I have watched a generation of old guard Lutherans suffer through the implosion of their denomination after the merger of three erstwhile Lutheran denominations into the ELCA in 1988. In 2009, the ELCA Churchwide Assembly in Minneapolis voted to allow congregations to call and ordain gays and lesbians in committed monogamous relationships to serve as clergy. Seeing the writing on the wall years earlier, conservative Lutheran clergy and laity have been bailing out, forming new denominations, going east to Orthodoxy or swimming the Tiber and becoming Catholics. The ranks of the latter have included the likes of the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Robert Wilken, Bruce Marshall, Reinhard Huetter, Leonard Klein, David Fagerberg, and Mickey Mattox, prompting Carl E. Braaten to write an open letter to his bishop in 2005 about an ELCA "brain drain."
Another former Lutheran, Fr. John Zuhlsdorf, wrote yesterday in a post, "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott" (WDTPRS, November 1, 2011):
I, a former Lutheran, think all readers of the Fishwrap should pay special attention to this post I picked up from Fr. Longenecker.Fr. Z adds:
These ... what do you call them ... incongruities? ... exist in order to make irony redundant.
This, friends, is where the liberal agenda will take Catholics:In celebration of Reformation Day I thought readers might like this photograph of the heirs of Luther:
That would be Lutheran bishop of Stockholm Eva Brunne on the left. Eva is in a 'registered and blessed' homosexual partnership. She and her 'partner' have a child conceived through artificial insimination.
I remember how in [Catholic] seminary I was forced, over my objections and with realistic threats of expulsion from the faculty, to go to a Lutheran church on [R]eformation [Day] and sing as part of a choir “A mighty fortress is our God”.Redundant ironies indeed.
Dr. Blosser, I love how you caught Fr. Z's grammatical mistake in the title ("Burg" ist ja weiblich).
ReplyDeleteIt warms this grammatical pedant's heart :).
I enjoyed Fr. Z's comments, as well as Fr. Longnecker's original article. Fr. Longnecker wrote here about how the liberal Protestants always cry foul whenever someone dares say something "offensive": http://gkupsidedown.blogspot.com/2011/11/poking-fun_01.html
A question, though: Why do you think it took mainline Protestants 400 years to jettison any semblance of Christian morality or belief in the Divine, you know, like actually?
Thanks for the picture, PP, it was fall-down hilarious, and perfectly in keeping with the Halloween season.
ReplyDeleteI must be missing something. Isn't this already the case with Catholics, don't ask don't tell?
ReplyDelete"Don't ask, don't tell"???
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, as in all things Catholic, it depends on which Church you mean: the faithful Church or the dissident Church; for probably at least half of contemporary Catholicism is in one way or another in blatant schism and apostasy.
When I was teaching in NC and one of my Lutheran students converted and was, some years later, admitted to a seminary and headed toward ordination, I received one of many background checks in the the form of a phone call from a representative of the Diocese of Charlotte, asking many questions about this student, his background, etc. Among the questions were explicit queries about any HINT of homosexual inclinations, effeminacy, or sexual promiscuity. I was happy to tell him there was not, and happier still that such an investigation was being made, as it showed that the faithful Church was, at least in some quarters, being represented well.
Dr. B. I'm sorry it's not so obvious in my post; it's the dissident Church indeed!
ReplyDelete