The truth is like a lion.  You do not have to defend it.
Let it loose.  It will defend itself.
St. Augustine of Hippo

Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000

RAMANAM
In the Name of The Father, and of The Son and of The Holy Spirit, Amen.

Countrymen,

ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT

The Set-Up

Last month, The Washington Compost produced some fake news about Christianity under title: Liberal Churches Are Dying.  But Conservative Churches Are Thriving.

The writer’s thesis includes the accurate observation that efforts by John Spong and Harvey Cox to adapt the churches to the modern world have failed insofar as churches which adopted their program have been hemorrhaging members ever since Spong and Cox announced the program.  Spong is a queer and a retired Bishop of The Episcopal Church (ECUSA).  Cox is an entertainer and a retired professor at Harvard Divinity School.

I am a nominal Episcopalian since 1976 and a spiritual one since well before that.  Occasionally I have attended Mass, and I enjoy the fellowship, but the underlying tribulations of the denomination, and its leadership’s inability to resolve them, leave me cold and disgusted, and, I admit, without justifying it, angry.

So when I saw this article in the Compost, I thought to forward it to my Vicar, a woman of good quality, by nature a care-giver and not a student of scripture, theology or church history.  She illustrates the profile of ECUSA and other denominational clergy since clergy and laity hemorrhaging began in the late 1970s: middle-aged woman with income from husband or savings from a previous career, or both; superficial theological schooling, none of it deep study, which takes time; filling spaces insufficiently remunerative to support a family much less pay off school debt and therefore useless to men.

The Exchange

And with the URL to my Vicar — and with editing here for clarity — I enclosed this language:

Spong’s solution has not worked.  It could not work.

Personally, I think the conservative churches are not more Christian than the mainline ones, which all are now collectivist/socialist/secular.  And conservative churches certainly are legalistic, with is defiance of Christianity.

However, congregants at conservative churches do not have to sit through Scripture readings followed by sermons blatantly going opposite to Scriptures just heard.

Sermons in conservative churches do not follow Scripture readings either, but at least they are not blatantly opposite and contrary thereto.  Just subtlety so.  This makes them, in my mind, more dangerous to the Faith long-term — for offering the false harbor of legalism — than mainline sermons, which are merely hilariously a-Biblical, a-Traditional and a-Rational.

Pike and Spong killed ECUSA as a denomination of the Church, made churches into feeble social clubs for a very, very narrow band of humanity.  No ineffable greatness, no soaring upward and forward aspiration, no inclusion of everyone for their own sake rather than for the hierarchy’s sake.  Politics (separation) and social engineering (oppression) rather than religion (freedom).  Neither Grace in San Francisco nor St. John in New York is a completed project.  This is monitory.

When was the last time an ECUSA congregation built a St. Thomas, New York or a St. Bartholomew, New York, both completed projects standing now on a lick and a prayer?  No inspiration to.  And who are the inspirers?

I think the solution/course is back to the monastery.  Renunciation, quiet, spiritual practice, deep and wide learning (nothing excepted), detachment, cultivation of foods and skill in trades, promulgation of the Gospel, repetition of the sacraments (all seven), keeping the Holy Office (recitation, chant and hymnody), avoidance of legalism or, what is the same thing, inclusion.  That may come from clergy and/or laity, but it sure-as-sunrise will not come from the hierarchy.  Pike and Spong failed their duties wretchedly.

Let the winds blow and be thankful for them.  They are the Holy Spirit in Person.  That is what I think, anyhow. 🙂

After an hiatus, my Vicar responded:

I have felt (beginning with my seminary experience) that the Church is a dying institution.  As with all institutions, they are created to develop & sustain an idea.  But by their very creation they become onerous and eventually start eating their young to sustain the institution itself rather than the ideal they sought to nurture & protect.

And I’ve always felt my role is to be a hospice volunteer sitting at the bedside of the dying patient who cannot pull the plug on the ventilator.  (It’s what I can do … not sure how well, but that may be beside the point.)

