Posted on 01/22/2006 7:26:33 AM PST by Huber
The Executive Council of the Episcopal Church has approved the Church’s membership in the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC), an organization whose literature states its “primary role is educating the public to make clear that abortion can be a moral, ethical, and religiously responsible decision.”
My understanding was always that ECUSA's "teaching" on abortion and on every other sin that's not racism, sexism, "homophobia," or some other leftist cause current this month basically boiled down to, "We'd rather you didn't but we're not about rules here." Apparently, I was dead wrong.
The vote during the Jan. 9-12 meeting held in Des Moines, Iowa, came upon a recommendation from the Executive Council’s Committee on National Concerns. John Vanderstar, an Executive Council member from the Diocese of Washington who proposed the resolution, said it was intended to clarify the Church’s relationship to the organization.
In 1978, the Executive Council rejected a proposal from the Episcopal Women’s Caucus and the Episcopal Church Women (ECW) of the diocese of Washington to join the organization. (In 1994 the organization changed its name from the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights to the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice).
The A word is a tough sell, isn't it?
On May 19, 1978, Episcopal News Service reported the Executive Council "voted against participation in the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights on the grounds that the Coalition’s stand was inconsistent with that of General Convention.” However, the Episcopal Church Center joined the RCRC on behalf of the Episcopal Church in 1986.
The Episcopal Church. We're so independent that we don't even listen to ourselves.
Mr. Vanderstar noted the vote by Executive Council did not change the Church’s position on abortion, which has been an “unequivocal opposition to any federal or state legislation that would interfere with a woman’s right to make a decision on terminating a pregnancy.” He said the vote to approve membership in the RCRC was taken “so as to lay to rest any suggestion that [Executive Council’s] 1978 action tainted that membership.”
And there you have it. ECUSA has always been a pro-abortion "church." But let him be accursed who offends the pro-abortion lobby. Pro-life Episcopalians are horrified.
[Georgette] Forney told The Living Church she was displeased by the vote, saying she believed it is important that standards be created stating what types of organizations the Church can join. She sees RCRC membership as incompatible with the Church’s mission, and said it is impossible to see “children as a gift from God but celebrate the ‘right’ to kill them.”
The Pontificator is exactly right.
A Christian community that supports the unconditional legal right to abortion has ceased to be Christian; it has ceased to be Church. A Church that is not willing to stand against the evil of abortion cannot be the Church that Jesus Christ founded. The lampstand has been taken away.
If you belong to the Episcopal Church and if you believe that abortion is unjust killing, how can you in good conscience remain in communion with it? How can you remain an Episcopalian? The Episcopal Church has ceased to be “neutral” in this moral battle. It has joined the forces of darkness. Flee, for your soul’s sake!
I would go even further. If you are a pro-life member of a conservative Anglican church and your church still has any kind of connection with ECUSA, even the most remote and theoretical, you and your church are compromised. If you are a member of a solidly pro-life denomination that has regular "ecumenical dialogue" with the Episcopalians, you and your denomination are also compromised.
I don't think it will happen but I would love for the Roman Catholic or Orthodox Churches to say that because of this approval, all ecumenical discussions with the Episcopal Church about anything at all were terminated. And that unless the Episcopalians were expelled, all ecumenical discussions with the Anglican Communion would also come to an end.
This is one time when straddling the fence is more virtuous than enthusiastically casting one's lot with evil. The ECUSA Executive Council's vile action ought to be reason enough to leave ECUSA even if no one had ever heard of Gene Robinson.
Day is done,
gone the sun,
from the lakes
from the hills
from the sky,
I once was lost, when I was an Episcopalian, but now I'm found, when I became a born again Baptist. It's only a matter of time before this dwindling denomination disappears. A seven day a week Christian will never stay there.
Too often church leaders just become owners of a tax exempt business instead of Christian leaders.
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams. I'll bet that when Lambeth approved the moral acceptability of artificial contraception, contradicting 1900 years of Church teaching, the "good" bishops didn't dream that they were signing the death warrant of the EC.
Next up for approval: all forms of non-reproductive sexuality.
Ain't moral relativism, especially when separated from Apostolic teaching authority, grand?
That must have been a difficult transition. Many "seven day a week" Christian Episcopalians have joined other churches within the Anglican Communion such at the AMiA, or have joined other liturgical churches ("crossing the Tiber", or "embracing Orthodoxy") within the great tradition. Some have moved a little further, crossing to "hard protestant" denominations such as PCA. Moving to the a Baptist denomination is quite a leap!
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Why the drop after 1960? (in deaths of women from illegal abortions)
The reasons were new and better antibiotics, better surgery and the establishment of intensive care units in hospitals. This was in the face of a rising population. Between 1967 and 1970 sixteen states legalized abortion. In most it was limited, only for rape, incest and severe fetal handicap (life of mother was legal in all states). There were two big exceptions — California in 1967, and New York in 1970 allowed abortion on demand. Now look at the chart carefully.
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Abortion Statistics - Decision to Have an Abortion (U.S.)
