Petition to Archbishop John Hepworth: Press Release by the Signatories

Here is a Traditional Anglican Communion press release mandated by the signatories of the petition to Archbishop John Hepworth:

View this document on Scribd

 

PRESS RELEASE (pdf.)

 

Virgin Mary’s Positive Pregnancy Test

Church launches controversial advert campaign in time for Christmas.

A controversial New Zealand church has rolled out a publicity stunt in time for Christmas – with a billboard showing the Virgin Mary holding a positive pregnancy test.

Auckland’s St Matthews in the City Church launched its festive advertising campaign to ‘avoid the sentimental and trite’ and ‘spark thought and conversation’.

Vicar Glynn Cardy said: ‘It’s real. Christmas is real. It’s about a real pregnancy, a real mother and a real child. It’s about real anxiety, courage and hope.

‘This billboard portrays Mary, Jesus’ mother, looking at a home pregnancy test kit revealing that she is pregnant.

‘Regardless of any premonition, that discovery would have been shocking.  Mary was unmarried, young, and poor.

‘This pregnancy would shape her future.  She was certainly not the first woman in this situation or the last.’

It is not the first time St Matthews has provoked outrage with a promotional campaign.

In 2009, one of its billboards showed Mary and Joseph in bed with the tag line: ‘Poor Joseph, God was a hard act to follow’…

Read more on this despicable action here.

How irreverent.

 

Cartoon: No Christ in Christmas

HT

 

Bishop Trevor Rhodes

Bishop Trevor Martin Rhodes.

Born this day in 1938, Bradford, Yorkshire, England.

Of Memory Eternal (10 June 2007).

Fondly remembered…

RIP

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your iPhone More Precious than you?

Yup!

Dawkins to Hitchens: If we Win and Destroy Christianity, won’t Islam Replace it?

Wicked  New Atheists:

In the Christmas issue of The New Statesman Richard Dawkins, the guest editor, asks Christopher Hitchens if he’s worried that Islam will replace Christianity if the New Atheists succeed in their goal of destroying Christianity:

‘Do you ever worry that if we win and, so to speak,destroy Christianity,that vacuum would be filled by Islam?’

Protect the Pope hasn’t got a copy of The New Statesman so we can’t post Hitchens’reply.

But here’s a comment from one of Richard Dawkins friends, the Rev. George Pitcher:

‘For all his claims that Christianity has been a brutal force throughout history, I’m sure Prof Dawkins’attitude, revealed here, isn’t reciprocated. I don’t recall Rowan Williams talking about “destroying atheism”.

So it’s good to know, at last, where Prof Dawkins really stands –and, incidentally, it’s not where the gracious,generous-spirited and libertarian Hitchens stands. Hitchens hates totalitarianism. And it’s totalitarians who have tried and failed throughout history to “destroy Christianity”. Dawkins now sees that as a measure of winning. Good luck with that, Richard. And happy Christmas.’

Protect the Pope comment: The hubris of Dawkins is breathtaking, and at the same time, truly pathetic in its delusion. Pathetic in the sense of evoking pity and sadness.

Imagine the uproar there would be if a Catholic bishop said in public that Catholics should seek to destroy atheism. The media would be whipped up to fever pitch with commentators and pundits screaming about intolerance, inequality and the inherent violence of religion.

But let Richard Dawkins talk about destroying Christianity during the holy season of Advent as Christians prepare for the Christmas, and there is silence, the unholy silence of agreement from the BBC and SKY.

By the way what a joke Rev George Pitcher calling Christopher Hitchens ‘gracious’, and ‘generous-spirited’!  It seems the canonization of Hitchens is occurring even before he’s dead.

 

God’s Funeral

From here:

An exchange between Martin Luther and his wife Katharina:

“Once, when Martin was so depressed that none of Kate’s counsel would help, she put on a black dress.

Luther noticed it and asked, ‘Are you going to a funeral?’

‘No,’ Kate replied, ‘but since you act like God is dead, I wanted to join you in your mourning.’

Luther got the message and recovered.”

—Rudolf K. Markwald and Marilynn Morris Markwald, Katharina Von Bora: A Reformation Life (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2002), 139-140.

 

Maybe the ESV was Just a Marketing Ploy after all?

So suggests Joel over as Unsettled Christianity.