Decline in the Church continues

 

Pope Francis takes advice from the Archbishop of Canterbury                                   Source: Twitter

       

OK. I get it. Theology and tradition are now thought irrelevant.

Women are allowed to become deacons. Then you bend to secular claims of discrimination and misogyny and allow female deacons to be ordained priests.

People get used to seeing women at the altar so you have to agree that it is unfair if women priests are not allowed to be bishops.

So obvious. Why didn't Jesus Christ think of this?

Women Religious, Women Deacons Q&A: What about ordained women religious?

Postscript [24.01.2021]

Bishop Schneider shows why instituting women as lectors, acolytes is a huge problem

Dreams to reality

Rev. Mary Glasspool (right)  the second openly gay bishop elected in the US Episcopal Church. (AP)

"ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE (Reuters) -  Pope Francis said on Tuesday more study was needed on the role of women deacons in the early Christian Church, which eventually could affect decisions on the role of women today.

"Francis and his predecessors have ruled out allowing women to become priests. But advocates of women priests say a ruling that women in the early Church were ordained ministers might eventually make it easier for a future pope to study the possibility of women priests."

The movement for the ordination of women has a clear track record. Claim victimhood, gain support of secularists, substitute equality for theology, foot in the door, deacon, priest, bishop, LGBT rights, gay church, exclusion of orthodox Anglicans, decline and collapse. Queering the Church continues unabated.

From Another screw in the Anglican coffin (2011): "The slow death of the Anglican church looks set to continue. While the role of bishops and priests becomes ever further divorced from traditional religious reality congregations continue to haemorrhage."

The writing on the wall has been clear for some time.

Postscript [09.05.2019]

On the plane again
"Catholics would do well to pay greater attention to the programme which resulted in the ordination of women in the Church of England." - ignatius his conclave

I don't care says Archbishop

Archbishop Justin Welby                                    Source: The Spectator

It is a sad time for orthodox Anglicans when archbishops don't care, adopting a mix and match approach to faith, driving Western Anglicanism into the mud as it becomes bogged down by secularism. And it is not just Canterbury. The Church in Wales and the Scottish Episcopal Church are in the same rut.

The US Episcopal Church (TEC) was allowed to become terminally infected by the spirit of the age before if wafted over the pond to infect the Church of England (CofE) and beyond, welcomed by impatient liberals as if it were the Holy Spirit rather than the Zeitgeist.

Interviewed for The Spectator the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, responded to claims that "one in ten Catholic priests is a former Anglican vicar by saying, "Who cares? I don’t mind about all that. Particularly if people go to Rome, which is such a source of inspiration."

Such an inspiration that after talking since the 1970s about possible reunion the CofE ignored pleas by the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches and admitted female priests, blocking the road to unity.

Archbishops may not care but orthodox Anglicans do care. While Anglican priests cross the Tiber going to Rome, Catholic priests are travelling in the opposite direction. The numbers are likely to increase after Pope Francis told gay priests to "be celibate or leave the priesthood", thus further diluting Anglican orthodoxy as the CofE embraces homosexuality and same sex marriage.

Rev Dr Tina Beardsley: "Positive development"

 Next on the Anglican agenda is the CofE's welcoming of transgender people with calls for an Affirmation of Baptism service adapted to allow transgender Christians to celebrate their new sexual identity.

A step too far? The Church of England is facing opposition from more than 2,000 of its own clergy and office holders over new guidance on celebrating transgender ‘transitions’.

It comes as no surprise that according to an analysis of CofE churchgoing in 2017 less than 50 people attend Sunday services at a typical English parish church and just one in ten babies is baptised into the Church of England.

Archbishop Welby accepts that the numbers are "challenging". From the Spectator article, "vocations are rising but weekday and Sunday services decreasing and the number of marriages and baptisms declining sharply. Perhaps the most startling statistic is that just 2 per cent of under-25s regard themselves as Anglican. ‘If you’re over 70, you’re eight times more likely to go to church than if you’re under 30,’ he says. ‘And I think that’s a huge challenge.’ I ask if he thinks rising secularism is also a challenge: that young people who go to church are seen not just as weird but as potential bigots and homophobes. It’s not a story he recognises."

No doubt the archbishop will welcome liberal minded Roman Catholic priests into his un-orthodox Anglican Church leaving orthodox Anglicans even more isolated. As conviction Anglicans they are unlikely to become Roman Catholics. Many have already left. Those who refuse to contemplate leaving 'their church' will be further compromised by sustaining an organisation that no longer shares the faith of the vast majority of Christians in the Anglican Communion

For those who are tempted to become Roman Catholics the writing is on the wall in the headline Papal advisers on female deacons hopeful for positive answer.

Rome has only to look to Canterbury for the dangers in that. As deacons in the Anglican Church justice demanded that they be allowed to become priests, then bishops, then cohabiting priests, then married priests, then married bishops. They call it progress but it is not Biblical.

