After church

Innocence

A father watched his young six-year-old daughter playing in the garden after church.

Tears formed in his eyes as he thought about her seeing the wonders of nature through innocent eyes.

Suddenly, she stopped and stared at the ground.

He went to see what work of God had captured her attention. He noticed she was watching two spiders mating.

"Daddy, what are those two spiders doing?" she asked.

"They're mating", her father replied.

"What do you call the spider on top," she asked

"That's a Daddy Long Legs," her father answered.

"So, the other one is a Mommy Long Legs?" the little girl asked.

As his heart soared with the joy of such a cute and innocent question, he replied, "No dear, both of them are Daddy Long Legs."

He smiled as he reflected on how sweet and pure his little girl was.

The little girl, looking a bit puzzled, thought for a moment, then took her foot and stomped them flat.

"Well, we're not having any of that faggot shit in our garden!" she said.

First Communion

The church wasn't terribly full this morning, but I suspect that many parishioners, much like the monsignor, were at the cathedral for the new pointy-hat archbishop's first Mass. That basically left the second string (even at the keyboard) for us this morning at St. Stevie's.

Hymns this morning were Morning Has Broken (with a weird set of words), How Firm a Foundation, and Father We Thank Thee (plus some responsorial ditty at communion no one sang). Mass setting was a hodge-podge as usual, but this time incorporating Proulx's A Community Mass during the prayers of consecration.

The priest preached about death and taxes and how a priest friend of his wants to die in a plane crash.

There was a different female cantor there this morning. I kind of liked her.

Mass was a first for Ry Ry, who's a recovering Baptist and who'd not really done real church before. I didn't think he was going to go up for communion, but he did anyway; I was amused when he said "that wine was really strong!" If I'd known Ryan was going to have his First Communion, I'd have dressed him up in a frilly white frock.

On the way out, we ran in to monsignor as he was walking back to the church from the cathedral, so I introduced him to Ryan. Monsignor says that Ryan and I look like brothers. LOL

Solstice time

Happy Summer Solstice to all of my Druid, Wiccan, Animist, and Episcopagan friends!

And the Church continues to evolve

Today the House of Bishops elected the Right Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schori, Bishop of Nevada, to be the next Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States, during the triennial General Convention of the church.

This is going to be an interesting development for the worldwide Anglican Communion. The Communion, dominated by conservative male bishops from the Southern Hemisphere, is already displeased with the United States for consecrating an openly homosexual bishop and for seriously considering some type of blessing or union ceremony for homosexual couples. The United States (along with Canada and New Zealand) is one of the very few national churches that has elected females to the episcopacy and there are still dioceses in the world—including three in the United States—that still do not allow the ordination of women to the priesthood, so it will be interesting to see how the other primates (heads of national churches) will deal with having to sit with a female primate.

The other interesting detail is the fact that Bishop Schori is known to be quite liberal. Not only did she support Bishop Robinson's (the homosexual) election in New Hampshire, she has permitted same-sex unions in her diocese as well as holding quite a number of other non-mainstream views. I don't think the outspoken conservative bishops from Africa (who make up more than a third of national Anglican churches worldwide) are going to be pleased with a liberal female from the United States.

Now, at least here in the United States, a presiding bishop really doesn't have any power. It's primarily a figurehead position for international meetings and a national administrator for the activities of the national church, but as the "first amongst equals," it's a powerful position if only for its bully pulpit.

For those of you unfamiliar with Protestant Christian denominations, the Episcopal Church is the American branch of the Church of England. In the U.K., the Church of England is the official "established" religion of the country and the Queen is "supreme governor" of the church; both the colonies of Maryland and Virginia prior to the Revolution had the church designated as the official religion in that colony. Today, Anglicanism is the third largest Christian denomination in the world.

During the colonial era, the Church of England was unable to adequately staff churches in the colonies with priests and had no American bishops, since new bishops had to swear allegiance to the Crown. That's what opened the door to Methodism, the Anglican splinter group that sacrificed its Apostolic Succession in favor of allowing ministers to be elected and installed by other ministers instead of by bishops; the Methodist Church became the major religion in this country until probably the middle of the 20th century.

In America, the Episcopal Church is rather small these days—perhaps 1% of the national population. The Episcopal Church has, however, had a disproportionate impact on the American religious and cultural scene over the years because the leaders of the country, corporations, and communities, as well as professionals and the upper socioeconomic classes, traditionally were Episcopalian. Along with people like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, former presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush are Episcopalian and the incumbent was reared in the church before marrying a Methodist (and he occasionally attends an Episcopal church a block from the White House).

