Posted on 07/23/2008 6:54:12 PM PDT by markomalley
Canterbury: The Vatican’s top evangelism officer urged the bishops of the Anglican Communion to set their house in order so that they may fulfill the Gospel mandate of bringing the world to Christ. Vatican official in warning to Anglican bishops
Cardinal Ivan Dias, the prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples said internal dissention within the Christian world and external attacks were hindering the spread of the faith. However, “for a disciple of Jesus Christ” to “preach the Gospel is not an option, but a command of the Lord.”
Speaking to bishops gathered for the 14th Lambeth Conference on July 22, Cardinal Dias, who was accompanied by the Papal Nuncio to Great Britain, Archbishop Faustino Sainz Munoz, said the battle to bring Christ to the world must be placed in the “wider context of spiritual combat” with Satan. “If this context is ignored in favour of a myopic world-vision, Christ’s salvation will be conveniently dismissed as irrelevant,” he argued.
This “spiritual warfare” has continued since fall of Adam, he said, and “rages fiercely even today, aided and abetted by well-known secret sects, Satanic groups and New Age movements;” who reveal the “many ugly heads of the hideous anti-God monster.”
These works of the Devil were “secularism, which seeks to build a godless society; spiritual indifference, which is insensitive to transcendental values; and relativism, which is contrary to the permanent tenets of the Gospel,” Cardinal Dias said. All sought to impose a “culture of death” upon the world, and “we Christians --- and Bishops in the first place, can ill afford to remain on the sidelines as passive spectators.”
Cardinal Dias outlined common steps for evangelism, noting that in his home country of India the “witness of exemplary Christian living” was an effective tool for spreading the faith. He also urged the bishops to engage in inter-religious dialogue and pursue the inculturation of the Christian faith, “by which the Gospel message is incarnated into cultures and local contexts, so that it is meaningful to the members of a given Christian community and is easily understood by those outside it.”
Anglicans and Roman Catholics would do well to seek the assistance of Mary, the Mother of God, Cardinal Dias argued. “Besides being a subject of Christian piety,” Mary was the “Star of the New Evangelisation.”
Christians should model their lives on her virtues of “Fiat, Magnificat and Stabat,” he argued. “Fiat,” saying “yet always to God’s plan for us; Magnificat, praising God for his many mercies,” and “Stabat, living our Christian commitment with courage, coherence and perseverance till the very end.”
To bring the world to Christ, the church must also set its house in order. In his discussion of the ecumenical aspects of evangelization with reference to the Roman Catholic Church and Anglican Communion, Cardinal Dias offered a circumspect rebuke to the gathered bishops.
“Much is spoken today of diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's,” he said. “By analogy, their symptoms can, at times, be found even in our own Christian communities.”
“For example, when we live myopically in the fleeting present, oblivious of our past heritage and apostolic traditions, we could well be suffering from spiritual Alzheimer's. And when we behave in a disorderly manner, going whimsically our own way without any co-ordination with the head or the other members of our community, it could be ecclesial Parkinson's,” Cardinal Dias said.
FYI
Strong but needed words, from Cardinal Dias, not only what he mentioned on the record, but what he did not mentioned, off the record wise, that I would also add that Christians must stand up to a growing Islamic threat.
The Anglicans - certainly their Western adherents - have long since lost the will, the infrastructure and the proper belief set to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This speech sounds more like a final warning before the Church simply opens up the Ark door and affords the remaining Anglicans who are actually Christian an opportunity to climb aboard before the floodwaters of hedonism, humanism and New Ageism submerge even the highest peaks of the Anglican Communion.
“Booooaarrrddd!”
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What's being lost is the remnant of the Western/Northern members of the worldwide Anglican Communion (wwAC), which have been bleeding membership for 3 decades leaving few other than the apostates remaining. Today these comprise just a few million (probably not more than 1 to 2 million in the U.S.) persons, as opposed to the 75+ million in the wwAC, which is growing rapidly.
It's long past time for the rest of the wwAC to cut ties with TEC, CofE and their ilk -- but Anglicans are very Entish in their slow deliberations and it is VERY hard for a cradle Anglican to leave the wwAC as we have known it.
These works of the Devil were “secularism, which seeks to build a godless society; spiritual indifference, which is insensitive to transcendental values; and relativism, which is contrary to the permanent tenets of the Gospel,” Cardinal Dias said. All sought to impose a “culture of death” upon the world, and “we Christians --- and Bishops in the first place, can ill afford to remain on the sidelines as passive spectators.”
This could have come from the Large Catechism, and so is deserving of a
Lutheran Ping!
Well, perhaps I could have been clearer, but I had the West pretty much in mind. And they do control the purse strings for the entire AC, so, to some extent, even the Africans, who are more faithful to a Christian Anglican outlook, have to suffer because of them, no? Besides, the entire top-structure of the AC is dissolving, and with that, so is the AC’s raison d’etre. In ten years, there might very well be no WWAC at all; the westerners will have removed themselves either to the Catholic Church lifeboat or New Age oblivion, and the Third World members will have bolted to form a new denomination, or, in greater or lesser numbers, gone off to come on board with the Catholic Church themselves. The push, it seems to me, is largely in that direction already. The apostate antics of the Home Office crowd might very well give the Third World Anglicans enough pause for introspection and consideration of Anglicanism’s very purpose that swimming the Tiber en masse will be a much more attractive option than many other alternatives. Time will tell, of course. For the second time today I have reason to say it: God’s time is not our time.
That said, I don't think it will go away (the notion has been planted too deep too long for it to just go away*) but it won't look like the wwAC of old. I remember several years ago one of the larger of the African churches saying they would no longer take money from the apostates.
It's going to be an "interesting" time as things get sorted out in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. (primarily), particularly with the churches that left TEC and gone with archbishops overseas.
I haven't looked very closely at the Jerusalem conference, though I gather there are hints of a new Communion forming there. (I also haven't been following the Lambeth conference, apparently occurring right now.)
(* I know of one church whose people left recently to form a church in one of the Continuing jurisdictions. A few weeks ago their diocese left TEC en masse for jurisdiction under a southern archbishop -- the departees were brought back to the diocese with the idea that they'd still be in the wwAC.)
If only it were just wives for which they search.
Don’t go there, unless you change the reference to “Episcopalians.”
I type corrected.
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