I also think the Church is only one manifestation of institutional chaos.  Most of the big I institutions are about to collapse on themselves … Government, Education, Military, The Press, Marriage, you name it.  I sometimes noodle about whether this is all part of a grand scheme I cannot comprehend or envision, but it all seems to be coming to a head at the same time.  But if my role is to actively participate in navigating the last few days of one of those institutions, then so be it.  There are real and good people in all of those places who deserve to have their hands held as we pass from life to death to resurrection.  And Jesus must weep for all of us most of the time.

I’m a progressive in many ways, although I’ve always thought Spong & Pike were too out there for the vast majority of people.  I cringe at the conservative, legalistic stuff (an unapologetic rejection of earlier influences) and think you’re correct that it is a more insidious way of deluding people’s faith.  We humans seem to think that when something is bad we need to swing the pendulum clear to the other side to correct things.  Too bad!  Both extremes violate & do harm.  Both sides have lost the essence of faith and have now resorted to lobbing grenades at each other trying to prove their right way.  It is not is The Way!  Neither children or adults can thrive under absolute legalism or boundary-less permissiveness.

I’m not sure which needs to come first, the death of the institution or a massive Pentecostal indwelling of the Holy Spirit to renew & recreate — perhaps it is both, but certainly it is not something any of us can do as humans.  Repentance is part of it … from the on your knees version to the turn around and walk this way version.  I also doubt you and I will live to see what this resurrection looks & feels like.

I agree that the monastics have much to offer at a time like this … as long as it’s not isolationist.  I try to go to my monastery at least once a year (& wish I could go more often) to stop, pray, get back to basics, & listen.  On those occasions alone it is life-giving in more ways than one.  We need monastics who will pray & listen and then hold up a new vision or hope for anyone willing to hear it.  It won’t be easy, but we aren’t in charge either — thankfully!

The Ruminations

Now, I am free to own being stumped by this my Vicar’s response.  Not in 73+ years have I heard anyone else, anywhere else, of any station, pronounce ECUSA or any other church denomination a terminal patient in a hospice and the clergy’s duty to provide said patient empathy as, so to speak, a pain-relief medication.  I have heard many metaphors for the Church and the churches, but never that one.  Certainly I have never read or heard of any saint, educated or uneducated, care-giver or student, describing the Church or even the churches after the manner of a hospice patient and clergy as nurses thereto.  I find the image appalling, pusillanimous and paynim.

So, as of this date, I have not responded to my Vicar’s missive.  I have not been sure how to respond.  I think, however, she has made a salient assertion that merits analysis, marshaling and response.  These following, therefore, are my thoughts to date in preparation for a response to my Vicar’s response to my original comment to the foregoing article in The Washington Compost.

1- Her seminary experience poisoned my Vicar’s intelligence regarding her experience of God and The Church.  It is a common phenomenon and an old one, made not less but more dangerous and deplorable by being so.  Being a monastery is a prerequisite for being a seminary, and even then, if puffy academics gain an upper hand on penitential scholars, even a monastery is quits of justification for existence.

2- Above all else, my Vicar makes a classic, lamentable error in identifying the churches as The Church.  No theologian does that.  The churches participate in this world, the world of heroism, corruption, courage, faith and doubt.  Today the churches are cesspools of endless description.  Tomorrow they are engines of divine power, which is to say, sempiternal transformation to a new reality, New Being: Christ Jesus the Lord of History.  The Church, however, is a spiritual community, the Bride of Christ, not of this world but available anticipatorily and fragmentarily in this world as transcendent visitation.  She includes all who call upon Jesus the Christ as Lord and Savior.  And, being purity, She is ever pure, incorruptible and unavailable to doubt.  My Vicar confuses the churches and The Church.  From that confusion cataracts of nonsense pour forth as disease.  Today, the disease is styled progressivism, aka collectivism, aka globalism, aka Communism, aka Fascism, aka Socialism.  Another name for it, digging deep into church history: Pelagianism.

