Church of England backs women bishops

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Yes but what Steve calls liberalism such as female bishops and ordination and I gather you call unorthodox, and no doubt most on CAF agree with you and Steve, others OTOH might call it growing in further understanding. It really depends a lot on the faith.
They can call it what they want, but it is not “orthodox” and not scriptural. I agree completely with Commenter that political terms such as “liberal” and “conservative” should not be used to distinguish between different lines of thought within the Church. On is either in line with Church Tradition and Scripture (orthodox) or they are not. Ordaining women, same sex marriage and active gay priests and bishops are in line with neither.
 
They can call it what they want, but it is not “orthodox” and not scriptural. I agree completely with Commenter that political terms such as “liberal” and “conservative” should not be used to distinguish between different lines of thought within the Church. On is either in line with Church Tradition and Scripture (orthodox) or they are not. Ordaining women, same sex marriage and active gay priests and bishops are in line with neither.
Well as I said they might say it’s a further or growing understanding of Scripture or of God but indeed they can call it what they want as can you. 👍
 
Not really sure how or why this affects the Catholic Church except of course more prayers for those that are falling further from the Truth. C of E female bishops will be just as valid as their male ones…which is to say not valid, right?
No, this is worse. It compounds invalid form with invalid matter.
 
Yes but what Steve calls liberalism such as female bishops and ordination and I gather you call unorthodox, and no doubt most on CAF agree with you and Steve, others OTOH might call it growing in further understanding. It really depends a lot on the faith.
There is such a thing as “truth in advertising”. You are free to be married or single, but don’t say you are single, when you actually are married. That’s not “growing in further understanding”. You are free to open an evangelical outreach to try to convert Jews on campus to Christ. But don’t call it a synagogue, or your youth pastor “Rabbi”. You are free to promote your opinions pushing Fundamentalism, legal abortion, the New Age Religion, White Supremacy, or whatever Huffington Post is pushing this week. But call your agenda what it is. Don’t pretend it’s a new, alternate or renewed or modern form of Judaism, Lutheranism, Islam, or anything else; including Anglicanism. What happened in Anglicanism, especially the TEC, is that people who had mostly left the orthodox Anglican faith no longer had the integrity to leave the Church, they keep diluting it, holding onto their positions and podiums. They advertise something they no longer offer, and this still brings people in, who think they still are getting the same gospel, when they really will get the media.
I’m not asking you to agree with me on Catholicism, or Anglicanism. I’m asking you to consider my point on Integrity.
 
There is such a thing as “truth in advertising”. You are free to be married or single, but don’t say you are single, when you actually are married. That’s not “growing in further understanding”. You are free to open an evangelical outreach to try to convert Jews on campus to Christ. But don’t call it a synagogue, or your youth pastor “Rabbi”. You are free to promote your opinions pushing Fundamentalism, legal abortion, the New Age Religion, White Supremacy, or whatever Huffington Post is pushing this week. But call your agenda what it is. Don’t pretend it’s a new, alternate or renewed or modern form of Judaism, Lutheranism, Islam, or anything else; including Anglicanism. What happened in Anglicanism, especially the TEC, is that people who had mostly left the orthodox Anglican faith no longer had the integrity to leave the Church, they keep diluting it, holding onto their positions and podiums. They advertise something they no longer offer, and this still brings people in, who think they still are getting the same gospel, when they really will get the media.
I’m not asking you to agree with me on Catholicism, or Anglicanism. I’m asking you to consider my point on Integrity.
Considered. I agree for instance you don’t say you’re single if you are married. I disagree your point can be transferred to matters of faith. But I indeed gave it consideration. We’ll just have to agree to disagree and I’m okay with that.
 
Invalid subject. The matter of the sacrament of orders is the imposition of hands.

GKC
Thank you. That was a widespread misconception that persists in these forums, I’m glad you corrected it so quickly.
 
Thank you. That was a widespread misconception that persists in these forums, I’m glad you corrected it so quickly.
You are very welcome.

As you know, it was a long poorly defined concept, often taken to be the porrection of the instruments, until defined by SACRAMENTUM ORDINIS/1947.

