Free Republic

It’s believed to be the first time in the U.S. that a father and son have been ordained at the same Mass. Details: “Charles Albert Hough the III.”Bishop Kevin Vann’s historic words rang out at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Church in Keller as he called first the father… and then the son.“Charles Albert Hough the IV.”Both answered the call before a big congregation during a one-of-its-kind ordination.“Oh, this is a great moment in the life of our family — a great moment in the history of our faith,” said the elder Hough.The father-and-son duo — who both go by...

The Episcopal Church (TEC) and the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) are vying for ecumenical partners as each jockeys for recognition by the wider Christian community. TEC recently celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Episcopal-Lutheran Concordat wherein the Episcopal Church USA and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) entered into full Communion. While this was initially met with much enthusiasm and idealism in the hope that the two denominations would usher in a new era of inter-denominational cooperation, the occasion went mostly unnoticed. In February of this year, the Northern and Southern Provinces of the Moravian Church in...

COLONIE — The Episcopal Church must embrace change and diversity if it is to move forward, the presiding bishop of the 2.4 million member church said Friday. "We need to discover ways to engage in the outside community," Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said, in urging the 125 delegates attending the Province II Synod of the Episcopal Church to recognize that while many believe the church is an unchanging rock, it too slowly evolves. "'We are beginning to discover a way forward into a new chapter in the church's history," Jefferts Schori said. "If we are going to save the...

Wichita, Kan. (AP) -- A California boy attends only four days at a Kansas military boarding school where he is tormented by staff and students after breaking both his legs in separate incidents. A Tennessee student's stomach is forcibly branded as a rite of initiation. A Florida cadet breaks his hand fending off a student with a history of sexual abuse who tries to grope him, and school officials refuse to investigate or inform his parents of the attack. These claims are the latest additions to a growing list of former cadets who allege in a federal lawsuit they were...

The first thing to be said about Dr. Rowan Williams is that he is by common consent a subtle theologian, a sensitive pastoral priest, and a genuinely good and holy man, because a great many less flattering things will be said about him in the next few months, some of them further down this column. Dr. Williams announced last Friday that he intended to resign at the end of the year as Archbishop of Canterbury and therefore as spiritual leader of the Church of England and, by extension, of the 77 million–strong Anglican Communion around the world. His announcement came...

The evangelical church is under constant threat to compromise its reliance on biblical truth. The human desire to be accepted, to not be seen as "outside the mainstream," can be overwhelming. But that desire is our weakness, our downfall. It does not always immediately destroy the dam we build to protect the waters of truth, but instead it leads to tiny fissures that grow until destruction is inevitable. Twenty years ago, I experienced the painful demise of the Episcopal Church, which once was a bastion of biblical truth. It was not a pretty picture. It was a picture painted in...

Dr. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale, president and dean of the Episcopal Divinity Church, testified at a House hearing on March 8, 2012 against a bill that would make it a federal crime to transport minor girls without parental consent across state lines to get an abortion. (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr) (CNSNews.com) – Were Congress to outlaw the transporting of a minor without her parents’ permission across state lines to get an abortion, an abortion- and gay-rights activist testifying on Capitol Hill Thursday she would break the law to continue to help girls end their pregnancies.Appearing as a Democratic Party witness at a...

Were Congress to outlaw the transporting of a minor without her parents’ permission across state lines to get an abortion, an abortion- and gay-rights activist testifying on Capitol Hill Thursday she would break the law to continue to help girls end their pregnancies. Appearing as a Democratic Party witness at a hearing of the House Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution, Dr. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale, president and dean of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass. recalled the time she took a 15-year-old girl she had never met before to get an abortion. “Although New Hampshire was closer to that girl’s...

So much talk amongst right wing Catholics of the erosion of religious liberty, the collapse of all things and the coming persecution. Talk of government detention centers and priests being shot like Bl. Miguel Pro. I don't think they get it. That's not what it will be like. America is different. We're into image big time. We thought the Soviets were into brainwashing and propaganda. We put them in the shade. America is all about healthy, lusty, good looking guys and gals who are clean cut, successful and smiling. We're into the good life. We're into being good and...

The season of Lent begins not only for millions of Catholics by having placed a sign of the cross on their foreheads with ash on Wednesday, but with many Christians in and outside of denominations vowing to mark the season with acts of faith.Though Lent is often seen as part of the Catholic tradition of fasting for 40 days (calculated sometimes to exclude the weekends in the days leading to Easter), many Christians view this time as serving as a reminder to the importance of getting closer to God.Christine Smith, founder of the online site Womens Bible Cafe, wrote on...

