Bleeding Christians

The two churches nearest to him, I have looked up in the office. Both have certain claims. At the first of these the Vicar is a man who has been so long engaged in watering down the faith to make it easier for supposedly incredulous and hard-headed congregation that it is now he who shocks his parishioners with his unbelief, not vice versa. He has undermined many a soul’s Christianity. His conduct of the services is also admirable. In order to spare the laity all “difficulties” he has deserted both the lectionary and the appointed psalms and now, without noticing it, revolves endlessly round the little treadmill of his fifteen favourite psalms and twenty favourite lessons. We are thus safe from the danger that any truth not already familiar to him and to his flock should over reach them through Scripture. But perhaps bur patient is not quite silly enough for this church – or not yet? At the other church we have Fr. Spike. The humans are often puzzled to understand the range of his opinions – why he is one day almost a Communist and the next not far from some kind of theocratic Fascism – one day a scholastic, and the next prepared to deny human reason altogether – one day immersed in politics, and, the day after, declaring that all states of the world are equally “under judgment”. We, of course, see the connecting link, which is Hatred. The man cannot bring himself to teach anything which is not calculated to mock, grieve, puzzle, or humiliate his parents and their friends. A sermon which such people would accept would be to him as insipid as a poem which they could scan. There is also a promising streak of dishonesty in him; we are teaching him to say “The teaching of the Church is” when he really means “I’m almost sure I read recently in Maritain or someone of that sort”. But I must warn you that he has one fatal defect: he really believes. And this may yet mar all.

CS Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

Christopher Johnson, a non-Catholic who takes up the cudgels so frequently for the Church that I have designated him Defender of the Faith, has a brilliant fisk at Midwest Conservative Journal detailing how upset some Episcopalians are at the Pope, because so many other Episcopalians are swimming the Tiber…

The modern Episcopal Church is hemorrhaging members because it has abandoned Christianity.  There is no great mystery about this.  Frankly, over the past few decades we have had more than a few people in the Roman Catholic Church, some holding large amounts of authority within the Church, who wished the Church would follow a similar path to extinction.  Fortunately, we Catholics have the Holy Spirit to make up for our blind guides who have so fecklessly attempted to destroy the Faith given to us by God while He walked among us.  We thus have no prideful attitude towards the former Episcopalians who join our ranks, but merely a humble thankfulness for the Good Shepherd who saves so many before the fall of night.

Read the whole piece here.

 

British Judge Approves Christian Conversion

Of a 10 year old Jewish girl.

(JTA) – A British judge has allowed a 10-year-old Jewish child to convert to Christianity against her mother’s wishes.

In November 2011 the mother of the girl applied for a court order to prevent the father from having the girl baptized until the girl turned 16, according to the London Jewish Chronicle. The mother argued the girl had been “brainwashed” and was too young to change faith.

Judge John Platt ruled on Wednesday at Romford County Court in Essex that both the girl and her younger brother could convert to Christianity.

Both parents of the children were Jewish at the time of the girl’s birth, the report said. The father converted to Christianity after the breakdown of his marriage.

The judge reportedly said he decided that “the best thing” for the girl would be to be allowed to start baptism classes as soon as they could be arranged “and that you are baptized as a Christian as soon as your minister feels you are ready”.

The court heard a written submission from Odom Brandman, a Chabad rabbi, who said the case was “extremely disturbing”.

The Jewish Chronicle quoted Brandman as saying, “It is unfair to any child to put them under this pressure and to do something unnatural to their soul.”

Episcopal to Catholic Converts

Transcript and video here.

 

Msgr Jeffrey Steenson on Becoming a Catholic

As most know, Msgr Jeffrey Steenson (the Ordinary of a Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter) is a former Episcopal Bishop. I recently scratched out a 2009 article in which he discusses his then new life as Catholic priest. The reasons for his decision to become a Catholic are interesting and worth a read:

If using dolls to practice the baptismal ritual is a humbling experience for seminarians, one can imagine what it was like for someone who already had baptized hundreds of babies.

Father Jeffrey N. Steenson, the former Episcopal bishop of the Rio Grande, prepared for his ordination to the Catholic priesthood with seminarians from Rome’s Pontifical North American College.

The 56-year-old, who spent 24 years as an Episcopal priest and three years as a bishop in New Mexico, laughs about the humbling experience of the doll practice and has nothing but praise for the “graciousness and good humor” of the NAC seminarians and staff with whom he’s been working for the past year.

Welcomed into the Catholic Church in 2007 and ordained a deacon in December 2008 by Cardinal Bernard F. Law, the archpriest of the Basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome, he was ordained to the priesthood Feb. 21 by Archbishop Michael J. Sheehan of Santa Fe, N.M.

