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.
An Asherah cult without the fun parts.
Sadly, not much different from this:
'Hail Persephone': Pagans Retool the Rosary
And both of these 'new' so-called 'rosaries' are nothing like the real thing.
LOL! Spot on!
Only, our prayers are said in intercession to Mary.
Now, there's a bit of good news.
Nice swing, but you need to follow through...
:-)
ROFL! And the aroma of incense is replaced with the stench of sulphur.
Was it Ezekiel or Jeremiah that denounced the Israelites for “offering cakes to the Queen of Heaven?”
Jeremiah, after he's been drug down to Egypt with the bitter end dregs of the remnants of Judah, left after Nebuchadnezzar cleaned house. Chapter 44.
8 [19] I am Gabriel: "the angel of the Lord" is identified as Gabriel, the angel who in Daniel 9:20-25 announces the seventy weeks of years and the coming of an anointed one, a prince. By alluding to Old Testament themes in Luke 1:17, 19 such as the coming of the day of the Lord and the dawning of the messianic era, Luke is presenting his interpretation of the significance of the births of John and Jesus.
9 [20] You will be speechless and unable to talk: Zechariah's becoming mute is the sign given in response to his question in v 18. When Mary asks a similar question in Luke 1:34, unlike Zechariah who was punished for his doubt, she, in spite of her doubt, is praised and reassured(Luke 1:35-37).
10 [26-38] The announcement to Mary of the birth of Jesus is parallel to the announcement to Zechariah of the birth of John. In both the angel Gabriel appears to the parent who is troubled by the vision (Luke 1:11-12, 26-29) and then told by the angel not to fear (Luke 1:13, 30). After the announcement is made (Luke 1:14-17, 31-33) the parent objects (Luke 1:18, 34) and a sign is given to confirm the announcement (Luke 1:20, 36). The particular focus of the announcement of the birth of Jesus is on his identity as Son of David (Luke 1:32-33) and Son of God (Luke 1:32, 35).
11 [32] Son of the Most High: cf Luke 1:76 where John is described as "prophet of the Most High." "Most High" is a title for God commonly used by Luke (Luke 1:35, 76; 6:35; 8:28; Acts 7:48; 16:17).
12 [34] Mary's questioning response is a denial of sexual relations and is used by Luke to lead to the angel's declaration about the Spirit's role in the conception of this child (Luke 1:35). According to Luke, the virginal conception of Jesus takes place through the holy Spirit, the power of God, and therefore Jesus has a unique relationship to Yahweh: he is Son of God.
13 [36-37] The sign given to Mary in confirmation of the angel's announcement to her is the pregnancy of her aged relative Elizabeth. If a woman past the childbearing age could become pregnant, why, the angel implies, should there be doubt about Mary's pregnancy, for nothing will be impossible for God.
14 [43] Even before his birth, Jesus is identified in Luke as the Lord.
15 [45] Blessed are you who believed: Luke portrays Mary as a believer whose faith stands in contrast to the disbelief of Zechariah (Luke 1:20). Mary's role as believer in the infancy narrative should be seen in connection with the explicit mention of her presence among "those who believed" after the resurrection at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 1:14).
16 [46-55] Although Mary is praised for being the mother of the Lord and because of her belief, she reacts as the servant in a psalm of praise, the Magnificat. Because there is no specific connection of the canticle to the context of Mary's pregnancy and her visit to Elizabeth, the Magnificat (with the possible exception of v 48) may have been a Jewish Christian hymn that Luke found appropriate at this point in his story. Even if not composed by Luke, it fits in well with themes found elsewhere in Luke: joy and exultation in the Lord; the lowly being singled out for God's favor; the reversal of human fortunes; the fulfillment of Old Testament promises. The loose connection between the hymn and the context is further seen in the fact that a few Old Latin manuscripts identify the speaker of the hymn as Elizabeth, even though the overwhelming textual evidence makes Mary the speaker.
OMG.
I am not even Catholic, and I can smell blasphemy in this one.
Oh, I know. I wasn’t speaking about Mary, there’s a Bible passage where one of the OT prophets condemns the Israelites for worshipping false gods like the Baals, and one of the references was to women baking cakes of bread to be offered to the “Queen of Heaven,” which IIRC, was the goddess Ishtar.
They’re trying to merge Wicca and Christianity. It’s yeast working through the true bread of Christ.
}:-)4
Did you even read the post you were responding to?
Therefore the nether world enlarges its throat and opens its maw without limit; Down go their nobility and their masses, their throngs and their revelry.
Isaiah 5-14
LOL!
But seriously, one of the things about these flakes is that always, deep down inside, they want to worship themselves.
Ford Foundation and Lilly Endowment, heresy's sugar daddies.
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The whole Rosary is composed of twenty decades. Each decade is recited in honor of a mystery in Our Lord's Life and that of his Blessed Mother.
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It is customary to recite five decades at a time while meditating on one set of mysteries.
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The decades may be separated, if the entire chaplet is completed on the same day.
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Each Mystery may be meditate "bead by bead" for every Hail Mary of the decade.
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I have read it and I know it quite well. As an Orthodox Christian I also know about the importance of the Blessed Theotokos in the plan of salvation and of devotion to her.
There is nothing there or otherwise in accepted, orthodox (small “o”)Christian tradition about a “goddess.”
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