Posted on 06/18/2008 5:52:49 PM PDT by DeaconBenjamin
Hardline Church leaders have formally declared the end of the worldwide Anglican Communion, saying they can no longer be associated with liberals who tolerate homosexual clergy.
The traditionalists dealt a serious blow to Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, by claiming that he can no longer hold the Church together.
They warned that the Church was gripped by its most serious crisis since the Reformation.
It could only be saved by the repentance of the Americans who triggered the row by ordaining a homosexual bishop, the Rt Rev Gene Robinson, five years ago.
The formal pronouncement of the schism is contained in an 89-page document titled The Way, the Truth and the Life, which has been drawn up by conservative Anglicans ahead of the breakaway Gafcon summit next week and which has been seen by The Telegraph.
It is supported by the heads of key African churches including Nigeria, Uganda and Rwanda.
Archbishop Peter Akinola, the primate of Nigeria, states in one section: "There is no longer any hope, therefore, for a unified Communion.''
PING
Hardline?
That would be the liberals, who will not budge nor repent.
There. Repaired the bias.
Why are the normal ones always called “hardliners”? How would the other side feel if they were called the “Limpwrists”.
Be interesting how the Pope plays his cards...
It is past time for Christians to stand for the Word.
And he will NOT go quietly.
At least someone in the Anglican Communion has read Matthew 18
8 “If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; it is better for you to enter life crippled or lame, than to have two hands or two feet and be cast into the eternal fire. 9 “If your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out and throw it from you. It is better for you to enter life with one eye, than to have two eyes and be cast into the fiery hell.
Well, if they choose it, Anglicans will find a warm reception on the shores of the Tiber.
Absolutely! The TAC is already getting their feet wet.
All roads do lead to Rome and you'll be welcomed by BXVI who, enthused by the Holy Ghost, is throwing modernism out the window!
With the Lambeth conference to follow shortly thereafter, it will be an interesting and likely historic summer for Anglicans.
Why are the chr*stians of Africa so much more conservative than those of "Afro-America?"
Why don't they expel the unrepentant Americans from the worldwide Anglican Communion and allow the repentant ones to remain in it? Or is that what they're saying?
They should have arranged to kick that nitwit out while they were at it.
Or you can fellowship with a remnant that actually believes the Bible is true, and uses it in all matters of faith and practice.
We’d love to have you visit. Ironically, my uncle is a bishop of a major U.S. city and he knows next to nothing about God’s Word. Ignorance of God’s Word spawns liberalism.
Check it out. Follow the trail of blood of the matyrs (J.M. Carroll)...the Donatists, Paulicians, Albigenses, Waldensians, Anabaptists.....and more....
http://www.independencebaptist.org/Trail%20of%20Blood/trail_of_blood.htm
I pray the love of Christ and His word grows abundantly in
you.
Rev 19:13 And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God.
Thanks to DeaconBenjamin for the ping.
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Speak the truth in love. Eph 4:15
Most of the Africans are from the Evangelical side rather than the Anglo Catholic side. The Pope probably won’t pick up many folks there.
On the other hand, he could pick up a number in England as that branch fractures over women bishops and homosexual ‘marriages’ by the Anglican clergy.
While I can understand claiming the Anabaptists and Waldensians, I would be leery of claiming the Albigensians, who were nearly Gnostics.
It’s one of the built-in prejudices of the MSM. They can’t just let the truth be the truth; their business model does not allow it. They have to keep the pot stirred.
IMO, comforting illusions about life are less believable in Africa; what Christianity you will find over there is “meat and potatoes,” because in brutal circumstances the warmed-over stuff just looks and sounds stupid.
"Stand Firm is also in possession of this document, and while I haven't scrutinized the entire thing, I think it's accurate to say that those parts pertaining to the fractured nature of the communion are more descriptive than they are prescriptive. They state the obvious - granted, in unusually articulate and foreboding prose - but they do not go so far as to declare a schism as the Telegraph claims. The purpose of the document appears to be more to frame the discussions that will take place in Jerusalem, not to declare anything in the way of an official schism.
"While further examination upon the release of this document may reveal something different, prudence requires that I warn everyone not to proceed from the assumption that this document declares - and thus GAFCON will open with - a declaration of an official schism."
Here is a link to a .pdf of the document in question. I haven't read it yet, so you can judge for yourself.
The news media hates the Catholic church because it is the last large, organized stronghold against abortion and homosexual 'affirmation'. Therefore the media spreads these stories, and those who already dislike the Church, or are ignorant of its actual teachings, believe them.
