Posted on 11/23/2005 9:18:36 AM PST by sionnsar
I have no knowledge of what's happened with these two, but it took years for my mind to change on this (and not to please my wife, who is thoroughly against W.O.) and even then not until well after we'd left ECUSA.
I was with Doug Weiss at Our Savior in Campbell. We left before there was anything to even leave to.
Doug Weiss went on to become one of the first AMIA Bishops.
I don’t think I ever met him. In ‘94 we’d already been gone 11 years, and that was one to two years after the sole diocesan convention I attended, the one that was the initial reason for my departure.
I think he just flat nailed it. If you have women priestesses, you have something not near so much like a church. The CofE ceased being very much like a church right about the same time it created an order of priestesses.
If Lewis were alive today he would be a great Catholic Apologist.
I suppose you think artificial contraception is no longer an issue either. Never mind, you prots can continue to play your little church games and the True Church will continue to be the vessel of Truth until this sinful generation has passed away and the people are ready to hear.
Even diversity professionals often maintain that differences of race are real as well. Everyone is viewed by them in terms of "group" membership. Notwithstanding this, one might plausibly argue for example that the Inuit are not noted for basketball prowess. Different ethnic groups do often have, on average, different physiological norms. Classical conservatism argues (Locke and Jefferson notwithstanding) that all men are not created equal in terms of ability, but are created equal in terms of their inalienable rights, in their intrinsic value and in God's love.
There was much speculation to this effect during his lifetime and was the subject of at least one letter to Lewis to which he replied rather strongly in the negative.
Of course we will defend you.
Or, at least, I will.
But I think you take a very pessimistic view of the future. the conservative, evangelical churches are the ones that are growing while the TEC (two the’s there) is fading and dying.
Why would churches who are in the majority be persecuted??
would you care to define the term, ‘prot?’
In a loving Christian manner, of course.
Already in England, the Roman Catholic organizations and the Church of England have been forced to hire or not fire active homosexuals—and in certain jurisdictions in the USA we are close to that state of law, if not there already.
Pastors have been prosecuted for “hate speech” in Canada, and Scandinavia too, for simply preaching homosexual practice is morally wrong—and these were not wacky hateful types either. A pastor in the western part of Germany was convicted of “holocaust denial” simply for comparing abortion to the holocaust (he never denied the holocaust at all). PC forces in Western democracies are dead set against Christians in the name of equality. All it would take are a couple Hillary appointed justices...and we could have a near-fascist state, in my opinion.
Not optimistic, true, but real. The left in our country are not freedom loving democrats—they are more than happy to force their “enlightened” opinions on the rest of us, all in the name of equality. One of those enlightened opinions is the interchangibility of men and women—first showing itself in radical feminism (which brought us abortion, and kept us the nation with the highest abortion rate in the West) then, on that interchangeability trend, going all the way with homosexual “rights.”
In the church, the approach to scripture (reading around it...) which brought women to the pulpit, also quickly allowed the reading around of the relevant passages on homosexual (and other forms of sexual) sin. The same method of scripture interpretation is used for both. Yes, the women’s issue isn’t grossly sinful, or even inherently sinful, like homosexual sin is, but still, its the same horse (of poor or absent Bible interpretation) that brought both the issues in.
I can envision a time too, where if Churches don’t have the requisite number of women in leadership, they will be deemed sexist “hate” groups too, and lose their tax exempt status, going right along with homosexual hiring quotas... So that’s the kind of persecution I can see. Especially in a time when “everyone” will think it unbelievable that a church would still not allow women clergy.
Don’t think it can’t happen either. Ted Kennedy has proposed such “anti-discrimination” laws as would make the above scenarios inevitable—having no exemptions for religious institutions. These kinds of laws are already in effect in the UK—and already institutions are cowing and bowing to the powerful forces behind the law. You can bet for every prosecution that makes the news, 20 other cases never make the news as they are settled (caved) privately. Legally enforced “equality” for things like behavior (”orientation”) and yes, sex (gender), is quickly doing in liberty in our lands.
I took a seminary level course in the life of C. S. Lewis. He’s so popular, everyone from Baptists to Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic tries to claim him. So much for “mere Christianity!”
