They are not supposed to but. . . Yes, seriously, until I moved here 5 years ago I had never experienced such a thing either and I would have thought it something that had long since died away. Live and learn, I guess. The priest is a very nice person and he was very polite in explaining that he did this because of wanting to let the Spirit move people, and not be tied to certain words or gestures or expectations. So he’s convinced he is perfectly right and perfectly free to do this. Most of the people in the parish over the last decade have ‘voted with their feet’ so by the time I came in, just about everybody who is there is perfectly fine with the idea.
That’s just the trouble. . . you have people who are being conditioned to believe that anything that "The Spirit’ moves them to is perfectly fine. So what if it’s ‘disobedient’ to what ‘the rules’ say? if we are “easter people” we don’t need RULES, in fact, we should be totally casting them off since they aren’t things which WE have made for ourselves. We need to think for ourselves. Jesus was a rebel. He hated rules and petty things, so we need to move beyond that. . . You can imagine that the sermons are pretty much of that nature. Everything is an encouragement to disobedience to Scripture, law, and anything ‘traditional’ because supposedly the Spirit is always moving us to change.
Women priests? He can’t wait until they’re allowed, etc.
Very tough situation, so far can only pray because, despite my rep here apparently for being a PITA in my rigid super traddydom, I don’t go around mouthing off to a man of God and telling him he’s wrong or whining to the bishop; I just pray. (and whine here where it can’t cause him or others in the parish any problems!)