Here's what actually happened -- Certain bishops in the Church succumbed to the zeitgeist of the 60s and 70s, and as a result ordained homosexual priests who promptly 'chickenhawked' teenaged boys (as one would expect). Then they believed the psychotherapists who told them these guys could be 'cured' - instead of adhering to long-standing Church law, and sent the homosexuals for 'treatment' and then reassigned them. Stupid (and disobedient) but they believed in "modern science".
John Paul II was handicapped by his experience of Communist governments using false accusations of homosexual conduct to attack Church leaders in Poland, but he began a concerted cleanup and instituted a permanent audit of all dioceses in the U.S. Benedict XVI has accelerated that process. He has also re-emphasized the long-standing (since the 50s) rule that homosexuals or those with homosexual tendencies are not to be admitted to seminary, let alone ordained. And most of the goofy heterodox bishops have been cleaned out, with a few notable exceptions that are so well entrenched that it is simpler to wait for them to retire. But even those bishops have seen the writing on the wall and have changed their ways to some extent (e.g. Mahony of LA).
So your accusations are almost entirely past history. (Meanwhile, of course, the news media ignores ongoing homosexual predation in protestant denominations and especially in the public schools, because it doesn't fit the agenda.)
If you are an evangelical or low church Episcopalian, you will find some doctrinal and liturgical difficulties in the Catholic Church, but those can be dealt with. If you are a high churcher, you will be amazed at how little anything differs from a high Episcopal parish (other, of course, than fidelity to Scripture and Church tradition!)
- speaking as a former high church Episcopalian, sixth generation. We swam the Tiber in 2004 and could not be happier in our new parish. We have a wonderful rector, a faithful, orthodox congregation, and (I was surprised) a great music program.
I pray and carefully watch what the new pope is doing.
For over twenty years I have attended the traditional Tridentine mass that was the mainstay of the Roman Catholic Church for centuries.
The evil and perversions wrought in the worship and in the dwindling ranks of the priesthood was caused by two factors: Vatican II and the popes who initiated this aberration and those who nurtured it. This pope appears to have recognized the fact that these changes are not pleasing to God.
About 1950 Stalin recognized that he had two enemies: The U.S.A. and the Catholic Church. There wasn't much to be done to the U.S., beyond larding it's government and other insitutions with spies and moles, but there was something that could be done to the Church: infiltrate it.
The communists did infiltrate the Church and its seminaries, but then those infiltrators decided that the Church could be brought down more quickly with the help of that perverted class known as homosexuals.
Little by little they have been and are still being weeded out. They didn't take their vows seriously. Their intent was to prey upon our children.
I don't have to point out to you that the Anglicans have serious problems, especially when one considers they ordain homosexual and lesbians on a regular basis to the point that true Christian Anglicans are leaving the Church in droves.
What’s interesting here is that this was obviously leaked...why?
I don’t believe it was leaked. I just looked at the website and the whole thing is available for digital download.
That’s the first I’ve heard that. What source are you using?
1 - pg 121; “The Torch of the Testimony”; John W. Kennedy, 1965
2 - History of the Churches; David Cloud, 2002; citing “History of the Ancient Churches of Piedmont and Albigenses”, Allix; 1690/92
You might be using a source that describes a sect that has since become apostate.
By His Grace
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It started way earlier, during the Depression.
From Wiki, so subject to all of the usual flaws, but it tracks quite well with other readings I have done on the matter. Dualism is very Eastern in origin, and has very little connection to traditional Christian beliefs...
 EPISCOPAL TURNING POINTS |
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-- 1976: Women's ordination to priesthood approved. -- 1989: Barbara Harris is named first female bishop in Anglican history. -- 2003: Openly gay V. Gene Robinson becomes bishop of New Hampshire. |
The Anglican Communion is fairly small (about 75 million members worldwide) compared to the Catholic Church. However, prior to the mid-1970s Anglicanism was nearly identical to Catholicism in terms of Church hierarchy, etc.
It is my belief that the secular humanist left has spent the past decades using Anglicanism as a “test run” for a future assault against the Catholic Church who they have always seen as the primary target (if for no other reason than the sheer size of the Church). And now we are seeing the left’s recreation of their assault on Anglicanism, beginning with the push to ordain women.
-- 1958: Lambeth Conference removes opposition to artificial contraception.
