Posted on 04/25/2007 6:54:31 AM PDT by NYer
“WOW -- coming from RC tradition I thought I’d never return to the Rosary. But here it is and here SHE IS. Blessed be, Mairly.”
The “here” in this message, found on herchurch.org, is Ebenezer Lutheran Church in San Francisco. But the SHE is not the Mother of God. SHE is “God/dess.”
On Wednesdays at 7 p.m., Ebenezer opens its sanctuary for the “Christian Goddess Rosary.” The church says it offers “Goddess Rosary Beads” and that “prayers and suggested meditations will be on hand as well as incense, candles and bells.”
“The Goddess rosary is grounded in traditions of the Christian Church and the proclamation of the gospel which is a vision of release from bondage for a new creation,” says the church’s web site.
The Goddess Rosary page on herchurch.org says that though “God as Father plays an important role” in Christian tradition, its “exclusive emphasis... contributes to a limited understanding of God, an understanding that supports a domination structure that oppresses and subordinates women.” Jesus used “Abba” as a “revolutionary deconstruction of domination structures of his day in both religious and social institutions.” The modern task is to do the same with “Goddess.”
Ebenezer, however, does not want to eradicate masculine images of God but to balance them with feminine images to “confront the biblical texts, products of their day and cultures, for the blatant patriarchal biases and misogynist attitudes.” And herchurch.org cites three Catholic theologians in support this confrontation: Harvard’s Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Fordham University’s Sister Elizabeth Johnson, and Rosemary Radford Ruether (who will lecture students in the course, “The History of God in Feminist Theological Discourse,” at LA’s Mount St. Mary’s College this spring.) Ruether calls the exclusive use of male imagery for God “idolatry.”
Herchurch.org offers a “Hail Goddess” prayer by feminist theologian Carol Christ, formerly of Harvard Divinity School but now director of the Ariadne Institute for Myth and Ritual in Greece. The prayer goes: “Hail Goddess full of grace. Blessed are you and blessed are all the fruits of your womb. For you are the MOTHER of us all. Hear us now and in all our needs. O blessed be, O blessed be. Amen.”
“I felt that I had stepped into a Presence, like a mother’s warm embrace,” wrote Dalyn Cook of Ebenezer’s Goddess Rosary. “The attendees were few in number, yet there was a sense of fullness in this welcoming space. I inhaled deeply the earthy scent of the incense, sending up delicate tendrils of smoke which curled around the altar in a nimbus visible against the warm rays of the evening sun filtering through the stained-glass windows....
“From the basket of rosaries, I took into my hand a strand of vibrantly-colored beads with a silver goddess icon in place of the traditional cross. The goddesses came in a variety of shapes and sizes, celebrating the beauty of the feminine form; I found reflections of my own figure in the full hips and Rubenesque curves of my goddess,” Cook wrote.
What is “Queen of Heaven” if not a goddess?
That’s cool, I believe in the first commandment, what God says.
She's a glorified and redeemed human being, raised higher than the angels.
There are no "goddesses," sorry. They don't exist, and cannot exist.
There aren't any "gods" either.
There is only the One God, uncreated and eternal.
Because we don't. Gee, who could have guessed a thread about "Lutheran" feminists would turn into a "Catholics are idolators" happy hour?
“Why do you think so?”
Once Western Christianity broke with the East, it lost its moorings and became increasingly worldly and “pagan” in that it became so influenced by Aristotelianism. One result was the Protestant Revolution, which lead to the Enlightenment and secularism which has in turn lead to feminism, massive societal apostasy and paganism. These pagans, P, are in the final analysis, a result of the Great Schism. In all honesty, I don’t understand why more Westerners, especially Roman Catholics, aren’t righteously infuriated by this evil.
Well, I don’t see how, either, having a rosary with beads and praying to some feminine form, has anything to do with it. It’s obviously a pagan concept.
Do you suppose she shares her throne with Sarah? How about Leah? Rachel? David's mother, the nameless one? What do we know about this?
I will agree with you to a certain extent. It the West, not Western Christianity, became increasingly world and "pagan," but it wasn't because St. Thomas Aquinas and scholasticism, but because of William of Occam and his fellow travelers, and the Renaissance's revival of the Greco-Roman pagan ideals, which indirectly lead to the Protestant Revolution, which was followed by the French Revolution and its bad fruit, and the communist/socialist revolutions and their bad fruit.
In all honesty, I don’t understand why more Westerners, especially Roman Catholics, aren’t righteously infuriated by this evil.
There are plenty of Catholics who have been infuriated by these evils. But I disagree with you that it is a result of the Great Schism.
“There are plenty of Catholics who have been infuriated by these evils.”
I’d say then do something about it, but in the Latin system, you can’t...and that’s both a result and a cause of the Great Schism.
Here we go,according to some, Nitzevet, is David’s mother. Why are there no Jewish temples to Nitzevet, do you ever wonder?
So do Baptists worship John the Baptist? Do Methodists worship methods? Should we name our churches the Elm street church and would that then mean that we worshipped elms?
Now, if your exhortations are supposed to show me the error of my ways as you believe it, then don't you think that you are going about it a little differently. I sure wouldn't even consider changing religions because of your example. In other words, you should change your tired tactics, they aren't fruitful. It would be more fruitful for you to pray to God that the eyes of the blind would be opened and that His True Church would be revealed to all, especially to those Christians who already seek him. You see, God is the Omnipotent One and He will not betray you if you truly seek Him in all His Glory and I will trust in Him anyday over you.
In terms of royal protocol, who was the second most important person in the Israelite Davidic monarchy, after the king? (The answer is in your Bible.)
Sorry, all of them were the mother of the Messiah, even Rachel, as strange as it may seem, now
There's a church in my town named "Judson Baptist Church". Obviously they worship someone named "Judson," or maybe "Judson the Baptist".
Ancestors of the Messiah, not his mother. That seems rather obvious.
I hope so.
Well they are every bit his mother as Mary is. Without the Abrahamic promise coming thru them, there would be no Messiah. I think Mary should scootch over, share her throne as Queen of Heaven. Oh wait, no Jewish woman would accept that title! Never mind!
Too funny. Then why don’t we find Catholic churches called Lakeview Catholic church, instead of “Our Lady of the Lake”? Why not “Hudson River Catholic church, instead of “Our Lady of the River”. Good try, no cigar
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