GenCon 2012: A.S. Haley-House of Bishops Votes for Liturgical Anarchy

July 10, 2012

The House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church (USA) is a ship without a rudder. It is adrift on the sea of spiritual platitudes, and at the mercy of the winds of popular culture. Its leaders on the bridge have no idea where it is headed, because they have lost their compass, too. And as for the crew—well, they just keep on doing what they have always been doing, which is to keep their heads down, work at their daily tasks, and hope that they eventually will find a safe harbor, despite having no idea how to get there.

They listen to daily prayers which have no root in the liturgy, but which “sound” quasi-spiritual. “May God be with you,” intoned their chaplain just before they voted to “approve”, 111-41, some kind of liturgy for some kind of mumbo-jumbo to be pronounced over some kind of persons who see themselves in some kind of relationship.

How is the Church to “bless” something which its Book of Common Prayer cannot even define?

The Bishops do not tell us; they just say: “Do whatever your own Bishop may choose to approve in his or her own Diocese. It can be this liturgy, for example; or it can be something someone else has written for this liturgically undefinable occasion, as long as the Bishop says, ‘That’s fine.’ Or it can be no such rites or liturgies whatsoever, if the Bishop says that. Whatever—just go with it, pewsters.”

This is a recipe for liturgical anarchy in the Church, and is symbolic of the systematic damage the Bishops have allowed to eat away at ECUSA’s foundations over the years. The pastors have ignored their real flocks while chasing after particular kinds of sheep (who actually are very few in number). In the process, the fences have all fallen down, and now the pastors can scarcely tell who is in their flock, and who isn’t, while there are no longer any protections against beasts of prey. the rest

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