Lutheran (EL
* as of August 19, AD 2009, a liberal protestant SECT, not part of the holy, catholic and apostolic CHURCH.
Posted on 09/27/2009 7:27:21 PM PDT by lightman
Now I'll go back and fix the formatting on the first one.
* as of August 19, AD 2009, a liberal protestant SECT, not part of the holy, catholic and apostolic CHURCH.
Ping.
We need a Martin Luther to reform the Lutherans. Lucifer has entered the church.
The spirit of Luther came to the Minneapolis assembly in the guise of the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Minneapolis, who admonished those gathered that they must base their decisions on Scripture!
History has come full circle!
Save the Lutherans!
Thank You Lightman. You just helped me find a new congregation. I knew I was headed out the door of my old one when the pastor cited Stephen Colbert in one
of the sermons months ago.
The congregants may not be the enemy, but even those that don't agree with the changes from the convention but remain in the ELCA and stay silent are 'working for the enemy'. Deal graciously yes, but admonish them to return to repentance and forgiveness. Some members are in fact working for the enemy outright even though they don't discern it. Others have their politics above faith in God and are knowingly working this destruction but fearing not God, don't care.
These ELCA “house organ” news releases are not a compete waste. My former ELCA congregation has an ELCA news feed, and so anyone who sees the feed on their website is forced to confront the collapse of the ELCA.
They must now confront this latest blow to their “Churchwide expression”:
I still have friends in my former congregation. The congregation is VERY complacent, planning major building renovations and taking in “partnered” “gays” as new members. They have “blessed” “gay unions” as well.
And they are using the bogus “Lutheran” (ELCA) Study Bible, which the ELCA rushed out to beat the LCMS. I also wonder if that study Bible was done in imitation of the excellent Orthodox Study Bible, and to try to prevent ELCA members from ordering the OSB. The OSB, by the way, was NOT rushed out—its publication missed several deadlines by years, and it was long-awaited.
Now they have to confront the growing signs of the ELCA’s collapse (which I predicted before I left). They will be having a congregational retreat next weekend, so maybe they will discuss the collapse. I hope that they don’t just attribute it to “anti-gay bigotry”, which would be a major cop-out.
May the All-Holy and Life-Creating Spirit illumine my friends, and their entire parish!!!!
.....even those that don’t agree with the changes from the convention but remain in the ELCA and stay silent are ‘working for the enemy’.....
The Church Fathers said the same thing.
Why don’t they all just convert to Orthodoxy and be done with it?
There are significant cultural and liturgical hurdles involved in converting to orthodoxy. The latter are perhaps fairly easily addressed if congregations and their clergy were to convert to Western Rite Antiochian.
However, the real problem for the LutheranCORE folks and their parallel movements has been quite crudely put as “what about the girls?” There are some truly outstanding female clergy in the leadership of this organization: read Pr. Erma Wolf’s closing sermon to the gathering at Fishers.
There are many fine MALE clergy who have vowed not to go anywhere without their Ordained sisters. Unfortuntely, that stance rules out , Orthodoxy, Anglican Use Catholic, LC-MS—three of the best options out there, in that order.
I agree!!!!
As (Antiochian Orthodox) Father Morris’ essay points out, there is not one church body that instituted women’s ordination that did not see demands for feminist/anti-Trinitarian liturgical language, ordination of gaysbians, and “blessing” of same-sex “unions”/”marriages”. We can call it Morris’ Law, which goes together with Neuhaus’ Law.
There are a few women former Lutheran pastors who have converted to Orthodoxy, thus giving up their ordination.
Origen and Tertullian were stellar theologians but they failed to accept core Christian beliefs and strayed into heresy.
These "ordained" women "clergy" you mention may also be fine theologians, but they are not "there yet" so to say, since they obviously do not understand, or worse yet, understand but refuse to accept their role in the Church.
The Church of Christ, the catholic and apostolic Church, did a lot for recognizing women and elevating womanhood and motherhood to a level unseen in the ancient world, but clergy was not their role in the Church.
Arguing with that or rejecting it is like arguing with God that it's not fair that women get pregnant and not men also. God does not mandate fairness, just compassion. These feminists and their allies ignore their own scripture and create their own justice.
But that does not explain why the rest of the Lutherans don't convert to Orthodoxy and be done with it.
“Western Rite Antiochian.”
You know Father, that’s a real non starter. One of the best aspects of Orthodoxy is that it is what it is, glory and warts together. We traditionally don’t go to some non-Orthodox land and pretend we are the same as the local traditional “denomination” but with an Eastern accent. Take us as we are, as counter-cultural as we are. That’s what Christianity is, Father counter-cultural, especially here in America.
“There are some truly outstanding female clergy in the leadership of this organization: read Pr. Erma Wolf’s closing sermon to the gathering at Fishers.”
Among the very holiest people I know are the nuns, including my cousin, at the monastery outside my maternal village down in Greece. The majority of them, probably 80%, were professional women in the world. Their holiness humbles me...and Father, they have neither the desire nor the compulsion to be something they can never, properly, be, priests. They are something better, true spiritual Olympians!
At one of the first STS Chapter Retreats--one which +Michael McDaniel of blessed memory attended as teaching theologian--was also attended by a Roman priest who commented that one of the crises of our mutual ministries is that Lutherans have not embraced the gift of celibacy and Rome has not embraced the gift of a married presbytery. That observation seems quite germain to your comment.
Which church?
There was only one Christian church at the time, in both East and West—the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, the Orthodox Church!
The Holy Fathers said not to be in communion with heretics, and that anyone who was was an enemy of God.
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