Journeys of a Catholic Poster Girl

Apparently FireFox is hating me and not allowing me to cut and paste things onto my blogs! So I’m just going to have to tell you fun things I’ve read:

–The WaPo had an article on my cousin, Archbishop Wuerl, and his first year “in office.” If I can ever get this to cut, I’ll post it here, but you can probably find it on the site’s archieves.

–Fr.Z had a great list of five things to do when the M.P. comes out; check out the link of the sidebar to see it. And it IS coming, we swear! Really!

–Note that the MP just allows priests to celebrate the old Latin Mass without getting a bishop’s approval. The old  Mass has always been allowed to be said but you had to get the OK. (if I am wrong about this let me know!)
–In  local news…preparations are underway for my pastor’s Last Mass with us on July 8th at noon. The choir will be singing, and since I will have my CI activated by then, I will join them! YAY! And we are singing some of our best stuff, so it you’re an SPX parishioner be sure to come on out!

–Parish festival prep already! I signed up to work the food booth. Doesn’t everyone love the parish festival?

–Started Evelyn Waugh’s (a man, yes, not a woman, thank you) quintessential Catholic novel, Brideshead Revisted. Very, very good thus far.

–Finished Suffering of Love and Honey from the Rock. Both extremely good.

–Oh, and the ECUSA has a bishop who is both Episcopalian and MUSLIM. You can read about this on Rod’s blog (Crunchy Cons) on the sidebar.  When headlines from The Onion are coming true, that’s got to be a “sign of the apocalypse” (S.I.)

From January ‘06 NRO:

During its January 9-12 meeting in Des Moines, the executive council of the Episcopal Church voted to clarify and affirm its membership in the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC).

RCRC, formerly known as the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights, was founded in 1973 with funding from the Playboy Foundation (and later from the Ford Foundation), to organize religious supporters of legalized abortion. RCRC is absolutist in its rejection of any restriction on abortion, defending the legality of partial-birth abortion, and opposing parental-notification laws, as well as other sensible restrictions.Agencies of the Episcopal Church, United Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the United Church of Christ, Reform Judaism, and Conservative Judaism all belong to RCRC. So too does “Catholics for a Free Choice.” RCRC was founded in the wake of Roe v. Wade to counteract Roman Catholic opposition to the Supreme Court ruling.The author of the Episcopal motion, representing the Diocese of Washington, D.C., noted that the executive council’s vote simply reiterated the denomination’s stance on abortion, which he said has been an “unequivocal opposition to any federal or state legislation that would interfere with a woman’s right to make a decision on terminating a pregnancy.” This was reported in the Living Church magazine .

RCRC boasts that its ecclesial alliance for abortion rights is both wide and “mainstream.” It describes abortion rights as integral to “religious liberty.” RCRC head Carlton Veazey notes on its website that RCRC founders thought their struggle would last only a decade. “In fact the struggle is far from over,” he regrets. “It has changed and intensified, and the stakes are growing.”

Veazey refers to a “sense of doom” as the U.S. Senate moved toward confirmation of Samuel Alito. RCRC had already called the Senate Judiciary Committee’s approval of Alito a “dangerous setback for individual privacy and women’s reproductive health.” According to Veazey, in a column for Beliefnet.com, Alito has “shown an appalling lack of understanding for life’s complexities and the circumstances that some women must endure.”

Feelings of angst at RCRC are quite deep. Veazey, who is ordained in the National Baptist Convention, writes:

After four years of unprecedented access, far-right Christian fundamentalists are deeply embedded in government structures. The nation is not yet a theocracy, if mullah-run Iran or Taliban-controlled Afghanistan is the standard. But we are on the brink of a de facto Christian state, and we should be very frightened for the future of religious freedom and diversity.

Despite the claims of the “mainstream” on the issue of abortion, RCRC’s members are in fact an increasingly isolated minority among America’s churches. The vast majority of America’s over 160 million church members belong to Roman Catholic or evangelical churches that disapprove of abortion. Denominations totaling less than 20 million belong to RCRC. And the membership of those denominations is, in fact, deeply divided and ambivalent on the question of abortion.

