Is the Church of England ashamed of Christianity?
03/24/2024
The Church of England is in a state of total collapse. It has been reduced to hiring out its stolen cathedrals as nightspots. Sacred ground trodden by saints and martyrs now are converted into mini-golf arenas.
Theologically, it is nothing but wokeness wrapped in tattered religious garb. It's latest fetish is apologizing for all the evils of history. This is the new hotness with liberals. Rather than take personal responsibility for something in the present, they puff themselves up by denouncing their ancestors.
But an apology requires an offense and redress. Mostly they're just condemning their ancestors for not being as hip as they are.
A draft version of their plan to atone for the evils of the past includes this remarkable passage:
Penitence: We call for the Church of England to apologise publicly for denying that Black Africans are made in the image of God and for seeking to destroy diverse African traditional religious belief systems. This act of repair should intentionally facilitate ongoing and new sociological, historical and theological research into spiritual traditions in Africa and the diaspora, thereby enabling a fresh dialogue between African traditional belief systems and the Gospel.
This is absolutely hilarious, indeed beyond parody. A Christian church is apologizing for bringing people to Christ!
The line about diversity is also priceless. So much for the unity of the Holy Church! I mean, I suppose Church of England is now finally preaching what it practices. Having broken from the Western Church, it's now breaking from itself.
The bit about "dialogue" with traditional belief systems is also great. Protestants have long (falsely) accused the Catholic Church of incorporating pagan elements into its doctrine as a means of converting people, but here the Church of England is seeking to do exactly that. I'm curious as to how they'll work cannibalism and human sacrifice into that dialogue.
What this document demonstrates is a lack of faith in the faith. The Church of England does not believe its own teachings, and deeply regrets sharing them with others. The Africans were better off with their old "diverse traditions" than with the Gospel of Our Lord.
During my conversion, I remember the exhilaration I felt when I realized that the Church was real; her authority was real; her morals and teachings were real. I had grown up with irreligious parents and lived in a town where intentions superseded results. Good people doing their best to be good was the ideal and if things went awry, who was I to judge?
The Church changed all that. There was intrinsic good and intrinsic evil, and one could speak clearly and truthfully about right and wrong. For a time, even Catholics tried to be "nice," but that time is passing, if not already passed.
The Church of England, however, has embraced "nice" over faith. They worship the Spirit of the Age, and I suspect the ultimate act of this will be its disestablishment, which cannot be that distant.
I think this is a good thing, because it was founded in adultery and heresy, aggressively persecuted people who refused to partake in it, and is now nothing but cult of wokeness led by people LARPing being dissident Catholic clergy. Good riddens.
The C of E's woke self-hatred is on par with those who believe that the people of South America were unjustly robbed of their religions which practiced human sacrifice as "food for the gods" or to bring about a good harvest. But when they make the world go all Sri Lanka and try to ban fertilizers, perhaps they can reclaim their precious heritage.
Ah, East Lansing has been big on good intentions for a very long time. A Catholic friend of mine from Case told me that the student centered parish was totally cool and comfortable with taking a holiday from their faith if it wasn't "where you're at, right now". I suppose the idea behind it was that a glimpse of the areligious, or even sacrilegious, lifestyles available would turn them back. Maybe it did for some. For others, it was long term break. I spoke to this woman during the lockdown, and she told me about how some of her Catholic college friends are big RBG fans and very pro-choice. Not sure how the priest could have gotten around that outcome, even if he had been tough instead of "nice".
On another connected note, I have recently taken to reading one of your guru's favorite authors of the 1970s; Anne Morrow Lindbergh. During high school I had read Bring Me a Unicorn, but never opened Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead, which was mandatory reading and in keeping with his focus on death and grief. Maybe he got over it before you got there, but it was a hot topic in his mid-70s classes.
Posted by: CN | 03/24/2024 at 02:26 PM
I'm missing the reference to the guru. Professor Ronald Dorr offered excellent writing advice, and I thank him for that. I didn't delve too deeply into his politics.
Yes, St. John's was always a known as being on the outer edge of Catholic orthodoxy. It was merged with the "townie" parish some years ago, but the (Boomer) pastor enjoyed doing "sex talks" with the college kids, until he was suddenly removed from his position. I hesitate to give the "rumor on the street," and will content myself that no one has come forward to accuse him of actual crimes.
His successor (a Gen Xer) has wrought considerable change on St. John's, including a significant restructuring of the worship space, which was (to put it mildly) at variance with established Catholic tradition.
There is an organic, grassroots thirst for tradition in the Church right now, and the fact that my formerly liberal enclave is hosting relics, and reviving old practices (which are being received with great enthusiasm) is quite the juxtaposition with the C of E deciding to void itself.
Interestingly (and this may be fodder for a post of all its own), there's an increasing acceptance in Christian circles that the Catholic Church is in fact an authentic inheritor of the Jewish traditions, that it didn't try to fuse Plato and Moses, but was a natural progression - and this is supposed to be a BAD thing, because it corrupted Europe with Judaism. The Protestants, by contrast, heroically cut all of that out.
I can't even , but here we are.
Posted by: A.H. Lloyd | 03/24/2024 at 03:56 PM