The goal of liberals is subversion and naturalism. At the root of it lies basic atheism. These people no longer believe in an acting transcendent God. The only thing they believe in are visible structures of power, and false Ungodly theories of gender theory and cultural Marxism. Since they find themselves in power, while beholden to these theories, they proceed to enact those theories in their Churches. Pope Francis in Rome, Canterbury and TEC in Anglicanism, the Greek Orthodox who are now pushing for women deacons. And so on. It is a life or death struggle for the soul of the Church, which our generation is locked into.
Matthew 16:18 "And I tell you, I will build my church, and shall not prevail against it." Anglicanism can't die, but it can get real bad. These people are like cancer in the body of Christ's Holy Church. I pray that Christ comes before things get even more out of hand. This is very true. Orthodox Anglicans are staring to get outnumbered by liberals and heretics who take advantage of Anglican diversity. I don't think anyone has told them that there are limits to diversity, and a difference between having different opinions and being all out heretical.
Truth be told the liberals are going extinct. TEC is dying, the CofE, corrupted of her prior pristine condition, is dying (no one in England goes to church). The orthodox are growing: ACNA, the Anglican Mission in England. That doesn't take into account the non-white parts of the Anglican Communion which are orthodox and have no truck with the heresies of the white liberals. There are more practicing Anglicans in Nigeria alone than in all of England and TEC put together. They have 4-6 children. The white liberals have 1-0 children. They are contracepting themselves out of existence. The Episcopal Church is losing tens of thousands of members every year. Need I go on? In ten-twenty years every liberal church will be extinct and disappear. A Church cannot persevere once God withdraws his Holy Ghost from it.
Cool! I was under the impression that the orthodox were getting out numbered due to TEC and a few other diocese practically advertising "Join here, pro choice! Does your church let you have an abortion?", and news articles saying a ton of democrats were going to join if they hadn't already. It's touching to hear about religious people in third world countries because even though they have less than a lot of us, they still prize God above all materialistic items. I had a question though, you said a church cannot preserve once the Holy Spirit leaves it, are you saying the Holy Spirit has left TEC? I'm not offended or anything, in fact the HS probably has left TEC, but this got me thinking... If the HS left TEC does that mean the communion and baptism and holy orders are invalid now? Sorry, I know this is a stupid question but I am legitimately curious.
I was going to post other links but there's a link right on this website: https://forums.anglican.net/threads...-35-000-members-in-1-year-christianpost.2284/ They've been selling our faith down the river for over sixty years. They have no money, they have only old hippies, and they have no future. The promise of new liberal pink-haired Christians who have non-binary gender and post naked pictures online, but yet are faithful disciples of the eternal God our Father and his only son our Lord, Jesus Christ, has not materialized. It's not as simple as that. God may judge covenantally, whole nations and churches, and he may judge individually, you and me one by one. I still see faithful Anglicans within the Episcopal Church: the Diocese of Central Florida, the Diocese of Albany, the Diocese of Dallas, and others. And you know what? They're growing. All the vocations are happening in the few remaining orthodox dioceses. If you are faithful to the Lord you shall not wither on the wine, imagine that? Now granted, they're not fully orthodox in that even they ordain women into holy orders, but at least they reject most of the other agenda from the national TEC headquarters. So God may be judging TEC covenantally, but also giving a partial pardon to the faithful who are within. Maybe he's growing the faithful remnant so as to eventually split them off from TEC, join them into ACNA and that will be the end of the Episcopal Church and all its troubles. Or maybe, what God is doing is he's preserving the faithful remnant in the Episcopal Church, so that eventually the heretical dioceses die off, and ACNA just folds into TEC, and we have a resurgence of old-fashioned Anglican orthodoxy in the United States.
Pope Francis isn't "pushing" for them, but is having a special commission to examine the issue (probably to put the question to rest once and for all as well). I don't anticipate we'll see "deaconesses" coming around any time in the future.
