Thursday, June 16, 2011

Changing Churches to Stop the Church From Changing


From Religion Dispatches (Love the T-shirt)

When the Rev. Mark Lewis joined his congregation and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, DC in announcing that St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Bladensburg, Maryland had decided to take up Pope Benedict XVI on his 2009 invitation to disconsolate Anglican and Episcopal churches to join the Roman Catholic church en masse, the official spin was that the move was motivated by a desire for greater Christian unity—a wish, as Lewis put it, to "enter into full communion with the Holy See of Peter."

At the same time, the small flurry of press releases, letters, statements, and ecclesiological cheat sheets also insisted that the new arrangement for full communion with Rome would allow St. Luke’s to “continue to worship with integrity in the Anglican tradition.”

In practical terms, this means that St. Luke’s will no longer be under the authority of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington and parishioners will be educated according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church on doctrine and faith practice in general. Thus, the parish has begun to adopt Roman Catholic practices of praying the rosary and saying confession. They’ve even ordered a bigger, better statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM).

More here-

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/atheologies/4742/mass_conversion%3A_changing_churches_to_stop_the_church_from_changing/

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