Legalized Child Murder in the Netherlands & Anglican Liturgy for Euthanasia

Netherlands does the unthinkable: euthanize a young child

Anglican Church of Canada to offer special liturgy for euthanasia deaths

This is demonic. 

HT: Dr. Tighe

Anglican priests are fleeing to Catholicism

Father Matthew Topham, priest-in-charge of St Mary’s, East Hendred in Oxfordshire, is acutely conscious of the weight of Reformation history that comes with his role.

When Henry VIII broke with Rome, East Hendred was one of only a handful of places around the country where Recusant Catholics remained stubbornly loyal to the Pope, risking death by attending Mass in a secret chapel in the local big house. That chapel remains part of Fr Topham’s parish, somewhere he says Mass each week. Yet the 36-year-old Cambridge graduate is no die-hard cradle Catholic but rather a former Anglican curate who converted in 2023 and was then ordained. He is one of 491 Anglican vicars who, over the past 30 years, according to a new report, have “headed to Rome”.

Many of them are now fearful that, as it approaches its 500th anniversary, the Church of England’s days may be numbered given it is riven by division amid the appointment of Dame Sarah Mullaly as its first-ever female Archbishop of Canterbury and a row over same-sex blessings that has set conservatives and liberals at loggerheads.

Authored by Prof Stephen Bullivant of St Mary’s University in Twickenham, the report details how former Anglican clergy have accounted for more than a third of all Catholic ordinations in England and Wales since 1992, when the General Synod (the legislative assembly of the CoE) voted to ordain women.

That decision prompted an exodus of clerics who could not accept female priests. When the Vatican held out its hand to them and offered a special opt-out from its compulsory celibacy rule (if they were already married), the path was open to enable them to continue in ministry as Catholic priests...

Read the rest here.

Anglican Church in North America primate goes on leave amidst allegations

The top leader of the Anglican Church in North America — a conservative denomination that broke away from the more liberal Episcopal Church about 15 years ago — has taken a leave of absence after facing allegations of sexual and other misconduct, which he denies.

Archbishop Stephen Wood announced the leave Monday while he awaits the outcome of a church disciplinary process triggered by a formal complaint, called a presentment, of alleged misconduct against him.

The presentment has not yet been made public, but an investigative report by The Washington Post said it alleged Wood tried to kiss a former children’s ministry director at his parish in 2024, shortly before he was elected archbishop. The presentment alleged Wood made other comments and acted in ways that made her uncomfortable since 2021, and made thousands of dollars in payments to her from church funds, the Post said. The presentment also includes allegations that he bullied staffers and plagiarized sermons, the Post reported.

Wood, 62, a married father of four, has denied the allegations.

Read the rest here.

GAFCON Severs Ties with Canterbury and Liberal Churches in Major Anglican Schism

Official Statement here.

See also this.

The near total silence on this event from the mainstream press and media, including in the UK, is deafening.  

The Anglican Communion is closer than ever to formal schism

Backgruond... GAFCON & Sarah Mullally

Mexican (Catholic) bishop faces backlash for con-celebrating Eucharist with Anglican female cleric

A retired Mexican bishop has provoked widespread controversy after he celebrated the Eucharist with an Anglican female minister at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City.

On the 26 August, Bishop Emeritus Raúl Vera López of Saltillo presided at Mass in the basilica with Rev Emilie Teresa Smith, a Canadian Anglican minister, standing beside him as a concelebrant. During the liturgy, Ms Smith, wearing a stole (a liturgical vestment), joined in parts of the Eucharistic Prayer, whispered words of consecration, raised her hand in blessing and elevated the chalice containing the Precious Blood of Christ.

The Mass was recorded and published on the bishop’s own Facebook page, where it quickly gained attention. In a post accompanying the video, the bishop invited viewers to “reflect together” on the Gospel of the day, quoting the words of Christ in St Matthew’s Gospel condemning hypocrisy and spiritual blindness.

