Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Oh NO! The SKY IS FALLING! THE SKY IS FALLING.

David As_hat-ermVirtue, is exclaiming -

THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION: The End Is the Beginning

No. I'm not linking. You know where to find him.

Some highlights:
In a single breath, they [GAFCON]rejected any overture by the Archbishop of Canterbury that would require them to compromise on the faith once for all delivered to the saints. They will have no truck with sexual behavior outside of heterosexual marriage between a man and a woman.

The finality in their communiqué must have sent chills around Lambeth Palace and across town at the Anglican Communion Office run by Canon Kenneth Kearon and his liberal staff.

The only question left is whether the Archbishop of Canterbury wants to join the GAFCON primates or form his own Global South equivalent by co-opting Archbishops like John Chew (Singapore) and the CAPA (African) bishops. There is no middle ground. The high moral ground is now firmly in the hands of the Global South, so are the numbers.

GAFCON might have had only 303 bishops in Jerusalem, but they represent more than 75% of the Anglican Communion's church going worshippers. The 600 plus bishops at Lambeth represented less than 25% of the communion.

It is ironic that the largest bloc of bishops in attendance at Lambeth was The Episcopal Church USA with 127 bishops. The second largest contingent came from the Church of England, which registered 103 (39 diocesan and 64 suffragan/assistant bishops) people. The Episcopal Church has less than 800,000 church-going Episcopalians, the C of E a little over 1 million, the equivalent of two medium-sized Nigerian Anglican dioceses. The Lambeth conference had a budget shortfall. There was no budget shortfall for GAFCON attendees.


He says:
Within the next two months, two dioceses - Ft. Worth and Quincy - will formally move to end their relationship with the Episcopal Church. When they do, it will signal the end of Anglo-Catholicism in The Episcopal Church. While there will be isolated parishes here and there in TEC that remain staunchly Anglo-Catholic, such as the one parish in the Diocese of Bethlehem, St. Stephen's, Whitehall and the dozen or so parishes in the Diocese of Louisiana, for example, Anglo-Catholicism as a body of belief and dioceses will be gone forever. Anglo-Catholic priests have been drummed out of dioceses like Long Island, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania while Evangelical priests are not welcome in liberal and revisionist dioceses.


Re Duncan:
The Diocese of Pittsburgh with its Evangelical catholic bishop Robert Duncan poses the greatest single threat to Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori. She, like Salome, would like to hand him his head on a platter after the next meeting of the House of Bishops. Whether she is successful, remains to be seen.

Duncan's diocese is very conflicted but a clear majority want to leave. It is set to vote to leave TEC, but the liberals will fight tooth and nail to retain the properties if he does. There is an assortment of conservatives who do not want to leave The Episcopal Church, which makes the going tough for this bishop.
Awww. Bet +Katharine is scared. And +Poor Bushybrowed Bobby!

But the following is really my favorite little tidbit!
English religion writers of secular newspapers, (with some exceptions) and neo-conservative bishops like Tom Wright (Durham) just don't get it. They think American liberals and revisionists are reasonable people who can be dealt with reasonably. They also think that what goes on, on this side of the Atlantic, won't affect them. It is so naive as to be laughable.

The recent "marriage" of two priests in a London parish by a leading English cleric using a bastardized version of the Book of Common Prayer marriage service moved way beyond anything that has ever happened in The Episcopal Church. (Rites have still not been officially approved in TEC). Furthermore, if Jeffrey John, the Dean of St. Albans should become the next Bishop of Bangor, that Welsh province (on English soil) he will only be a used condom behind Gene Robinson, the homogenital Bishop of New Hampshire.

It is naïve beyond words to believe that anything will change the direction of Western pansexual Anglicanism at this late stage in the ecclesiastical game.

The Lambeth Conference was such a huge failure that even some revisionist bishops now recognize it. Washington Bishop John Chane opined in an editorial on the conference describing it as "the turning point that wasn't. This Lambeth Conference could have been a positive turning point for the Anglican Communion, but instead the powers that be chose to seek a middle way that is neither 'the middle' nor 'the way.'