3- Who reads the Gospel and preaches its opposite?  Those who do not hear the Gospel.  Like practically everyone in the churches today, clergy and laity, my Vicar does not hear the Gospel.  She reads the Gospel, she listens to it being read, she sees it written on the page.  She does not *hear* it.  Like water surrounding a rock, the Gospel does not penetrate to her intellect, her heart or her soul.  Inside, my Vicar is dry.  If she heard the Gospel she could not preach its contrary, week after week … and the same contrary over and over again, no less: aggressive messianic collectivism conjured by weaponized empathy.  In two words, Liberation Theology … for the silly affluent.

4- My Vicar uses PC attitude and language approvingly to discuss ecclesial affairs.  PC attitude and language descend from KGB active measures meant to prevent Americans from thinking clearly about their self-defense.  PC is political, not theological.  Specifically, PC is socialist, collectivist, globalist claptrap.  Use of it in the churches subverts the churches’ raison d’être.  Liberation Theology is the KGB’s very clever and successful creation of PC attitude and language for the purpose of throwing Americans into confusion regarding their own safety and welfare.  The churches’ clergy lapped it up, gulped it down and felt nourished.  Or better, felt quite self-righteous, which is the opposite of being nourished.

5- My Vicar’s metaphor for ECUSA and herself — and I am sure her sentiments in this particular reflect those of numerous clergy in other church denominations and one man or one woman shops — stands to examination.  For example:

a- By what measuring means does one declare a church or a denomination terminally ill and clergy hospice nurses attending it?

b- By what authority does one minister as if to a terminally ill patient without telling them how one regards them, especially when one is pimping them palliatives — collectivist delusion and worse (i.e., weaponized empathy) — when they think they are receiving restorative medication — The Gospel?

c- One accepts leadership responsibility of ordination in a church denomination but is not in charge of — responsible for — said church denomination’s operations, welfare and conformity with the spiritual Archetype: The Church?

d- On what authority does one regard The Reading, The Psalm, The Epistle, The Gospel, The Sermon, The Prayers, The Consecration and The Hymnody as palliatives — pain management — rather than life-givers — restoratives?

e- Who said the churches can or will undergo or have undergone resurrection?  What saint, scripture, tradition or reason says The Church *needs* resurrection, now or ever?  Why should one look/hope for an institutional permanency existence — the condition of the churches — absolutely denies?

6- Shepherds now eat their sheep as well as fleece them.  The description progressive is a synonym for the description Pelagian.  Progressives are modernity’s Pelagians.  Like Humanists and Communists, Progressives have their Ideals.  Christians, however, have their Realities.  Progressives produce narratives to match their ideals, reality be damned.  Christians proclaim a Gospel that describes existential experience, reality be cherished.  Ask your pastor if they see themselves as a terminal care nurse in a hospice at which their church is a terminal patient.  If they say yes, or anything near it, you are in mortal danger and must decide what to do.  You might also ask them what the hospital is their church inhabits during these final days of its existence … something *other* than the church?!?  Churches’ clergy want their congregations to *pay them* for, effectively, euthanizing their congregations at the same time said congregations *believe* their yearnings for life are being answered by their clergy with elixirs?!?  I am stupefied.  I thought long ago I had taken measure of clerical depravity, but this … this, tells me I was an ignoramus, in this particular at least.  As I try to contemplate this treachery of souls, God’s Playmates, I feel reduced to babbling.