He described Ms Smith as one “who walks among us picking up the word of many people around finding solutions to the climate crisis we live in".

The event caused shock among Catholics both in Mexico and internationally, with many describing the event as sacrilegious. Critics of the bishop's actions said that the presence of a female Anglican minister at the altar during the Eucharist is a clear violation of Catholic teaching on both the ordained priesthood and intercommunion with non-Catholics.

The bishop emeritus attempted to defend his actions with a second Facebook post: he recounted how, after Mass on the following day, he had been questioned by journalists about whether canonical sanctions might follow. Bishop Vera explained that Ms Smith was a fellow co-chair of the international solidarity network SICSAL, who was passing through Coahuila on route to the COP 30 environmental summit and had accepted his invitation to take part in the Mass at the basilica.

He dismissed accusations of sacrilege, heresy and indiscipline as “common sense” misunderstandings, noting that Ms Smith had long been active in human rights and pastoral work, with experience as a parish minister and theologian.

“Not only does she work with the poor, she has a parish, has a theological background, she is a writer, she is ready to participate in a meeting of the United Nations and with God’s people around the defence of our Mother Earth,” he wrote. He also praised her homily as “excellent”.

“We are no longer in witch hunts and bonfire times,” the bishop also said in his Facebook post. “The word of our sister Emilie gives us light, life and guidance as Laudato Si’ asks for all the people of this planet.”

Read the rest here.

HT: Dr. Tighe

Alice Linsley: Changing the Church by Stealth

The shrinking Episcopal Church welcomes all. It prides itself on diversity and inclusion. In 1976 the General Convention of ECUSA affirmed homosexual behavior when it passed the “we are children of God” resolution.

In 1977, Bishop Paul Moore (NY) ordained the lesbian Ellen Marie Barrett to the priesthood. She served as Integrity's first co-president along with the late Louie Crew.

Most Episcopalians slept through these changes, many of which were launched with great stealth, as Crew admits in this statement from his paper "Changing the Church": "More 'irregular' ordinations of women took place… after our convention. In Washington at the time, on a missionary journey to our new chapters in the east, Jim Wickliff and I yielded to the counsel of friends who advised that our visibility at the ordination might put in jeopardy lesbians among all early ordinands."

However, the consecration of Gene Robinson in November 2003 stirred many to wakefulness, but by then it was too late to reverse the disastrous course of the Episcopal Church.

There is a popular saying Lex orandi, lex credendi. It means that that there is a direct relationship between the law of praying (lex orandi) and the law of believing (lex credendi). Change the prayers of a community and you can change their beliefs. Innovation can direct people's thoughts away from the received tradition. That happened when the Episcopal Church introduced its 1979 prayer book. It should have been called "A Book of Alternative Services" as was done in other Anglican Provinces that introduced experimental liturgies in the 1970s.

By comparing the ECUSA/TEC prayer book to the Book of Common Prayer 1928 one sees the degradation of orthodox theology and the exultation of TEC's social justice agenda. Even advocates of the 1979 prayer book recognized that it presents heterodox theology, what Urban T. Holmes termed a "differentiated" theology. An Episcopal priest and theologian, Holmes understood that the liturgical revisions of the 1970s drew more on Process Theology and modern philosophy than on Scripture, Tradition, and the Church Fathers. In reference to the Episcopal Church 1979 Prayer Book, he wrote, "It is evident that Episcopalians as a whole are not clear about what has happened. The renewal movement in the 1970s, apart from the liturgical renewal, often reflects a nostalgia for a classical theology which many theologians know has not been viable for almost 200 years. The 1979 Book of Common Prayer is a product of a corporate, differentiated theological mind, which is not totally congruent with many of the inherited formularies of the last few centuries. This reality must soon ‘come home to roost’ in one way or another."

Holmes added, "The church has awakened to the demise of classical theology."

Holmes admitted that the 1979 prayer book is not orthodox, and it does not align with what Anglicans have always believed and how they have always prayed.

