Anglican Bishop Comments on Faith Shaken in Catastrophes

[jamesclaude]

oat soda:

why cares what this guy says. he’s not validly ordained and his church is a total disgrace. why not post what bon jovi has to say about this, at least he use to have sweet hair.

This is the type of arrogance that sets ecumenism on its backside.

JP2 would recoil from seeing this kind snotty churchmanship, from what I’ve read on his views of cooperating with the Separated Brethren.

It has nothing to do with a Christlike attitude whatsoever.

 

[Traditional_Ang]

mean_owen:

Michael- If memory serves correctly, Williams is rather strongly anti-abortion. Like the Pope, he’s rather opposed to a lot of wars, as well. Unlike the Pope, he cannot make any binding declarations such as you propose. He doesn’t have, or claim, that mojo.

Incidentally, what are the exact, official Anglican and ECUSA positions on abortion?

Also, by Test, do you mean God inflicted the tsunamies on the victims, to see how we’d respond?

The TAC Position on Abortion is the Same as the Pope’s, which is that abortion is the taking of innocent human life and is simply not allowed.

This quote from the Anglican Church of Canada (Communion with Canterbury), doesn’t give me much comfort:

*In the light of the Government’s announcement of a new Abortion Bill, the Anglican Church reaffirms its position that both the rights and needs of women, and the rights and needs of the unborn, require protection.

The Church welcomes a non-gestational approach. This accords with the Church’s opposition to any arbitrary division which would make early abortion available on demand. The Church’s fundamental position is that “abortion is always the taking of a human life and, in our view, should never be done except for serious therapeutic reasons.”*

generalsynod.anglican.ca/ministries/departments/doc.php?id=76&dept=library

It isn’t obedience to God when there’s a **“But!”

1998:** 69th General Convention:

“All human life is sacred from its inception until death. The Church takes seriously its obligation to help form the consciences of its members concerning this sacredness…We regard all abortion as having a tragic dimension, calling for the concern and compassion of all the Christian community. While we acknowledge that in this country it is the legal right of every woman to have a medically safe abortion, as Christians we believe strongly that if this right is exercised, it should be used only in extreme situations. We emphatically oppose abortion as a means of birth control, family planning, sex selection, or any reason of mere convenience.”

1994: 71st General Convention:

“Resolved, That this 71st General Convention (1994) of the Episcopal Church express its unequivocal opposition to any legislative, executive or judicial action on the part of local, state or nation governments that abridges the right of a woman to reach an informed decision about the termination of pregnancy or that would limit the access of a woman to safe means of acting on her decision.”

religioustolerance.org/abo_chur.htm

When many of us left the then PECUSA in the late 1970’s, the language was that of the 1994 ECUSA Convention. I therefore must conclude that that is what the ECUSA Bishops, Priests and laity must really believe, esp. since most of the "Pro-life Episcopalians left a long time ago.

None of those positions, except for that of the TAC could ever hope to reconciled to that of the Catholic Church or to be acceptable to Pope John Paul II.

I must admit I’m not the most impartial observer regarding Archbishop Dr. Rowan Williams, and a lot of that has to do with The Windsor Report which essentially said that SCHISM of congregations leaving the "Anglican Communion (C of E) over the various heresies within rthat Communion were worse than the HERESIES themselves.

anglicancommunion.org/windsor2004/index.cfm (That’s the Forward - the pdf is 93 pages)
acahome.org/tac/news/pr041018.htm (Archbishop Hepworth’s Reply)

Regarding TESTS. One, these are different than what Jesus was refering to when he us the “Our Father”.

I do not believe that God afflicts people to see how we will respond, but I do believe that God, in His wisdom, ALLOWS things you happen in our lives to Test us, to give us a chance to respond in Christian Charity or with the usual pettiness that afflicts us and so much of what we do. Sometimes, He ALLOWS that on a very large scale.

I know a Priest who, as a Physicians Assistant, worked with AIDS patients for most of the 1980’s and a good part of the 1990’s before he was forced to retire with a brain injury. He tells me that he believes that the AIDS epidemic, esp. in its early days, was just one of those “tests”.

He feels that many of us failed it miserably, including one Protestant Minister, who refused to Baptise a REPENTANT and then celebate Homosexual, because the man had AIDS! There were parents who refused see or talk to their Sons (and sometimes daughters) for the same reason, even as they were dying.

God didn’t “afflict” or “inflict” the people with AIDS, he allowed it to happen, but we know that all things happen for a reason, and sometimes that reason is to call us to be better than we really are.