The Anglican Communion must face into the hard truth that when we scapegoat and victimize one group of people in the church, all of us become victims of our own prejudice and sinfulness." Activist homosexualists and lesbians like Louie Crew and Susan Russell said Dr. Williams betrayed the cause for sexual liberation and therefore betrayed the New World Anglican order being born from the theological loins of John Shelby Spong. Orthodox Anglicans would agree with the liberals and revisionists at this point, so GAFCON is born. There is no way Rowan Williams can win. Chane is right; there is no middle way anymore, if there ever was one. The Elizabethan Settlement is dead. A new post-colonial Anglican Communion is emerging in the Communion even as The Episcopal Church is disintegrating.

Lions and Tigers and Bears....OH MY!

Feh on this hysterical asshattery.

I'm crossposting at OCICBOV... (sorry! I'm low on time..gotta do double duty!)

9 comments:

James said...

HOw do you REALLY feel?????

I have to admit that I belly-laughed my way though the post this morning. I was dying to reprint it all, but decided not to do so. I'm glad you quoted poritons.

Poor DVless -- he forgot to say, "We'll get you, my apostate, and your little church, too."

Anonymous said...

Running out of control...truly, if anyone, other than demented fundamentalists believe this stuff I'd suggest they get emotional and spiritual help fast...this is speeding well past delusional paranoia and suggests the lapping up of grandiose personality disordered cool aid...this gang of zealots must be treated...there really isn't much more that deformed puritan bigots can do before they start with the one-on-one physical attacks, this is a very dangerous lot...they've already started poaching on other peoples property...it's no longer a case for MINISTRY, it's a case for MEDICATION followed quickly by a reintroduction into living in the REAL.

Leonardo Ricardo

Malcolm+ said...

I was amused by the new math.

Up til now, the schismatics have been claiming that GAFFEPRONE represented the majority of Anglicans. Apparently that bit of creative arithmetic wasn't grandiose enough.

So now, 303 bishops (including at least 100 who are not part of the Anglican Communion) now represent 75% of Anglicans.

The initial numbers claim of a majority, though based on suspect data and statistical manipulation (ie, using claimed membership figures for Nigeria but Sunday attendance numbers for the US), was probably close to the truth. Most Anglicans are now in the Global South, and most Anglicans in the Global South are closer to David Virtue's opinion of gays than to mine.

But where does the 75% claim come from?

He's pulled it out of his ass.

He's made it up.

It's a fantasy.

Or, to put it more succinctly:

Figures lie and liars figure.

By Christmas, they'll be claiming that GAFFEPRONE represented 90% of the world's Anglicans.

But do note, they claim the numbers game doesn't matter when anyone points out that the numerical decline in conservative Quincy is significantly faster than the rest of the Episcopal Church. Likewise if anyone points to the abysmal membership figures from the English Chaplaincy in South America that pretends to be the Province of the Southern Cone.

Unknown said...

Ok, at first I was amazed at the level of venom and paranoia. Then I got to, um, a certain section. Now I need to take a shower . . . and exfoliate . . . and use a chemical peel . . . and apply disinfectant.

James said...

Im so evil! I love that I sent eveone over there to read the ranting. And I love the "I need to shower after I lauged". Bruhahahahahahhaaha.

episcopalifem said...

Yeah..you know..I hardly ever read there, on general principal...BUT..this was too effin' funny to leave by the wayside.

Talk about a drama mamam. Cripes.

Anonymous said...

I had to chuckle at the doomsaying about Anglo-Catholics vanishing from the church. On a visit back to Boston 2 years ago, I went to High Mass at the Church of the Advent, the bastion of Anglo-Catholicism on Beacon Hill. Two of the ushers (both men) were quite clearly a couple, and there were plenty of same-sex couples in the congregation, which numbered 300 or so. The other Anglo-Catholic parish in Boston, St. John's Bowdoin Street, has a reputation as a gay church.

And I am quite sure they are not alone as open and affirming Anglo-Catholic parishes (and much more faithful to the historic roots of Anglo-Catholicism and the Oxford Movement than Backward in Faith)

David said...

Kevin M.,

Forget the rest of that stuff. Naphtha and Brillo Pads, it'll get the "Virtue" right offa ya...

William Lang said...

Once upon a time I emailed Virtue. He kept calling the Presiding Bishop Mrs. Jefferts-Schori. I asked him, if he didn't want to use her correct religious title, would he please at least call her Dr., since she does have a Ph.D. Briefly, David did use that title, but soon reverted back to "Mrs."