A jury convicted Msgr. William J. Lynn of child endangerment Friday, finding that as the Archdiocese of Philadelphia secretary for clergy, he ignored credible warning signs about a priest who later sexually assaulted a 10-year-old altar boy.
The verdict, after a three-month trial, marked the first time since the clergy sex-abuse scandal erupted nationally a decade ago that a Catholic Church supervisor had been found criminally liable for child-sex crimes by a priest.
In a conscious effort to reinvigorate Western ritual, [Matthew] Fox deconstructed forms of worship inherited from the modern era, such as sitting in benches and being read to, being preached at and singing from hymnals. In the late 1990s in California, he incorporated the premodern practice of dance with modern music and computer technology to create what he called Techno Cosmic Masses.
Joining a move toward nonsectarian prayer, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department has asked its chaplains to stop including Jesus in their invocations at official department ceremonies.
The change, which applies to such events as police graduations, promotions and memorials, took place about a month ago, said Maj. John Diggs, who heads the department’s volunteer chaplain program. The goal: greater sensitivity to all religions practiced by the more than 2,000 police employees.
“This is not in any way an effort to demean anybody’s Christian beliefs,” Diggs said. “It’s to show respect for all the religious practices in our organization. CMPD is not anybody’s church.”
I am to talk about apologetics. Apologetics means of course defense. The first question is –What do you propose to defend? Christianity, of course: and Christianity as understood by the church in Wales. And here at the outset I must deal with an unpleasant business. It seems to the layman that in the Church of England we often hear from our priests doctrine which is not Anglican Christianity. It may depart from Anglican Christianity in either of two ways: (1) It may be so “broad” or “liberal” or “modern” that it in fact excludes any real supernaturalism and thus ceases to be Christian at all. (2) It may, on the other hand, be Roman. It is not, of course, for me to define to you what Anglican Christianity is–I am your pupil, not your teacher. But I insist that wherever you draw the lines, bounding lines must exist, beyond which your doctrine will cease to be Anglican or to be Christian: and I suggest also that the lines come a great deal sooner than many modern priest think. I think it is your duty to fix the lines clearly in your own minds: and if you wish to go beyond them you must change your profession.
This is your duty not specifically as Christians or as priests but as honest men. There is a danger here of the clergy developing a special professional conscience which obscures the very plain moral issue. Men who have passed beyond these boundary lines in either direction are apt to protest that they have come by their unorthodox opinions honestly. In defense of these opinions they are prepared to suffer obloquy and to forfeit professional advancement. They thus come to feel like martyrs. But this simply misses the point which so gravely scandalizes the layman. We never doubted that the unorthodox opinions were honestly held: what we complain of is your continuing you ministry after you have come to hold them. We always knew that a man who makes his living as a paid agent of the Conservative party may honestly change his views and honestly become a Communist. What we deny is that he can honestly continue to be a Conservative agent and to receive money from one party while he supports the policy of another.
Even when we have thus ruled out teaching which is in direct contradiction to our profession, we must define our task still further. We are to defend Christianity itself–the faith preached by the Apostles, attested by the Martyrs, embodied in the Creeds, expounded by the Fathers.
–C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970), pp.89-90 (emphasis mine)
Leaving the hospital three months [after an accident]…he soon walked on crutches down the aisle of Greater Mt. Carmel and committed himself to the Lord.
“I immediately started a street ministry because … I was so shocked by my relationship with Christ, I wanted everybody in my neighborhood, all my partners … to know the God that I knew,” Luter said. “So every Saturday at 12 noon I’d be preaching on different streets of the Lower Ninth Ward and sharing Christ. And that’s how, as they say, that’s how it all began.”
The first African American president of the Southern Baptist Convention is amazed at how God has blessed his ministry, opening doors previously closed to those from Luter’s side of town.
A Towson area church will make a faithful transition this weekend as its rector is ordained ”” and its congregation confirmed ”” into the Catholic Church.
Anglican priest Father Edward Meeks ”” of the Christ the King Anglican Parish in Towson ”” will be ordained a Catholic priest by Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington, on June 23, during a ceremony in Washington D.C.
The next day, Sunday, June 24, some 120 of Meek’s parishioners are expected to be received into the Catholic Church during a Mass of Confirmation and Reception at Christ the King, located at 1102 Hart Road.
A German-born university chaplain has been appointed head of Melbourne’s flagship Anglican church, St Paul’s Cathedral.