7- The Church is not an institution.  The churches are institutions, smaller and smaller ones all the time (even Roman Catholic Bishops must engage in secular businesses and quasi-governmental operations — e.g., schools, hospitals, alien settlements — in order to support their liturgical responsibilities).  One — The Church — is not subject to corruption, one — the churches — is.  Who who confuses these cannot minister in the churches because they are not a Minister of The Church.  Ordination and consecration are in The Church, not in the churches.  When clergy cannot *hear* the Gospel, how can they preach the Gospel or administer the Sacraments?  They cannot.  Bottom line truth: they are not clergy.  St. Jerome said, “A vestment does not make a bishop.”  Clergy who cannot *hear* the Gospel have undergone an ordination or consecration ceremony, in one of the churches, that is disconnected from The Church.  They are neither ordained (as a priest) nor consecrated (as a bishop).  Correlatively, a person who has undergone a ceremony of ordination or consecration, in one of the churches, that *is* connected to The Church is authorized clergy in any one of the churches, of any denomination.  True clergy are counterparts of general and flag officers in military formations.

8- Now, what to do when inside a church denomination regarded as an institution in terminal decline by leaders, shepherds, self-identifying as a hospice nurses for said expiring institution?  First, I see this as a cleansing operation.  That means, add nothing but remove a whole lot of stuff not belonging.  I can think of several vectors of action, none of them mutually exclusive:

a- In prayer, turn the problem of cleansing the churches over to God’s omnipotent wisdom.  Ending always with, “Your will be done.”

b- As did St. Paul to the Galatians, read them the riot act, give them a taste of the whip and a whiff of grape.  Emphasize the tradition handed to us in the Bible and guaranteed by Saints and The Church.  And tell them their parlous condition is in consequence of their eschewing their wealth, their treasure: the Liturgy, the veneration of Parents and Teachers, the adoration of Saints and Sages, the respect of deep learning and skilled craftsmanship, the rejection of ambition and pride.  Tell them their treasure remains ever present despite their dismissal of it.  Tell them The Church is not ill but they are, and for the old reason: they looked away from Her towards tinsel and trash, the myriad blandishments of this breathing world.

c- As did St. Augustine to the Pelagians, move to contact them with classical Christian Logos Theology.  Let nothing they say go unchallenged because everything they say is untrue, a lie or both.  But anchor the attacking force on Logos Theology and pivot from there as required to meet and defeat Pelagian maneuvering.  Keep your lines of communication with Logos Theology open and active.  They are what make the battles and the war winnable.

d- As did St. Bruno, establish a mountain fastness, appeal to God for help, and wait, and always end with the words, “Your Will be done.”

e- As have adepts and aspirants through the centuries, faced by similar circumstances, turn your home into a sanctuary.  Be a family monastic.  Raise your children and take care of your spouse as an indomitable union of personalities.  Pray in private, give in private, study in private, work in private, love in private, and bring to each of you that which they need for personal, spiritual, intellectual, moral and physical expansion.  And lead not your family into dangerous places unless you have a good reason for their being there, and then only temporarily, for a specified, time-limited purpose.

9- Although I am not a Roman Catholic — although I am a Catholic, as is every person who speaks the Nicene Creed believingly — this Roman Catholic Prayer to St. Jerome expresses the ground of things spoken of here:

Master of unworldliness, and founder of monasteries, you had a deep love for God’s inspired Word and were a most careful translator of the Sacred Scriptures.  Your perseverance in seeking God’s glory is a perfect model for all interpreters of the Holy Text.  Inspire them with respect for the Sacred Text as well as for Tradition and the Church’s Magisterium.  Help them to impart to all the true meaning of the Word of God.  Amen.

The Response

So finally, after another hiatus, I responded to my Vicar’s note as follows:

Thanks for your note.  I hope you had or are having a fine, relaxing vacation!

The gist of your note stumped me.  I had not before, during 73+ years in this breathing world, heard the churches regarded as terminal hospice patients and clergy as hospice nurses dispensing palliatives.  Nor had any metaphor even close to that ever occurred to me.  So this was a genuinely new thing for me to see and ruminate upon.  Which I have been doing.

I think what stands out most to me is the metaphor’s confusing the churches with The Church.

