Bishop steals clothes

"Be joyful and keep the faith!"                                                                                                                                                                       Source: Credo Cymru

                             

Credo Cymru (Forward in Faith Wales) provides a voice for traditional believers in the Church in Wales:

"Founded in July 1993 following the creation of a Bill by the Governing Body of the Church in Wales to allow women to become ordained as priests in that Anglican Province, Credo Cymru aims to uphold: the faith handed down from Christ by the apostles : the faith of Saint David and all the saints of Wales : the faith of the historic mainstream of Anglican Christians." 

                      Their motto:

                              "Be joyful and keep the faith!"

which comes from last words traditionally spoken by Saint David to his monks: "Be joyful and keep the faith. Do those little things you have seen and heard from me."

It was astonishing, therefore, to hear the bishop of St Davids open her sermon in advance of St David's Day with those words when she preached on 'The last words of St David' in a service broadcast live by BBC Radio 4 from St Davids Cathedral on Sunday last.

St David was a 6th century Welsh bishop who lived a monastic life far removed from the life of the first woman bishop in the Church in Wales.

The Monastic Rule of David prescribed that monks had to pull the plough themselves without draught animals, must drink only water and eat only bread with salt and herbs, and spend the evenings in prayer, reading and writing. No personal possessions were allowed: even to say "my book" was considered an offence. He lived a simple life and practised asceticism, teaching his followers to refrain from eating meat and drinking beer (Wiki).

It is possible, though improbable, that Joanna had no idea that she was stealing the clothes of Credo Cymru when she launched into her sermon: "Lords, brothers and sisters, rejoice and keep your faith and the Creed and do the little things you have heard and seen of me."

In ignorance of Credo Cymru's position or not, there is no excuse for masquerading as a guardian of the traditional faith of the Church when she and similar thinkers have diluted it to accommodate secular moods and ideas.

Anyone in Wales who, against all the odds, has struggled to keep the faith spoken of by St David has been ignored or weeded out of the Church in Wales along with orthodox Anglicans in other provinces that have unilaterally decided that after 2,000 years they know better than the Apostles and their successors, casting aside scripture and tradition in favour of self advancement and self satisfaction.

That bishop Joanna should choose the last words of St David to enhance her own position as one who follows in the footsteps of St David is beyond farce. It is a slap in the face for all faithful Anglicans who have rejected the revisionism engaged in by the 129th Bishop of St Davids and the rest of the bench of bishops.

It is an insult to those who have kept the faith after the bench of bishops deprived them of the sacramental assurance and pastoral oversight promised when the Church in Wales unilaterally ordained women in defiance of the wishes of the majority of Christians, including most of the 85 million members of the worldwide Anglican Communion .

By comparison the tiny Church in Wales has 44,000 members on its Electoral Roll, only 27,000 of whom regularly attend Sunday worship yet their bishops continue to claim that the Church in Wales is part of the Apostolic Church because the Nicene Creed forms the basis of Anglicanism, ignoring the fact that they have departed from the agreed common beliefs expressed in the Creed.

 Listening to Joanna's sermon with no knowledge of her background, one would have thought she was preaching to the faithful at a Credo Cymru service:

"Keep your faith, keep the faith. The faith Dewi Sant tells the community to hold onto is not a faith of their own imagining. It is the faith of the Christian community, taught first by those who had met the risen Jesus.

A faith then handed down on through the early Christian centuries and summed up in the Nicene Creed. The faith statement put together by the Church in the fourth century.

The Creed expresses the core of the Christian faith and is held in common by countless millions of Christians today."

The problem for Joanna Penberthy is that the faith held in common by countless millions of Christians today is not the diluted faith of the Church in Wales, the Church of England and other provinces which have adopted a faith dominated by feminism and sexual freedom under a banner of love which is more akin to early paganism and its priestesses.

The Christian faith as expressed in the Nicene Creed has been adapted unilaterally to allow women bishops: "The Historic Episcopate, locally adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the Unity of His Church."

The faith expounded by the bishop of St Davids would not be recognised by St David. To imply otherwise is an insult to those who strive faithfully to "do those little things you have seen and heard" from St David.

A breath of fresh air

PIC FROM CATERS NEWS – A lesbian couple have had a DIY baby after
 using a syringe full of their gay best friends sperm to get pregnant. 

At last, some sense from bishops. Not from the Church of England and certainly not from the completely secularised bishops of the Church in Wales but from bishops in France.

