UPDATE 14 Dec:
Rod Dreher put it well HERE.
At this rate, by 2030, they’ll be ordaining sexbots to preach to empty cathedrals.
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Originally Published on: Dec 11, 2018
This is what happens when churches … rather… ecclesial communities… hitch their wagons to the state and/or trends.
From a nauseous piece at The Telegraph:
Church of England to offer baptism-style services to transgender people to celebrate their new identity for first time
The Church of England has encouraged its clergy to create baptism-style ceremonies for transgender people to welcome them into the Anglican faith.
New pastoral guidance, published on Tuesday, advises clergy to refer to transgender people by their new name, though it stops short of being a baptism.
The guidance, which was approved by the House of Bishops on Monday night, also details how elements including water and oil can be incorporated into the service.
It also advises that as part of a special service, they can be presented with gifts such as a Bible inscribed in their chosen name, or a certificate.
[…]
Read the rest there, if you would. You may feel nauseated by the details.
I think it was the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus who quipped that the purpose of the Anglican Church was to make irony redundant.
They are going to make a mockery baptism.
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They have already made a mockery of Marriaage,
Why not baptism
Living in England this does not surprise me in the least. So much of Anglicanism is about “being nice”. They are being nice to transgender people today.
Anglicanism has a much bigger problem really: the lack of Magisterium. A convert told me once that when she converted to Catholicism, an Anglican friend said: “Yeah, I thought you were the kind of person who likes being told what to believe.” You can believe anything and still be an Anglican. According to a survey 2% of Anglican clergy believe that God is a social construct. (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/survey-finds-2-of-anglican-priests-are-not-believers-9821899.html)
“…the Affirmation of Baptismal Faith enables people to ‘renew the commitments made in baptism and in a public setting…’ ”
From the trans point of view, this will be seen as affirming a lot more than Baptismal Faith.
I bet the Martinites will use the existing “Order for the Welcoming of New Parishioners“ from the BofB to create something similar in a Catholic context
Perhaps this will be good for the Anglican Use Ordinariate in England.
All of these outrageous happenings defy human nature. What would Jesus say, none dare ask. The media seems to take a perverse pleasure in reporting such nonsense. Just imagine some 6″2″ man weighing 200 lbs., comes up to you, and says you must now refer to me as Penelope, it is the law. By the way, laughing at me trying to walk in my high heels is a hate crime.
Absurdities are shoved at us, it seems like every day, but human nature will always triumph, although the damage caused in the meantime can be quite considerable.
This sounds an awful lot like “The Lord of the World.”
Newman said that the Church of England is a great bulwark against heresies greater than her own. Now that this bulwark has been bashed down, the enemy is pouring into the breach here in the Catholic Church.
Wonder how long it’ll be before many of them become atheists. I don’t know how else anyone can reconcile this sort of practice with actual belief.
This is straight from Hell, where Henry VIII is mostly likely suffering in eternity for his rebellion against the Catholic Church. Have the English gone completely daft? May St. Augustine of Canterbury and all the English Saints and Martyrs pray for this one great nation to return to the Catholic faith. +JMJ+
Of course if history had preceded a little differently, Henry’s break could have resulted in something more like Eastern Orthodoxy with a separation from Rome but a retention of the truths of the Faith such as the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. However 2 things prevented that – the desire to loot the monasteries due to his chronic shortage of money and the later effects of the Protestant Revolt which brought in the Calvinist understanding of the “Lord’s Supper” and many other things.
This kind of thing will become more common, as the protestant sects circling the plughole desperately try to find some new relevance to draw people in. Its is all in vain, of course.
APX makes a good point that this may boost numbers coming to the Anglican Ordinariate. The Catholic Hierarchy of England (and further afield) would be appalled by this however, thinking the Church “needs them as Anglicans”. Which is the kind of empty waffle held up as leadership in many places today.
JonPatrick: even the breach under Edward VI could have been overcome under the influence of the Oxford Movement by way of the irregular but valid apostolic lines of various vagante bishops, to make as you suggest a sort of orthodox connection. But what really destroyed the Church of England as a christian body was the 20th century devolution of doctrinal decisions to the General Synod (General Walking together). Membership of the General Synod was open to any determined hack with a political agenda who had leisure to get himself elected by a rotten borough. So when the Vatican speaks of Synodality you can already see where this is going.
I didn’t know that the Telegraph was in the business of publishing vocations pieces for the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham.