/christian/ - Christian Discussion and Fellowship

>>582110

Neither picture, A nor B, is indicative of the entirety of all Anglican communion.

Look up the term "cherry picking".

>>582110

Both are present today. The first, and the second. I understand the second - a desire to express to homosexuals we don't wish they were dead. I think we need to be careful - we are NOT endorsing sin and we expect chaste and decent lives outside of marriage for all. The rainbow flag is a symbol about which I have reservations, but the open door is a symbol of which we all should greatly approve.

>>582114

And the female clergy?

>>582118

Well ordination to the diaconate is uncontroversial, I should think. To the priesthood or episcopacy, more challenging. There are theologians, explanations, I don't know them well enough to comment.

>>582117

Cherry

Picking

>>582121

I don't get this meme. If you can show that a picture is in oppositions to the teaching of a church I can see why you would disregarded it, but is this not legitimate in this church?

>>582122

It's not a meme. Cherry picking is when you select certain images, stories, or ideas that represent your narrative instead of representing the whole.

>>582127

Abandon your sodomy

>>582129

What sodomy, fool? I am married and have children and you accuse me of sodomy? Is this the Orthodox view of brotherhood in Christ?

>>582110

Look up Continuing Anglicanism and Anglo-Catholicism

>>582144

>Anglo-Catholicism

Didn't that reach it's pinnacle when the best they had to offer made the English early church fathers collection everyone uses and their best converted to Roman Catholicism?Is there really much to talk about there anymore?

>>582138

FUCK OFF GNOSTICFAGS!

>>582121

You're a fucking idiot. Do the priests of Anglicanism not need to follow rules? No. So this is allowed, therefore it shows what the religion as a whole is like.

>>582110

This is why I don't like state churches. If the state declares something, the church, a branch of the state, must comply.

>>582178

>Lutheran

>>581154

>>582145

More or less. The Oxford Movement tried to reclaim the Catholic heritage in Anglicanism (largely through a gross misunderstanding of the past - for example they claimed that the Book of Common Prayer was well-received by the Catholic population when it was first published, whereas in fact vast numbers of people rioted in the streets over it), but when nobody else was willing to budge most of them converted to Roman Catholicism anyway, and that was well before the modernisation for which Anglicanism is criticised occurred.

>>582218

The liturgical part was good, when they said Trent was compatible with the 39 Articles, that was a bit much. Newman eventually left.

>>582466

I guess we all eventually bridged the gap officially with the Lutheran-RC and ARCIC agreed statements, greater familiarity would help cement those understandings. It's difficult.

>>582508

It's not much better in Europe. And many people who do go to church do it out of habit but they don't really follow the rules in everyday life.

>>582511

Oh, Poland is in its own league. Other Catholic countries are in a pretty sorry state. Catechism also starts a 6 in my country and lasts until you graduate high school + you go church for catechism before first communion and confirmation. An overwhelming percentage of the population identifies as Catholic, but they have no real problem with nepotism, corruption, lying, sex outside of marriage, using contraception, etc. And the thing is, you can see all those corrupt people at mass every Sunday. You can see young people who are involved in various activities, but when you go out for a coffee with them, they talk about their sexual exploits.

If you did a research in Europe, I would say that less than 10% of people who identify as Catholic actually follow the moral teaching. Actually, make it 5%.

>>582514

"Many are called, but few are chosen."

>>582518

There's been little or no emphasis on that over the last 50 years. I never in my life heard a priest say you'll go to hell because of premarital sex, cohabitation and contraception. This atmosphere of 'God will forgive everything' has been creating and people are just living it up. Never during my growing up I heard anyone of my friends and acquaintances say anything about sexual abstinence, they were all mainly interested into getting into a girl's pants. Or the same about nepotism, I never heard anyone say 'hey dad don't put in in the public sector, that's unfair'.

>>582532

As a convert I don't know what the state of catechism is like in Catholic Schools. What I do see, though, is that a lot of times in parish churches here (UK) the priest will announce at the start of Mass for the children to come forward for the children's liturgy, where they then get taken by a tutor (I suppose?) to go into the Church hall. Here they seem to just do colouring in and probably sing songs since they come back at about the time of the Offering and usually have coloured in sheets or things.

Children learn better with their parents, and taking them away to do dumb shit like this is a waste of everybody's time.

It used to be the case that the Children's liturgy was a literal mass for the children on a Sunday morning, at 11AM, in between other adult/family masses before and after this. This has also gone, but by the same token, I still have the same disagreement about separating families like this.