Read the rest here.

Archbishop of York: Our Father is problematic

The archbishop of York has suggested that opening words of the Lord’s Prayer, recited by Christians all over the world for 2,000 years, may be “problematic” because of their patriarchal association.

In his opening address to a meeting of the Church of England’s ruling body, the General Synod, Stephen Cottrell dwelt on the words “Our Father”, the start of the prayer based on Matthew 6:9–13 and Luke 11:2–4 in the New Testament.

“I know the word ‘father’ is problematic for those whose experience of earthly fathers has been destructive and abusive, and for all of us who have laboured rather too much from an oppressively patriarchal grip on life,” he said.

His comment – a brief aside in a speech that focused on the need for unity – will divide members of the C of E, a body whose differences on issues of sexuality, identity and equality have been highly visible for years.

Read the rest here.

Texas Supreme Court Rules In Favor of Break-Away Episcopal Diocese

The Texas Supreme Court today issued a decision in the long-running property dispute between the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth and its former parent body.  (See prior related posting.) In 2007 and 2008, the Diocese withdrew from The Episcopal Church (TEC) and affiliated with the more conservative Anglican Province of the Southern Cone.  In Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth v. The Episcopal Church, (TX Sup. Ct., May 22, 2020), the court held:

Applying neutral principles to the undisputed facts, we hold that (1) resolution of this property dispute does not require consideration of an ecclesiastical question, (2) under the governing documents, the withdrawing faction is the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth, and (3) the trial court properly granted summary judgment in the withdrawing faction’s favor....

Explaining its holding, the court said in part:

At bottom, the disagreement centers on what effect the majority’s disassociation vote had on the Fort Worth Diocese’s identity specifically, whether the majority faction constitutes the continuation of that entity or whether the majority left as individuals and became something else. ...

In sum, TEC’s determinations as to which faction is the true diocese loyal to the church and which congregants are in good standing are ecclesiastical determinations to which the courts must defer. But applying neutral principles to the organizational documents, the question of property ownership is not entwined with or settled by those determinations. The Fort Worth Diocese’s identity depends on what its documents say. To that end, the Diocesan Constitution and Canons provided who could make amendments and under what circumstances; none of those circumstances incorporate or rely on an ecclesiastical determination by the national church; and nothing in the diocese’s or national church’s documents precluded amendments rescinding an accession to or affiliation with TEC. Applying neutral principles of law, we hold that the majority faction is the Fort Worth Diocese and parishes and missions in union with that faction hold equitable title to the disputed property under the Diocesan Trust.

The court went on to also reject TEC's claim that the Diocese's property was held in trust for TEC.

From Religion Clause.

Woo hoo! Not a lot of good news lately. 

New Archbishop of York: ‘Bible has to fit the current culture’

The incoming Archbishop of York believes biblical teaching on sexuality should come second to 21st century Western cultural beliefs.

Stephen Cottrell is currently the Bishop of Chelmsford and will take over from Dr John Sentamu next year to become the second most senior clergyman in the Church of England.

Bishop Cottrell made his comments on the Bible in 2017 as he welcomed the Archbishops of Canterbury and York’s plea for a “radical new Christian inclusion”.

 ‘Culture’

He said it would be wrong to ignore the “damage” that is done by rejecting Western society’s current view of human sexuality.

“I am not sure the church has ever before had to face the challenge of being seen as immoral by the culture in which it is set.”

Read the rest here.

Alice C. Linsley: Ten Objections to Women Priests

As a woman who served as a priest in the Episcopal Church for 16 years, I have some experience of the nature of the priesthood. In 1982, with the encouragement of my parish clergy, friends and family, it seemed the right course for my life. Over the years, I began to question the rationale for women priests. I remember feeling that I was standing in another's shoes, not appropriately mine. I wanted to explain this to my bishop, but he clearly did not want to hear it.

