Leaders of the Episcopal Church of America will take a vote this week on whether to remove Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan from ministry.
Duncan notified the Pittsburgh diocese Saturday of the vote, which be taken Thursday during a meeting of the Episcopal House of Bishops in Salt Lake City.
Duncan is charged with abandonment of the Communion of the Church, a charge initiated by five priests and 16 lay people from the Pittsburgh diocese, Duncan said in a letter.
Read it all and do not be confused by the paper’s incorrect and confusing headline.
When is it an honor to be deposed? When you are being deposed by SATAN.
So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.
Rev 3:16
“Simons declined to comment on a potential legal battle over the $43 million in assets that the national church says the diocese holds in trust. He said that Across the Aisle is working in cooperation with the national church, but the decision over any legal action will ultimately be made locally.” Locally? This guy is really in la-la land!
#1,
Forgive me for saying this (and I’m sure that you’ve had a harder row to hoe in your neck of the woods than Pittsburghers do in theirs), but doesn’t language of that sort merely deprive the word of its power?
“Satanic” is an adjective fitting for the Holocaust and Darfur, for September 11 and St. Batholomew’s Day and for the process by which black Africans were shipped across the Middle Passage. The Presiding Bishop and those around her have been disingenuous (at best) in their dealings with those with whom they disagree and uncharitable in their treatment of good men and women striving to proclaim the message of Christian redemption to the world. It is also pretty clear that their theology is not ours.
All of this still falls short of “Satanic” in my book. It would be so much easier if they were.They are fallen human beings; so are we. We can only enjoy the privilege accorded by Christ’s injunction in the Beatitudes blessing us for suffering false persecution if we refrain from responding in kind.
#4, Any time God’s purposes are subverted, His Church and Name used and abused, it is permissible to use the term, evil or satanic. If Christ called St. Peter ‘satan’ for suggesting He not die, then I guess it’s ok to call those who pollute Christ’s Gospel and The Faith ‘satanic’.
PS, #$ – maybe it will wake them up if some of the lily-livered ‘Windsor’ ‘bishops’ used the ‘s’ word this week. I hope and pray something will wake up and humble these people who live for the agenda of satan and baal and that the Lord will grant them repentance.
Moreover, the sign over Christ’s Cross was written in the language of those who crucified Him….literally/historically and symbolically/figuratively:
Latin – the secular world system
Greek – the flesh
Hebrew – false polluted religion
#4, Satan is at work in the little things as much as the big ones. If not for the little corruptions the big ones would not be possible. Souls wind up in Hell because of lust, gluttony, sloth, anger and so forth played out in mundane, daily life as they do for participating in “big” sins like slavery and genocide.
I see what you are saying, and you have a point, but I would argue it is so because we have lost the sense of the supernatural in daily life, and no longer think of the last things and how our lives relate to them. Many people no longer see their own seemingly ho-hum lives as a profound drama that will lead them either to eternal bliss or eternal despair and suffering, and so it sounds odd to hear this sort of language applied to mundane things – but the problem is us, that we have been disenchanted and lost our sense of the spiritual reality that contains our lives. What is going on here is a concerted effort to corrupt the church and lead people away from orthodox belief in God – of course Satan is involved.
When on e serves satan and his minions, I think that qualifies them to be call satanic. Who else does queen katie serve other than satan?
[i] The comments are sounding sarcastic. Please carefully consider what you’re saying before hitting the submit button. [/i]
-Elf Lady
This whole episode is really tragic. Bishop Duncan is a man of God and I hate that he is being chased off for preaching the Gospel. We are warned repeatedly in Scripture about not associating with those who are clothed in the garments of liturgical worship yet lead us away from the Gospel. Perhaps this is God’s way of making this happen. We should all pray for Schori’s conversion, as for that of the HOB majority. And we should pray for Bishop Duncan, that he will remain faithful through all this mess and not fear the adversary.
Elves, the comments are sounding angry and condeming, but “sarcastic” is a word that cannot describe them. I detect nothing other than honest contempt from them.
[i] Your description is better than mine. Thank you. [/i]
By the way, what is this Epicopal Church of America? Didn’t they get the memo?