The Reverend Dr Andreas Loewe, senior chaplain at the University of Melbourne, will be installed as Dean of the cathedral, the church announced on Sunday.
Dr Loewe, 39, succeeds Bishop Mark Burton, who resigned earlier this year.
The Rev. David Ousley was baptized a Methodist in 1951, was ordained a priest of the Episcopal Church in 1979, and left it in 1999 for the Anglican Church in America.
And on Saturday, this 61-year-old married father of three will make one more ecclesiastical leap: he will be ordained a priest of the Roman Catholic Church in a 11 a.m. Mass at Holy Cross Church in Mount Airy.
He is “swimming the Tiber,” as Anglicans call conversion to Catholicism ”” a reference to the river that runs through Rome ”” but the white-bearded Ousley will not emerge from his swim on some strange and foreign shore.
On June 3, the Rev. Patric F. D’Arcy’s first Sunday officiating at his new parish as a newly ordained Roman Catholic priest in the Bronx, he offered Mass in crystal-clear Spanish in a packed sanctuary. Later, at a lunch celebration, his new parishioners welcomed him with trays of rice, beans and roasted chicken, and a white cake adorned with golden icing.
It was a festive event ”” a thanksgiving for the blessing of a new priest ”” that would normally take place in early June in at least several of the 370 parishes in the Archdiocese of New York. But this year the New York Archdiocese has ordained only one new priest, Father D’Arcy. It is the first year that has happened since the archdiocese opened its seminary more than 110 years ago.
Being the archdiocese’s sole member of the Class of 2012 is a slightly uncomfortable distinction for Father D’Arcy, 33, a soft-spoken man who prefers to stay out of the spotlight. He is not a native New Yorker, nor even an American citizen. Father D’Arcy comes from a small suburb of Toronto, about 80 miles northwest of Niagara Falls, and transferred to the seminary here three years ago, he said, because he had a special interest in working with Latin American immigrants, and had heard that New York needed such priests.
…the idea of having leisurely conversations about Jesus is just, well, too slow. The only adult formation things that have been in any way successful are sermon podcasts and daily e-mailed bits of wisdom, prayer or scripture.
A mentor once gave me some good advice: stop doing things that aren’t working. This makes all the sense in the world, but it’s hard to do. It is hard to give up the picture I have in my head about what a church is supposed to look like: people sitting around on couches in the parish hall, Bibles open.
But at least in my ministry context, that just isn’t working anymore. And personally, I’m done with the roller coaster of getting seduced by the latest thing that’s supposed to work, putting mountains of energy into making it really good and then getting cranky with people because they don’t come. So we stopped it all.
The Rev. Tom Eklo of Richfield’s St. Nicholas Episcopal Church, after voicing his opposition to the proposed constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage in Minnesota, went even further recently, saying he’d like to get out of the marriage business altogether.
“I don’t think clergy should be doing marriages,” he said. “We’re basically puppets of the state in that regard.”
According to Eklo the state is responsible for marrying individuals””and because marriage is thus a civil, rather than religious contract””religious organizations, of any denomination, should not be tasked with performing marriages.
When we speak about the doctrine of God the Holy Trinity, we approach with fear and trembling a great mystery. For many modern Christians, any attempt to think about the mystery is considered impious; but this cannot be: because “unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of God”. Not to receive this gift of knowledge is the true impiety. And though the mystery ever exceeds our comprehension, yet “now we know in part” however imperfectly, the mystery which God has chosen to reveal to us. This attempt to understand is not an act of pride, but of humility ”“ ”˜standing under’ the bright heaven of divine truth, in openness to its vitalizing gifts.
In explaining the mystery of God, resort is commonly had to the acts of God in history. Thus, for example, the answer to the question about the Apostles’ Creed in the Prayer book Catechism, “What dost thou chiefly learn in these Articles of thy belief? Answer. First, I learn to believe in God the Father, who hath made me, and all the world. Secondly, in God the Son, who hath redeemed me, and all mankind. Thirdly, in God the Holy Ghost, who sanctifieth me, and all the [elect] people of God.” That is to say, the persons of the Holy Trinity are revealed in the acts of God in history, the “economy” of salvation.
