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.
Are we back to such diatribes or did we never leave them?
I’ve probably railed more at Protie idiocies than you have.
With many writers of history with particular political and relisious biases well evident in their writing.
You don't have to tell the Church that many writers of history had differing political or religious biases!
AND THAT IS SIMPLY IMPOSSIBLE WITH THE H.S. PROTECTING IT.
= = =
Sounds like many Pentecostals I know who declare that they have The Mind of Christ and therefore whatever they hear must be from Holy Spirit and therefore free of error.
In NEITHER CASE do I find it true.
The RC edifice has had PLENTY of error and evil at the highest levels throughout it’s history. The above assertion is simply historically utterly false.
I wouldn't either.
We're all sinners, so how do you go about differentiating which of us are so far gone as to make us disposable?
The intent.
I've never seen anyone on the boards attack Mary, though there are plenty who attack everything that looks like elevating her to anything resembling creating her a goddess
Again, no one is twisting their arms to subscribe to anything regarding Mariology. If they don't like it, they can move on. Spewing venom at something they personally find outside of their realm of beliefs and practices is un-Christian to say the least.
There are some things where the only productive thing to do is agree to disagree & move on
Precisely.
The treatment of Mary is just one of those problem areas
Man-made problem. The treatment of Mary in the Apostolic Church is deep reverence and gratitude. A saint of saints. Some people have a stronger devotion to her then others, just as some favor one parent over another; in this case saints. But some people can't stand the fact that people do love Mary, and venerate her in a very demonstrative manner.
Like I said, in some case (very few, given the whole congregation) it appears idolatrous. But the Church would never teach that. Yet, what is the priest to do when someone does it? Throw that person out of the church? Judge him? Say "Look I noticed..."? I don't think so.
I'm sure Satan is quite happy that this issue festers between us, keeps us divided & starts us attacking one another.
Of course!
Failure to venerate Mary was not among Luther's sins...
Failure to venerate Mary is not a sin. It's sad, but it's not a sin.
The church of my youth was ELCA
I found most Lutherans and Anglicans (of the conservative kind) close and dear brothers and sisters in Christ and I lament their separation from us.
Impending death has a real knack for prodding one
Walk in your faith; that's more important. But we get dirty, and sacraments and prayers are like spiritual hygiene.
We can pray wherever and whenever, but we can only get sacraments in the church, our spiritual hospital.
Amen!
Amen.
You may well have; I won’t dispute the point. :)
FYI, do you know about the Collyridians? They were an early heretical group who sought to deify Mary, and even sacrificed to her, it seems.
http://www.ewtn.com/library/HOMELIBR/COLLYRID.TXT
The Catholic Church anathematizes the Collyridians as heretics.
Frankly, the very title is offensive. I would say, some people never leave their diatribes. My message to all is to walk in Chirst and let Him be the Judge. Let Catholics be Catholics and Jews be Jews, without constantly accusing and judging them!
Worthy exhortation for all of us.
Thx.
No, I am not familiar with Collyridians . . . except for the
Durangatangs in Durango, Colorado 45 miles north of here.
me: when christ gives the keys to peter and builds the church on him, renaming in Rock, he said the very gates of hell would not prevail against the church....
if you disagree with christ when he says that, that is your issue, not mine, i agree with christ, and so far, the H.S. has protected his one, holy, catholic and apostolic church from heresy within, and without, against enemies within and without, from luther’s deformation and further fracturing of christ’s body into thousands of competing denominations all preaching something different....
the church built on st peter stands unvanquished.....
because the holy spirit protects her....and that is christ’s words, not any pentacostal, not any mere man, like the founders of the deformation churches...
= = = =
1. Gates are DEFENSIVE. I don’t claim to know what Christ meant by that but it’s fairly clear He did not mean that any organization of flawed humans would be perfect. Pretending otherwise is a gross mangling of the English language.
2. No, it does not appear that you agree with Christ at all because you mangled His words outrageously out of context and outrageously all out of whack with English word meanings and grammar.
3. The RC edifice has had many outrageous things over the centuries done in the Name of Christ and in the name of Peter. Heresy would be a mild label for many of them.
4. We still reject that Christ built His Universal Body on Peter, at all.
Unvanquished?
I think not.
I believe the anointing left Rome a long time ago. Just as it has left a lot of Pent/Char congregations a long time ago—just not AS long a time ago.
AND WHO ARE YOU TO SAY WHAT CHRIST MEANS?
I’m rather surprised you didn’t see that
that statement cuts both ways. LOL.
Your extremely biased diatribes are getting weary-some.
I don’t wish to go over the orgies of some Pope(s); The bloody political wars etc. The claim has been made that such hideocies were not heresies—which is a mystifying claim, to me. Heresies vividly acted out, it seems to me.
Anyway—enjoy your construction on reality while you may.
I ENJOY CHRIST’S CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY....
re THE rc EDIFICE . . . NOT by a WIDE MARGIN.
Wow, so we are apostate demons? I hope you don't really believe this.
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