· 25.5% of women deciding to have an abortion want to postpone childbearing
· 21.3% of women cannot afford a baby
· 14.1% of women have a relationship issue or their partner does not want a child
· 12.2% of women are too young (their parents or others object to the pregnancy)
· 10.8% of women feel a child will disrupt their education or career
· 7.9% of women want no (more) children
· 3.3% of women have an abortion due to a risk to fetal health
2.8% of women have an abortion due to a risk to maternal health
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So how many women’s lives have been saved by abortion?
Only about 3% of abortions since 1972 were reported to be “due to a risk to maternal health.” A reasonable person would recognize that not all of those cases represent a lethal risk. But let’s say they did. That means that nearly 45 million fetuses were butchered to save the lives of about 1.3 million women. Or put another way; 35 babies are killed to save each woman.
Abortion was legal in all 50 states prior to Roe v. Wade in cases of danger to the life of the woman.
Roman Catholic and Protestant doctrines differ in, among other things, the degree to which they are legalistic. The Catholic Church would have us obey the rules formulated by the Vatican, but Protestants believe that we are free by grace and justified by faith. The phrase “the sacredness of life” means one thing to Catholic bishops—that the life of the fetus is all-important—but to most people of other Christian denominations it means that there is a presumptive right to life that is not absolute but is conditioned by the claims of others. For us the right to life and the sacredness of life mean that there should be no absolute or unbreakable rules that take precedence over the lives of existing human persons.A Prayer for Children in Need from the RCRCThe pro-life position is really a pro-fetus position, and the pro-choice position is really pro-woman. Those who take the pro-fetus position define the woman in relation to the fetus. They assert the rights of the fetus over the right of the woman to be a moral agent or decision maker with respect to her life, health, and family security.
Mother-Father God, Loving Parent, it is never easy to look into the face of a child desperately in need. But we do acknowledge that it is much easier to respond and offer our help when we can actually see that desperation; see first hand the plight and witness ourselves the conditions and sources of misery.Help us, Creator of All, to continue to open our hearts and hands to those children in our world whom we can see are motherless, fatherless, hungry, ill, abandoned, oppressed, violated, without hope, addicted, violent, homeless, imprisoned, victimized.
But we know that there are more children in need than we can actually see. More whose lives, for many reasons, are hidden from our view. More who are not only not seen and not heard but whose needs and lives are altogether forgotten by the adults who hold all the power in their world.
We are confident though, Loving One, that their need is not unseen by you, their cries are not unheard by you, nor their lives unremembered by you. So we would ask that you show them to us, and open our ears to their pleas. And when you believe that we are ready, bring us into their lives so that we might join our lives to theirs and together build a better world for every child.
Amen.
And here's a picture of a pro-choice mom:
Yes, I crossed the Tiber. I had had enough.
This is a false statement of the Catholic position. The Catholic position is that the fetus is a person and that its claims must be acknowledged by law. Any deliberate killing of the fetus must be justified on the same grounds as the killing of any other person. Our present national abortion law denies that the fetus is a person and gives the mother the unconditional --absolute right to have an abortion. Talk about legalism!
"I don't think it will happen but I would love for the Roman Catholic or Orthodox Churches to say that because of this approval, all ecumenical discussions with the Episcopal Church about anything at all were terminated."
At least from the Catholic perspective, we don't hold talks with the Anglicans (and it is with the Anglicans that we hold talks - as an entire communion, not with the Episcopalians in particular) because we're trying to bridge our differences. Rather, we hold talks with them to clarify our differences, and one hopes, see if they misunderstand our teaching so that then they can once again accept it.
The effort may be futile, but it is required.
These birds are not only abortionists, but they refuse to pray to our God, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, the God who knows us, loves us, and saves us!!!! They are not only heterodox in one thing, but heterodox in every way!! That's par for the course.
When one refuses to pray to God using the Name that he revealed to us in Christ, what god is one praying to? No one knows. And if these birds support the culture of death, they may well be addressing Satan!!
What an unjust caricature of the Catholic faith! At least understand and present fairly the Catholic claim even if you don't agree, i.e., that the Catholic faith is based on divine revelation taught by Jesus to the apostles and past down to us in the Church in Scripture and Tradition as authoritatively interpreted and expounded by the apostles' successors, the bishops, in union with the successor of Peter, the pope. To be fair, a lot of Catholics don't have this simple understanding of what the Catholic faith is.
I don't know how true this is, but I read around the blogosphere that the following is being proposed for the new prayerbook:
“Heavenly Father, you are the Giver of Life and you share with us the care of the life that is given. Into your hands we commit in trust the developing life that we have cut short. Look in kindly judgment on the decision we have made and assure us in all our uncertainty that your love for us can never change. Amen”
I find myself wondering if these, uh, people (I use the term with some hesitation) have ever bothered to crack open the Old Testament and understand it. God has already rendered his opinion of child sacrifice. When the Kingdom of Israel practiced by offering up their children to Molech, he sent the Assyrians to utterly annihilate them as a people.
That's his "kindly judgement" on that particular "decision".
This is the church that couldn't muster enough votes to affirm its own classical faith documents at the last General Convention. I left because it finally sunk into my brain that voting on doctrine is totally absurd.
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