When going through RCIA, however, what was offered to us seemed distinctly Christian rather than Catholic. If it weren't for the fact that I was doing a lot of back-ground reading I would probably be none the wiser to a lot of stuff if I had relied solely on the catechists as my point of reference.

In fact looking back a few things that we were taught were jut wrong. During the session on the Trinity, for example, our catechist used the example a previous catechumen used to illustrate the Trinity, saying that she understood it as being a "Mother, a daughter and a wife at the same time", which is didn't occur to me until later on that this was in fact Modalism/Sabellianism, a heresy refuted by St Basil the Great.

>>582535

>Here they seem to just do colouring in and probably sing songs since they come back at about the time of the Offering and usually have coloured in sheets or things.

>Children learn better with their parents, and taking them away to do dumb shit like this is a waste of everybody's time.

Not to mention that there's always a risk of wolves corrupting those children when they're removed from God's ordained family structure, like in public school.

>>582532

I think many are aware of the Church's teaching on sexual morality and morality in general, but they simply don't care. As I said, I have acquaintances who are in those Catholic youth circles and when you go out with them you hear the same stories I hear from my atheist friends - sex, alcohol, pot. Or many people simply think going to confession will make everything all right, so they can do what they do, confess it, do it again, and so on. There is simply no fear of God, absolutely none.

>>582535

The Church is in a very sorry state, I applaud you for sticking with it and going the extra mile. Because a lot of people simply say hey, my priest said this and this so it means it's true so why even bother questioning anything. That used to be true in the past, but no so much nowadays.

>>582522

>This atmosphere of 'God will forgive everything

I think you've missed the mark here slightly. That atmosphere was always there. The teaching of the Bible and the Church has always been that God loves us and will forgive us, if we truly repent. The problem is not so much that ideas about God's forgiveness have changed (after all, the apostles were called to be fishers of men, and bring sinners into the church rather than reject them as eternally damned) but that ideas about repentance have changed. Repentance isn't going to confession, or saying you're sorry for sinning or even genuinely feeling sorry. Those things are important, but the essence of repentance is change - that you reject the sin in your actions: "Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more."

Failing to repent in this way even after knowingly receiving God's forgiveness is surely the truest path to damnation.

>>582541

I always remember Galatians 6:7. And I have never heard anyone say 'I am sorry I was with 2 dozen girls and had fun with them and alcohol and I'm sorry I have this cushy job because my dad's friend got me this cushy public service job which enables me to live comfortably'. People mainly consider that as a part of growing up and have fond memories of that period.

>>582546

I agree with you. I'm just trying to make the point that a merely 'cultural' Christian, although he might get to the stage of genuinely feeling sorry and promising not to sin again, akin to a new year's resolution sort of outlook, does not have the idea of eternal justice and concern for his soul before his mind, but rather the condemnation of his community, his family, his priest, etc. Thus being forgiven by others takes the place of being forgiven by God, and as soon as avoiding the sin taken a concerted exercise of willpower again the cultural Christian will probably lapse, to no one's surprise.

The church has to be somewhat diplomatic in its approach here, because a fire and brimstone sermon is only going to strike the intended fear into a person who already fears God in his heart. A different strategy is needed to win the souls of the reluctant and the vacillating. The content of the fire and brimstone sermon may be true, but the church has to keep its goal in mind.

Likewise, however, that goal is not served by too much softness when preaching to the choir, who may be encouraged by laziness to lapse.

>>582538

Well exactly. And we see the fruits of this all over the place.

>>582539

Thanks man.

Part of the issue with that is that, here in the UK anyway, priests had an oddly revered status. It was this kind of Irish piety where the priest was pretty much untouchable, omnipresent, and could do no wrong, so this led to just the same kind of complacency. That said I think theologically they were more disciplined and less hesitant about preaching about sin, the Last Things, evil and so on, even though, as the stereotype goes, after mass they'd go out to the pub and get soused.

Now the pendulum has swung the otherway where they are much less acknowledged and often more sloppy, preaching a more muddy "God loves you!" type of Faith, which, though not untrue, isn't the whole picture. This seems especially to be the case when it comes to penance. I can think of only a handful of times when I felt truly awful and elated after having come from confession, which was when the priests gave me some pretty hard words (though not from malice or anger) and penances. Just about any other time it seemed like their reaction was just "OK, just say 1 Our Father".

Maybe I'm just being overzealous and critical of it.

>>582153

pretty sure he's Orthodox

>>582535

very similar here in Québec. I wish I had found my Latin mass Parish and was confirmed there.

>>582514

>you can see all those corrupt people at mass every Sunday

If I didn't see corrupt people at mass then there would be no one at mass, priest included.

Thank God that corrupt people attend mass.