So, where will the Church go from here? It will be interesting to see how events unfold over the next few years. The Church almost split a few years back over the issue of female priests and bishops; splits are threatened again today over the homosexuality issue, though I sense most of that is just a power play and a bunch of boys threatening to take their marbles and go home if they don't get their way. I'm not sure, though, that electing a liberal bishop (instead of a nice moderate) is what the Church needs at this juncture. Of course, if the African churches sever ties with the U.S., that is not, in my opinion, a bad thing, since they get huge amounts of funding from the U.S. and their rejection of the American church would free up a lot of funds for other purposes.

All of these churches and parishes need to remember the centuries-old traditions of Anglicanism, though, and those are moderation, acceptance, and mutual respect. Throughout the centuries, the high church, low church, broad church, and even presbyterian elements of the C of E have all been able to coexist as one big church, even with Parliament's meddling and interventions. The Episcopal Church inherited that tradition, and until recently, it has abided by it. It's time for the bishops and parishes to return to that spirit of collegiality.

Why are Bush and Frist wasting our time?

Marriage in the United States shall consist solely of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the constitution of any state, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman.

—S.J.RES.1

Thoughts from a Christian Republican

Monday, President Bush gave a major speech whining about "activist judges" and supporting a proposed constitutional amendment which would restrict judges from interpreting both the national Constitution or any state constitution as requiring "marriage" to be anything other than the union of one man to one woman. The Republican leader of the U.S. Senate, Senator Bill Frist, M.D., has been urging the President to do this for some time, he ramrodded the proposed amendment through Senate committees last May 16, and now he has brought the matter to the floor this week for a full Senate debate.

When there are so many other pressing, urgent, and important issues facing the nation, I fail to see why the President and Senate are wasting so much time trying to take away the civil rights of a 5-10% minority of the population other than to pander to the Religious Right in an attempt to bolster their sagging public opinion polls.

High gas prices. The war in Iraq. The national debt. Health care. Senior citizens. Education. Crime. Trade policy. Corruption in the House. Stem cell research. Do any of these things matter?

The consensus of non-biased scientists (which means excluding both the gays trying to prove their side and the evangelical doctors trying to support their religious beliefs) is that neither homosexuality nor heterosexuality is a choice; while we do not yet know if it is genetic, the result of maternal hormones in the womb, or learned somehow in infancy, these scientists accept as fact that sexual orientation is established by the time children are toddlers and certainly before they head off to pre-school or kindergarten. Is it, therefore, fair to condemn all homosexuals to lives of celibacy?

Marriage originated as a means of subjugating women and publically declaring that the "property right" of ownership had passed from father to husband. Poor people didn't get married—it was just for royalty, the nobility, and eventually the wealthy merchant class. Marriage wasn't even encouraged by the Church until the ninth century, and it wasn't until after the Renaissance that marriage became common (though not universal) amongst the peasant class. Only in the 20th century did American and European society begin to allow young couples to meet their own prospective mates and marry for love; before that, marriage was arranged by parents or family for any number of property, social, and political reasons, with many couples not even meeting until just before the wedding. Until the late 1970s, even church wedding rituals joined a couple to become "man and wife," reinforcing the biblical concept that women should be subservient to their husbands.

It seems to me that women should be very interested in getting rid of such an archaic tradition. After all, it's not like half of American marriages don't end in divorce, with Christians having a higher divorce rate than the general population.

The Republican Party is supposed to stand for the concept of small government with minimal intrusion into citizen's private lives; we are not the Evangelical Christian Party (and I say this as a devout, non-Evangelical Christian) with a mission to make all citizens and residents of the country bow to the Evangelical's interpretation of the Bible and Christianity. Even as a Christian, I have to insist upon my rights to freedom of religion and I must resist the Evangelical branch's attempts to force their religion on my family and me.

I am a firm believer in the separation of church and state. Our founding fathers were escaping religious oppression in Europe where they were being told by their government what they would believe and how they should worship. Catholics and Protestants were killing one another over religion. Even Protestant Anglicans were killing Protestant "Non-conformists" (such as the Anabaptists and Puritans) and "reformers" were killing high church Anglicans. Those today who are trying to play "Christian Taliban" and impose their evangelical tradition on the country would do well to read and learn the lessons of history.