This is helpful, and yet a false conclusion may be drawn ”“ that the meaning of “Father, Son, and Holy Ghost” is expressed fully in the formula “Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier”. The latter phrase speaks of God’s acts in history (in each of which all three persons are involved); the former of God in himself. For that we must engage with the paradoxes of the technical language of theology, developed to uphold the Biblical revelation: that there is but one divine substance, essence, or nature; infinite in power, wisdom, and goodness. Within this unity of substance there is a distinction of persons, each of them fully God, co-equal, co-eternal, consubstantial ”“ and yet “there are not three Gods, but one God”. God is not a committee.
According to Saint Augustine, the best image of the Trinity is in the life of the human soul itself, made in the image of God. When we look at the soul itself, we see a certain image and likeness of God. Robert Crouse summed up Augustine’s teaching: “One says of the soul three things: it is; it knows; and it wills, or loves. And these three powers are one soul: being, knowing, and willing. God is; God knows; and God wills. God eternally begets his Word, the Son ”“ that is the divine knowing; and in that knowing, there proceeds God’s love, God’s will, the divine Spirit. The Word begotten, the Spirit proceeding; Father, Son, and Spirit: one spiritual life, one substance, in which these three are co-equal, co-eternal persons. God is not some abstract principle, physical or mathematical or whatever; God is not some impersonal force in the universe. The actuality of God, being, knowing, and loving, Father, Son, and Spirit, is the actuality of life. He is the living God.” Since our end is to know and to love God, our salvation consists finally in our worship ”“ by knowing and loving ”“ the living God. So the doctrine of the Trinity is not some arcane obscurity, but the truth which shapes the spiritual life of Christians, as they turn to God and grow into his likeness in Christ. To a limited degree we may know God through God’s knowing of himself; we may love God through God’s delight in his own infinite goodness; our knowing and loving God is a participation in the life of God himself. Not to think the Trinity, therefore, not to believe and profess this doctrine, is to shut oneself out from salvation.
—The Rev. Gavin Dunbar is rector of Saint John’s, Savannah, Georgia
Resolved, the House of _______ concurring, That Title III, Canon 1, Sec. 2 of the Canons of the Episcopal Church be hereby amended to read as follows: No person shall be denied access to the discernment process for any ministry, lay or ordained, in this Church because of race, color, ethnic origin, national origin, sex, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, disabilities or age, except as otherwise provided by these Canons. No right to licensing, ordination, or election is hereby established.
This is from yesterday from yours truly if you have an interest. It was preached at Saint Andrew’s, Mount Pleasant, S.C. and is based on Articles 12-14 of the 39 articles and readings from Ephesians 2:1-10 and Matthew 25:31-46. The link included downloadable options as well as sermon notes and questions.
Dorothy Sayers, the British intellectual and theologian and ”“ not incidentally ”“ writer of mystery novels, once remarked that for the average churchgoer of her day, the mystery of the Trinity meant “The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, the whole thing incomprehensible; something put in by theologians to make it more difficult ”“ nothing to do with daily life or ethics.”
Well, in fact the mystery of the Trinity has everything to do with daily life and ethics, though it is also, it must be said, “incomprehensible.” Which is why in the Church we are accustomed, as we have been this morning, to talking about this revelation as a “mystery.”
But, in this theological sense, when we talk about a mystery, we’re not talking about a sort of intellectual puzzle….No, in the Church, when we talk about a mystery, and especially when we talk about this Mystery of Mysteries, the ultimate mystery which is the Most Holy Trinity, we are using the word in almost the opposite way. Instead of a logical puzzle, a question, we are talking about a truth, a revealed truth, which we may know to be true even though it is impossible to wrap our little heads all the way round it.
The house lights go down. Spinning, multicolored lights sweep the auditorium. A rock band launches into a rousing opening song. “Ignore everyone else, this time is just about you and Jesus,” proclaims the lead singer. The music changes to a slow dance tune, and the people sing about falling in love with Jesus. A guitarist sporting skinny jeans and a soul patch closes the worship set with a prayer, beginning, “Hey God ”¦” The spotlight then falls on the speaker, who tells entertaining stories, cracks a few jokes, and assures everyone that “God is not mad at you. He loves you unconditionally.”
After worship, some members of the church sign up for the next mission trip, while others decide to join a small group where they can receive support on their faith journey. If you ask the people here why they go to church or what they value about their faith, they’ll say something like, “Having faith helps me deal with my problems.”