The same thing may be happening now.

I hope this clarifies things.

In Him, Michael

 

[Traditional_Ang]

Gottle of Geer:

Gimme back my sig line

Maybe JP2 could bring to an end the culture of secrecy among us, that made all those scandals possible. I can’t see any difference between the two objectionable things - Rowan’s, and Karol’s, that is. JP2 has far more power in the CC than Abp. Williams has in the Anglican communion, so he ought to be much more able to correct evils.

A case of sorts can be made in defence of abortion - but child molestation is universally admitted to be utterly vile, whatever
one’s churchmanship. All Catholic criticisms of Anglican sin will rebound upon us as long as child molestation is not made next to impossible in the clergy. ==

Michael:

I’m an Anglican, so I’m criticizing members of my own own Communion, and essentially stating on of the reasons why I’m leaving.

I’m sure that’s a small party on the other side suggesting that I “don’t let the door hit” my rear “on the way out”.

I won’t.

Regarding the Child Molestation Problem in our society that afflicted your Church. I’ve read a few reports and tried my best to understand exactly what was happening to the best of my ability. So, here’s an outsider’s view.

1. Most organizations seem to have this problem and/or similar, and it seems to have gotten worse during the past 30 years as basic moral education has broken down in our schools and in our seminaries. Having people being ordained as Priests who weren’t so sure that there was such a thing as Mortal Sin certainly didn’t help the situation.
2. 95% of what has happened has involved “Gay” Priests and 11-15 year-old boys, while the overwhilming majority of Priests did nothing of along these lines or what many Priests have been accused of…
3. The Catholic Church followed advice given it by noted psychologists and criminologists. These people, esp. in the 1960’s and 1970’s were advising the Catholic Church based on the “Best Research” of the time. And, the “Liberals” who want to use them haven’t admitted that these “Experts” were full of hogwash, in pite of fact they’ve been pilloring the Catholic Church for following that horrible advice.
4. Many Archbishops have behaved badly, thinking LEGALLY and not PASTORALLY. They listened to the wrong people in the 1960’s and 1970’s, and they’re listening to the wrong people now. In all of these cases, the Priest Shortage has figured prominently.

5.The Press, by calling what has happened “Child Molestation” and using words such as “Crisis” has mislead people into thinking that huge numbers of Priests are molesting little Children, when that’s not the case. What’s happening is bad enough, but painting it as far worse, and tarring all priests as Child molesters, as the Press has done, is manifestly unfair.

1. The Catholic Church needs more Orthodox, non-Gay Priests! That won’t solve the problem, but it will mean that the Church can allow the serial victimizers to go to, and stay, in JAIL! The Seminaries in this country will need to teach the Doctrine of the Church as found in the Scripture and Traditions of the Church!
2. The Pope may need to replace Archbishops who think Legally and not Pastorally. Otherwise, they may continue to cause further scandal and to drive people away from the Church!

I hop this helps as far as my POV.

In Him, Michael

 

[Traditional_Ang]

This is the type of arrogance that sets ecumenism on its backside.

JP2 would recoil from seeing this kind snotty churchmanship, from what I’ve read on his views of cooperating with the Separated Brethren.

It has nothing to do with a Christlike attitude whatsoever.

James:

You don’t know what he knows…

I ask you to read what we Traditional Anglicans have been forced to read from Archbishop Dr. Rowan William’s “Studying Committee”:

anglicancommunion.org/windsor2004/index.cfm (That’s the Forward - the pdf is 93 pages)
acahome.org/tac/news/pr041018.htm (Archbishop Hepworth’s Reply)

Oat Soda has seen the miserable manner in which Continuing Anglicans have been treated by the established Anglican Church. He’s also seen that they allowed for the Consecration of a man who left a man who left his wife and two young children to move in with his gay lover, and that they’ve consecrated women “Bishops” and ordained women “Priests”, all of these are against the Scripture and the Tradition of the Church.

Once you’ve read The Windsor Report, you’ll see that the chances for union with the C of E are just about non-existant, unless they repent.

There is one group that you do have real chances for Union with, and Oat Soda knows most of the details.
Anglicans to Rome?
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=28244

In Him, Michael

 

[mean_owen]

Michael (Trad Anglican): I’m confused by some of the comments you made and by the letter from your Primate John Hepworth. Your church is out of communion with Canterbury, right?

The Primate says "It is an invitation to further marginalisation for those still within the Anglican Communion, and a fierce rejection for the Continuing Churches who exist beyond its borders.