Galatian 3:28 has been used to justify the innovation of women priests: "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." In the fourth century, St. Epiphanius remarked that the heretical Cataphyrgians (Montanists) employed Galatians 3:28 to elevate women as "bishops and priests and they say nothing makes a difference 'For in Christ Jesus there is neither male nor female.'''

Reading Galatians 3:28 in context, it is apparent that Paul is speaking of the unity of the body of Christ. He is not promoting gender equality as it is framed today. As the Supper was intended to unite the participants to the Head, Jesus Christ, the idea of a woman presiding at the Feast would have been unthinkable.

My doubts made the priestly ministry increasingly burdensome and problematic. As a heterosexual, Bible-believing, Anglican Traditionalist, I found no affirmation in the Episcopal Church as it moved toward a radical revision of the Gospel, setting aside the Apostolic Tradition for its social justice agenda.

Eventually, I renounced orders in the Episcopal Church and left that body. This initiated a decade of reflection on the role of women in the Church and the historic priesthood. During that time, I was in conversation with three former women priests who were seeking clarity also. One entered the Roman Catholic Church and the others entered the Orthodox Church of America. I explored both traditions, but I am thoroughly Anglican and have been for forty-three years.

I have written on the question of women priests, exploring it through Biblical studies, Church history, and cultural anthropology. As with many Anglicans, I believe that the Episcopal Church erred in 1976 when it departed from the all-male priesthood. On a single day the General Convention of the Episcopal Church overthrew catholic orders, rejected the teaching of the Fathers, and denied the authority of Holy Scripture.

Read the rest here.

Why it matters that Canadian Anglicans are having a near-death experience

Years ago, while I was still an Episcopalian, I tried to get a circle of clergy and journalists to collaborate on what I thought would be a classic work of religion-marketplace humor.

The basic idea: The creation of the definitive collection of jokes about Episcopalians and their unique approach to Christian life and culture. As one priest put it, the Episcopal Church is “NPR at prayer.”

The book never happened, but I learned lots of jokes that I didn’t know in all of the basic categories, from “how many Episcopalians does it take to change a light bulb” quips to jokes featuring “Episcopalians at the gates of heaven and/or hell.” But here was my favorite joke, as I heard it in 1993 (but with a few updates):

The year is 2030 … and two Anglo-Catholic priests in the back of National Cathedral are watching the Episcopal presiding bishop and her incense-bearing wife, an archdeacon, process down the aisle behind a statue of the Buddha, while the faithful sing a hymn to Mother Earth.

"You know," one traditionalist whispers, "ONE more thing and I'm out the door."

The whole point was that it’s hard for religious communions to die. In the end, there are always reasons for true insiders to hang on and hope the pendulum swings back their way.

But I remember that someone else had a joke — I don’t remember how it went — that centered on the idea that, after a few more decades of declining statistics, Anglican churches would be empty, except for elderly clergy at the altars whose salaries would be paid with endowment funds.

That joke cuts to the heart of the news story discussed in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in).

As background, here is the top of the Religion News Service story I critiqued in an post with this headline: “Canada's Anglicans are vanishing and RNS can't find any conservatives to debate the reasons why.”

Story here.
HT:T-19

Anglican Primate to lead spiritual retreat for South Sudan leaders in Vatican

By Vatican News

Pope Francis has approved the proposal presented by the Archbishop of Canterbury, His Grace Justin Welby, to organize a spiritual retreat to take place in the Vatican, within the Domus Sanctae Marthae, from the 10-11 of this month of April, in which the highest civil and ecclesiastical authorities of South Sudan will participate.

Civil authorities

A statement released by Alessandro Gisotti, interim Director of the Holy See Press Office, said that representing the civil authorities in the event, are the members of the Presidency of the Republic of South Sudan, who, under the Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of Conflict in South Sudan, will assume positions of great national responsibility this coming 12 May: Mr. Salva Kiir Mayardit, President of the Republic, as well as four of the five designated Vice Presidents: Mr. Riek Machar Teny Dhurgon, Mr. James Wani Igga, Mr. Taban Deng Gai and Ms. Rebecca Nyandeng De Mabior.

