Posted on 12/17/2009 10:08:35 AM PST by Teófilo
Folks, I stumbled upon this article published by the BBC. I invite you to read it. I won't republish it due to its prurient subject matter, and out of a sense of decorum and respect for Our Lord, His Mother, and his earthly father, Joseph. Read it carefully and then contact this "church" here and let them know what you think. This is what I told Glynn Cardy, the pastor:
Dear Reverend Cardy:I can't tell you that the Lord isn't present in "progressive Christian" churches such as this St. Matthew's Church in Auckland, New Zealand. I don't pressume to tell the Lord where and where not to go. No one is ever far from His grace. But I also say that, judging from this disgusting display, the demonic infestation afflicting St. Matthew's makes for a very crowded congregation. Matthew himself must be pretty busy interceding for the shepperds and so many people who have so mangled the Gospel he was once wrote to preserve the soft memory of faith of God's transcendent intervention in human history, through the humble vessel of a poor, Spirit-filled Nazarene virgin.
I've just read a news report published in the BBC website about your billboard distorting the meaning of Christ's virginal conception and mangling the marriage and family life of Joseph and Mary.
From half a hemisphere away I wish to register my hurt and my disgust at this blatant publicity stunt. I can't begin to fathom what you wanted to achieve with it.
Your stated justification to the effect that the billboard was meant to "challenge stereotypes of Christianity" is lame and disingenous, and an insult to the intelligence of millions of devoted, and yes, intellectually aware believers worldwide, not to speak of those of simple, childlike faith who will precede you and me in the Kingdom of Heaven whom have scandalized.
There are other ways to communicate messages challenging what Christmas has become in this materialist,secularized age. Yet, you have chosen to do so by means of a lurid portrait, a distortion of the biblical record, and a cheap shot at a love you have no business intruding, much less defacing in such a public fashion.
You have taken the low road. You have brought great shame and dishonor to yourself, your congregation and your denomination. May God, who we both agree is slow to anger and rich in mercy, forgive you.
Yours in Christ,
-T
PING.
What do you expect, they’re New Zealand Episcopalians!
You can listen to the sick heretic “priest” pontificate here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsfqWM7Ifn0&feature=player_embedded#at=12
Graphic of the billboard on related thread here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2408743/posts?q=1&;page=151
In all fairness, I know of at least one who is unlike the other at St. Matthew's.
-Theo
It is. Inappropriate and disrespectful.
In poor taste, yeah, but I don’t think that quite rises to the level of “lurid” or disgusting.”
Here the Episcopal Church is totally controlled by Satan. This kind of stuff is all you will hear. If it’s not about pushing homosexual acts.
Offensive? nah.
Silly, Sophomoric, Juvenile?
Better descriptions...
Q. Why do Catholics believe that Joseph never had sex with Mary?
A. Because God is a hard act to follow.
Couple that with the fact that Mary looks like a Catholic nun in on the billboard and it seems anti-Catholic to me.
I apologize beforehand if I have offended anyone. My intent was not to offend, but instead to question if this is anti-Catholic.
Brown was the correct color of the paint to “deface” the defaming billboard with.
New International Version (©1984)
Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.
You know, I understand humor, satire, caricature, and the like. I also know that humor is in the eye of the beholder. What is a joke to some may be an insult to others.
When the Simpsons ran a satire of Dan Brown and Lisa became a nun in a local Springfield convent to “break the code” and the front door of the convent had a sticker of a screaming Virgin Mary saying “scram,” I laughed. When South Park took aim at her menses I didn’t.
When I read the joke with the punch line “God is a hard act to follow” I also laughed and thought that, as written and as intended, it DOES make a sane, healthy, and correct doctrinal point. But when the punch line was scribbled over a picture of Our Lady in bed looking flustered and Joseph looking frustrated, I didn’t laugh for one second.
What’s the difference?
You see, in this day and age when exhibitionism and voyeurism is the order of the day, and everything is sexualized, we lose sight of the fact that sex, to a Christian, is a sacred act. Yet, the Master himself stated that the most excellent way is to refrain from marriage for the sake of the Kingdom.
We Catholics believe, and think that Scripture does support, the notion that Mary and Joseph decided for elected chastity and virginity without losing sight of the excellence of marital relations. They just moved beyond them. Their sexual abstinence has nothing do with sexual repression, but with love, albeit another kind of love, possible only by God’s grace. And God’s grace is given quietly, in silence, and intimately, in a way that the pruriently curious will never understand or accept.
Elected virginity is also a escathological sign, that is, it points to the Parousia, the End of Time. It’s a mark of a people who underwent one Advent season and then fell in the throes of another, definitive Advent for which this ongoing season is just but a preparation and a reminder. We are a people of the First and Second Advents and many await them by sacrificing their procreative powers for the sake of that Kingdom that is both to come and within us.
This billboard was a fragrant attempt to pry into the mystery of this grace; it turned the marital bed of Mary and Joseph into a circus freak act; it aimed to destroy the very mystery present in a unique marriage in the history of man. It was also an attempt to destroy the mystery by soiling it in such away as to make perversely disgusting the mere thought that there is such a thing, such a vocation, such a grace as elected virginity.
I, in turn, find the blatant inversion of values perpetrated by this “church” despicable and disgusting in itself. Their point about the true meaning of Christmas could have been made a thousand different ways without bringing the God of Israel to the level of Zeus and without stressing the biological so much in order to make the Incarnation and its consequences - to Mary, Joseph, to the rest of us - trivial and unimportant.
This is why I find this thing so offensive, hurtful, and degrading, not only for Those portrayed, but also for the rest of us who have to suffer it. Shame on them. May the Lord forgive them; and may the Lord grant me the grace to forgive them now, at this very moment.
-Theo
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