Claim: General Convention proved its lack of orthodoxy by defeating a resolution that declared an “unchanging commitment to Jesus Christ as the Son of God, the only name by which any person may be saved” and “the solemn responsibility placed upon us to share Christ with all persons when we hear His words, ‘I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No-one comes to the Father except through me.’”
Fact: The discussion about this resolution pointed out that the church had already committed to these concepts when it approved the Book of Common Prayer and Catechism, and, more importantly, raised objections to another section of the resolution that insisted on a specific (substitutionary) interpretation of the Atonement, noting that it was not in the Anglican tradition to insist on a single interpretation of basic doctrines. (See http://gc2006.org/legislation/vi...type=ORIGINAL.)
Claim: That Presiding Bishop-elect, Katharine Jefferts Schori, introduced radical feminist theology by referring to “Mother Jesus” in her homily at General Convention.
Fact: The image of “Mother Jesus” was used widely among patristic and Medieval theologians and Christian mystics including: Julian of Norwich, Adam of Perseigne, Aelred, Albert the Great, Anselm, Aquinas, Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux, Bonaventure, Bridget of Sweden, Catherine of Siena, Clement of Alexandria, Dante, William Flete, Gilbert of Hoyland, Guerric of Igny, Guigo II the Carthusian, Helinand of Froidmont, Isaac of Stella, Margery Kempe, Peter Lombard, Ludolph of Saxony, Marguerite of Oingt, Mechtild of Magdeburg, Richard Rolle, and William of St. Thierry, as well as in the Ancren Riwle and the Stimulus Amoris. These church heavyweights got their inspiration from the Bible, which itself uses such imagery. See, for example, Deuteronomy 32:18; Isaiah 46:3–4; Hosea 13:8; and Mathew 23:37.
And haven't you noticed that Ratzinger has been calling for a smaller church, and that the Catholic Church is shrinking in Latin America and the Catholic heartlands of Europe -- largely as a result of the turn-back on Vatican II?
Like the Kantian philosophy, "the Church has clean hands -- but it doesn't have hands". The vibrant and honest debates of Anglicanism put our silenced, paralyzed church to shame.
Ms Allen, in the unquoted part of her text, says this: "A number of liberal Episcopal websites are devoted these days to dissing Peter Akinola, outspoken primate of the Anglican diocese of Nigeria, who, like the vast majority of the world's 77 million Anglicans reported by the Anglican Communion, believes that "homosexual practice" is "incompatible with Scripture" (those words are from the communion's 1998 resolution at the Lambeth conference of bishops). Akinola might have the numbers on his side, but he is now the Voldemort — no, make that the Karl Rove — of the U.S. Episcopal world."
In fact, Akinola goes far beyond Lambeth's negative strictures in supporting a law that criminalizes any group openly supportive of gays (some say he is the instigator of the law, directed at an organization of his own church, whose leader he brazenly smeared -- namely CAN, Changing Attitudes Nigeria). If Ms Allen is referring to Fr Jake's or the Thinking Anglicans websites, it is false that they are devoted to Akinola-bashing -- they are far too Christian for that. Nor is it only liberals who are petrified at Akinola's behavior -- Bishop Jensen, the other leader of the Global South, has expressed misgivings; and Canterbury, in its infinite patience, is clearly very unhappy with him as well. Ms Allen shows a frank disregard for human rights here.
I fail to see how one can be a loyal American and a monarchist.
_I fail to see how one can be a loyal American and a monarchist._
That's rich, coming from a priest who sees no problem with being simultaneosly a loyal Catholic and a practicing homosexual. Anyway, why should an American care what the political opinions of an Irish priest living in Japan are?
Whoa, look at this man jump to the defense of his favorite denomination! We see where your heart is, "Spirit."
Helinand of Froidmont uses imagery of "Mother Jesus"??? Really? Where? You are so enamored of this thing aren't you -- this New Agey use of the patristics and medievals for goetic purposes. I mean ... your treatise on the divine foreskin a while back was simply scintillatingly twisted.
Paul VI loved the Anglican Church and so do I. Good company, again, and good taste.
Did we not have reams of comment on Bernard of Clairvaux's eloquent discourse on Christ as our mother on some other thread here? Is Bernard a Gnostic?
Jaundiced circular reasoning! Bishop Schori is a woman, therefore a gnostic, a pantheist, what you will, so when she uses the language of St Bernard, nay of the Bible, she must be using it in a gnostic, pantheist sense.
