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RC archbishop to Anglicans: we don’t want cafeteria Catholics

And let's share that message with Catholics as well!

I’m really enjoying this group of reflections on “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” It’s one of my favorite Christmas hymns, and I always sing the non-gender-neutral tradition words at the top of my professionally-trained lungs, not matter what the book says.

Born that MAN no more may die, born to raise the SONS of earth ... take to that, hermaphroditic weasels!

I was trying to say that, absent the orthodox language of “Father” and “Son”, the relationship between God and Jesus, the Word made flesh is very indistinct and ambiguous.

You and I implicitly recoginize the relationship to be that of the only-begotten Son and His Father, and we recoginize that because we have been nurtured on the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds.

A person whose knowledge of Christianity has not been similarly nuturted might well wonder if “Jesus, the Word made flesh” is a second God, or a mere part of God’s created order (Arianism).

I posed the question because departure from the historic language of the Church seems to be the primary m.o. these days: “Political correctness” in avoiding the dread masculine pronoun has become the first principle rather than theological accuracy.

[Dr. D. A. Waite, Ephesians, p. 10]: "When the plain sense of Scripture makes common sense, seek no other sense; therefore, take every word at its primary, ordinary, usual, literal meaning unless the facts of the immediate context, studies in the light of related passages and axiomatic and fundamental truths, indicate clearly otherwise. God in revealing His Word neither intends nor permits the reader to be confused. He wants His children to understand."

Voila. No need for decades-long ELCA commissions to "study" whether the Bible really means what it plainly says. And no justification for ELCA-issued semantic contortions and eisegetical distortions of the plain sense of Scripture.

A recent chapter in the ELCA handbook "How Can We Make the World Like Us Better?"

ELCA Resources Offer Prayer to 'Mother' God

Worship resources also highlight the Biblical and theological crisis in the ELCA. One of the goals of Lutheran CORE is to insist upon the priority of the revealed Name of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in worship and educational materials produced by and for the church.

The ELCA publishing house is recommending a prayer addressing God as “Mother” in worship materials for Sunday, Dec. 27. The prayer is one of the Prayers of Intercession in the Sundays and Seasons worship planning resource widely used by ELCA pastors and is included in the “Celebrate” bulletin insert used by many ELCA congregations.

The ancient Latin phrase Lex orandi, lex credendi — which means “the law of prayer is the law of belief” — is taught to pastors and other worship planners as a reminder of the relationship between worship and the faith of God’s people. This important principle is sometimes translated, “As we worship, so we believe.” It highlights the importance of language used in worship and is a reminder of the significance of the Biblical and theological crisis in the ELCA.

I guess I did misunderstand you. What were you trying to say with this sentence?

What is the relationwhip between God and Jesus, the Word made flesh? Is there any relationship at all? One would never know from that sentence!

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

You may have misunderstood me: A listener understanding that the Word is indeed the only-begotten Son of the Father would solely be the result of good catechesis. S/he would not have understood the relationship between the Word and the Father through a verbal rendition of ++Mark’s message.

Why would you assume he is breaking with past catechesis with this message?

Well put.

Sounds like you have a good pastor and dad.

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.

Is this billboard anti-Catholic? I do not know what Angelicans believe about Mary being ever virgin. But I have heard this joke before.

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.

Every comment which comes to mind would be inappropriate for a religious thread.

Although homosexuality is mentioned in the Old Testament, the subject is also mentioned in several of Paul’s letters. My dad is a retired ELCA pastor who joined a Missouri Synod church, last year. He sent me a list of about 20 Bible verses that mention homosexuality, and he said that every time that behavior is mentioned, in the Bible, it is condemed.

Looks like a man with a gray hair piece!

Yikes!!

Lutheran (EL C S*A) Ping!

* as of August 19, AD 2009, a liberal protestant SECT, not part of the holy, catholic and apostolic CHURCH.

Marantha--Come, Lord Jesus!

I highly recommend Rev. Dr. Paul Hinlicky's essay:

It’s Not About Homosexuality--Not Really

Offensive? nah.

Silly, Sophomoric, Juvenile?
Better descriptions...

It would never occur to me to question that sentence. Doesn’t the fact that Word is capitalized indicate he is speaking of a connection between the Word and the Father?

This message was produced both as a written statement and as a YouTube-genre video clip. In the video clip and its audio version capitalization can only be assumed; and that assumption would stem from past catechesis, not the present proclamation.