These RCRC churches, in their official abortion statements squishily express discomfort with abortion while still defending its unrestricted legality. “We do not wish to see laws enacted that would attach criminal penalties to those who seek abortions or to appropriately qualified and licenses persons who perform abortions in medically approved facilities,” the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) declares.

The United Methodist Church unequivocally asserts, “We support the legal to abortion as established by the 1973 Supreme Court decisions.”

Episcopalians warn that “legislation concerning abortions will not address the root of the problem” and insist that any legislation must “see that individual conscience is respected.”

The United Church of Christ “upholds the right of men and women to have access to adequately funded family-planning services and to safe, legal abortions as one option among others.”

The end result of all their statements is that the official lobby offices of these denominations, on their own and acting through RCRC, oppose all proposed restrictions on abortion. In April 2004, they all endorsed and participated in the “March for Women’s Lives” in Washington, D.C., organized by the National Organization for Women and Planned Parenthood.

In all their unctuous demonstration-marching and statement-making, the pro-abortion-rights church community has not considered the effect of their advocacy on their own demographic health.

Conservatives have often chided the mainline Protestant denominations for their dramatic membership losses, faulting the controversial liberal political advocacy of their churches’ officials. No doubt there is truth in this. Most mainline Protestants are still conservative leaning, despite the chronic leftism of their church hierarchies. Many react in frustration by leaving.

But the demographic implosion may also have other, deeper contributing factors. One out of every six Americans belonged to a mainline denomination 40 years ago. Today it is one out of every 15. Writing for The American Journal of Sociology several years ago, Catholic priest (and romance potboiler author) Andrew Greeley, with two other sociologists, asserted that mainline Protestant decline is actually created by decades of declining birthrates in comparison to those for conservative Protestants and Roman Catholics.

Though Greeley et al. did not address it directly, mainline Protestant hierarchs long championed legalized abortion before Roe v. Wade, culminating in their founding of RCRC in 1973. Undoubtedly this had some impact on abortion rates among their own flocks. The lower birth rate among mainline Protestants can probably be explained, at least partly, by some level of increased moral ease with and resort to abortion (the “Roe Effect“).

So perhaps unrestricted abortion is fueling the decline of the very same churches who have most championed it. The irony is a sad one.

— Mark Tooley directs the United Methodist committee (UMAction) of the Institute on Religion and Democracy.

Wow. I knew that a lot of mainstream Protestant churches supported abortion, but this is overwhelming to me. How can you say you are a Christian church if you support abortion? What happened to “Thou Shalt Not Kill?” Or “whatever you do to the least of these you do to me?”

This is why I cannot stand the so-called “Christian Left.” To me, until they are pro-life, they have no moral ground to stand on. Calling for a higher minimum wage and saving the Earth is great, but maybe we should save ourselves first. Any group that condones the ceaseless, indeed, the on-demand killing of innocents, has forfeited the moral high ground.

I kid you not. From the corner:

Chutzpah   [Mark Krikorian]
The head of the Episcopal Church, Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, is complaining about Nigerian Anglican bishops coming to Virginia this weekend to formally install the head of the conservative breakaway denomination in this country. Here’s what she said: “Such action would violate the ancient customs of the church.”

I kid you not. The female head of a church with a practicing homosexual bishop planning to “marry” his lover, a church that could accept into seminary the adulterous homosexual governor of New Jersey, a church that embraces splitting open babies’ skulls and vacuuming their brains out, is complaining about violating ancient customs? Wow.

All from Amy: she says it better than I can…

We had an extended and thoughtful discussion of the Communiqué from the Primates Meeting in Dar es Salaam, which represents the beginning of a longer process of response that will continue through the coming months.

