Letter from Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger to Anglicans opposed to gay bishop

american anglican council ^ | Oct 9, 2003 | +Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

[Huber]

Dear Keynsian_grad,

Thanks for helping us all to discern the truth about the idolators. Thanks to your incredibly wise counsel, I gave the old St Anthony on my dashboard the heave-ho, and smashed the Assissi bird-bath in my yard. I've burned my Madonna CDs and I've flushed the St. John's Wort. That aspirin that's supposed to be safe for kids? Gone!! And, from now on I'm taking all my used junk to goodwill. No more St. Vincent de Paul around here!

If I see any Catholics walking around my block, I'm going to bring my kids inside the house directly.

So, tell us 'bout yusself... Do y'all belong to one of them pure churches where the spirit moves y'all to handle snakes and talk in tongues?

Thanks again for all you do!

[altura]

Well, hang in there with the Episcopal Church.

I am. If the conservatives abandon it, who will be left to fight?

[Convert from ECUSA]

You aren't the only one! In late July 2003, then Cardinal Ratzinger publicly issued a letter/statement that was very clear on the traditional Catholic Christian teaching on what marriage is and is not. A week later, the episcopagan general circus met in Minneapolis where a majority of their bishops-in-name-only voted "okey-dokey" for V.G. Robinson. That was my exit out the ECUSA and across the Tiber. Whatever the problems that might exist in the Catholic Church, there was still a final office and authority to state clearly what traditional Christian teaching has been and will always be. Ratzinger's letter of late July 2003 was a very contrasting witness to the episcopagan "vote" in early August 2003. I would have eventually crossed the Tiber, it was for me more a matter of when than if. My Catholic friends can thank the episcopagan bishops-in-name-only for speeding up my crossing.

[AnAmericanMother]

Yep, ol' Vicki Gene was the bomb that launched us across the Tiber.

Of course, all of us knew that the national church had gone astray long ago (as early as Spong's first pronouncements.) But we could ignore it as long as it stayed in New Jersey (you can imagine what a bunch of Southerners had to say about that) or up in NYC.

But the fish rots from the head down, and V.G. forced the issue on local parishes. Our new rector was a liberal in conservative's clothing . . . he and his vicar backed V.G. all the way, and anyone who had doubts was EVIL.

As my husband says, thank God we have some Adult Leadership now.

[Convert from ECUSA]

"you can imagine what a bunch of Southerners had to say about that"

Indeed I can, since I live in Virginia. When Peter "Judas" Lee voted Okey-Dokey, then tried to backpedal (the EUCSA Diocese of Virginia is the oldest in the US and more conservative than most), he ended up in hot water. In Sept. 2003, he scheduled a bunch of meetings around the Diocese to try and "explain" his "vote" (i.e., do damage control and a shuck and jive job to try and fool people). In most of the meetings, they were packed and he was booed and his answers laughed at, people were nailing him with very tough questions. I'd crossed the Tiber by that time, but Episcopalian friends kept me posted.

We knew the national church had gone off the rails and was rotten, but usually things were different in much of the South. When we saw that our own 'bishops' were just as rotten as the infamous Spong and Browning (when our 'bishops' revealed what they really were), we saw how totally rotten the ECUSA was. As I put it to my former rector, one of the few godly ones left and a fine man, Vichy had totally taken over and I had to get across the Channel where they still sent a few Spitfires up every day to shoot down Heinkels. He liked the analogy!

[born in the Bronx]

We are fighting for the Anglican Way, which we love. Anglicans/ Episcopalians deliberately draw on both Catholic and Protestant teaching, and therefore have something quite special of our own.

I encourage all fed-up Episcopalians not to give up yet--instead, look up The Anglican Communion Network.
(www.anglicancommunionnetwork.org). Ten faithful Episcopal bishops are preparing, with the blessing of Canterbury, to lead orthodox Episcopalians into a new structure which will beome the US member of the Anglican Communion when ECUSA gets kicked out (probably next summer).
I live at the very gates of Hell (Diocese of Newark) and I am greatly encouraged by what I learned at a Communion Network conference. Stay and fight!

[born in the Bronx]

But in ignoring it, you forgot about all the faithful people living in New Jersey, to say nothing of the half-informed who are so easily led astray. I don't understand how the Church could stand by while so many had to endure Spong as our "shepherd."

[AnAmericanMother]

Well, Southerners are like that . . . a little insular.

There was a north-south split in almost every major denomination that existed before the Civil War. The aftereffects persist.