Lewis’ brother, “Warney” a bachelor who lived with C.S. (”Jack” as C.S. Lewis was known to his friends) was a horrendous binge alcoholic. He would literally disappear for weeks at a time, on a bender, and not remember what happened. Very very bad. He was even drunk when Jack died, and that state may have contributed to his ignoring C.S. Lewis’s rapid decline....(and he blamed himself for it...dying not too long afterward, staying drunk most of the time). Anyway, one time after a bender on a vacation Warney was picked up out of the gutter (literally) by some kind nuns at a local Roman Catholic hospital. They nursed him back to health and were so loving and kind, Warney was ready to convert. Jack though warned him in a letter in the most stern terms not to do it, and Warney didn’t.
We must remember, C. S. Lewis was actually Northern Irish in his upbringing, and Welsh in his ancestry—his grandfather a preacher...no background that makes one sympathetic to Roman Catholicism. He was a high Anglican, even fairly Anglo-Catholic (I’m sure they will claim him... believing in a form of purgatory for example—but not as dogma), but that didn’t make him, if you’ll excuse the expression (which Lewis used), a papist.
His views on the Sacraments, Purgatory, and other issues are decided Catholic. Given the direction the C of E has taken since his death, I think it's a toss-up as to which direction he would have gone (and he certainly wouldn't have been very happy with some of the goings-on in the Catholic Church either!)
It's entirely speculation of course, sort of along the lines of trying to decide what Henry VIII really died of.
And poor Warnie! He was a scholar in his own right, he did try to beat the bottle, but it eventually beat him. There wasn't the support and treatment available in those days that could have saved him.
I think it's actually Lewis's adherence on most occasions to the idea of "mere Christianity" that makes it possible for so many folks to claim him! (and that's not necessarily a bad thing). He says in the foreword to Mere Christianity that the concept is like an entryway or hall to the various Christian denominations, and that you can't stay in the hall. But of course that's where the book is -- basic tenets that almost all Christians can agree with. In the words of a salesman, "Get 'em in the door!"
Suppose the reformer stops saying that a good woman may be like God and begins saying that God is like a good woman. Suppose he says that we might just as well pray to “Our Mother which art in heaven” as to “Our Father”. Suppose he suggests that the Incarnation might just as well have taken a female as a male form, and the Second Person of the Trinity be as well called the Daughter as the Son. Suppose, finally, that the mystical marriage were reversed, that the Church were the Bridegroom and Christ the Bride. All this, as it seems to me, is involved in the claim that a woman can represent God as a priest does.
Thank you for posting this. This analogy explains why the "churches" that have feminized their churches justify women priests and preachers. Many of them are also feminizing their worship and hymnals.
A woman cannot represent God because of her gender.
Pingferlater
look at the Anglican church today w/ a practicing gay bishop and clergy that are scarcely Christian. That, my dear, is the fruit of female priests.
May God spare the Roman church from such folly.
You consider his generation (that of my grandfather, WWI veteran) and how he was raised (an Northern Irish Protestant) and Lewis was remarkably free of religious bigotry, specifically anti-Roman Catholic bigotry. He was good friends with J.R.R. Tolkien after all, among other Catholics, and like good Anglicans, even (or especially) theological conservative ones, had a big-tent idea of “mere Christianity” as you said.
He, like most Anglican and Protestant types today, even evangelicals, freely admit its very possible to have a personal relationship with Jesus, and yet remain a Roman Catholic. While this may not sound like something big, just a generation ago this could not be said, evangelical types admitting RC’s can be born-again....and at that time neither would many RC’s reciprocate the idea of non-Catholics going to Heaven.... Times have definitely changed.
I hope this is a true ecumenicism, and not just a product of post-modern relativism...”if it’s good for you...”
(Kate can’t reply, as she was banned years ago, see above)
For his generation, though, you are absolutely right that he was far more perceptive and tolerant than most. He certainly recognized and rejected the extremes of Orange bigotry. Since you studied Lewis in depth, you probably read Pilgrim's Regress, and the prejudices of the church of his childhood don't come off very well there.
My maternal grandfather, also a WWI veteran, was a rock-ribbed Scotch Presbyterian of the old school, and anti-Catholicism ran pretty deep. If he were still alive, he would be shocked and revolted by our "poping". Even my mother was viscerally horrified -- she got over it when we finally got her to Mass and she realized that we weren't sacrificing babies or anything. "It's just like our service!" she exclaimed in some surprise (she became a Piskie when she married my dad). Well duh, mom.
And there's no question that things have changed a great deal from the time of our grandparents -- or even from my childhood when people told the most outrageous stories about Catholics. I think creeping secularism has a lot to do with it -- Christians stick together when they're persecuted. When almost everybody was at least nominally Christian, it was easier to quarrel over distinctions between groups, because the core beliefs were never challenged.
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