[Apologetics] Coming this Halloween to an Episcopal parish near you?

[Art Kelly]

Stuart, 

This is very sad for the Episcopal Church. 

Do you think this absurity would have occurred if the
whole Anglican Church had not decided to ordain women?
 

Isn't the Robinson situation simply "the tip of the
iceberg" with Anglicanism? 

Isn't all of this just the end result of the decision
of the Lambeth Conference about 70 years ago to
endorse artificial birth control?  

And isn't all of this just what could have been
expected from a religion founded by King Henry VIII?

I don't want to be uncharitable, but don't you see a
pattern?

Art

--- "Stuart D. Gathman" <stuart at bmsi.com> wrote:

> 
> Coming this Halloween to an Episcopal parish near
> you?
> 
> Just in time for Halloween, the Episcopal Church
> Center is offered a new 
> liturgical resource, complete with links to pagan
> goddess worship and 
> wiccan practices.  In an October 25, 2004 story,
> Episcopal News Service 
> reported that the Womens Ministries Office is
> requesting resources for 
> their Womens Liturgy Project to memorialize the
> aspects of womens lives 
> that have historically been left unrecognized in the
> rites, rituals, and 
> ceremonies of the Episcopal Church.  A Womens
> Eucharist:  A Celebration of 
> the Divine Feminine was on the Episcopal Churchs
> website as a resource 
> available to be used by women, men, parishes,
> dioceses, small groups, 
> within the context of a Sunday morning service, or
> any other appropriate 
> setting. [For more information on the availability
> of the article, see 
> Erik Nelsons article. ED]
> 
> Even the most cursory glance reveals that this
> liturgy has little in 
> common with the Christian celebration of Holy
> Eucharist.  Rather than 
> being a service of remembrance and thanksgiving for
> the sacrificial and 
> atoning death of Christ, this Eucharist does exactly
> what the title 
> suggests:  it celebrates human femininity as divine.
> 
> Awareness of the feminine attributes of God is not
> inherently 
> objectionable or unorthodox:  Isaiah likening God to
> a woman crying in 
> labor pains (41:14), and Jesus comparing his desire
> for Jerusalem to that 
> of a mother hen gathering her chicks are two
> examples.
> 
> However, the Womens Eucharist makes no attempt to
> ascribe worship to the 
> Trinitarian God of Christianity;  the liturgy is
> explicitly focused on 
> addressing a pagan goddess and celebrating womens
> bodies as divine.
> 
> Towards the end of the rite, the participants are to
> raise a plate of 
> raisin cakes and say, Mother God, our ancient
> sisters called you Queen of 
> Heaven and baked these cakes in your honor in
> defiance of their brothers 
> and husbands who would not see your feminine face. 
> This is a reference to 
> the idolatrous practices of the Old Testament that
> were soundly rebuked by 
> God through his prophets.  Loving the sacred raisin
> cakes is a sign of 
> total depravity and prostitution in Hosea.  And in
> Jeremiah, raisin cakes 
> are associated with the same pagan gods who desired
> ritual child 
> sacrifice, provoking the wrath and fury of God.  It
> was not in defiance of 
> their brothers and husbands that these ancient
> sisters baked the raisin 
> cakes.  It was in defiance of God.  And to
> participate in such a ritual 
> for the Queen of Heaven is to worship pagan deities
> specifically condemned 
> in Scripture.
> 
> Just as disturbing as addressing worship to a pagan
> goddess is the 
> encouragement to set up our own bodies as objects of
> worship;  it is an 
> equally severe form of idolatry.  The liturgy
> elevates womens sexuality, 
> water, blood, and breasts to divine status.  The
> third section of the 
> liturgy borrows imagery from the Gospel of Matthew
> of flowers blooming and 
> fading, but places it within a context of female
> sexuality.  The liturgy 
> declares that the flowers shape evokes in us the
> unfolding of our own 
> sexuality.  The celebration is of eroticism, and is
> self-focused. 
> 
> In the next section of the rite, the participants
> are to celebrate water 
> of the womb and of tears. It  dips a bit deeper into
> heresy by asserting 
> that Mother Earth brought forth life from the womb
> of the sea.  Not only 
> does the rite assert the power of the water of the
> womb, but the water of 
> tears also has redemptive qualities.  Of course, we
> may weep tears of 
> repentance as we seek redemption, but to assume that
> redemption comes from 
> sorrow negates the atoning role of Christ and gives
> far too much authority 
> to individual people.  If tears are the water of
> life, then everyone who 
> cries and does not see life re-emerge from her
> personal sorrow is bound to 
> be disappointed.  Life, and redemption of life, can
> come only from Christ 
> who gives living water; it is not something we can
> conjure up through 
> crying.
> 
> The fifth section, concerned with red wine,
> symbolizing blood, moves the 
> focus even more onto the women who are involved, not
> to something outside 
> themselves.  It is their blood, specifically
> menstrual blood, that is 
> being celebrated.  In the Christian Eucharist, the
> emphasis is on the 
> power of Christs redemptive action on the cross for