Most of us figured "they do things different up North." And of course the tradition of ECUSA was for the bishops to be pretty autonomous. So most of us figured it was "none of our business".

I'm not sure what we could have done anyhow, since the people of New Jersey seemed to like the man, at least we didn't hear of any popular uprising at the time. Wasn't he brought up before an ecclesiastical court and acquitted?

Anyway, it's all water under the bridge. This ECUSA diocese is completely given over to political correctness and vicious suppression of any protest. The bishop is a vindictive hard-line lib/rad. The two parishes that tried to mount opposition were crushed - one ceased to exist, the other is dying.

It's not the hill I want to die on, particularly when there's a fine, orthodox, growing Catholic archdiocese right here.

[AnAmericanMother]

What's happening in VA anyhow?

The church here continues to bleed members,and money.

[Capt. Tom]

Am giving up on the US Episcopal church, and am going to convert to the Roman Catholic church. Not that big a leap, really.

If you believe a gang raped woman should have to carry the baby from that rape and deliver it, then you are in accordance with Catholic teaching.

If you have a different opinion such as she should be allowed to abort within 6 weeks of the rape, you will be a heretic and shouldn't bother making the conversion. - Tom

[Podkayne]

You are not alone, welcome to the club! :-)

[altura]

What am I fighting for? (serious question)

I'm fighting for the Episcopal Church to move back to the right, just as the country as done.

We didn't move to France when Clinton was President, at least I didn't.

I don't want to be a Catholic. I couldn't be. I love the Episcopal Church and I love my own parish. I'm in a conservative diocese (Bishop Stanton) and although my own little parish is a bit liberal, it is full of wonderful people.

I advance my opinion at every opportunity. I think a lot of people are AFRAID to do so because they might be called homophobes (I have been).

I am considered ultra conservative in my church, but to many of you people on this forum, I am going to hell in a handbasket (to quote a tagline) because:

I think women priests are just fine. I've had two and the one we have now is the best priest we've had in 20 years.

I like the new prayer book, although there is much to be said for the 1549 one.

I do not like the radical left, and I don't like Frank, the presiding bishop. He is a poor leader and is responsible for much of the current conflict.

I cannot understand how a church could not be anti-abortion, but apparently Frank and Gene can.

But there's too much good in the church to abandon it.

[Convert from ECUSA]

I haven't kept up much on what's happening with the ECUSA in Virginia once I crossed the Tiber; other than the news I mentioned earlier in Sept. 03 when Peter "Judas" Lee ran all over the Dioces having backpedalling meetings and getting booed and reamed with tough questions by the Christians still left in the ECUSA in VA. I did hear a few months ago that money and members in VA were starting to dry up. The fools in Richmond finally stopped sending me the monthly "Virginia Episcopagan" after several requests that I did not want their rag to soil the rest of my mail.

[Capt. Tom]

If you believe a gang raped woman should have to carry the baby from that rape and deliver it On the contrary, we believe that a woman who has just suffered a horrible rape should not want to harm her baby, who is wholly innocent of the crime.

Tom here - Then you would qualify to be a Catholic if you agree with that and the Church's other dogmas.

you will be a heretic... Cheap scare tactic. All Muslims, Jews, and Protestants are defined as material heretics. This is not sin imputable to the individual, and therefore is also not canonically punishable.

Tom here- Protestants are heretics from the Catholic point of view, because they originally were Catholics and decided they wanted to hold views contrary to Catholic teaching.And they persisted in those views after being told what the Church's teaching was on the subjects.

I wouldn't call Jews and Muslims heretics,they never were believers in Jesus Christ as the savior. Those religions like Jews and Muslims believe in another God,(Yahweh,Allah,)

Jews and Muslims never believed that Jesus was the son of God.

Being a heretic IMHO is not necessarily a bad thing. You might be right in your thinking and the Catholic Church is wrong. If you feel that way you should get out of the Church or certainly not join it. The Catholic Church has plenty of heretics in it right now.

I hope the new Pope will clean them out.-Tom

[No.6]

"Transubstantiation vs. Consubstantiation. Not a small issue."

You're perfectly welcome to your own opinions, but the transubstantiation/consubstantiation thing is fairly near the absolute bottom of my list of items to worry about.

At present the Church (the larger one, not speaking about denominations here) is under full-scale assault by pervs, so I'm not really concerned about the pressing issue of the spiritual nature of the wafer.

It just seems to me to be a bit like a man in a raging firefight worrying about whether he'll get his belt buckle scuffed.