That was one of the most important decisions since Martin Luther decided to split with the Church. It was the opening gun in the Sexual Revolution, leading directly to Griswold v. Connecticut, and from there to Roe v. Wade. The Anglican Church was still centrally important back then in the Anglophone world. The WASP Establishment was still ascendant in America, and the 1958 Lambeth Conference was the key cultural turning point. Since then, the Mainline Churches have collapsed, and few people talk about WASPs any more, but back then they were at the center of the Establishment.
As for the current schism in the Anglican Communion, of course it was the American Church--with the complicity of Rowan Williams--that is responsible. It would be one thing to ordain a bishop and then discover that he was a homosexual. It is quite a different thing to deliberately ordain someone a bishop after he has divorced his wife and openly declared himself to be a gay advocate. And to ordain this man for no other reason than BECAUSE he was a homosexual.
< crickets >
Which is why I don’t use Wikipedia. You can’t check the sources.
All of the sources I’ve seen that would say the Cathari were heretics, (gnostic, or holding to a dualist theology); come from late sources that restate the pronouncements of authors of the Inquisition, and amounts to nothing more than name calling. And for good reason: the Cathari (Albigenses) actually believed in the Bible, and held it above the Catholic Church; as witnessed by the surviving manuscripts of their enemies: the inquisitors themselves that recorded the proceedings; and the surviving Cathari manuscripts, which are largely ignored.
For example, Dr Leo Levitov’s 1987 treatment of the Voynich Manuscript, suggesting the Cathari held to an eastern cultism centered on Isis, shows his ignorance of the surviving Cathari primary and secondary sources, and his reliance on old and speculative sources (Guiraud, 1928; Lea, 1888; and Molinier, 1881), or rather speculative (Baigent, Leigh, & Lincoln).
Absent credible primary/secondary sources that say different, I pick the Cathari/Abigenses as my church fathers for their adherence to the basic, fundamental doctrine of “sola scriptura”; or, Scripture Alone for all matters of faith and practice in authentic Christianity. That is what they were slaughtered for.
1Th 5:21 Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.
you’re correct about the Albigensians being closet-Gnostics. It’s strange how the BAptists add them to their “ancestors”
I think it would be fair to say the Baptists added to the Albigenses as their church fathers because of the empirical evidences shown by the testimonies of their enemies, and the few remaining testimonies authored by them. Arbitrary judgments without the data to support it would be dishonest in any discussion on this, or any other topic. If you were to investigate why the Albigenses were slaughtered, it was because they practiced believer’s baptism, not infant baptism; as clearly shown by Scripture. As a result,
“manichaeism” was leveled at anyone who disagreed with the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. St Augustine used it profusely, particularly in his attacks on the Donatists. Go back and read his letters on this point. He actually tips his hand in revealing what the Donatists believed in by his very accusations; a trend that would continue by his church throughout the dark ages. The primary sources available to us show the Donatists were intent on applying Scripture to all matters of faith, beginning with those bishops who chose to side with the Romans during the many persecutions of the Christians, then chose to come back to the church, as if nothing happened, after Constantine legalized Christianity.
Good conversation.
That’s why I don’t use Wikipedia. I use primary/secondary sources.
Please name them.
I should also point out that there is a branch of the Catholic church known as the Eastern Rite Catholics. They're under the authority of the Pope but their worship style and traditions are very different from most of the Catholic world as they use the traditions of the eastern churches (greek orthadox, russian orthodox, etc.) Many of them were former breakway Orthodox churches that decided they wanted to be back in the Catholic fold and the Pope accepted after they agreed to incorporate a few changes.
I'm a lifelong Roman Catholic and thinking of switching to Eastern Rite Catholic myself. I wouldn't have been confirmed Catholic if I didn't accept the churches teachings, but I find something special in the eastern rite traditions that is lacking in the modern latin mass.
Surprisingly, there are even some Eastern Rite Catholic priests that are allowed to be married, which special permission from the Vatican. Apprently the rules are almost identical to the Episcoplian church (Priests can be married, but have to be married before they are ordained They can't get married after taking holy orders). This is rare in the U.S. churches though.
So for anyone who believes in the Catholic churches doctrines and values but is a little wary about worship services being too "Roman", the Eastern Rite Catholic churches might be the way to go. That beings said, a traditionalist anglician would probably find the current Roman Catholic church to be 90% alike of what they grew up on in the Episcoplian church. I think Henry VII basically copied everything the Roman Catholics did when he started his own church, so as Robin Williams said, Episoplians are already "Roman Catholic lite"
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