> people who are 
> entirely powerless to effect their own salvation. 
> In a directly 
> contradictory statement, the Womens Eucharist
> declares to the goddess, we 
> bless you for the power of this drink to remind us
> of our own power. They 
> go on to pray for the day when. . .womens blood is
> honored as holy and in 
> your image.  The liturgist is reducing women to one
> body part, asserting 
> that only a womans blood is in the image of God.
> 
> The trend of women honoring their own bodies
> redemptive power continues in 
> the sixth section, where the liturgist expresses a
> desire for women to 
> honor our breasts as symbols of your abundance,
> after which the 
> participants drink from a communal cup of milk and
> honey. This 
> over-emphasis of life-giving faculties of womens
> bodies brings us back to 
> a fundamental denial of Christian doctrine by
> asserting that we, not 
> Christ, are responsible for our own salvation.
> 
> The Womens Eucharist was created by the Reverend
> Glyn Lorraine 
> Ruppe-Melnyk, rector of St. Francis in the Fields;
> shes married to Bill 
> Melnyk.  Both are priests in Diocese of
> Pennsylvania, whose bishop stated 
> at General Convention 1997 that we offer resolutions
> apologizing to women 
> for the sacrifice language of the Eucharist.  A
> virtually identical ritual 
> to the one on the Episcopal Churchs website, called
> A Celebration of the 
> Divine Feminine in a Eucharist to our Mother
> Goddess, could be found on 
> the website of Tuatha de Brighid, a clan of modern
> Druids.  The 
> Celebration of the Divine Feminine ceremony was
> created by Glispa, who, 
> with another Druid Oak Wyse, also created the Wiccan
> Lunar Ritual.  The 
> careers and musings of Episcopal priests Glyn and
> Bill Melnyk are 
> uncannily similar to those of Glispa and Oak Wyse;
> in fact, Bill Melnyk is 
> addressed as Oak Wyse on the Druid Network.  In
> addition to the liturgical 
> rites mentioned above, the Melnyks have written a
> Goddess Prayer Chant to 
> go with goddess prayer beads, available for sale on
> the site.  Also 
> included were step by step directions for creating
> non traditional 
> rosaries or NTRs.  Oak Wyse writes there that
> Christians have always 
> borrowed from the Pagans, so creating alternative
> rosaries is just 
> borrowing back.  He continues that the common people
> from the first 
> century CE onwards saw Mary as the continuation of
> the Queen of Heaven: 
> Astarte in Palestine, or Isis in Egypt. It is
> fitting, then, to adapt a 
> Marian devotion for honor to the Goddess, the Queen
> of Heaven. These beads 
> honor the Goddess in her three-fold, or triple,
> nature as Maiden, Mother, 
> and Crone.  One wonders how fitting the Mother of
> our Lord might think it.
> 
> Ruppe-Melnyk habitually finishes her messages on the
> St. 
> Francis-in-the-Fields web site, and her emails to
> the authors of this 
> article, with the closing, Peace and Brightest
> Blessings.  It sounds like 
> a charming, unusual, and innocuous term until one
> learns that Brightest 
> Blessings is the salute given by wiccans, witches,
> and other pagan 
> practitioners all over the world.
> 
> It is profoundly ironic that this story broke as
> American bishops are 
> dismissing the bishops of the Global South as
> backward.  Six years ago at 
> the world-wide Lambeth Conference of Anglican
> Bishops, the Rt. Reverend 
> John Spong, angry with the African bishops adherence
> to biblical 
> orthodoxy, declared that Christians in Africa had
> moved out of animism 
> into a very superstitious kind of Christianity. 
> They've yet to face the 
> intellectual revolution of Copernicus and Einstein
> that we've had to face 
> in the developing world, he intoned.  At that same
> meeting Richard 
> Holloway, then Primate of Scotland added his own
> insults to the faithful 
> African bishops saying that they needed to be taught
> Biblical scholarship 
> of the last 150 years. 
> 
> Here in the U.S. Episcopal Church, the intellectual
> revolution has come 
> and gone.  Apparently having out-grown Copernicus
> and Einstein, 
> contemporary Episcopalians are offered
> pre-Christian, pagan teachings.   
> We already knew that the Biblical scholarship that
> they were taught and 
> are teaching has led them to heresy.  Now we know it
> has led them to 
> paganism, too. 
> 
>  
> 
> Note: Since this story broke, much of the
> information available on the 
> pagan websites about these rites and their authors
> has been removed.
> 
> 
> Commentary on the above:
>
http://www.ird-renew.org/Episcopal/Episcopal.cfm?ID=985&c=21
> 
> 
> -- 
> 	      Stuart D. Gathman <stuart at bmsi.com>
>     Business Management Systems Inc.  Phone: 703
> 591-0911 Fax: 703 591-6154
> "Confutatis maledictis, flamis acribus addictis" -
> background song for
> a Microsoft sponsored "Where do you want to go from
> here?" commercial.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Apologetics mailing list
> Apologetics at gathman.org
> http://bmsi.com/mailman/listinfo/apologetics
> 
> <!DSPAM:1002085458526932143606141>
> 
> 


=====
ART KELLY, ATM-S
13524 Brightfield Lane 
Herndon, Virginia 20171-3360 
(703) 904-3763 home 
arthurkelly at yahoo.com
art.kelly at cox.net
akelly at americantarget.com
ArtK135 at Netscape.net