The Anglicans pull me back in. Everyone's favorite broccoli-shaped clergyman comes in on the American situation.
[Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan] Williams, who currently serves as Master of Magdalene College at Cambridge University, joins scores of religious leaders who have condemned the reported use of tear gas and rubber bullets to clear clergy and protesters from the area around St. John’s Episcopal Church, across the street from the White House, so Trump could use it for an unauthorized photo op.
Which never happened.
“Quite literally, God alone knows what was going on in the head of the President of the United States as he stood outside a church this week brandishing a Bible, having walked to the church with his path cleared by tear gas and rubber bullets, posturing before a nation more tragically divided than it has been for decades, wounded at so many levels,” Williams wrote in a June 4 newsletter to the members of St. Clement’s Church, Cambridge.
Maybe the Creator of the universe alone knows what was going in the head of the President of the United States" but you'll be happy to fill the rest of us in since you're an Anglican and stuff and you apparently have a direct line to the thinking of the Creator of us all.
“In a context where racial privilege itself has long been an idolatry,
Whatever. Keep churning out those bumper stickers. Nobody's going to think that this crap is profound or anything but it's basically all you've got at this point.
where long-unchallenged institutional violence has been a routine means for the self-defense of that privilege
Because it's never been challenged in this country before and this sort of thing happens here all the time. Last I checked, the people responsible for this murder were going to face justice.
the image of the President clinging to the Scriptures as if to an amulet is bizarre even by the standards of recent years.”
No more bizarre than you fixing the 2008 Lambeth Conference in order to not even begin to address the Elephant In The Room and quite happily presiding over the death of whatever's left of the Anglican Tradition. But you do you, my gracious lord of Canterbury.
God knows, nobody cares anymore.
15 comments:
It's amazing how many Brits, using "facts" from CNN (which means they don't know what they're talking about), presume to lecture Americans as if they are somehow morally superior. Excuse me, Archbishop. Rotherham. Get back to us about societal ills when you've handled your own.
If MD Teacher and other Catholics are around, read this open letter from Archbishop Vigano, formerly papal nuncio to the US, to President Trump. He praises his for his visit to the JPII shrine in the furtherance of international religious freedom. Abp. Gregory and other US bishops have criticized Trump for the visit. Really, read the letter:
https://www.lifesitenews.com/mobile/opinion/archbishop-viganos-powerful-letter-to-president-trump-eternal-struggle-between-good-and-evil-playing-out-right-now?__twitter_impression=true
Back to Rowan Williams: What better symbol could we have for national healing and repair than the Bible? What would he rather Trump hold? The Communist Manifesto?
Dr. Williams isn't interested in "national healing and repair." What would he have left to pontificate about?
I read the letter via a local Catholic blog - it's quite good.
Unfortunately, Abp. Vigano has largely become persona non grata to the American hierarchy due to his exposure of the McCarrick (criminal) behavior. The masses in the pews (on their couches) don't even know who he is, much less read the letter. Much easier for our bishops to earn about racism than give us access to the Sacraments.
Our host is right - people like Dr. Williams would be out of a job and megaphone if these problems were solved.
It only takes minimal searching to find that Trump is a frequent attender of Bethesda-by-the-Sea Episcopal church down the street from Mar-a-Lago. He and Melania were married there in 2005. The wedding was attended by such luminaries as Kathy Griffin and the Rev. Al Sharpton.
Days before the "photo op" at St. Johns (which Trump has also attended three times) he and Melania visited the Shrine of St. John Paul II in Washington DC. Melania is a practicing Catholic and Trump is at least a fair-to-middlin' Episcopalian.
So all this ranting about Trump not being Christian is hogwash. He's at least as much a Christian as most 'piskies. Maryann Budde and the former ABC are probably aware of this, too.
"Melania is a practicing Catholic."
"Practicing Catholics" don't marry outside the Church nor do they marry divorced men with two previous wives extant.
Well, Dr. Tighe, wouldn't Donald's previous two marriages be outside church law, if they weren't celebrated in Catholic churches? I have no idea if Ivana, Wife #1, is or was Catholic. But yes, describing Melania as a "practicing Catholic" seems incorrect. She was married in an Episcopal church, her first and only marriage. Her son was presumably baptized there, and the boy attends an Episcopal school in suburban Maryland.
Well, whether or not Melania meets the criteria for "practicing" or not, the point is, Trump is at least as religious as many Episcopalians. He's more religious than the "nones."
Trump's more religious than quite a few Episcopalians of my former acquaintance. The last couple of years that I attended an Episcopal church, the number of divorces among people I thought were forever genuinely shocked me.
Not least because of the fact of all those divorces didn't seem to shock or disturb much of anybody there, particularly the clergy.
Certainly Episcopalians in general have no justification for objecting to Trump's two divorces, given the number of multiple marriages among them, including clergy and bishops.
Not least because of the fact of all those divorces didn't seem to shock or disturb much of anybody there, particularly the clergy.
Every counted the number of clergy on number two or further? Why, when I was in England when things were first going off the rails, a Brit parson complained to me that whilst he was in California, the dude in the lead for Bishop was on his third marriage.
If the Anglican Communion doesn't put an image of Henry VIII on its seal, it's really missing an entire symphony of beats.
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