Posted on 10/27/2009 1:07:10 PM PDT by NYer
.- A Pennsylvania Episcopal church which joyously greeted the announcement of a provision to assist Anglicans who wish to become Catholic could be among the first to take advantage of the church structure put forward by Pope Benedict XVI.
The Church of the Good Shepherd, an Episcopalian parish in the Philadelphia Maine Line suburbs, is an “Anglo-Catholic” parish in the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania. According to the Rosemont Journal, its liturgy is celebrated in the “high church” style reminiscent of traditional Catholic churches: with incense, elaborate vestments, and a choir that may sing in Latin.
The parish has objected to recent changes in the denomination, such as its allowing women and homosexuals to become priests and bishops.
Bishop David L. Moyer, who leads the Church of the Good Shepherd, said that for two years the parish had been praying daily for the Pope’s action towards Anglicans.
“When I heard the news I was speechless, then the joy came and the tears,” he told the Rosemont Journal.
Following a Mass devoted to church unity, Rev. Aaron R. Bayles, the assistant pastor, reported that the majority of parishioners would be “on board” with the development.
He said he himself was exultant when he heard the news because he had always hoped for the unification of Anglican, Eastern Orthodox and Catholic Christianity. The new provision for Anglicans may be “a step in that direction,” he commented.
For 17 years the parish has refused to allow the local Episcopal bishop to come for a pastoral visit or confirmation. It also stopped paying its annual financial assessment to the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania. The diocese sued to take over the Church of the Good Shepherd’s building in 2009. It is a replica of a 14th-century English country parish that was built in 1894. The property is estimated at $7 million in value.
Bishop Moyer was made a bishop in the Traditional Anglican Communion and was one of its 38 bishops to sign an October 2007 petition asking Pope Benedict XVI for an arrangement that would unite Anglicans with the Catholic Church.
He explained that he had been defrocked for disobedience to Episcopal Bishop Charles E. Bennison, but he remained in place.
The Church of the Good Shepherd never formally left the Episcopal Church, in part because it did not want to be evicted from its property. Bishop Moyer, who lives in a rectory on the church’s property, said he hoped to resolve the “legal quagmire” over the property before the church decides to join the Catholic Church.
While the Anglican provision will allow married Anglican priests, it would not allow married bishops. Bishop Moyers is the father of three and is waiting to hear what his status could be under the proposal.
He told the Rosemont Journal that some of his parish’s 400 members would choose to leave rather than become Catholic. Some are former Catholics who may not want to go back, while others remain loyal to the Episcopal Church.
They only bash us out of love.
Ping for later
It’s a Christian thing. You wouldn’t understand.
Ever read Galations?
Paul was full of joy when that church followed a false Gospel.
Why? According to your own theology, if we're damned, we're damned because God made us that way. Likewise, if we're saved, we're saved because God made us that way.
And either way, nothing we (or you) do can "change" that decree in any way, it can only provide evidence of that decree to the world.
Why are you "concerned" about the eternal, ineffable, immutable decree of a sovereign God, pronounced before the foundation of the universe? Clay, meet potter.
Or are you really a closet Arminian? Is your theology so dreadful and impossible that even you don't really believe it?
***Why? According to your own theology, if we’re damned, we’re damned because God made us that way. Likewise, if we’re saved, we’re saved because God made us that way.***
Simples.
Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God.
God tells us to preach the truth so that some may be saved.
Do you rely on Christ’s 100% perfect sacrifice, or do you keep some portion of the work for yourself, even if that work is a period spent in purgatory?
lol. Yep. There is something in fallen man that loves the rituals, the adornments, the hoops they jump through in order to (vainly) prove their own good works can save them - completely missing the point of the New Testament.
But now the righteousness of GOD without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; Even the righteousness of GOD which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus." -- Romans 3:20-26 "Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.
Therein is salvation, as Paul teaches us, though some deny it and claim for themselves the glory of God alone.
If Episcopalians head to Rome, then they were most likely never on the path of Christ to begin with.
"They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us." -- 1 John 2:19
It does seem ironic that some Episcopalians are crossing the Tiber because they think they're getting away from homosexuality.
ROTFLOL. I guess you have your answer.
"As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the LORD; My spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed's seed, saith the LORD, from henceforth and for ever." -- Isaiah 59:21
And some, not so much.
Yes, when you see drowning people floundering in a river, toss them an anchor, that’s the ticket
Dr. Eckleburg's been throwing anchors at folks safely standing on the shore for years. Drowning's got nothing to do with it.
You're trashing Italian tourism now?
No, but it doesn’t surprise me you’d think so, seeing as how Rome and its magisterium and its papacy are viewed as “infallible,” according to...the magisterium and the papacy.
I told you, I’ve never been to Rome. I’ve never been further east than Roissy Charles de Gaulle.
That is "mind-reading," according to the rules of FR religion forum. You are telling me what I think.
Learn the rules. They make our conversations on FR a lot clearer.
lol. And then tell the drowning man he can pull himself from the riptide by his own effort.
Hear me, O LORD; for thy lovingkindness is good: turn unto me according to the multitude of thy tender mercies... I will praise the name of God with a song, and will magnify him with thanksgiving." -- Psalm 69:15-16,30"Let not the waterflood overflow me, neither let the deep swallow me up, and let not the pit shut her mouth upon me.
Coincidentally, just this morning I was reading Hebrews 6. The only "anchor" we require is the promise of God's grace through faith in Christ, "which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast."
There is a difference between restating what someone has said, and putting words into someone else's mouth. If you'd prefer, I could have written...
"it doesn’t surprise me you'd think write, state and believe so (that I was 'trasing Italian tourism') seeing as how Rome and its magisterium and its papacy are viewed as “infallible,” according to...the magisterium and the papacy.
They can always take the route I did and become Baptists.
It may not be a "high" service, but there will be a lot Scripture.
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