Cardinal Grocholewski's embarrassing document and its commentary by the homophobic Anatrella, SJ, went on and on about spiritual paternity, but I would say that a good priest or bishop, like Jesus, should have the capacity for spiritual maternity as well -- as indeed St Paul expresses it somewhere -- and perhaps gay priests have this to a special degree.
Calling this heresy etc. is pure ignorant bluster!
Having glanced over this blog site for some months, I have to ask Fr. O'Leary "Spirit of Vatican II" why he continually, in almost every thread, gives half-a-dozen or more responses in a row, without letting anyone else get a word in edgewise.
Don't you believe in moderation when it comes to words, Father? Your constant talking strikes me as rude.
The contributors to this website are drifting in an ever weirder direction -- coming close to an outright rejection of Vatican II and now to a denunciation of democracy as lacking moral basis. Soon you will be sounding like this: http://www.opusdeialert.com/foot...m/ footnotes.htm
If you want to dump Vatican II you will have to dump Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI as well -- do not forget that these were among the foremost architects of Vatican II.
Mike, the floor is yours!
Fr. O'Leary,
I'm just requesting clarification, as I'm not as widely read as you are on this subject. (I am in earnest; I'm not trying to be smart.)
Do the authors you cite refer to Jesus specifically as "Mother," or is it a different way of talking about God in general, or is it a replacement for "Father?" I am aware that these kinds of substitutions have taken place in writers like Julian of Norwich, but do they really refer to Jesus specifically in this way?
If the answer is yes, my next question would be about the implications of this with respect to the Incarnation.
Ekkehard, I am no expert on such matters, I assure you; my riposte above comes from an Anglican source. I can only quote St Bernard's remarks: "Do not let the roughness of our life frighten your tender years. If you feel the stings of temptation . . . suck not so much the wounds as THE BREASTS OF THE CRUCIFIED. HE WILL BE YOUR MOTHER, and you will be his son."(Letter 322)
I think the humanity of Christ, which is given maximum perfection by the medievals, is also made all-encompassing, so that he can be to use many, many things.
Paul VI loved the Anglican Church and so do I. Good company, again, and good taste.
No doubt. But your Irish ancestors would have vomit to hear you say this. Wasn't it Cardinal Heenan who helped British (or at least English) Catholics secure an indult Tridentine Mass so that they would not have to endure the Novus Ordo in Britain, which in some ways is even less Catholic than the Anglical liturgy, which their forefathers were drawn and quartered for refusing to attend? Vomit? They would spit upon you!
It is significant that the only debate among the faithful that Phil has found to discuss is a debate among Anglicans. Why is this? Because Roman Catholics are not debating at all. They are not allowed to debate. And does this mean that they have serenely internalized and energetically enacted the Orthodox Teaching that the Vatican has copperfastened and preaches day in day out at them? No one knows, because no one has checked. I suspect that the Catholic faithful go their own way merrily, unlike those over-serious Protestants who take their religion so seriously...
There has been a love fest for years between Anglicans and New Agers, which can be witnessed at any retreat on the subject of 'Celtic Spiritiuality,' 'Women Mystics,' 'Jung and the Inner Feminine Spirit,' and so forth. Here you can see what happens when this all goes to seed.
" Paul VI loved the Anglican Church and so do I. Good company, again, and good taste... " No doubt. But your Irish ancestors would have vomit to hear you say this.
-- Oh, so I am a "West Briton", as the planters of bombs in London pubs (with American financial support) like to say? And Irish Anglicans are not real Irish, as the ethnic cleansers of the Free State propagandized? And Ecumenism has to be held at arm's length in case it might sully some zealously preserved vengeful identity?
"Wasn't it Cardinal Heenan who helped British (or at least English) Catholics secure an indult Tridentine Mass so that they would not have to endure the Novus Ordo in Britain, which in some ways is even less Catholic than the Anglical liturgy, which their forefathers were drawn and quartered for refusing to attend? Vomit? They would spit upon you!"
Clearly you define "Catholic" in a radically sectarian way. Also, your history is quite doubtful. Can you give a single instance of someone being drawn and quartered for refusing to attend the Anglican church? In any case, by the same argument your own Protestant ancestors must be vomiting and spitting when they see your ultramontanism, and reminding you of Roman persecution of religious non-conformism, which was far more ferocious than anything the Protestants or the Anglicans ever managed.
