On the Feast of the Proto-Martyr, killed for proclaiming Christ in the public square, we should take note of the erosion of the Catholic identity our forebears died for.
Notice that in the background, there is a Gothic chasuble.
The site Bad Vestments does us a great service.
Bad Vestments
Because Christian worship is not supposed to be about you.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
PAGANIANITYTo connoisseurs of ecclesiastical goofballism like me, one name stands head and shoulders above the rest and believe it or not, that name is not connected with the Episcopal Church. It is a San Francisco Evangelical Lutheran Church in America congregation officially called Ebenezer although, as you can see by the link, it has begun to refer to itself as herchurch. [I recall that, recently, an ELCA former presiding bishop, remonstrated with Archbp. Nienstedt for defending marriage.]
Why does herchurch exist? According to the web site:
The Christian-Lutheran Feminist/Womanist/Mujerista Movements exist to celebrate the feminine persona of God/dess and dimensions of the sacred as expressed in faith, worship, learning, mutual care, and acts of justice.
How do they do that? One of the ways is illustrated by that picture, something you can order through their web site if you’ve decided that Christianity just isn’t cutting it for you anymore. That’s what those folks call a Goddess rosary.
Thanks to David Fischler.
Wow.
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Luther would be so proud to know what abuses he bequeathed the world in his name. This is what you get for deciding you know better than the holy Catholic and apostolic Church. Lessons for anyone in the SSPX?
dnicoll,
Don’t go there. The SSPX has never, to use the quote in the article, “decided that Christianity just isn’t cutting it”
With charity to Luther, neither did he.
There is a wicca site which has the meditations for the goddess rosary. Blasphemy Level One.
I must confess my ignorance of Luther. I only know one direct quote of his: “Sin boldly.” [“Pecca fortiter sed crede fortius… Sin boldly, but believe even more boldly”. This is a tenet of Luther, which he wrote to Melancthon about justification by faith alone. Justification, not sanctification, by the way. The idea is that, provided we believe, that we have faith in Christ, no matter what we do we will nevertheless be saved. Christ will impose Himself between the Father’s wrath and our inherent filthiness. It strikes me that Luther came to this idea as a salve for his own struggles with scrupulosity.]
What stuns me about the Feminist/Whateverist movement is that those wymyn never seem to realize that all women are ALSO made in the image and likeness of God, just as men are. Women are no less noble in the eyes of God simply because God chooses to reveal Himself and interact with humanity in the persons of Father and Son, and that He chose in His wisdom to be incarnate NOT as a hermaphrodite but as a MAN.
@Mvhcpa
Don’t even try to figure out the thought process of feminists. It will only cause undue frustration and your brain may explode in the process. Your dealing with a movement that wants the equal murdering of babies when parents opt to have gender-selection abortions. I kid you not. I just finally got through my required Women’s Studies class. I thought I misunderstanding what I was reading, but no. Just smile and shake your head.
Father,
The photo gives me the creeps. It is truly shocking to actually see one of those instruments of the devil.
Actually, the ELCA and the ECUSA have been in communion since the 1980s. If clergy at herchurch are properly ordained Lutherans, they can preside over the eucharist at an Episcopal church.
The truly ironic,” to the point of stupid IRONIC ” part is the charm they put in place of the crucifix is a FERTILITY symbol. Fertility so they can abort more, these old hags and cows haven’t desired fertility in ages, all they know is barrenness and death, all in the practice of their wymynness or what ever the hell they call it. Purely PAGAN
Whoops, I was wrong on the date, the ECUSA and the ELCA were in full communion as of 2001. A space odyssey?
Thank you, Father, for your clarification. Is it me, or do I suspect a sneaking tenderness in you for the soul of that old arch-heretic! [You have an active imagination.] Reminds me of the Bishop of Metz (I believe it was) who prayed every night that those he was forced to excommunicate “Please dear Lord! let them survive the night!”
I think the article mis printed and it was supposed to say a “Godless Rosary” as opposed to a “godess rosary”.
Beautiful Rosary, where can I get one?
Reminds me of Christa on the cross, who, since 1975, has been showcased in churches around the world, including Rome.