Fifty or sixty years ago, these now-commonplace elements of American church life were regularly found in youth groups but rarely in worship services and adult activities. What happened? Beginning in the 1930s and ’40s, Christian teenagers and youth leaders staged a quiet revolution in American church life that led to what can properly be called the juvenilization of American Christianity. Juvenilization is the process by which the religious beliefs, practices, and developmental characteristics of adolescents become accepted as appropriate for adults. It began with the praiseworthy goal of adapting the faith to appeal to the young, which in fact revitalized American Christianity. But it has sometimes ended with both youth and adults embracing immature versions of the faith. In any case, white evangelicals led the way.
The three former Episcopal priests said they found themselves more aligned with Roman Catholicism and less with increasingly liberal stances taken by Episcopal leaders. The nation’s sixth-largest Protestant denomination has been divided in recent years over the ordination of [non-celibate] gay men and women and same-sex marriage. Meanwhile, the Roman Catholic Church has made efforts to draw Anglicans interested in conversion; even Anglican priests who are married can be ordained.
“It really boils down to understanding of Scripture,” said Vidal, 52. “We believe that the Catholic Church is following the early church teachings more consistently.”
Who will guard the guardians? Ten years after the Catholic hierarchy of the United States gathered in Dallas and adopted unprecedented policies to address the scourge of child sexual abuse by clergy, the question of accountability at the top remains unanswered….
The best answer the bishops had…in Dallas was a behind-the-scenes “fraternal correction” policy, by which a bishop would quietly pass along any concerns about another bishop to that bishop. Church tradition was invoked to preclude any external oversight by laypeople or other prelates. As always, each bishop would answer only to the pope, who alone had the authority to remove the head of a diocese.
Now, as the bishops gather next week in Atlanta for their annual spring meeting, they will hear an update on the Dallas charter but are unlikely to address this enormous loophole””despite events that make it all the more urgent.
This is an important video because it represents the prevailing theology among the TEC elite. It is something you need to be aware of as illustrated by the fact that it is planning on being screened at General Convention 2012, and that it contains two members of the House of Bishops in its content. You, however, need to make your own decisions about whether to view it since the theology advocated will cause major dissonance–KSH.
[Former rector Jay] Lawlor, 42, who was cleared in a jury trial of the assault charge, served at St. Luke’s for 21 months. The payout was equivalent to more than a three-year severance package.
Lawlor’s 2010 compensation was $125,000, which included $85,000 in salary, plus housing and benefits.
That year, the church had a $630,650 operating budget and $1.9 milllion in investments at the end of the year, according to records shared last year with the Gazette.
While there is scepticism whenever those who represent Caesar in the political realm invoke God, [and there is great wisdom in the consequent reticence displayed by politicians] it has been possible for the Queen with her very different role to be steadily more explicit in her Christmas broadcasts about her own lively faith in Jesus Christ which sustains her work.
The cost of this call and way of life is so great that it is proper to regard it in sacrificial terms. As a notable republican said to me the other day ”“ “I don’t believe that we should ask anyone to do the job”
But the job has been done with conspicuous dedication over the past sixty years. The Queen embodies the truth at the heart of our life as a nation that the kingdom of God and a humane society is built, yes by raw political power and programmes but also and perhaps most profoundly by the human touch, loving and unwearied service, attention to others.
Christian monarchy today embodies not a set of policies or the pinnacle of a hierarchical social order but a life, a fully human life, lived in the presence and calling of God who dignifies all humanity. Such a life which is open to us all is the essential ingredient from which the Kingdom; God’s plan for the human race, grows.
The spectacle of such a life properly evokes loyalty.
To declare a lifelong dedication is to take a huge risk, to embark on a costly venture. But it is also to respond to the promise of a vision that brings joy.
And perhaps that is the challenge that this Jubilee sets before us in nation and Commonwealth. St Paul implies that we should be so overwhelmed by the promise of a shared joy far greater than narrow individual fulfilment, that we find the strength to take the risks and make the sacrifices ”“ even if this seems to reduce our individual hopes of secure enjoyment.
Via email:
Please keep the family of the Rev. Canon Hollis H. Buchanan in your prayers. He died on June 1, 2012.
Father Buchanan, a 6th generation native Floridian, was born on September 16, 1927 in Tampa, FL. He was a graduate of the University of Florida and Seabury Western Seminary. He was ordained an Episcopal priest in 1954, served as a chaplain in the U.S. Army and the U.S. Air Force Reserve, and spent his life serving his Lord and the Episcopal Church. He served as a priest in Miami, FL, Winter Park, FL, Vero Beach, FL, Florence, SC, and Summerton, SC, retiring from active ministry in 1992.
