[StJacques]

The Episcopalians are suffering for the fact that they have allowed the teachings of their church to be updated within a framework of belief which postulates that, as human societies progress -- a term I use in the pejorative as regards moral values here -- so must religious doctrine change in kind. This approach violates one of the core underpinnings of Roman Catholicism, first expounded in truly articulate form in the writings of St. Augustine, which is that the most basic explanation for why human societies rise and fall in a cyclical pattern is that human fallibility will always lead to depravity and the breaking of God's covenant. For a society to survive and avoid this eventual decline (declension) it must hold fast to those permanent and infallible religious truths that form the basis of the foundation of the Covenant of Redemption between God and mankind. The Episcopalians have violated this precept in permitting the fallible conclusions of an ever-changing social order to infect their religious doctrine, thus placing themselves on a path in which they will eventually find themselves, as Catholics would say, outside the Covenant of Redemption. Roman Catholicism has avoided this by holding fast to those permanent and infallible religious truths which are not submissible to the changing whims of the social doctrine of the current generation.

[NYer]

This approach violates one of the core underpinnings of Roman Catholicism, first expounded in truly articulate form in the writings of St. Augustine, which is that the most basic explanation for why human societies rise and fall in a cyclical pattern is that human fallibility will always lead to depravity and the breaking of God's covenant.

Gotta love St. Augustine ... and his mother, St. Monica, who prayed for his conversion. Thanks for that post.