Ecclesial authorities

Representing the ecclesiastical authorities of the country, eight members of the South Sudan Council of Church will take part in the retreat. His Excellency, Archbishop John Baptist Odama, Archbishop of Gulu (Uganda), and the Reverend Father Agbonkhianmeghe Orobator, S.J., President of the Conference of Major Superiors of Africa and Madagascar, will provide the preaching during the retreat.

Occasion for encounter and reconciliation

This event, both ecumenical and diplomatic at the same time, was organized by mutual agreement between the Secretariat of State and the Office of the Archbishop of Canterbury, with the goal of offering on the part of the Church a propitious occasion for reflection and prayer, as well as an occasion for encounter and reconciliation, in a spirit of respect and trust, to those who in this moment have the mission and the responsibility to work for a future of peace and prosperity for the South Sudanese people.

Pope Francis to conclude the retreat

The conclusion of the retreat will take place on the afternoon of Thursday, the 11th, when, at 5:00pm, the Holy Father will pronounce His discourse. Following that, those participating in the retreat will be given a Bible, signed by His Holiness Pope Francis, by His Grace Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, and by the Reverend John Chalmers, former Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, with the message “Seek that which unites. Overcome that which divides”. At the end, the leaders of South Sudan, who will take up the common task for peace, will receive the blessing.

The OCA is talking to some conservative Protestants and the usual suspects are upset

Details here. My comment is somewhere underneath.

Anglican orders not 'invalid' says Cardinal, opening way for revision of current Catholic position

One of the Vatican’s top legal minds has opened the way for a revision of the Catholic position on Anglican orders by stressing they should not be written off as “invalid.”  

In a recently published book, Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, President of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, calls into question Pope Leo XIII’s 1896 papal bull that Anglican orders are “absolutely null and utterly void.”

“When someone is ordained in the Anglican Church and becomes a parish priest in a community, we cannot say that nothing has happened, that everything is ‘invalid’,” the cardinal says in volume of papers and discussions that took place in Rome as part of the “Malines Conversations,” an ecumenical forum. 

“This about the life of a person and what he has given …these things are so very relevant!” 

For decades Leo XIII’s remarks have proved to be one of the major stumbling blocks in Catholic-Anglican unity efforts, as it seemed to offer very little room for interpretation or revision. 

But the cardinal, whose department is charged with interpreting and revising Church laws, argued the Church today has a  “a very rigid understanding of validity and invalidity” which could be revised on the Anglican ordination question. 

“The question of validity [regarding the non-recognition of Anglican orders, while the Pope would give pectoral crosses, rings or chalices to Anglican clergy], however, is not a matter of law but of doctrine,” he explains in a question and answer format. “We have had, and we still have a very rigid understanding of validity and invalidity: this is valid, and that is not valid. One should be able to say: ‘this is valid in a certain context, and that is valid another context’.”

Read the rest here. 

Ummm... sorry. They are invalid and we (Orthodox) need to cease accepting their baptisms. The CofE and their North American constituencies are simply pagan. That Rome does not seem to grasp this is alarming further evidence of the crisis in their own communion.

More Anglican Apostasy

The CofE is planning a sacrilegious parody of baptism for the benefit of the alphabet crowd. Rod Dreher has some good commentary on the subject. The money lines being...

Serious, non-trolling question to traditionalist Anglican readers: how do you stand it? Is there anything that would make you leave? If not, then seriously, what specific practices (if any) do you embrace to allow you to endure this kind of breakdown in the institution? What is the argument for remaining (or remaining in communion with Canterbury as it descends into madness)?

Read the rest here.

Conservative Anglicans are close to despair. Is the CofE about to split?