In the Diocese of South Carolina he served at St. Matthias, Summerton from 1984-1992, at All Saints, Florence from 1979-1984. He was named an honorable Canon for the Cathedral of St. Luke and St. Paul in 1993.
In his retirement, he continued to serve part-time as a priest in Leesburg, FL. He is survived by his two sons, William and Robert (wife Cindy); three grandchildren, and one nephew. He was predeceased by his parents, Herbert and Lena, his brother, Kenneth, and his daughter, Valencia. A Memorial Service will be held at 10 a.m. on June 20 at Emmanuel Episcopal Church, 1603 E. Winter Park Rd., Orlando, with interment of ashes immediately following at St. Richard’s Episcopal Church, 5151 Lake Howell Rd., Winter Park, FL. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to the Episcopal Relief and Development Fund or your local Humane Society.
Jesus ate local.
He walked everywhere. He loved grilled fish dinners with friends. And even if drive-thrus existed in the first century, he wouldn’t have gulped down a value meal on his way to the office.
That’s the message Tennessee’s obesity fighters want pastors to convey to their flocks, captive audiences with a built-in support system ”” one another. And while the deadly sin of gluttony slipped out of church lingo decades ago, a gentler approach that emphasizes eating as a spiritual issue can work, they say.
(I thought of this when I was reading the previously posted article. It is only very slightly edited from its orignial form as a post on the blog in 2004–KSH).
Andrew Adam covers an absolutely taboo topic with some helpful comments, including this truth:
One of the problems at the seminary level is that very few people preach a half-decent sermon in their first dozen, two dozen, perhaps hundred sermons. Overall, the standard of preaching in the Episcopal Church is pretty low, so some people preach sermons that aren’t nearly as bad as the average; but most folks need more than three or four practice sermons in seminary to make significant strides toward fluency and grace in preaching.
I [Kendall Harmon] would submit that the question ought to be why the Episcopal Church is not repenting over our pitiful preaching. Most Episcopal preachers today think they are terrific, and in most cases they aren’t good at all, or worse than that.
The Episcopal Church in my view has no outstanding preachers, zero, none, nada. It is why in a movement like Promise Keepers there are no ECUSANS who are part of the preaching program. Someone like T.D. Jakes ought to be considered a possible model for great preaching, yet in a diocese I know well when one of my friends mentioned him a bishop said : “Who is that?”
Preaching simply isn’t a priority in ECUSA, and our system gives us the fruit of that.
If you want to see what I consider a typical Episcopal sermon look at this.
Note: an openly heretical beginning invocation, he tells us mostly what he does NOT believe, but when it comes to being constructive, he is extremely weak. In terms of Scripture and the Tradition we have little. In terms of organization it is merely o.k. The application is pitiful if it is there at all.
Yet: if I gave this sermon to many ECUSANS I bet they would say it was pretty good. A lot of people in ECUSA consider that priest to be a solid preacher!
Good preaching has three parts: it is biblical, it is organized, and it applies the Bible to the lives of those listening. 90% of Episcopal sermons I listen to do not even meet those three criteria which is what is needed to GET OUT OF THE STARTING BLOCKS toward being a good sermon (never mind a great one).
Let me conclude with two points. We do have a few–a very few–preachers with potential. I think John Howe is a very good preacher, and Paul Zahl can be quite good when he is on. Among those slightly younger, Russell Levenson…[is a] good preacher…who may develop into [a] very good [one]….
But I would counsel those who want to learn of great preaching to drink heavily from better wells. Go listen to Tony Evans or T.D. Jakes or Jack Heyford for at least a year. If you want Anglicans listen to John Stott sermon tapes, or those of Michael Green.
And repent and pray for better preaching, and for better preachers, in ECUSA. Heaven knows we need them–KSH.
In his memoir “The Pastor” (2011), Eugene Peterson identifies one of the most serious threats to biblical preaching””a “pragmatic vocational embrace of American technology and consumerism that promised to rescue congregations from ineffective obscurity” but that “violated everything””scriptural, theological, experiential””that had formed my identity as a follower of Jesus and a pastor.”
The obsession with measurable “results,” the rebranded promise of some technique or strategy: Preachers are bombarded with this stuff every day (four keys to success, six marks of a healthy church, seven principles of growth). Many ignore it and get on with their work in “scripture, sermon, and sacrament.” Praise God for that.