To piggie-back on what Stalwart wrote a couple of posts back, the influx of gays, ultra-politically liberal types, and the other new categories that the likes of TEC had thought to tap will not happen because those people can almost always find something they would rather be doing than attending a stuffy service at a dusty church on a Sunday. Saturday vigils are not really gaining traction either, because again, the target audience can always find something else they would rather do. My wife has relatives that are a lesbian couple. About four or five times a year they'll rouse themselves to go to a TEC church and that's what you can expect from most of the people that were expected to swell TECs membership figures: nominal attendance, the spare cash in their wallet making its way into the plate, and no real participation in the life of the parish.
I despise TEC and hate the fact that traditional Anglicanism is sometimes conflated with it. The term Anglican should be reserved only for traditional churches and not TEC. I am tired of it. I have been drawing away from a lot of the media and entertainment because of its bombardment of worldly messages. Even the love songs that seemed innocent that I listened to, are not about Godly love or even human love in a profound way. Just because it doesn't use profanity or mention sex does not mean that it is wholesome. A lot of movies that appear innocent are also infested with irrationally ideal views of love or fortune that will only poison you if you look to them for edification. Most of it is based on new age ideals and worthless. I am also glad that the Spirit has guided me in this turn, because I am not regretful for trashing or putting aside a lot of empty stuff for the true bread of life. However, it does seem here in the US that there is still a strong movement of the Holy Spirit upon the entertainment industry. There are tons of stories of nominal Christians returning to the faith they grew up with in a serious way, and Christian influence is penetrating places you'd never thought of. Sadly though, they proclaim the message in everything except gay marriage. Even those who've been professing Christians for a while now will say nothing of it. And those who did are no longer tolerated in mainstream entertainment (i.e., Kirk Cameron).
The Episcopal Church will start ordaining dogs as priests with the argument that dog is God spelled backwards, that Adam was a misinterpretation of Atom, and that whales can perform valid baptisms by sprinkling. Next, they will replace the Holy Spirit with the Holy Ferret as part of the Godhead, and last but not least, robots as bishops.
According to this Catholic Herald article, the Pope will look to get married priests and even women deacons at the 2019 Synod in Brazil: http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/com...-will-the-2019-synod-discuss-married-priests/ And in any case in my post I was talking about the Greek Orthodox: GREEK ORTHODOX PATRIARCH OF ALEXANDRIA AND ALL AFRICA WILL REINSTATE ORDER OF WOMEN DEACONS http://www.thetablet.co.uk/news/796...-africa-will-reinstate-order-of-women-deacons
They're really just snapping the branches from top to bottom. This is hardly a spiritual achievement! Rather tis politics under the mask of religion.
What does married priests have to do with anything? It would be news for the Latin rite, but Eastern Catholics already permit candidates for the priesthood to marry. Besides, this is (as far as I know) only relating to the Amazonian region, where the lay faithful far outnumber the clergy. If he allowed candidates to the priesthood to marry, that decision would only apply to that region. Celibacy is a discipline, not a doctrine. It can be flexible. As for female "deacons", it simply won't happen. Only men can be ordained. This has been the fact of the matter for the 2,000+ years of the Catholic Church's existence, and it won't change for even a single region (unlike the relaxation of priestly celibacy).
And even then, evidence for female deacons is usually confined to the case of priest's wives or other lay women given a privileged status serving at the altar. Traditionally, a deaconess was never ordained, but just a woman involved.
Precisely. I think they may have assisted at baptisms, but their role was far different than the ordained diaconate we have today.
This is very true. I live in Sacramento, the capital of California, and at my TEC 8 am mass, there are only about 7-8 people. Maybe 10 on a good day. Now if we can safely assume 79.64% of Episcopalians are heretics.Tthat means 6.3712 of the 8 people that go to mass are heretical in some way. This leaves 1.6288 member(s) of the mass traditional.
I disagree with that assumption. Many if not most of my TECers are not heretical. The problem is those that are currently hold influential places.