From a report in Crux:  The French bishops said "proposals to extend fertility treatments to lesbian couples and single women would harm society by removing fatherhood from the lives of children.

"In an eight-page statement published Sept. 20, the bishops predicted that liberalization of the law also would lead to the social acceptance of surrogacy, the rise of eugenics and the notion that children were commodities to please adults.

"Could we collectively accept that man is considered a mere supplier of genetic materials and that human procreation is thus akin to manufacturing? it asked."

Male influence is on the wane. Primary education is dominated by female teachers. Your GP is increasingly likely to be female. Since the ordination of women the parish priest is likely to be female with an increasing number of female bishops, many of whom enthusiastically wave the rainbow flag.

The victims are fatherless children who are purposefully denied the wholeness of human creation.

Anglican bishops take note. Do not be conformed to this self-centred view of the world.

Wimmin not listening

ReutersAntje Jackelen, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden, at Uppsala Cathedral                                                                                    Source: Christian Today

The Church of Sweden is opting for gender-neutral language when referring to God, with designators like 'he' and 'Lord' being omitted....'Theologically, for instance, we know that God is beyond our gender determinations, God is not human,' said Archbishop Antje Jackelén, who leads the Church of Sweden. She said the change had been in conversation for decades, as early as 1986. Full report here.

In response Christer Pahlmblad, associate theology professor at Sweden's Lund University, criticsed the move. He told Denmark's Kristeligt Dagblad newspaper that the change undermined 'the doctrine of the Trinity and the community with the other Christian churches'.

Antje Jackelén is not the first female archbishop to ignore the wider church and please herself. The  heretical mentor of the former Archbishop of Wales, Barry Morgan, liked to put her own spin on the Gospel. Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori used 'violent images' for God. She described the Son of God as a Hell's Angel "Gang Leader" and "Party Animal".

Less extreme but also obsessed by secularist feminism in the church, Australia's first female Anglican archbishop, Kay Goldsworthy, would like to see more women in church leadership roles, a constant theme of women bishops in England and Wales.

More women than men are going forward for training for ordination for the first time in more than 15 years according to a recent report, strengthening the view that church ministry is going the same way as primary school teaching where there are few male role models, and primary medicine with Health Centres often staffed by part-time female GPs, a problem which is also affecting hospital care with many female consultants working part-time.

But still the clamour for more women continues regardless of the consequences. As the Guardian headline put it, Amid fight for equality, new bishop of London unlikely to be a woman. The feminist pressure group Women and the Church puts it succinctly as they move towards their true goal after the Church of England was beaten into submission and accepted the ordination of women priests and bishops: Just getting started - working actively for gender justice, equality and inclusion in the Church of England - as if there were no justice, equality or inclusion. Ironically that is just what these feminists are creating leading some to speculate that the Church of England is about to split over theological liberalism.

After her appointment, the second woman bishop in Wales boasted in a BBC interview that Wales was the province in the Anglican Communion with the highest percentage of female bishops before going on with the familiar feminist theme about gender parity, equating equality with sameness.

As if Wales were an example. Their own theological college has closed. Out of the ashes, St Padarn’s Institute, the 'training arm of the Church in Wales' is inviting  all licensed minsters to share what makes them [my emphasis Ed.] flourish and what they struggle with in a series of ‘listening days’ taking place across Wales.

Recent history shows that wimmin issues, not listening, has become the driving force in the Church in Wales. Consultations that have not worked out as the bench of bishop desired were simply ignored. Traditional Anglicanism has been virtually extinguished.

Those churches that are not on the redundant list should not have long to wait as congregations become increasingly elderly. Similarly in England, "Women clergy become the death of the Church of England" as attendance continues to slide.

All are equal in death!

Postscript [27.11.2017]

"Reforming" Church of Sweden looks to Islam:

"It would be foolish to assume that Jackelén's ecclesiastical revolution will end with this victory. On the contrary, there is every reason to believe that her success at Thursday's synod will inspire her to redouble her efforts to transform the Church of Sweden into a more Islam-friendly institution – one that ultimately, at the very least, puts Muhammed on an equal plane with Jesus Christ. No, we cannot know what is really in this woman's heart; but one thing we can be sure of is that when Islam does eventually take over Sweden, her remarkable history of appeasement will not save either her or her Church from a brutal reckoning." Full report here.