" There has been a love fest for years between Anglicans and New Agers, which can be witnessed at any retreat on the subject of 'Celtic Spiritiuality,' 'Women Mystics,' 'Jung and the Inner Feminine Spirit,' and so forth. Here you can see what happens when this all goes to seed."
I was not aware that this was a particularly Anglican thing. I was at an Eckhart conference in Oxford a few years ago, of this type, and the attendance was mostly Roman Catholic (though Rowan Williams is one of their sponsors). Your view of female priests and bishops is bilious and jaundiced. As to the liturgy, you yourself admit that the Anglican liturgy has a Catholic dignity that our own currently lacks. That is why I say we must learn from them. Sorry, Waugh and Heenan, but there is no going back to the Latin. We must learn to use the vernacular artistically and contemplatively. The non-Roman churches have a five-century head start on us there. One of the horrors of the liturgy is the use of really bad, sloppy, soulless Roman Catholic translations of the Bible. Here again the non-Roman churches are streets ahead -- the RSV and NEB eclipse the paltry stutterings of the Jerusalem Bible. (The French Bible de Jerusalem in its various incarnations has dignity, however, while the Traduction Oecumenique is a bit wooden.)
Women Mystics are all the rage in Catholic circles -- you should be happy that "Protestants" are at last discovering the blessings of this ultra-Catholic specialty. When I was a pre-Vatican II schoolboy I heard no end of women mystics and visionaries -- Teresa of Avila, Therese aka The Little Flower, St Margaret Mary, St Clare, Jeanne de Chantal, countless others. Maybe it is just English and German women mystics you don't like?
Spirit of Vatican II you are a nutcase. Dr., why even bother??
It is remarkable that where mainline Protestantism has decided to chase of the zeitgeist, this has invariably led to the emptying of its houses of worship.
Then again, when you keep telling people that all that old crap doesn't matter, they will have the tendency to take you at your word.
A greater sin than the goofy (and deliberately provacative) mother Jesus quip is Bishop Schori's embrace of that hapless egomaniac and apostate Spong, and having him come in to train her clergy.
Talk about Amateur Night...
'One of the horrors of the liturgy is the use of really bad, sloppy, soulless Roman Catholic translations of the Bible.'
One and perhaps the least of the horrors ... and apparently the only horror that "Spirit" is willing to rage against.
Such horrors as removing the tabernacle from the sanctuary, using the sanctuary as a trippy new age dance space (a'la Cardinal Mahoney's California dreamin' liturgy), replacing sacred music with sappy folk guitar, hand-grabbing during the Our Father, etc., these things the "Spirit of Vatican II" approves as most fitting expressions of the "social dimension" of the Mass.
"Pastor" O'Leary:
This doesn't have to do with this combox explicitly, but why is it that you continually impugn the opinions of the faithful who post herein when all the while, that is what your "spirit" imbues, the participation of the same? Furthermore, you make a strikingly heretical comment, “I suspect that the Catholic faithful go their own way merrily, unlike those over-serious Protestants who take their religion so seriously...” I would like to focus on the phrase, “who take their religion so seriously…” are you not a Roman Catholic priest? Are you not bound by sacred law (as well as Canon Law) to uphold the faith? How can you make such an anti-religious comment? John Paul II posed a question that I would like to have you answer, “Ask yoursel[f], do I believe these words of Jesus in the Gospel?” If you do, I suggest you get with the Catholic program and stop acting like a heretic. If you do not, I see laicization in your future. With all due respect to your Reverence, Pope St. Felix III said, "Not to oppose error is to approve it; and not to defend truth is to suppress it; and indeed to neglect to confound evil men, when we can do it, is no less a sin than to encourage them." God be with you all!
"I suspect that the Catholic faithful go their own way merrily, unlike those over-serious Protestants who take their religion so seriously..."
I suspect that Fr. Joe might be speaking ironically here, in the sense that the majority of the Catholic faithful do tend to think that evangelical Protestants take their religion too seriously. And that is true! Far too many Catholics take their faith for granted, and look askance at evangelicals who always want to talk about JESUS. I say more power to those Jesus-freak evangelicals. I count myself among their number, except that I dearly wish that they would come across the Tiber and re-discover the Lord Jesus in the Eucharist -- and fall in love with him all over again. As for our fellow Catholics who think that their religion should be taken in "moderation", who are not awestruck and overwhelmed with joy when they receive the Lord Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, I say: take a clue from those heretics down the street at the Bible Church. At least they understand the admonition of St. Paul: "Grace be with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with love undying." (Eph 6:24)
Sorry, Waugh and Heenan, but there is no going back to the Latin.