GKC
 
Any Catholic who thinks that the Church of England approving women bishops is going to cause the church to “die” is completely out of their mind. You may be able to say that it is one small factor taken together with many factors that has caused some Anglican decline in some Western countries. However, it LOL silly to think Anglicans are going to just disappear due to women’s ordination to the episcopate.
The parable of the vine and the branches comes to mind here. The COE has severed itself from the vine and is in the process of withering. That will not happen overnight but it will happen.
I will never understand the level of vitriol that some Roman Catholics have when it comes to their Anglican brothers and sisters. It seems like some of you are literally foaming at the mouth with hatred and are just waiting to jump on the Anglican hate wagon. It seems that some of you look forward to any sort of Anglican decline. The only other faith/person that comes close to raising so much ire from Catholics is Martin Luther.
Really? “Vitriol”? I think you embellish the situation. It is not that we look forward to any Anglican decline. It is we see what is occurring in the COE and expect the process to continue as it did with the original protestants.
If we really want to point fingers with laughter and ridicule, then how about we point and laugh at the massive failure that is the Anglican Ordinariate? I am willing to bet that we have had more people join the Episcopal Church from the Roman Catholic Church over the last year, than the Ordinariate has taken from Anglicans since its inception. The Church of England is going nowhere and the Ordinariate will get virtually nothing from this and continue its slide into irrelevancy.
Here is a simple truth. People come and people go. Applies to any organization. However, from wgat I have personally witnessed the people who come into the Catholic Church do so in search of the truth. It is a quest for something positive. People who leave the Catholic Church do so not for truth but for selfish reasons. They never really were Catholicand did not understand Catholicism. Poorly catechised is one way of putting it.
Also, why you continue to hold up you magisterium and what the church “officially” teaches, it may interest you that there are a number of Catholic parishes in my neck of the woods that are “affirming” of non-celibate homosexuals. The bishop knows about these parishes and remains quiet. Some of you guys may enjoy pointing your fingers at Anglicans, but I can assure you that the grass in Rome is not nearly as green as many you think.
People will do all sorts of things but the issue is what the church teaches and whether there is any change in that teaching. The COE has certainly changed in what it teaches as have other protestant denominations. But the Catholic Church has not changed its teaching. It has formally defined certain doctrines, such as the Trinity, to add clarity so people could understand the doctrine better but no doctrine has been changed. The COE has changed doctrine. How can that be when God’s word is immutable (unchanging)?
 
I have never understood those who measure the authenticity and sanctity of Church by those who violate the principles it espouses.
I agree with you on this as well. The RCC is a top-down theocracy; because Bishop or Fr. So and So have strayed from the Magisterium’s teachings, does not invalidate the Magisterium’s teachings!

It’s akin to saying “…because Professor Doolittle ‘affirmed’ that 1+1=4, Math is henceforth invalid!..”
 
Originally Posted by seanman611 View Post
If we really want to point fingers with laughter and ridicule, then how about we point and laugh at the massive failure that is the Anglican Ordinariate? I am willing to bet that we have had more people join the Episcopal Church from the Roman Catholic Church over the last year, than the Ordinariate has taken from Anglicans since its inception. The Church of England is going nowhere and the Ordinariate will get virtually nothing from this and continue its slide into irrelevancy.
(end quote)

Christ never promised His Church would be successful, just guided in the Truth. Some US churches that have abandoned core Christian doctrines, including doctrines they themselves once regarded as crucial, receive direct government subsidies - “faith based grants” - as well as enormous indirect subsidy through the media, to which they are tightly aligned. They are “successful” in a way, and “relevant” in the eyes of CNN.

The Catholic Church does not kneel down to the secular media, so they get trashed. As a result of the hostility of the Media (and higher education, and politicians) the Church may lose individual members led by the media, and likely will lose the tax exemption in the US, and most of its institutions. The Church isn’t successful, but it’s faithful, as it’s supposed to be. The Church isn’t any more faithful to God than it used to be, but its faithfulness is becoming more apparent, as so many other churches are choosing success. The attitude of many Protestants towards Catholicism is “Oh, NOW I see why a Magisterium is needed”. So you’re right, the C of E may not go anywhere, it follows the secular culture, and thus is deemed “successful”, and “relevant”.

The Catholic Church will teach the Truth. That doesn’t change, even if 99% of people disagree; even if 99% of Catholics disagree.
 
Originally Posted by seanman611 View Post
If we really want to point fingers with laughter and ridicule, then how about we point and laugh at the massive failure that is the Anglican Ordinariate? I am willing to bet that we have had more people join the Episcopal Church from the Roman Catholic Church over the last year, than the Ordinariate has taken from Anglicans since its inception. The Church of England is going nowhere and the Ordinariate will get virtually nothing from this and continue its slide into irrelevancy.
(end quote)

Christ never promised His Church would be successful, just guided in the Truth. Some US churches that have abandoned core Christian doctrines, including doctrines they themselves once regarded as crucial, receive direct government subsidies - “faith based grants” - as well as enormous indirect subsidy through the media, to which they are tightly aligned. They are “successful” in a way, and “relevant” in the eyes of CNN.

