Posted on 12/01/2012 1:48:30 PM PST by NYer
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — The former rector of the nation’s largest Episcopal church has become a Roman Catholic.
The Rev. Larry Gipson was dean of the Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham from 1982-94 and rector at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Houston, where his parishioners included former President George H.W. Bush and his wife, Barbara, from 1994-2008.
Last month, Gipson was accepted as a Catholic into the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, a structure set up by Pope Benedict XVI to accept former Anglicans into the Catholic Church.
“The nature of authority in the Catholic Church is what attracted me to it,” Gipson said. “After I retired, I was concerned and had been for many years about the Episcopal Church’s authority structure.”
Gipson will be among 69 candidates for Catholic priesthood attending a formation retreat this weekend in Houston at the ordinariate’s headquarters.
Among those leading seminars at the Formation Retreat in Houston will be the Rev. Jon Chalmers, who was ordained a Catholic priest in June, the second former Episcopal cleric to be accepted as a priest under the ordinariate.
His wife, Margaret Chalmers, former canon lawyer for the Catholic Diocese of Birmingham and now chancellor of the ordinariate, will also be a presenter at the weekend retreat that runs Friday night through Sunday, Dec. 2.
“It’s a really big deal,” she said. “Larry Gipson, who was the priest of the largest Episcopal church in America, is now a Catholic.”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Matthew 16:18
Now there’s an image...
We have a newly converted and ordained Episcopal priest in my diocese (in the South), too, and I have heard rumors that our bishop is talking with several others who want to come into the Ordinariate. Some of the Southern Episcopal dioceses were very conservative but are under a lot of pressure from ‘Piskey Central, so this is accelerating things.
Welcome home, Reverend Gipson. Your pectoral cross has lead you.
I was senior warden of a Tennessee Episcopal church that was founded in 1832.
When the gays took over, I bailed out.
The once great ECUSA has destroyed itself.
Bp Stika is very good. Have you met him?
Off topic, but is Bopha anywhere near you?
I honestly cannot understand why the Episcopal Church went so gay-mad. Of all things...why that?
But then, one of my favorite quotes is from a writer - it may have been Ronald Knox - who said that all heresies begin below the belt. That is, people are just trying to justify something they want to do so they claim theological reasons for rebelling against orthodoxy (although it’s odd that so many people in the Episcopal Church apparently wanted to do that particular thing!).
” is Bopha anywhere near you?”
__________________________
Bopha is on a direct course to me here on Cebu.
It is expected around midnight Wednesday.
Check out this link:
http://www.typhoon2000.ph/activetrack.gif
There is an active thread on Bopha running right now...when I saw where it was; I had an unpleasant feeling that you would be dealing with this in the short term...
“I honestly cannot understand why the Episcopal Church went so gay-mad. Of all things...why that?”
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My guess is that the ECUSA is small enough to be overtaken, and another reason is the pomp and ceremony of the church.
It was the perfect target for the gays.
” I had an unpleasant feeling that you would be dealing with this in the short term.”
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Yes, this will be my first Typhoon in my four years of living here.
Previous typhoons have always passed to the west of us and
turn into the Philippines when they get up to northern Luzon.
Keeping my fingers crossed, as we live only 100 feet from the sea.
I remember you mentioning that you lived on or close to the beach...
Excellent news!
Sounds like a few days in Singapore might be worth considering.
Welcome home, Rev. Larry Gipson.
I am a member of the the nation’s largest Episcopal Church, St Martins, joined by transfer in 1999 when Rev Larry Gipson was there as rector (he is a great and intellectual preacher). I was raised Episcopalian, but after 50+ years, presently (for the last 3 months) attend RCIA classes at the Roman Catholic Anglican Rite church Our Lady of Walsingham, where, much to my surprise, we saw Larry and Mary Francis admitted into the Catholic Church as converts/members a few weeks ago at the Sunday service. No doubt Larry is destined for great leadership in the Ordinariate - he has a Yale Doctorate of Divinity and recently attained a Masters in Catholic Theology from St Mary’s seminary. If they are smart, they will move to ordain him and put him in a high position of leadership swiftly, in the Catholic Church.
Larry has been attending the same Catholic seminary in town where Mrs FE has attained a masters degree, and for years, he used to ask her for her book lists from her classes. Larry Gipson is one of the leading theological thinkers in America, in my view. It is fitting to see that such an astounding event as his conversion to Catholicism is recorded in the leading liberal birdcage liner of our Nation’s capitol, the Washington Post, the second most propagandist communist newspaper in America, behind the NYT.
I am not sure how it will end yet for me personally on my faith journey, but will not be surprised if Mrs FE and I are swimming the Tiber too at Eastertime, at the end of the RCIA classes. We are not in the midst of an exodus yet from St Martins, in fact, until we saw Larry and Mary Frances, none of our St Martins members have appeared at OLW.
The Episcopal Church has gone off the deep end entirely. We fought it from within for a long time. Free Republic kept a steady log of the epic decline at the hand of ArchMoron Frank Griswold and ArchDestroyer Squid Jefferts, and Anglican Archbishop Druid Bonehead Williams, who allowed the Episcopal church to go ahead and ordain a gay divorced (and later gay-married) bishop, instituted same sex blessing liturgy, denied the Lord jesus Christ Christ as the path to salvation, and other egregious acts against the Christian faith. The inability to adhere to the faith is due to an internal governance that is flawed to the advantage of heretical thought. These are not new heresies - they are ancient heresies. Even though the liberal idiots think they are doing a new thing, their heresies have been condemned as far back as the writing of Leviticus, and the universalist heresies and other idiocy has old deep roots undermining the faith since antiquity. These modern liberals are not thinking up new outrages, they are the same outrages that caused the Archangel Michael to cast the dragon down in ancient times. The cultural relativism issues also go back to the creation of the Anglican church in the time of Henry VIII, continued throughout the 1800s leading to the conversion ultimately of John Cardinal Newman and CS Lewis among famous personages. The USA version has a severe thread of heretical teaching relating to denial of the very basics in the apostles creed, of the divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ, immaculate conception, the basics of the sacraments, nevermind the current flirtation with pluriform truth and blessing gay marriages and other such abominations. The Episcopal Church is afflicted with a combination of heresy, liberal guilt, and a desire to litigate away all the wealth and social good of the institution in the interest of cultural relativism, and at the expence of personal and institutional intellectual honesty and integrity and honor to the Holy Sacraments, history and traditions of the church, and Word of God. In short, it is a shambles. Even a powerful brilliant leader like Larry cannot stem the decline. What happened to Larry Gipson is a micro-reflection of the illness, and ultimately the fatal decline of the Episcopal Church, now in a death spiral.
Personally I believe that only the Apostolic tradition as handed down through Roman Catholic faith can keep Christianity intact in these times, in the face of global economic, social and political decline and decadence, rising Islamism and a political economic and social ethos that is seemingly intent on the destruction of western civilization and culture, with basic preservation of life, freedom, and family, as certainly envisioned by the founders of our free republic. It may require some compromises and I certainly see the failings of the Catholic Church in these modern times, but the alternative, I am afraid, is that the entire fabric of society, politics and economy gets unravelled at ever-increasing velocity.
May our Lord continue to bless and guide you on your journey. Rest assured of my personal prayers.
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