Many Catholics have never left it. The question is whether the leaving of it has been an advance. Whether Anglican liturgy is more dignified than the Novus Ordo is a moot point, perhaps, in the face of the more daunting question which is whether we have not, in the well-intended name of reform, traded a far superior Mass for a pathetic caricature of one.
"Spirit of Vatican II" wrote:
"And haven't you noticed that Ratzinger has been calling for a smaller church, and that the Catholic Church is shrinking in Latin America and the Catholic heartlands of Europe -- largely as a result of the turn-back on Vatican II?"
Before the Council, I seem to recall many of these places being called nominally Catholic by those living in countries where we showed up for Sunday Mass. And I seem to recall that the virtual collapse of Catholicism in Quebec was largely before the Council concluded. If that's the case, then your attribuing reduced participation to more recent reconsiderations of the approach to implementation of the Council is mistaken.
And wrote:
"The vibrant and honest debates of Anglicanism put our silenced, paralyzed church to shame."
Meaning the recent ECUSA meeting? If vibrant, in this paragraph, is related to growth, from your previous paragraph, then the fact that the Catholic Church in the U.S. is growing, even if only nominally, and the ECUSA shrinking indicates your assessment is mistaken.
Catholicism may or may not have been on the wane in Quebec and elsewhere either before or during the council.
The more interesting question is, did the council's activity, and the liturgical and sacramental vivisections which followed it, do anything to bind the wound? Or did it merely make it worse?
Re: Fr O'Leary's point: " Can you give a single instance of someone being drawn and quartered for refusing to attend the Anglican church?" You and PP are using terminology differently. No one, priest or lay, was executed ON THE GROUNDS THAT they refused to attend Anglican services; in that sense, Fr O'L is right (though thousands were fined, often impoverished, imprisoned, had their children taken away and so on). However, many priests and laymen/women on trial for saying Mass, hearing Mass, sheltering priests, etc, were offered their lives on condition that they attended Anglican services. Given that fact (which I will happily substantiate with names and dates, did I not believe that Fr O'Leary knows them as well as I), PP is also right in his claim.
I hope that Fr O'L is not being deliberaturely obtuse here.
POPE PIUS IX "THE SCOURGE OF LIBERALISM".
On the 18th of June, 1871, responding to a deputation of French Catholics Pius IX spoke thus:
"Atheism in legislation, indifference in matters of religion and the pernicious maxims which go under the name of Liberal Catholicism are the true causes of the destruction of the States; they have been the ruin of France. Believe me: the evil I denounce is more terrible than the Revolution, more terrible even than The Commune. I have always condemned Liberal Catholicism and I will condemn it again forty times over if it be necessary."
Akalyte
What is referred to is actually classical liberalism which not actually the same as Liberal = leftwing as it is in the United States. Most people outside the US don’t use the word in this way. Americans call classical liberals libertarians because of the hijack of the term liberal.
You see an ongoing concern about classical liberalism from the Catholic Church in some of BXVI hits on freedom being not “true freedom” etc.
Yes indeed the Catholic Church has never liked classical liberalism she said much the same thing about the American Revolution as well and suspended judgement on the American experiment which she looked at with some alarm. I think the evidence is in: America is a success – indeed it is the majority funder of the Vatican both formally and in individual donations.
Look to some of the encyclicals around the 1900’s which in response to rising tide of socialism in intellectual circles come off as very leftwing – a Catholic communitarism was offered which was very socialistic – first duty of employers was employees (not profit etc). Contrast this with some of JPII’s encyclicals dealing with economic issues which move further towards classical liberalism and a much better understanding of economics and wealth generation.
Consider also the Catholic Church’s desire to see the expansion of the freedom of religion globally and as a result she quietly moves towards the ‘de-establishment’(leglislative control of religion) of Catholicism in many nations in order that she may push for this freedom in other closed societies. Without a shadow of doubt the freedom of religion is a classical liberal touchstone.
Often the truth of these matters is much more complex.
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