The Episcopal Church: The fruit of building with Satan's blueprints... "That if gold rust, what shall iron do?/ For if a priest be foul, in whom we trust,/ No wonder is a lewd man to rust." - Geoffrey Chaucer. Remember V. Gene Robinson, New Hampshire's Episcopal "Bishop" who said that the Vatican's ban on ordaining men with a homosexual inclination was "vile" and represented an "act of violence"? As I noted back in 2009, Mr. Robinson once opined that "the Episcopal Church and its proclamation of God's inclusive love" was something which appealed to young people who want to be...

A prophet is not necessarily someone who has a supernatural vision of the future. He may simply be a person who can see certain trends in the present, understand the underlying issues and therefore attempt to predict how things may go in the future. Here are some trends I see in the American Church and how I see the future developing. The first thing is the disintegration of denominationalism. It used to be that the different Protestant groups were distinct in their theology and their style of worship. There were boundaries. You pretty much knew what to expect in a...

February 6 Roy Schoeman- Jewish ConvertMark Shea- Former Baptist, Dr. Scott Hahn- Former Presbyterian, Fr. Ray Ryland- Former Episcopalian

Over at the National catholic Fishwrap, which sports the word “Catholic” in their title despite having been explicitly told not to by the local bishop, has an amusingly flaky piece by Sr. Maureen Fiedler, whom we have seen several times in these electronic pages. Sr. Fiedler is worked up over the new Personal Ordinariate for Anglicans/Episcopalians in the USA.Why? Because we should not welcome anyone into our Church who are against human equality!These new Anglican Catholics are fleeing from a welcoming, inclusive, non-homophobic community into one which denies that women and the abnormal sex acronym crowd can be ordained. Get...

More than 400 people, including a U.S. senator, witnessed the first same-sex civil union in Delaware on New Year's Day. Lawyers Lisa Goodman and Drewry Fennell were joined in the union by the Rev. Patricia Downing, rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in Wilmington, where the Sunday afternoon ceremony took place. Goodman and Fennell have been partners for 14 years. Goodman is a lawyer who led the advocacy group Equality Delaware's fight for the civil union law. Fennell heads the state Criminal Justice Council and formerly led the ACLU's Delaware chapter. U.S. Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., delivered the sermon and Lt....

Twenty-six months since Anglicanorum coetibus laid the groundwork for groups of Anglicans to cross the Tiber whilst maintaining elements of their liturgical, spiritual, theological and canonical patrimony, the top-shelf papal project has taken a sizable leap this New Year's morning, with as the establishment of the venture's Stateside jurisdiction by the Holy See. In an unprecedented Sunday announcement -- a significant sign of Rome's degree of seriousness about the effort -- the Vatican's press bulletin gave official word of the erection of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter, encompassing the territory of the United States. The...

(StAgustine.com) New Year’s Day ushers in a new era for Roman Catholics and members of the Anglican Church who will have the opportunity to enter into “corporate reunion” with the Holy See.An apostolic constitution, Anglicanorum coetibus, issued by Pope Benedict XVI, will lead to the creation of “personal ordinariates,” geographic regions similar to dioceses but typically national in scope.Parishes in these ordinariates are to be Catholic yet retain elements of the Anglican heritage and liturgical practices. They are to be led by an “ordinary” who will have a role similar to a bishop, but who may be either a...

At least 20 clergy and several hundred of their parishioners are already lined up to join the Ordinariate, the new structure set up by the Pope a year ago that allows them to remain some of their Anglican heritage while entering into full communion with the Holy See. But many more members of the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church of England are likely to defect following a critical meeting of its governing body, the General Synod, if traditionalists who cannot accept the ordination of women are denied special provision. The head of the Ordinariate, Mgr Keith Newton, told The Daily...

Rome will formally announce appointment on New Year's DayFormer Episcopal Bishop of the Rio Grande, Jeffrey Steenson, is to be named the Ordinary when the Anglican Ordinariate is erected on January 1, 2012, sources tell VOL. Word seeped out from the Vatican late last week that Steenson -- who left The Episcopal Church in 2007 over TEC's polity - has been tapped for the new post as the Ordinariate gets its first foothold in the United States. The former Episcopal House of Bishops' member has been deeply concerned with the continued fracturing of Anglicanism. The Episcopal Church's insistence on autonomy...

Bishop Kevin W. Vann of Fort Worth Baltimore, Md., Nov 17, 2011 / 11:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Bishop Kevin W. Vann of Fort Worth will be in charge of welcoming and forming Episcopal priests who wish to become Catholic priests under the recently announced U.S. Anglican ordinariate.The appointment, which was made by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was announced on Nov. 15 by Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl of Washington at the U.S. bishops’ fall general assembly in Baltimore. Cardinal Wuerl also announced that an Anglican ordinariate will be established in the U.S. on Jan. 1,...