Sadly, I must confess that my own cousin, a woman who previously served as a fund raiser for Guest House in Lake Orion, MI, an addiction treatment facility for Catholic clergy and religious, she has now been ordained in the ELCA. I have refrained from attempting any discussion with her, but I have no doubt that she is as committed to her priesthood as ever she was to the other works in which she was involved.
My aunt, whose father was a Lutheran minister, has herself resigned formally from her membership in the ELCA, a need which grew slowly, but reached full flower when the ELCA voted to embrace actively homosexual clergy.
An irony of the SF Ebenezer church, of course, is that is based in a city where women are men and men are women. Or trying to be. Where Sodom and Gomorrah are re-enacted on the city streets, with Pride.
A review of Caligula might seem tame just now.
I have no idea whether these are the end times described in Revelation, but I am increasingly confident that these are the end times of western civilization.
For those unable to make their way through the tortured syntax at the Ebenezer site to find the fun links, here is their idea of a “Mass”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-leM9SwhdA
Nice! Mujerista. That’s so…well, I guess new. To me, anyway.
It strikes me that this church in San Francisco is a better, and enviable, version of St. Joan of Arc in St. Paul, MN. At the very least, I can only think that many in this Roman Catholic parish would find much to be admired in this (Lutheran?) parish in San Francisco.
My point, that is, is that this sort of silliness does not seem to be a uniquely Lutheran problem. At the very least, when I point out these sorts of parishes to my confessional Lutheran friends, they introduce me to many Roman Catholic parishes that do many of the same things, just not as well. Though sometimes better.
Sorry. Christmastide is a always a bittersweet time to be Catholic for this former Lutheran.
http://gkupsidedown.blogspot.com/2011/12/awesome-music.html
That said, Bad Vestments has to be one of the best websites on the internets.
I truly wonder why these people continue to want to be called Christian. I got bamboozled into taking Liberation Theologies this past semester due to a lack of a cross-listing in the course book at my Jesuit University. The coure was taught by a feminist theologian, who is a self-proclaimed expert on Vatican II (no suprise there) and also St. Thomas Aquinas (I kid you not), who could not believe me when I said the Church, in her divine constitution, is not sexist and that all liberation theologies, feminist, mujerista, etc., are simply sociological theories or issues covered under morality., e.g. we do not need a new “theology” to determine that wage inequality is immoral. These people seriously believe that all theology starts with us and our physical needs, so seeing this goddess garbage does not suprise me an iota. The good news though is that they are starting to lose power, at least in soem Catholic circles, and if we fight them confidently they usually back down (at least in my experience).
Ok, I wasn’t going to post this, but decided it is better to know what one is up against and not be silly in thinking this type of rosary and worship is harmless. It is very, very dangerous. http://www.tradwicca.org/goddessrosary.html
Should one keep a list of who desperately needs prayer? I find I cannot keep track, and my prayer intentions feel like I could go on and on to actual infinity….Solution anyone?
Oy, the women, my own kind, how they grieve me, and know it not.
Simple-minded, and I say this with heartache! Chasing after rainbows, desirous of the soothing strokes to vanity…the odd rejection of true and authentic femininity (cooperating with God and bringing forth life! instilling in that life all the necessary aspects of a well-lived Christian life, forming their values and morality according to God’s word, keeping a home free from vice of any kind, enabling a carefully selected Christian spouse to go forth from home to make a living, and come home to sanity, a place of warmth and respite….making one’s best effort to effect the larger world in a positive manner by encouraging and facilitating the tenets of her Christian faith wherever she can….
fools! imbeciles! You reject the true and authentic God and worship yourselves! You bear children like cattle and refuse to raise them well…..you leave them abandoned to the world….and the world will eat them. They are your playtoys, little copies of yourself that you yearn to see represent you in your beauty…..While your children hunger for your attention, your caring, your teaching, you leave them to violent and sexist video games, to addiction, to television, to daycare, to public schools which fill their heads with atheism….to horrible movies and media…..
you run to the gym to firm your backside so every man in your company can admire you….your bum personifies what too many women have become…..an a–, an a– only, and you are blithely content to be just that, ignorant in the truest sense of the word that there is anything else possible for you and your daughters. You have traded a women’s true dignity for one or two anatomical aspects which our demented culture has easily convinced you you are only as worthwhile as they are young and firm. And you so easily bought this.