"The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn't mean that God doesn't love heterosexuals. It's just that they need more supervision."

—Lynn Lavner

I submit that state-sanctioned marriage is condoning and endorsing the religious sacrament of marriage, and that is unconstitutional.

In Europe, people go to the government office for their license and civil marriage and then, if they choose, to a church, temple or mosque for a religious ceremony. Americans are allowed to do their religious ceremony first, and then report that to the government. Now, if the governments in America want to allow for registrations of domestic partnerships or civil unions without regard to the genders of the two partners, that would be acceptable; registering religious ceremonies, however, is not.

With this new registration system, whoever wants the "legal benefits" of marriage would be able to have them and the churches that wish to define marriage in their own way would be perfectly free to do so (some churches already "marry" gay couples and other mainstream churches are considering it). Further, conservative churches wouldn't have to be troubled about non-believers who go to a judge for a "civil marriage" and then don't follow the church's view of how they (even though the people aren't members of the church) should behave. A couple who is in a domestic partnership will simply follow the government's rules and those domestic partners who are religious would be free to go to their religious institution for a marriage and then follow their religion's view on marital behavior.

On an aside, churches and ministers have often inserted themselves in the government recognition of marriage, but why is it that no church is willing to hear petitions for divorce from its members who were married in that church? Even the Catholics, who make a big deal about denying communion to divorcees, have a token process where marriages can be "annulled" for any number of both serious and silly reasons, but they don't "divorce" their member when the "standard" for annulment has been met; historically, though, in Renaissance English, the word "annulment" was synonymous with the modern definition of "divorce."

Meanwhile, the American Bar Association opposes the proposed anti-gay marriage amendment, asserting that it attempts to use the Constitution to impose a particular moral viewpoint on the states and tramples on traditional authority of the states to decide its own laws governing civil marriage. Senate Minority Leader Henry Reid says, "Senator Frist has chosen to put the politics of division ahead of real progress by pushing for a debate on a divisive amendment that will write discrimination into the Constitution."

A constitutional amendment will not "protect marriage" as a social or religious act. The Religious Right can't even protect marriage within their own flocks. Eventually these restrictions will fall as did prohibition and slavery, both of which also had vast popular support, once more people take the time to examine the credible medical and scientific data proving that homosexuality is not a "curable," "moral choice."

Perusing on Pentecost

Has it been that long since I've been to Mass? Most of my friends think I go too often! On the way out of the church this morning I ran into the monsignor on the sidewalk, and he said he hadn't seen me in a while. I wasn't aware that Catholics kept track as do those Baptists.

Edit: the last reported Mass mentioned in my blog was May 14; I may have gone since then and not blogged it.

Anyway, today was the Feast of the Solemnity of Pentecost, the day commemorating the Biblical story about how the risen Jesus came to visit his disciples and cause tongues of fire to come upon each of their heads, filling them with the Holy Spirit and allowing them to speak in tongues. It's a colorful day cause they get to use red vestments.

The associate pastor was the celebrant this morning and he preached on the Holy Spirit being a separate god-entity—reminding us that we used to call it the "Holy Ghost," a concept that gives us a more corporeal image—and then I'm not really sure where it went after that. I remember him saying that John Paul II spoke seventeen languages fluently and dabbled in others while the current Holy Father speaks at least five fluently. I always despair of my lack of fluency in any languages (including English); I guess I should become a priest so I can learn them!

It was the early Mass, so there were no anthems or choir (scheduled at 11 were the Gloria from Mozart's Coronation Mass and Everett Titcomb's "I Will Not Leave You Comfortless"). The hymns were Lambilotte for the processional, Veni Sancte Spiritus (plainsong Mode I) for the sequence, Down Ampney at the offertory, "O blessed Savior now behold" (1990 copyright by a guy named Jerry Brubaker) for a nobody-sang-it communion song, and Nun komm der heiden Heiland at the recessional. Mass setting was a hodgepodge as usual, with How's Parish Communion Service for the responsorial Gloria, the organist's Gospel alleluia, Hughes' Mass of the Divine Word during the consecration, and the plainsong Agnus Dei.

They took the rental electronic organ they rented for the Easter season back to the store. Now they're using an electronic keyboard which the organist was using for both piano and harpsichord and mix. Alas.