The One and the Many

So now the Episcopal church has an "openly gay" (i.e. proselytizing homosexual) bishop. The Rev. V. Gene Robinson, 56, was elected bishop of New Hampshire on June 7, in a vote by clergy and church activists. Robinson abandoned his wife and two infant daughters in 1986 to pursue his "lifestyle."

"[W]hen Jesus called on his followers to die in order to live, he created a tidal wave of joy and hope on which they have ridden for two thousand years. The gospel of progress represents the exact antithesis. It plays the Crucifixion backwards, as it were; in the beginning was the flesh, and the flesh became Word. In the light of this Logos in reverse, the quest for hope is the ultimate hopelessness; the pursuit of happiness, the certitude of despair; the lust for life, the embrace of death.

"The liberal assault on Christianity has been undertaken with a fury and fervour which today, when the battle seems to have been conclusively won, is difficult to comprehend. [...]

"It is, indeed, among Christians themselves that the final decisive assault on Christianity has been mounted; led by the Protestant churches, but with Roman Catholics eagerly, if belatedly, joining in the fray. All they had to show was that when Jesus said His kingdom was not of this world, He meant that it was. Then, moving on from there, to stand the other basic Christian propositions similarly on their heads. As, that to be carnally minded is life; that it is essential to lay up treasure on earth in the shape of a constantly expanding Gross National Product; that the flesh lusts with the spirit and the spirit with the flesh, so that we can do whatever we have a mind to; that he that loveth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. [...]

"As for the congregations -- not surprisingly, they are dwindling fast. Situational ethics prepares the way for situational worship -- a state of affairs not remedied by introducing pop groups, folk singers, and I daresay in time LSD and striptease to enlighten divine service. The new enlightened clergy positively revel in the decline in church attendance, gleefully recommending selling off redundant churches and their contents, and looking forward to the time when institutional Christianity, like the State in Marxist mythology, will have withered away. In this aspiration, at any rate, they are unlikely to be dissappointed."

-- Malcom Muggeridge

"Sex is the only mysticism materialism offers, and so to sex the pursuers of happiness address themselves with an avidity and dedication seldom, if ever, surpassed. Who among posterity will ever be able to reconstruct the resultant scene? Who for that matter can convey it today? The vast, obsessive outpouring of erotica in every shape and form; in book and film and play and entertainment, in body and word and deed, so that there is no escape for anyone. The lame and the halt, the doddering and the infirm, equally called upon somehow to squeeze out of their frail flesh the requisite response. It is the flesh the quickeneth, the spirit profiteth nothing; copulo ergo sum, I screw, therefore I am -- the new version of Descartes' famous axiom."

-- Muggeridge, again

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