As an Anglican, I used to think theological liberalism was on the wane. Not any more

Anyone with a lick of sense can see that the Church of England is in serious trouble. Congregational decline, child abuse scandals, and financially desperate cathedrals are just the most obvious symptoms of a very broad disease. As an Anglican, I have been confident that the Church would manage to turn things around in a few decades. After the most recent meeting of General Synod, however, I am no longer so confident.

On the face it, the Synod’s changes were all fairly minor. For all the fuss, the proposal to write official liturgies affirming the new gender identity of transgender people may well be ignored even by Church’s own bishops; and the changes on regulation of vestments merely rubber-stamps what already takes places across swathes of the Church.

But the most significant thing about the Synod was the manner in which it was conducted. The bishops stayed largely silent as Synod did theology by endless anecdote. The only notable episcopal contributions came from the liberal northern prelates (especially Paul Bayes of Liverpool). An outburst of anti-capitalism from the Archbishop of York provided comedy value amongst the general dour air of neo-Puritanism. The monotonous drumbeat of socialism and sexual liberalism was only broken by the ecumenical contribution of Bishop Angaelos of the Coptic Orthodox Church, who warned Synod that it’s bad for PR and the soul to spend so much time talking about sex. His plea fell on deaf ears.

Leading conservative Synod members seem to have left in a state of mind verging on despair. They have suffered no major defeats, but seem confident that it’s only a matter of time. The general consensus is that the “middle third” of Synod has no more appetite for gruelling fights or media uproar, and will quietly acquiesce to liberal demands for church blessings of same-sex marriage, to be shortly followed by same-sex marriage itself.

Read the rest here.

I feel badly for Mr. Sabisky. Not so much because he is right in his despair about the future of his religious confession, but rather because he does not grasp it's current state. The CofE is, and has been for quite some time, deeply and profoundly heretical by any metric of small "o" orthodox Christianity. Arguably it is simply apostate. That he, as a self professed "conservative" Anglican, does not grasp this pretty much says all that needs to be said about how bad things have gotten there.

The Church of Modern Lunacy

I have a passing interest in the Church of England and its American variation, the Episcopal Church. An old friend is in the church so I get some first hand descriptions of what it is like to be in a dying institution. That’s the only way to describe the Episcopal Church. Attendance declines every year as old members die off and new members never materialize. Go into an Episcopal service and you can’t help but notice that most everyone is a senior. The actuarial tables are the church’s greatest enemy.

Of course, church attendance has always skewed a little older. Young people tend not to be attracted to the faith, even if their parents regularly attend services. As people get older, have families and begin to sink roots, they get more involved in their faith and attend services regularly. That’s the trouble with the mainline Protestant religions. The young are not coming back once they start having families. That means their children are not raised in the faith. As a result, these churches are now in a death spiral.

The story is familiar to anyone who has been paying attention. These churches made the decision to chase the latest social fads in the 70’s and 80’s, hoping to make themselves more appealing to the young. The only thing they did was make themselves less attractive to people interested in being part of a traditional Christian sect. It was not just in the pews, but in the clergy as well. Those feeling the call found that the church in which they were raised was not interested in defending and maintaining the faith.

The result is the clergy slowly radicalized. First came the women and then the feminist women. Soon they invited in the homosexuals and the clergy started looking like the faculty of a liberal arts college. That’s when the pews started to empty out. Why bother going to church, when you can get the same liberal lecture from television? That’s what started the decline in church attendance. Instead of offering a shelter from the storm, they decided to chase an over-served market – radical Progressives.

Read the rest here.

Whistling past the graveyard

Anglican church set to offer special services for transgender people

Clergy can dress down after church votes to let them ditch vestments

Why is the Episcopal Church near collapse?

Why are we still talking to the Anglicans?

And I will add my own question, posted at least a half dozen times before on this blog... Why are most Orthodox jurisdictions still accepting Anglican/Episcopalian baptisms?

Cardinal Coccopalmerio: Anglican Holy Orders may not be invalid

Sigh. There is so much disturbing news coming out of Rome these days that I am consciously trying to ignore most of it. But I do think this is significant.