Old World Swine

Right Anglicans

According to this AP story form Yahoo! News, the Vatican has taken steps to create a new ecclesial structure just for traditional Anglicans who want to return to full communion with the Church.

It's no secret that a lot of Anglicans are aghast and appalled at the rapid doctrinal meltdown of their denomination, the result of moral relativism. A great number are looking for a way to reconnect with the historical roots of the Church, and are looking to Rome.

This new ecclesial structure will allow the return of Anglicans to the fold of the Church, while also allowing them to maintain some genuine Anglican identity in terms of their traditions and worship. Things like the Common Book of Prayer, I would guess. It will also allow the possibility of married Anglican priests and seminarians eventually becoming Catholic priests.

This is an exception to the celibacy rule that has also applied to married Eastern Orthodox priests who enter the Catholic Church.

Some Anglicans may be upset at this move from the Vatican, as the split within Anglicanism (long brewing, but recently triggered by major accommodations to homosexuality) has been growing, painful and public. It would seem that this response by Rome would have to encourage some who have been looking for a way out of the sinking Anglican lifeboat to make the leap for the Ark of Peter.

If they are that upset, though, perhaps we could arrange a trade. As much as it would pain me, I am willing to send them all our bitter feminist nuns, dissident crank theologians and aging hippie priests in exchange. These would fit right in with the likes of Katharine Jefferts Schori (head of the Episcopal church, the American branch of Anglicanism). Like peas in a pod.

What will these poor, Anglican converts do on Guy Fawkes Day? Oh, the internal conflict! Personally, I don't care if they celebrate and light their firecrackers. Guy was very naughty, trying to blow up Parliament like that. Had he run in with a pistol and a sword and demanded a fair fight, I might feel differently, but sneak attacks with bombs are unmanly.

A Reading...

...from Saint Paul's First Letter to the Special Fund Raising Task Force of the Evangelization Committee of the First Mammon Street Church of Corinth...

"You can't have a vision that doesn't have a funded budget,"

... or so says John Avant, former vice president of evangelization at the Southern Baptist Convention's North American Mission Board (according to USAToday.com). And he's not alone...

In his resignation letter sent to Hammond and to state evangelism leaders, Alan Quigley cites funding as a key frustration. In particular, Quigley, an evangelism specialist for Oklahoma Baptists, worried that the mission board did not plan to buy any national advertising to support the GPS initiative.

"The decision by Geoff Hammond not to purchase media time has undermined the entire strategy," Quigley wrote. " … This and other areas of the National Evangelism Initiative that are virtually unfunded make the idea of embracing NAMB's attempted strategy unlikely."

Now, this is not at all to pick especially on Baptists. The same disease - a bureaucratic mindset and a worldly view of reality - have infected the Catholic Church at various times and places, and plague her in much of the West now.

Many Christians act as if the first thing Jesus did after his resurrection was to establish a Committee and charge them with outlining new fundraising strategies so they could better serve the community by offering night basketball and Mother's Day Out.

Yet, somehow, the real apostles - twelve common laborers with no experience in ministry - managed to, you know, change the world... with no national advertising and not an Evangelization Specialist among them.

We are the evangelization committee... otherwise known as The Church. As has often been the case, it may be time for the good Lord to work through the rank-and-file to once again rescue the Church from the good intentions of Middle Management.

As they say in regard to war, what it comes down to in the end is "boots on the ground".