While he studies with the U.S. seminarians in Rome, Father Steenson and his wife have been living in a cottage on the grounds of the Pontifical Irish College.

Archbishop Sheehan has assigned him to pastoral work in a New Mexico parish for the summer, and then will send him to Houston where he will teach at the University of St. Thomas and at St. Mary’s Seminary.

The Steensons’ three children — a daughter and two sons — are grown.

Educated at Harvard Divinity School and at Oxford, Father Steenson is an expert in patristics, the study of the early church fathers. He spoke to Catholic News Service in Rome March 6 before making one of his frequent visits to the library at the Augustinianum Patristical Institute.

“I’ve been attracted to Catholicism all of my life,” Father Steenson said.

When Pope John Paul II was elected in 1978, he said, “I felt this tug,” but he continued his preparations for his 1980 ordination in the Anglican Communion.

For Father Steenson, the role of the pope as the successor of St. Peter, the servant of church unity and the guarantor of the church’s fidelity to tradition was key to his decision.

“It is not negative things that turned me to the Catholic Church,” he said. “I just felt God saying, ‘It’s time.’”

The time came, he said, in 2007 when he felt the bishops of the Episcopal Church had decided to give priority to their autonomy rather than to unity with the larger Anglican Communion.

Father Steenson said that for him gay people were not the issue. “It was the way the decisions were made and the way they were defended,” placing the local church and modern cultural sensitivities ahead of the universal church and fidelity to tradition, he said.

The priest said that while the Episcopal Church spoke of the importance of Christian unity, it continued to approve practices — ordaining women priests and bishops, ordaining homosexuals and blessing same-sex unions — that everyone knew would be an obstacle to Christian unity.

“The frustration with being a Protestant is that every morning you get up and have to reinvent the church all over again,” Father Steenson said.

He said he struggled with the idea of backing out of his pastoral responsibility to the people of the Episcopal diocese. But Archbishop Sheehan helped him see that “if you can’t lead with a clear conscience, you really owe it to everyone to get out of the way. And that’s pretty much where I was in the Episcopal Church,” he said.

Father Steenson said that while Catholic and Anglican liturgies are very similar externally, “there are profound differences, too.”
For example, he said, “even the high, high Anglicans would have a hard time understanding how absolutely central the Eucharist is to the Christian life” for Catholics.

“Anglicans have a hard time defining what exactly is happening with this. Catholics don’t have that problem at all,” he said.
“This is a silly way to put it, but it just feels more real. I told someone once: the air feels thicker around the Catholic Eucharist” and it’s not the incense, “because we use more incense in Anglicanism,” he said.

While Father Steenson was a member of the conservative, traditional wing of the Anglican Communion, he said he would not define himself that way in the Catholic Church.

“For instance,” he said, “I don’t have any interest at all in the extraordinary rite,” the Latin liturgy often referred to as the Tridentine rite, “or in any move of retrenchment against the Second Vatican Council. Vatican II is the reason I was able to become a Catholic.”

“I am extremely happy with the church as I find it,” he said.

Father Steenson said he fully supports the Catholic Church’s effort to promote Christian unity, particularly its conviction that “ecumenism must be based on the truth.”

While it is up to Archbishop Sheehan to decide what activities he will be involved in, Father Steenson said he hopes to be able to place his relationships with Episcopalians at the service of Christian unity efforts.

“If this is not about ecumenism, then it would seem to be awfully self-indulgent. I really feel that ecumenism has to be a huge part” of his life as a Catholic priest, he said.

Faith. And look just how far that ecumenism has brought him:

 

Evangelicals Becoming Catholic: Lectures

“Swimming the Tiber” is shorthand for conversion to the Catholic Church (the Tiber River runs alongside of Vatican City). Maybe you have wondered why someone would make such a move or how to intelligently discuss the issue with your friends and loved ones. These and related questions were addressed on Saturday, April 14 on the campus of Wheaton College when authors of the recent book, Journeys of Faith, delivered brief lectures on the subject and answered questions.

Download MP3 (145.5MB)

Sessions include:

1. Dr. Gregg Allison – The Roman Road, or the Road to Rome?  Why Some Protestants Drift to Catholicism.

2. Rev. Chris Castaldo -Crossing the Tiber: Why Catholics and Protestants Convert.

3. Dr. Craig Blaising – Does Accepting the Canon of Scripture Implicitly Affirm Rome’s Authority?

4. Dr. Robert Plummer – Moderator

Source

 

New Wave of Ordinariate Converts in Holy Week

In the Catholic Herald:

The Apostolic Nuncio to Great Britain has celebrated the first Chrism Mass of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham.

Archbishop Antonio Mennini celebrated the Mass on Monday at the church of St James, Spanish Place, in London with 60 former Anglican clergy, including five former Anglican bishops, concelebrating. Hundreds of laity from groups across Britain were in attendance.