Another bite of the apple?

Pope Francis has repeatedly pushed for greater roles for women in the church, but maintains that
 priesthood is for men only.  (ANDREW MEDICHINI / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO)

There have been a number of reports recently about the ordination of women in the Roman Catholic Church. From The Star, for example: "The Vatican’s commission of Latin American church leaders is demanding greater decision-making opportunities for women in the church and proposing that Pope Francis call a special meeting of the world’s bishops to discuss women."

"The Pontifical Commission for Latin America said after its recent plenary that the church needs a radical “change of mentality” in the way it views and treats half of humanity. It was published in Thursday’s Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano.

"The commission members — 22 Latin American cardinals and bishops, plus 15 women who joined the panel for the meeting — said it was both possible and “urgent” to increase opportunities for women at the parish, diocesan and Vatican level.

" 'This opening isn’t a concession to cultural or media pressure, but the result of a realization that the lack of women in decision-making roles is a defect, an ecclesiological gap and the negative effect of a clerical and macho conception,' the communique said.

"They warned that if the church doesn’t fix the problem soon, women will simply leave." Full text here.

Also, from Life Site: "Recent comments from Viennese prelate Christoph Cdl. Schönborn, apparently supportive of ordaining women, are opposed, I suggest, to at least three fundamental ecclesiological values but they have occasioned, as far I have seen, no correction whatsoever from Church leadership, and thus seem to be a chilling illustration of the erosion of order in the Church." Read the response here.

What many Anglicans liked about the Anglican Church was that it was both catholic and reformed, retaining the creeds and threefold ministry of the deacon, priest and bishop. But further reforming has plagued the Anglican Communion. In adapting to local circumstances, provinces in the US and here in the UK have allowed political activism to over-rule scripture and tradition.

In Wales a political fix saw the first woman bishop appointed to the diocese of St Davids followed by a second appointment by the bench of bishops to the diocese of Llandaff. The consequence has been a shift to gender politics. Sexuality has replaced spirituality while gender equality is the new mission.

None of this need have happened. Generally, the sort of women who agitated to become deacons saw the move as a stepping-stone. After their objective was achieved it was claimed to be unfair that women deacons were not allowed to be priests. After they were admitted to the priesthood it was the stained glass ceiling. Allowing them to be elected as bishops was now the "only logical step" said arch-schemer Barry Morgan. The stained glass was shattered along with Anglicanism. The results are clear for all to see. 

To claim that 'if the church doesn’t fix the problem soon, women will simply leave' is absurd. Many women have left the Anglican Church because of the changes, not because they are sexist but because the church has become secularised.

Spot the Difference?

YES YES NO

‘Woman and the Church’ (WATCH) constantly claim discrimination but that deception is part of their feminist propaganda campaign.

Contrary to what supporters would have us believe, opponents of the ordination of women are not misogynists. Many devout women and men are against the innovation but that is not to discriminate. To non-believers it may appear to be the case but that is of the the supporters own making. Having inched their way through the process to allow women first to become Deacons then Priests, they now claim that is discriminatory not to allow women to progress to become bishops (as though they have an automatic right to that office). The process has shown it was a grave error to have given in to what can now be seen as deceitful claims from the outset.

Many women and men are dismayed that a woman would want a job such as an armed policewoman or soldier that may entail taking life rather than giving it but if that is their choice, so be it. The same for business and politics but religion is neither, though it has been treated as such by WATCH and is regarded as such by the vast majority of people who are non-believers, even atheists. That is the clever thing about the WATCH campaign; they push their secular views on people who have only secular values and understanding. These people judge accordingly and join in the cry of ‘discrimination!’ We have now reached the stage where genuine believers are likely to be pushed out of their cradle church, the Church of England, if WATCH have anything to do with it.

While the Archbishops of Canterbury and York make a belated attempt to make provision for those who, in conscience, cannot accept the ordination of women, Sally Barnes of WATCH claims that is a way to “institutionalise this kind of discrimination” (see previous post). Balderdash! They just don’t get it. This is faith, not politics or business. In common with the wider Christian church the faithful few still believe that the traditional pattern of ministry Christ established through his Apostles is not something to be changed by committee merely to suit the times or the whims of converts to Anglicanism.

These women and their male supporters have demonstrated by their behaviour that the innovation is wrong. Those who did not support it were promised an honoured place in the church as loyal Anglicans but every move since has been to deny that and squeeze them out with constant accusations of discrimination. There is discrimination. It is against ‘traditionalists’ who refuse to bend the knee to liberalism in the church. They want ‘traditionalists’ out. Synod should see these people for what they are, deceivers unworthy of the office they claim is their right and vote accordingly.

Postscript

So the vote has been taken. The advice of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and the wishes of the Houses of Bishops and Laity have been rejected by the House of Clergy. It's a woman's world in the church, a sort of Mothers Union with ritual.