The Catholic Church does not kneel down to the secular media, so they get trashed. As a result of the hostility of the Media (and higher education, and politicians) the Church may lose individual members led by the media, and likely will lose the tax exemption in the US, and most of its institutions. The Church isn’t successful, but it’s faithful, as it’s supposed to be. The Church isn’t any more faithful to God than it used to be, but its faithfulness is becoming more apparent, as so many other churches are choosing success. The attitude of many Protestants towards Catholicism is “Oh, NOW I see why a Magisterium is needed”. So you’re right, the C of E may not go anywhere, it follows the secular culture, and thus is deemed “successful”, and “relevant”.

The Catholic Church will teach the Truth. That doesn’t change, even if 99% of people disagree; even if 99% of Catholics disagree.
I should have commented earlier on the enclosed quote. There is no way to refer to the Ordinariates as failures in any sense, assuming the structure and support under which they were organized is maintained. They were set up (and keyed by a certain specific event) to permit an Anglican who wished to join the RCC, to do so, under the conditions and offers that were presented. And that appears to be what happens.Any presumption, on anyone’s part,as to just how many folk would do that, was just that: presumption. I heard a fair amount of inflated prediction, which I put down triumphalism, at the time.

But whatever the number is, the Ordinariates are doing what they are supposed to do.

GKC
 
You don’t need a supposedly infallible statement from a pope concluding this that you need the pope to tell you the sky is blue.
😉
No, but it helps, especially when the fires have made it look red and gray.
 
It seems that God is mocking the Anglican religion and showing it for what it is.
This is no more appropriate to say than for anti-Catholics to claim that the corruption of the clergy during the Refomation was God “mocking the Catholic religion”. The sins and failures of humankind do set a poor example, but the faith is not defined by those who depart from it.
That’s an interesting point of view. Do you think it likely that God would do that?
God allows evil so that greater good can come of it.

1 Cor 11:19
19 for there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized.

The question becomes, by what criteria will those who are genuine be recognizable?
 
I find your post to be offensive. I forgive you but you may wish to proceed further with civility in mind.

Thank you.
Seraphim73 is responding, as might be expected, from what we call the sensus fidelum. Any Christisan who is well catechized should be able to tell right from wrong and know the doctrinal parameters of the faith. It is not necessary for a well formed Christian to wait until an ordained person makes a pronouncement about such things.
That is akin to saying that deacons can not be regardless of what the Apostles said. It is a basic denial of church authority and the substitution of one’s own ideas or opinions as an alternate standard because apparently, in the COE, women can become bishops; your opinion not withstanding.
No, it is not. Ordination requires proper form and matter, and women are not proper matter. Neither did the Apostles ordain female deacons.

Further, Seraphim73 is not “substituting his own ideas” as you accuse. This has been an ongoing part of of the deposit of faith in the East and in the West. On the contrary, it is the support of church authority that allows such a statement to be made.
 
That isn’t true. There are quite a few Episcopalians here. But we don’t have many really liberal ones. I myself am what could be described as a middle-of-the-road Anglican–although I’m an odd duck in that I also believe in the need to be in communion with Rome. (I accept women’s ordination, for instance, and while I believe in the traditional understanding of sexual morality I have come to see the push for blessing same-sex unions as something quite other than the slide into immorality and decadence portrayed by most conservatives.) I am therefore not on the same page with either traditionalist Anglicans in general or the small subset of traditionalist Anglicans who entertain the idea of “swimming the Tiber.” (Which is one reason why I find it so frustrating when well-meaning Catholics on this forum say, “Oh, I hope you can find an Ordinariate parish.” Two other reasons are that there aren’t in fact any such parishes near me or likely to be and that I don’t believe in parallel jurisdictions within the Church, which is one reason why I want to be Catholic in the first place.)
This sounds like me. I consider myself to be a traditionalist Episcopalian, but I certainly wouldn’t pass for what is considered traditionalist here or traditionalist in the most conservative Anglican circles.
It is my experience that the Episcopal Church as a whole (and obviously this is even truer of the worldwide Anglican Communion) is much more orthodox than most outsiders believe it to be. And I agree with seanman’s complaints that Catholics on this forum judge Anglicans by notorious (and usually misunderstood) incidents. For instance, in the past ten years there have been three notorious cases of interreligious syncretism among Episcopal clergy: the neo-pagan priest couple in Pennsylvania, the Muslim priest in Seattle, and the Buddhist bishop-elect in Michigan. What gets ignored in coverage of these incidents is that the two priests were disciplined and the bishop-elect was not confirmed and thus never became bishop. (I don’t myself think that practicing Zen Buddhism is necessarily heretical, but this particular bishop was heretical in ways clearly influenced by Zen Buddhism–the heresy and not the Buddhism per se was the problem.) The Episcopal Church, in other words, has in fact acted to maintain basic Christian orthodoxy, disciplining priests who worshiped other gods and denied the Divinity of Christ and refusing to consecrate as bishop a priest who changed the baptismal liturgy to delete references to salvation from sin by Christ. Yet this plays in the media as “the Episcopal Church is so liberal that it even has clergy who try to practice other religions.”
Well said and I agree. The media always presents these types of stories to show how far off the rails we have gone, however, there is never any follow-up stories reporting on how the national church responded to such heresies.