Archbishop Mennini celebrated the Mass at the request of the Ordinary of the Personal Ordinariate, Mgr Keith Newton.

Mgr Newton, who received the Renewal of Priestly Promises and preached at the Mass, said: “The jurisdiction given to me, unlike that of Catholic diocesan bishops, is vicarious on behalf of the Roman Pontiff.

“It is therefore particularly appropriate that our Chrism Mass should be celebrated by the Holy Father’s representative to Great Britain particularly as at this time we celebrate the 30th anniversary of full diplomatic relations between the British Government and the Holy See.”

Speaking of the priesthood, Mgr Newton said: “No man possesses the priesthood just as no one possesses baptism or marriage. They are something shared. You cannot be married on your own and you cannot live the baptised life apart from other Christians.

“No, the priesthood possesses us. It is a life. It is a particular way of living the Christian life. But it is not for ourselves but for Christ and his holy people. It is a life of sacrifice.

“Although much is written about priesthood, it is far too complex to be reduced to simple statements which we can easily understand because it is nothing less than a particular sharing in the eternal priesthood of Christ.

“That sharing is expressed visibly today as we gather round the altar to celebrate this Mass.”

In Holy Week over 200 former members of the Church of England and the Traditional Anglican Communion are expected to be received into full communion. This evening four former Anglican clergy are expected to be ordained as Catholic priests and groups of faithful in Lancashire, Kent, Essex and Surrey will be received into the Catholic Church.

 

There is Now Only One Way Out for Catholic Anglicans: It’s Over the Tiber

If a woman is a priest, she can also be a bishop: if she’s not, she can’t.

And so, the notion of setting up another ghetto for dissidents is simply ludicrous:

Is there any spectacle more absurd than that of the Church of England’s remaining Anglo-Catholics desperately attempting to negotiate “special arrangements” which will allow them in good conscience to remain within the Church of England once that body’s General Synod finally authorises women bishops?

Firstly, there is the prior question of women priests. Anglo-Catholics are already members of a Church which ordains these ambiguous beings. Are they priests, or aren’t they? (For the moment, put to one side the question of whether or not anyone in the C of E is a validly ordained priest.) If you believe they’re not, you are already yourself in an ambiguous condition, since you are a member of a Church which has arrogated to itself the power to ordain them, a power which even the Pope (like the Orthodox) denies that he possesses. You are a member, that is to say, of a Church which has already finally divorced itself from any possibility of reunion with the Universal Church of which it has thus far claimed to be a part. So, what kind of a Catholic does that make you? It is a question you must already have asked yourself; and to that problem there is now only one solution: the ordinariate. The existing arrangements for “flying bishops” were a temporary measure, which allowed a constituency of non-jurors to gather itself in preparation for secession: those temporary arrangements are no longer necessary and have now therefore morally lapsed.

But if you accept that women may be priests, that those women already ordained as such by the Church of England are validly ordained (and I actually heard a member of the Catholic group in Synod actually saying on the radio that he did accept them as priests, but that he didn’t want them to become bishops), then what are you on about? If a woman is a priest, then she is eligible to be a bishop. If she’s not, she isn’t. Either way, you are a member of a Church in which there are now hundreds of women priests: and whether you put yourself in a ghetto which doesn’t accept them or not, you are still in full communion with them (and don’t give me that stuff about “impaired communion”: you are in full communion with your own bishops (flying or not), who are themselves in full communion with the male bishops who ordained all these women, so you are in full communion with them: get used to it, or leave…

William Oddie has more here.

 

Iranian Christianity

That Muslims are converting to Christianity in numbers unprecedented throughout history comes as a (welcome) surprise to most Christians in the West. Every now and then I find someone who has heard about one of these movements, like the tens of thousands of Berbers in Algeria who in the last two decades have converted, or the hundreds each year who are baptized into the Catholic Church in countries like France and Italy. Or perhaps they have heard of the experimental laboratory that is Bangladesh, where there are groups of people who call themselves Christ-followers but don’t use the term Christian or Muslim to refer to themselves.
But one of the most numerically significant movements of Muslims to Christianity is among Iranians. I am not talking about people with Iranian citizenship who come from ethnic groups which are traditionally Christian (Armenians and Assyrians), but about the large ethnic group whose ancestors were Zoroastrians and slowly but surely, century by century converted to Islam. Today there are very few Zoroastrians left in Iran…

Read the full story here.

 

Accommodations in Converting Muslims

This is from the conclusion:

… Accommodations are not the stuff of theological principle… They may be temporarily necessary but they are never ideal and never desirable. They ought always to make us uncomfortable. Accommodations are concessions to the world rather than concessions to Christ.

Give it a full read here.