We in the Traditional Anglican Communion have drawn closer to those borders in recent years."

Does that mean they consider themselves in the Communion, but just barely? Also, you said that “I’m an Anglican, so I’m criticizing members of my own own Communion, and essentially stating on of the reasons why I’m leaving.” Does this mean that you’re not yet in the TAC, or that you’re in the TAC, but they’re still in the Anglican Communion, but not for much longer? Just curious.

 

[Fr_Ambrose]

HagiaSophia:

Archbishop of Canterbury admits: This makes me doubt the existence of God

David Hart (Orthodox Christian and author of “The Beauty of the Infinite” (Eerdmans)) has a clearer vision of this than the Archbp of Canterbury.

opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110006097

Tremors of Doubt
What kind of God would allow a deadly tsunami?
BY DAVID B. HART
Friday, December 31, 2004 12:01 a.m.

On Nov. 1, 1755, a great earthquake struck offshore of Lisbon. In that city alone, some 60,000 perished, first from the tremors, then from the massive tsunami that arrived half an hour later. Fires consumed much of what remained of the city. The tidal waves spread death along the coasts of Iberia and North Africa.

Voltaire’s “Poëme sur le désastre de Lisbonne” of the following year was an exquisitely savage–though sober–assault upon the theodicies prevalent in his time. For those who would argue that “all is good” and “all is necessary,” that the universe is an elaborately calibrated harmony of pain and pleasure, or that this is the best of all possible worlds, Voltaire’s scorn was boundless: By what calculus of universal good can one reckon the value of “infants crushed upon their mothers’ breasts,” the dying “sad inhabitants of desolate shores,” the whole “fatal chaos of individual miseries”?

Perhaps the most disturbing argument against submission to “the will of God” in human suffering–especially the suffering of children–was placed in the mouth of Ivan Karamazov by Dostoyevsky; but the evils Ivan enumerates are all acts of human cruelty, for which one can at least assign a clear culpability. Natural calamities usually seem a greater challenge to the certitudes of believers in a just and beneficent God than the sorrows induced by human iniquity.

Considered dispassionately, though, man is part of the natural order, and his propensity for malice should be no less a scandal to the conscience of the metaphysical optimist than the most violent convulsions of the physical world. The same ancient question is apposite to the horrors of history and nature alike: Whence comes evil? And as Voltaire so elegantly apostrophizes, it is useless to invoke the balances of the great chain of being, for that chain is held in God’s hand and he is not enchained.

As a Christian, I cannot imagine any answer to the question of evil likely to satisfy an unbeliever; I can note, though, that–for all its urgency–Voltaire’s version of the question is not in any proper sense “theological.” The God of Voltaire’s poem is a particular kind of “deist” God, who has shaped and ordered the world just as it now is, in accord with his exact intentions, and who presides over all its eventualities austerely attentive to a precise equilibrium between felicity and morality. Not that reckless Christians have not occasionally spoken in such terms; but this is not the Christian God.

The Christian understanding of evil has always been more radical and fantastic than that of any theodicist; for it denies from the outset that suffering, death and evil have any ultimate meaning at all. Perhaps no doctrine is more insufferably fabulous to non-Christians than the claim that we exist in the long melancholy aftermath of a primordial catastrophe, that this is a broken and wounded world, that cosmic time is the shadow of true time, and that the universe languishes in bondage to “powers” and “principalities”–spiritual and terrestrial–alien to God. In the Gospel of John, especially, the incarnate God enters a world at once his own and yet hostile to him–“He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not”–and his appearance within “this cosmos” is both an act of judgment and a rescue of the beauties of creation from the torments of fallen nature.

Whatever one makes of this story, it is no bland cosmic optimism. Yes, at the heart of the gospel is an ineradicable triumphalism, a conviction that the victory over evil and death has been won; but it is also a victory yet to come. As Paul says, all creation groans in anguished anticipation of the day when God’s glory will transfigure all things. For now, we live amid a strife of darkness and light

When confronted by the sheer savage immensity of worldly suffering–when we see the entire littoral rim of the Indian Ocean strewn with tens of thousands of corpses, a third of them children’s–no Christian is licensed to utter odious banalities about God’s inscrutable counsels or blasphemous suggestions that all this mysteriously serves God’s good ends. We are permitted only to hate death and waste and the imbecile forces of chance that shatter living souls, to believe that creation is in agony in its bonds, to see this world as divided between two kingdoms–knowing all the while that it is only charity that can sustain us against “fate,” and that must do so until the end of days.