Gee, Kelly, parts of your revised letter sound a lot like Bishop Tobin! (not the really uncharitable parts, nor the admission of personal imbecility, but the "telling it like it is" portions.) Leads me to recall how blessed we are to have a bishop who speaks Truth and talks sense, even (or especially) in the glare of the god of political correctness.
What, no, "The following people are hereby excomunicated..." at the end? Pulled a punch, there.
I stole that, whole and entire, and put it on my blog. We have a few PonchoLadies in Milwaukee, too--and a namby-pamby statement (on the last attempted-ordination) from the spokesbabe.
Pulled a punch, there.
Nope.
Actually, like +Vlanzny's column, it's pretty clear the folks have left the Church.
What I really, really, REALLY wish though about bishops? Is that they'd fight like hell, forgive the allusion, to get these people back. That's kinda what I wanted to get across in the "alternative message."
I will be a bit more kind (just a bit) to the Zion UCC, for this reason: while it certainly violates what the Catholic Church teaches, I wouldn't necessarily say that Zion UCC has a reason to know how serious a deal this is. There is no practice of excommunication in "low" or "middle" church traditions, and even most of the Catholics I've ever met don't always know what it takes to be excommunicated (that's a good thing, I suppose, because it means it's rare). They really have no inkling of how serious a deal it is, because most Protestants are just not aware of what it means in the Catholic tradition to be (literally) officially separated from the Eucharist. For Zion UCC to allow this to happen might easily have been part of a misplaced desire for some sort of ecumenism. I don't know, I'm strictly guessing here.
But (and here ends this small act of kindness I've bestowed) surely, SURELY they knew something fishy was up when a bunch of (now ex-) Catholics wanted to hold a ceremony to "ordain" a woman at a non-Catholic church, when everyone, Catholic or not, knows that priests are male. Makes you wonder why no one at Zion UCC was suspicious.
A UCC Church? Everyone knows that the UCC church is the most liberal, relativistic denomination in mainline protestantism. The Zion UCC Church knew full well what it was allowing to happen within its walls and more than likely enjoyed doing it!
AB Vlazny is the king of wimpy, vague statements that take up lots of paper and say almost nothing. I've been in his diocese quite a while. He makes me sick, frankly, and entire chancery up there in Portland is rife with homosexuals, feminists, "progressives" and heretics.
The Latin phrase is "IN persona Christi."
Thanks, William. I always get my "ads" and "ins" mixed up!
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