Anytime I mention that the Episcopal Church is not for abortion on demand and that our official policy is to oppose abortions, except in very extreme cases, I get a Ragsdale article thrown at me as if she speaks for the entirety of the Episcopal Church and Anglican Communion. Same thing with Spong and so on and so on.

However if a Catholic priest/bishop goes against the teachings of the church, then it is a inattentive bishop and a rogue priest. If an Episcopal Bishop or priest goes against the teachings of the church, then what that priest or bishop says is the Gospel truth. I’m not trying to be critical of Catholics or dismissive of the problems in TEC, but we must be consistent with our mud slinging.
In other words, Episcopalians are condemned not for having adopted these kinds of views officially, but simply for the fact that there is a debate about them.
Exactly, TEC teachings on marriage and abortion remain unchanged. However, as I mentioned above, any priest/bishop/leader in TEC that goes against official teaching is often held up here as being proof that Anglicans have changed their official doctrine on these matters.
My impression is that in the past ten years basic creedal orthodoxy has become stronger in the Episcopal Church, even as commitment to “social liberalism” has also strengthened. The younger clergy are, in my experience, pretty much of a relatively orthodox bent.
Agreed, the younger clergy are of a relatively orthodox bend and quite creedal. Furthermore, despite the “social liberalism” commitment, I’ve never been told that my libertarian political philosophy was incompatible with the Episcopal Church or Christianity. Catholic libertarians certainly can’t make that claim, especially with the current regime.
 
Seraphim73 is responding, as might be expected, from what we call the sensus fidelum. Any Christisan who is well catechized should be able to tell right from wrong and know the doctrinal parameters of the faith. It is not necessary for a well formed Christian to wait until an ordained person makes a pronouncement about such things.

No, it is not. Ordination requires proper form and matter, and women are not proper matter. Neither did the Apostles ordain female deacons.

Further, Seraphim73 is not “substituting his own ideas” as you accuse. This has been an ongoing part of of the deposit of faith in the East and in the West. On the contrary, it is the support of church authority that allows such a statement to be made.
Not proper subjects. In confecting the sacrament of Holy Orders, the matter is the imposition of hands. The ordinand is the subject of the sacramental act.

GKC
 
The media always presents these types of stories to show how far off the rails we have gone, however, there is never any follow-up stories reporting on how the national church responded to such heresies.

Anytime I mention that the Episcopal Church is not for abortion on demand and that our official policy is to oppose abortions, except in very extreme cases, I get a Ragsdale article thrown at me as if she speaks for the entirety of the Episcopal Church and Anglican Communion.

However if a Catholic priest/bishop goes against the teachings of the church, then it is a inattentive bishop and a rogue priest. If an Episcopal Bishop or priest goes against the teachings of the church, then what that priest or bishop says is the Gospel truth.

Exactly, TEC teachings on marriage and abortion remain unchanged. However, as I mentioned above, any priest/bishop/leader in TEC that goes against official teaching is often held up here as being proof that Anglicans have changed their official doctrine on these matters.
Has the TEC excommunicated any clergy for teaching heresy? Or demoted them? Pope Francis has excommunicated already. Recent popes have excommunicated, and demoted, regularly.
Even Planned Parenthood isn’t “for” abortion as a good thing.
No church is in favor of abortion on demand, but only some churches are actively campaigning for legal protection of unborn children, and those churches are denounced by the pro abortion lobby and media. TEC is not one of those churches.
No church is for gay marriage. In some churches the leadership have identified this as a “right” that must be respected however if people choose it. Other churches actively oppose legitimizing a practice that really hurts gay people. Which category is TEC in now?
Does TEC have a program to support chastity for people, of all sexual orientations?

Some churches are actively affirming religious freedom and getting trashed by the secular media and government. Is TEC one of those churches?
Have any politicians or major secular media outlets recently denounced TEC for anything?
Are any proabortion, or pro gay marriage organizations, denouncing TEC?
Are any national prolife groups currently endorsing or applauding anything TEC is doing at all?
Have any prominent Christians or organizations split from TEC complaining there is too much emphasis on dogma, or the Trinity, or the Bible, the Supernatural, or Tradition?
 
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