It was sad to read the public comments of the Episcopal Bishop of Washington denying the importance, or need for the Bodily Resurrection of Jesus from the dead, going so far as to imply this teaching was “outlandish. ” More on that in a moment, but first some background.Read the rest here.
Some time ago I brought a former Episcopalian into the Catholic Church who, after the Rite of Reception gave a great sigh of relief and said, “I know the Catholic Church is not without problems, but at least I know the Bishops actually hold the Christian faith. It is such a relief to be in the harbor of truth.”
I remember at the time wondering with him if that wasn’t a bit of an exaggeration of how bad things were in the Episcopalian denomination (this was about 1990). But he showed me a scrapbook of article after article of dozens of Episcopal “Bishops” denying quite publicly the divinity of Christ, the Virgin birth, the miracles of Jesus, that there was any inherent conflict between Christianity and Unitarianism, etc., not to mention a plethora aberrant moral stances.
Most notable among them, but not at all alone, is now retired Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong who still freely roams the halls of Episcopal parishes and openly calling the Nicene Creed “a radical distortion of the Gospel of John” and declaring that Jesus Christ did not die to redeem humanity from its sins, even going so far to say that we are not sinners at all [*], in outright contradiction to Scripture (e.g. 1 John 1:10) and, frankly, common sense.
The scrapbook was quite thick with painful articles of Episcopal bishops and clergy saying and doing the most incredible things, outright denying basic dogmas. Indeed, when a Christian leader publicly denies the divinity of Christ, or the Trinity, of the redemptive power of Jesus’ death he/she is no longer a Christian at all.
HT: A blog reader.
Keeping a scrapbook is an interesting idea. I'm presently stuck in that "place" as I don't seem to be able to open up my spouse to a discussion about why I want to leave and join the Orthodox Church - please pray for us.
ReplyDeleteI will pray, Nikolaus. Please pray for me also. God is merciful and all sufficient. We can be certain of that as it has been revealed in Jesus Christ our Lord.
ReplyDeleteNickolaus, I've known several couples where the husband was initially interested and had a reluctant wife. At some odd point, the wife suddenly was much more interested than the husband and things became very different. It *might* be your situation. God bless you both!
ReplyDeleteI second bob's comment above. I've spoken to many people about how many couples I've known in which the husband searched out Orthodoxy for many months to years before his wife became interested. OTOH, in most of those cases (including me and my wife) once the wife was ready, she quickly made up her mind and was READY, pulling her dithering husband behind her...
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