What stands out next to me is whether congregants, who assemble presumably for medication to life, both as individuals and as a Congregation, have been told by their physician — clergy — that their physician already considers them a forlorn hope, both as individuals and as a Congregation, and that they, clergy, in their minds, are handing out palliatives to the dying rather than medication to restore the living, as congregants presumably think they are and desire from accepting the Sacraments.  The metaphor treats the Sacraments as pain management rather than disease elimination.  I find that remarkable, and as I say, news to me.

Then there is the idea that The Church or the churches may someday undergo resurrection.  I can recall hearing of the churches being rebuilt or reformed but never resurrected and especially not if one is referring to The Church.

I think the fallacy of the metaphor — and it is a fallacy — is equating, if even merely by assumption, or for literary ease or simplicity, the churches and The Church. Having that metaphor for one’s professional labors in mind would really depress one, as I think you are, and not just by political affairs.  The Church and the churches is an ancient distinction which prevents the rise of Pelagian iterations, such as afflict the churches and society generally today.

Your seminary did you a disservice.  Mine did me one also.  I did not let that stand.

Since I cannot knowingly participate — dumb me, I did not see it when right in my view — in discharging the operational requirements of that metaphor, I have to forego playing at Mass or a Good Friday Meditation or attending the same.  This does not make me happy.  I just cannot see you or my fellow Episcopalians or Episcopal parish churches — or any others — as terminally ill persons or institutions in the care of hospice nurses — clergy — dispensing palliatives.

I think The Church is reforming Her existential aspects — the churches — here in earth, as She has done before, and we have responsibility to discern what those are, what those structures of order should accomplish, and make all that happen.  That is not resurrection.  That is reformation, a very different breed of cat.  Resurrection as we know it occurs once already on earth and then once again some time beyond time in some dispensation of reality not this one we bounce around in at the moment.

Even the churches are not institutions like GE or UW or DOD.  They are fleeting forms of Divine power, which is to say, liberation.  Our attention is to the Divine, not the forms, the power, not the fleeting.

Update 1: Socialist Or Fascist?

Update 2: But the churches are NOT ethical authorities: Of Money And Morals

Update 3: Ron Dreher: Trump Can’t Save American Christianity

Update 4: How Churches Die

Update 5: Back to Canossa, only now it is the Pope standing bare-headed in the snow begging forgiveness from the ChiComs.

Update 6: Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo: ‘China is the best implementer of Catholic social doctrine,’

Update 7: This British Vicar has figured it out: Christian Life In Exile

Update 8: Relevant stats

Update 9: Russian Orthodox Church Breaks With Constantinople As Ukrainian Orthodox Church Pulls Away

Update 10: How Far Should Churches Go to Appeal to Men?

Most successful way to appeal to both men and women: Male only church leadership.

Men love to belong to male dominated organizations.  On the other hand, women love to belong to male dominated organizations.  Don’t believe me?  Have you ever thought it was odd that women always want to belong to men’s business organizations, men’s career fields, men’s social clubs, men’s athletic clubs, etc., but men avoid women’s organizations.

I once attended a large and rapidly growing conservative Lutheran congregation which had a male-only leadership.  I was astounded by two things.  First, board and congregational meetings were more calm, to the point and productive than any church meetings I have ever been to.  In three years, I never heard someone said, “Well, I feel . . .”  Second, it had the strongest bunch of women I have ever known in any church I’ve ever attended.  Having men in visible, public leadership roles and the women in deeply influential, behind the scenes roles worked very well for that congregation.

I suspect the church’s acquiescence to feminism in the sixties and seventies badly damaged it.  As men fled the church, the church did not become larger.  It did not even get more women members because as the men left, the women follow them out the door.  The more women want to be in charge, the more men leave.  The more men leave, the more the women leave because an organization is only valuable to them if there are lots of men in it.  It’s deeply ironic, isn’t it?

Update 11: Bishop nixes Nicene Creed at Epiphany Mass to avoid offending unbelievers

Update 12: Prominent Georgia Church Breaks with Increasingly Progressive UMC Denomination

AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA