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.
Sadly you’ve pretty much pegged perfectly the individual from your post. If you follow him/her around the forum that’s pretty much the only thing they are capable of saying of anyone. I think you have posted the best refutation of that individual ever found on Freepers. Thank you and God Bless you.
There is hope for an eventual union after all, :).
Quite the contrary...First off, no church speaks for Christ...And secondly, when one religion (yours) usurps the authority of Jesus Christ, everybody's stuck with the outcome...
With independant churches, the way Jesus set it up, some churches may wander from the truth but others are not obligated to follow...That's the locical course as well as the biblical course...
I mean look...After 1700 years, your church still doesn't even know what to do with babies and children regarding baptism...We're talking the Holy Father here (your term, not mine)...
And for a little history, where did that bastion of Catholic higher education and doctrine originate from???
Answer: Egypt, Alexandria...
Where in the Bible does Jesus establish a network of “independent” Churches? It would seem that Paul and Peter got it wrong when they came together to discuss the role of Gentiles in the Church, since that would be “networking” which Jesus didn’t establish. LOL. Very entertaining made up history, as usual.
Quix, my friend, it is only because you have, through the Reformers, inherited a terribly stunted, aliturgical form of Christianity that you cannot see any difference in the modes of worship between God and Mary.
THE highest form of Catholic worship...not beads, not feasts, not flowers, not personal prayers...is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The sacrifice of the Mass is NEVER EVER EVER offered to Mary. It is always offered to God and God alone.
That is an *immense* gulf of distinction.
So there can’t be Christians in Egypt because that’s where the People of Israel were enslaved by the Egyptians. To say that there is absolutely zero thought involved in that statement would be an understatement. I missed the part of the Bible where Jesus said that Christians wouldn’t think or write or live in Egypt. Geesh, more invented history. You are something.
Oh really??? Do you guys baptize babies as well???
And, one would have thought that since Jesus was Jewish, He taught in Jewish synagogues, he was to be King of the Jews (had they not killed him), that his language would have been Hebrew...
Interesting. I never realized the connection.
Shows what you know. It’s generally accepted that while Hebrew would have been read/spoken in the Temple and the Synagogue, Aramaic was the day to day language of the area. You can ignore that though, since it would get in the way of your argument.
You mean Christ Himself prayed and read Scriptures *in a dead liturgical language* that was not the vernacular?
I am shocked and appalled. ;)
Bad example to prove your point. You prove mine. You guys are so far off the reservation, you can't see the plain truth. Independent churches gives you the model you find in Protestantism... which is no cohesion and no common understanding of Christ and His mission.
Why do you think the Epistles were written? Do you think Peter, Paul, James and the rest sought uniformity in the Church? The answer is obvious to anyone who will see it.
Even now, within the Catholic Church, a diocese can be led astray by their Bishop. Rome reproves them but it doesn't usurp them... as has been done throughout history. The Pope is Primary among equals... a Bishop with peers... but with a special calling, purpose, and grace.
Well put.
And, nothing Biblically valid would be lost in giving all that up while a lot would be gained.
GOD WOULD GET MORE GLORY. He tends to reward that.
Thx. Haven’t been able to come up with a better shorthand description of
MY EXPERIENCE of such ecclesiastical bodies and the serf’s responses to them.
The RC church merely has the oldest, most !!!!TRADITION!!!! BOUND, most ‘doctrines of men polluted’ etc. etc. etc.
The same probalems to greater or lesser degree are inherent in any human religious organization or congregation of sufficient size and age.
HaHa...Let's see here...God tells his chosen people twice to get out of Egypt and go back to the promised land...And ultimately they did...But yet you want us to believe that God then set up his base for His church, unbiblical veneration of Jesus' mother, building and kneeling to statues, baptism without repenting to Jesus, and on and on and on, down there in the unGodly land of Egypt...
And then your popes and folks like Origen insist that unless we join your Egyptian church, we are not saved...We're not Christians...
Oh yeah...Sure bud...You convinced me...
Good point.
However, don’t twist my words.
I have taken pains from my earliest comments on such to note that all groups . . . denomiations and even congregations of sufficient size and age have similar problems.
I do, however, still contend that the age of the RC edifice has compounded such problems enormously.
1. It’s a common human tendency to refer to the most famous, substantial, highest ranking relationship. Can’t get higher as a mother than the mother of Jesus.
2. John the Beloved was likely a much more loving and responsible fellow to look after Jesus’ Mother than her own other sons were.
Interesting.
However, one can take a lot of texts of Mariology and remove Mary’s name . . .
and they are indistinguishable from
texts about worshipping THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN PAGAN GODDESS.
That would at least gravely disturb me were I an RC.
As a Protie, I find it outrageous.
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As one RC said hereon:
faulty Mariology = faulty Christology
solving out the common elements =
Mary = Christ
I think that says it rather clearly.
There’s a lot of shucking and jiving and rationalizing but that rare bit of candor says it all.
BTW, I’ve often been maligned etc. for “telling RC’s what they believe” rather than listening to their telling us what they believe.
I’ll just note that a psychologist is used to all kinds of people asserting all kinds of things. If he accepted everything said at face value ONLY, he wouldn’t be able to help a lot of people.
I think that’s a grossly distorted STRAW DOG.
None of the Protie congregations I’ve ever attended even briefly has any kind of . . .
schstick . . . aura . . . edifice of adoration and custom built up around namesakes of churches etc. which elevate them above the common man.
Most folks in such congregations couldn’t care less who the church was named after and probably never think of him nor know much about him at all.
By comparison, all kinds of RC “saints” have pages of proper magicsterical/ecclesiastical STUFF to go by related to each saint—who the saint is patron to/for etc. etc. etc.
Such is AT LEAST on the slippery sloap to idolatry.
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