Your daughters will become virtual tramps, and your sons perverts, whose view of women is strictly utilitarian. This is as you willed it.
You gave away everything women had that was good, emeralds and diamonds beyond compare, for cheap tinsel and cracker jack. God help us, as women decline, civilization is lost. Women are the purveyors of culture and virtue. Historically we stem the tide of brutishness and vulgarity, at home and in the public arena. Without the voice of true femininity, the strength of that femininity requiring and insisting upon a virtuous and honorable atmosphere, all that is left is brutishness and vulgarity. It is woman who has held that line. It is now women who abandon their true calling and place in life to throw it away on self-worship and an existence where they are dooming themselves to become obsolete, because younger, sexier, prettier, is always arriving, and now you have nothing to offer.
It is just all so sad. The fruits of the inability to transmit the truth of Christianity. Thank God for the internet and good faithful priests like Fr. Z and Fr. Finigan, and all those like them. Without them and the links/comments etc I could be just another lukewarm catholic without a clue about my faith. I am so grateful for the ability to read and use the internet, I have learnt so much in the 16 years I have had internet, I know God has guided me, and that there is a reason, but I thank Him for you all.
I think men are longing for a return to the Goddess and want their worship to be focused on Her. –Steve
It seems Steve is still bitter that, in the beginning, Adam chose Eve over him.
Correction: My cousin has been ordained in the Episcopal Church, not the ELCA.
Smad0142
Amazing, at a Catholic University? At the Lutheran university where I just completed a course in dogmatics, the highly Lutheran professor (and minister) spent about 15 minutes on Liberation Theology and we all agreed it was very silly!
Wow. I’ve been thinking about the Spanish Inquisition lately and questioning the severity its measures. This article, however, has me yearning for Torquemada’s return.
Dnicol said:
“This is what you get for deciding you know better than the holy Catholic and apostolic Church. Lessons for anyone in the SSPX?”
Say what??!!! This kind of stuff is going on in the Catholic Church too and especially on so-called-Catholic-University campuses. Everything goes today except the Society of St. Pius X which simply preserves the One, True, Catholic and Apsotolic Faith!!
THE
WAKING
OF
MAN
Beware goddess green
Mother earth’s pagan queen
She’ll recycle man’s faith
Unto doubt.
They will question their existence
Contracept with persistence
If Catholic man does not wake…
He’s waked out!
This church is not far from where I live on the western side of the city. I pass by it occasionally and when I saw the Goddess Rosary banner go up on the outside of the building (which is a particularly virulent shade of purple) I was miffed. No, I was more than miffed. I was hopping mad. I was angry that some cockamamie quasi religious group had suddenly decided to appropriate that most rich and personal of Catholic devotions for other reasons than was intended. But, after thinking about it, my anger turned to sadness. Sadness that these poor people were wandering down a false path, sadness that this was all a fruitless effort on their part.
I would hope that we’d be able to refrain from referring to women as “hags and cows” no matter how intensely we may disagree with them?
I liked the comment over at Bad Vestments to the effect that it’s possible to be so open-minded that your brain falls out. Best explanation for all of this yet.
Helena Augusta,
I think, while perhaps not gracefully expressed, the Egyptian was referring to the death-dealing and anti-human aspect of all this supposed “goddess worship”, not the attributes of the mulieristas or whatever they’re calling themselves this week.
While these women claim to be pagan, they are simply using a few catchwords and trappings to justify whatever they want to do. And unfortunately what they mostly seem to want is to abort their babies and emasculate men and make themselves as unattractive as possible. Hence the hags (killing men and eating little children) and the cows (making themselves less than human).
The clincher for me is that the vast majority of the hard-core feministas I meet are desperately unhappy. All the ranting and raving covers an emptiness of heart.
What the hell is that, the golden spike? All aboard the crazy train.
Centristian,
I think it’s supposed to be one of the ancient fertility objects.
But these women are such slaves to the zeitgeist that they have slimmed her down like a Barbie doll.
When I saw “goddess rosary”, I read “godless rosary“.