It is our strong desire to remain within the fellowship of the Anglican Communion. The Primates’ Communiqué, however, raises significant concerns. First among these is what is arguably an unprecedented shift of power toward the Primates, represented, in part, by the proposed “Pastoral Scheme.” This proposed plan calls for the appointment of a Primatial Vicar and Pastoral Council for The Episcopal Church whose membership would consist of “up to five members; two nominated by the Primates, two by the Presiding Bishop, and a Primate of a Province of the Anglican Communion nominated by the Archbishop of Canterbury to chair the Council.” We believe this proposal contravenes the Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal Church. Moreover, because it is proposed that this scheme take immediate effect, we were compelled, at this March meeting, to request that the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church decline to participate in this aspect of the Communiqué’s requests. Nonetheless, we pledge to continue working to find a way of meeting the pastoral concerns raised by the Primates that are compatible with our own Church’s polity and canons. We should note that our recommendation to Executive Council not to participate in the Pastoral Scheme, though not unanimously endorsed by this House, came at the conclusion of long and gracious conversation.

Finally, we believe that the leaders of the Church must always hold basic human rights and the dignity of every human being as fundamental concerns in our witness for Christ. We were, therefore, concerned that while the Communiqué focuses on homosexuality, it ignores the pressing issues of violence against gay and lesbian people around the world, and the criminalization of homosexual behavior in many nations of the world.

The Theology Committee of the House of Bishops was charged with the responsibility of developing a teaching guide for consideration of both the Primates’ Communiqué and the proposed draft Covenant for the Anglican Communion. We anticipate this guide will be available by late May for use by bishops and dioceses in preparation for the September meeting of the House of Bishops.

The bishops unanimously affirmed a Mind of the House Resolution inviting the Archbishop of Canterbury and the members of the Primates’ Standing Committee to meet, at a time of their choosing, with the House of Bishops.

As we prepare to celebrate the Paschal Mystery we call for your prayers for and commitment to God’s mission of making all things new.

For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake. (2 Corinthians 4:5)

I’m going to need one of our Episcopalian/Anglican - heck even RC friends to sum this up succinctly, but what happened is that the Primates meeting in Dar es Salaam asked the Episcopal Church to think about these things until September, and try to figure out a way how they were really, really, really going to structure their pastoral life and polity to be in line with the Windsor Report. This would include working out, in charity, the issues of episcopal oversight and property for those parishes (and dioceses) wishing to not be aligned with the TEC. OR ECUSA.

As you can see, here the HOB respectfully declines.

Captain Yips:

Dar Es Salaam Communique, RIP
Born February 19, 2007.  Died March 20, 2007, aged but 29 days.  It was never robust, poor thing.

Much, much more over at Midwest Conservative Journal (including a great dialogue between church signs) and Titus One Nine. As per usual.

A very helpful summary at Christianity Today:

But instead of acting on those requests, the bishops passed three resolutions. In the resolutions, the bishops called the primates’ plan “injurious to the Episcopal Church.” They requested an “urgent” meeting with Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams to discuss their concerns. (Jefferts Schori admitted at a press briefing, “There is some belief in this house that other parts of the Communion do not understand us very well.”)

The bishops said the plan violated their founding principles following their “liberation from colonialism and the beginning of a life independent of the Church of England.”

“For the first time since our separation from the papacy in the 16th century, [the primates' plan] replaces local governance of the church by its own people with the decisions of a distant and unaccountable group of prelates,” they said.

The bishops in their lengthy third resolution noted:

Primates set “simply impossible” conditions for the Episcopal Church in order to end boundary violations in which conservative overseas primates provide oversight to certain American parishes.

Primates were “distressingly silent” on the subject of violence against gays and lesbians worldwide.

The Episcopal Church’s emphasis on “a gospel that welcomes diversity of thought. … If that means that others reject us and communion with us, as some have already done, we must with great regret and sorrow accept their decision.”

Terry Mattingly has a post on a NYTimes article on the financial aspects of this in terms of funding flowing from the TEC to the Global South. I would, though, point you to one of the comments on that post, left by George Conger, who asserts that the claims of the article are inflated, and that the national TEC office doesn’t really contribute much at all to, say, the Anglican Church in Nigeria.