Day - a holy day in the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches. The holiday honors Christian saints and was established by the Catholic Church in the 9th century. The ancient druids used to lite bon fires to ward off evil spirits. In order to protect themselves from the devilish tricks of the evil spirits, the druids would appease the spirits by offering them treats. The druids would also disguise themselves in costumes so the spirits would think that the druids belonged to their own company. This is where the custom of wearing costumes on Halloween, as well as trick-or-treating originated.
-
Remdinds me of the end of the Marc Cohn song:
By our fathers, and their fathers
In some old and distant town
From places no one here remembers
Come the things we've handed down
Posted by: Zhou De-Ming 周德明 at Oct 27, 2004 5:30:39 PM
I'm another of those who made the ECUSA->RC jump, back around 1980. This kind of thing was going on then--I mean, those of you who are old enough to remember the '70s know that they were pretty much the glory days of religious goofiness, when folk such as these feminists really expected their thinking to triumph inevitably, because it represented progress.
Of course as Sandra notes you can still find this stuff in the Catholic Church, but the great weakness of the Anglican tradition, and in a nutshell the reason I went Roman, is that it has no means of rejecting such toxins. Ultimately there is no person or body that can say "This can be called Anglicanism, but this cannot."
Alas for a noble tradition.
Posted by: Maclin Horton at Oct 27, 2004 6:09:14 PM
At Midwest Conservative Journal, nice narrative of interaction with the Episcopal office that put up the page, and took it down.
Intentions: dialogue with other religions; thinking outside the box how to spread Jesus' love
Problems: Official ECUSA website; not original material
Posted by: Zhou De-Ming 周德明 at Oct 27, 2004 6:27:51 PM
Too bad. The Titus One Nine site indicates that the Episcopal priest who put this up, Rector Glyn Ruppe-Melnyk is also a Druid, along with her husband. Wow. Those Episcopaleans tracked all this down real fast, and "poof!" the thing is gone from the site.
Posted by: Zhou De-Ming 周德明 at Oct 27, 2004 6:54:55 PM
Exactly, the website was heterodox for Episcopalians, and the powers that be, liberal bishops that they are, took action. As they should have.
For a variety of historical and cultural reasons, governance in the Episcopal is largely congregational. Their bishops have as much power as the senior presbyter or whatever the heck the Presbyterians call their bishop-equivalents. Methodists bishops have a lot more authority. Despite the Anglican sense of via media, they didn't call it the Protestant Episcopal Church for nothing.
This explains the diversity of practice among Episcopalians. I tell my Episcopal friend that God created Anglicans to beta test ideas for the Church. If it works after 500 or so years, then it might be good enough for the rest of the Church. For me, it would be hard to be always beta testing the latest version of Christianity. Again, I suggest charity for his relatively small demonination. Catholic triumphalism may be justified by history, but it is in poor taste.
Posted by: George at Oct 27, 2004 9:47:37 PM
George -- when the Anglican Church came into being Queen Elizabeth was reported to have said that she was not "interested in poking into people's consciences" but wanted a uniform form of worship for the English people and that is what prevailed. To see the Episcopal Church as a "laboratory" for testing the validity of Christian life is alarming, to say the least. When a Church has no boundaries whatsoever you get a John Shelby Spong for whom nothing less than a total deconstruction of historic Christianity will do. And having watched female Episcopal clergy marching for abortion rights gives me the chills.
Those of us who have had experiences in Episcopal parishes -- and left -- did not do so out of a sense of triumphalism. No denomination is guaranteed to survive in and of itself if it does not remain faithful to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Posted by: Christine at Oct 28, 2004 8:02:53 AM
Folks, turn to the Oct. issue of First Things Jrnl, "Public Square" column —
http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0410/public.html
There you will find information on the "Good as New" bible that has received the Archbishop of Canterbury's blessings.
"So you can see that One is a Very Good Thing. Endorsing Good as New, which also includes the noncanonical gnostic Gospel of Thomas, Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, says he hopes it will spread “in epidemic profusion through religious and irreligious alike.” The epidemic he wishes upon the masses changes original Hebrew and Greek names into modern nicknames. Peter becomes “Rocky,” Mary Magdalene is “Maggie,” and Aaron is “Ron.” Henson deftly refers to demonic possession as “mental illness,” and references to the “Son of Man” become “the Complete Person.”
Note — the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas is now embraced!!!
And, one wonders why the AAR is having religious treats to obtain "deeper" religious understanding of S&M sex .....http://michigancatholic.blogspot.com/
*all praises to polyamory, and greater praise to androgyny and onanism*
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1111/is_1798_300/ai_60102146/print
"Onan The Magnificent
Roger D. Hodge
"The triumph of the testicle in contemporary art"
"With the appearance of his new film, Cremaster 2, Matthew Barney's reputation as an important American artist is secure. Barney is the author of a cycle of art films so audacious and brilliant, so potent in their symbolism and private mythology, that astonished critics, fumbling awkwardly for an apt comparison, routinely evoke some dim memory of Richard Wagner's Ring cycle. ..."
+JMJ+
Posted by: pml at Oct 28, 2004 9:24:48 AM
oh, and "raisins" come up again — previous raisin ritual —
“You get some gin and get some white raisins — and only white raisins — and soak them in the gin for two weeks,” she said. “Then eat nine of the raisins a day.”
—Tereza Heinz
Posted by: pml at Oct 28, 2004 10:22:44 AM
