Friday, August 18, 2006

Video of the "Truly Ablaze!(tm)" Congregation

This is the video for the previous post. Have barf bag at the ready...

7 comments:

Whey Lay said...

AAAAHHHH!! Barf..Barf, AAAAHHHHH!!

Sorry, I'm better now. Ten years ago it wouldn't have even been a decent joke, too over the top on feminist stereotypes to be believable.
Your previous post was right. My main concern though is that people in our Synod who are pushing the envelope regarding echumenical fads would not take this for the sign post it is, (Destination Heresy 5 years) rather affirming that yes, that looks like the place, speed up.

cheryl said...

Oh my goodness! Did you catch the um..."rosary". I don't know about you, but I already have a mother (in Mary) and I don't much appreciate her being supplanted our by a mother-goddess.

(I've always wondered what these churches did with Mary, now that God has become "mother". Do they divinize her image and place in the church, or do they just ignore her altogether?)

And the statement, "In the name of the holy cosmic mother, the risen christ..." is beyond the pale.

Christ is not an idea...He's a real historic person, a male person...with a male anatomy, emotions, brain, and everything else pertaining to a man. I don't want to be judgmental here...but it sounds like they are just a hop skip away from denying the Incarnation as a true Incarnation.

It was hard to get a sense from that video, what they actually believe...but from what I could gather...it brought to mind the gnostic, "divine feminine".

cheryl said...

Here's the words to the "rosary":

Hail Goddess full of grace.
Blessed are you and blessed are all the fruits of your womb.
For you are the MOTHER of us all.
Hear us now and in all our needs.
O blessed be, O blessed be. Amen


Okay, firstly this prayer is blessing us, instead of Christ (oh, yeah I forgot I guess the "goddess" is Christ). And isn't "blessed be" a wiccan benediction/blessing?

Secondly, if you notice on the picture of their "rosary" where the cross is suppose to be, there's a figure of a woman instead.

http://www.herchurch.org/id8.html

I really don't understand why women feel the need to do this. Between the feminity of the Church and the place of Mary, no one's theology should be lacking in feminine "spirituality", for lack of a better term. I realize that in Protestantism, both Mary and the feminine nature of the Church is not given its due and is even supplanted by other things. This is a very real problem. A less than firm grasp on the feminity of the Church, can cause similiar negative consequences as making God "mother" theologically speaking. But the solution, is to return to Mother Church and Mother Mary, not to make God into a "goddess" and Christ into a woman.

Anyone who has a firm grasp on both Mariology and the feminity of the Church, will see how absurd it is for anyone to claim that the Church has oppressed feminity. But so many continue to claim such and act out on those claims. The DaVinci Code, being one of the most blatant and heretical examples. I just don't get it.

cheryl said...

Okay, one more comment, then I'll shut-up. At their website, it says:

Jesus' redemptive power lies ultimately in ideal liberated-humanity, not in his maleness. Christ's maleness is significant only insofar as he renounced the privileges that accompany it.

Christ's maleness is significant as the Second Adam. Christ's entire redemptive work can be summed up in his role as Adam. If Christ did not come as male, salvation could not have occured as it did. Recapitulation would not have been possible.
Secondly, Christ is the revealed image of the Father. "Revealed Image" being the key words there. He revealed Himself via flesh and bone. He revealed Himself as male. If God were female, Christ would have revealed Himself as a female.

Okay...I'm done now...I think.

Rev. Larry Beane said...

Cheryl:

Your observations are astute! Please don't feel the need to stop.

I'm planning on writing an article along these lines. There is a former Roman parish (called Corpus Christi) that was hijacked by feminists a few years ago. The parish was closed, and reopened after being renamed "Spiritus Christi." They called a woman "priest" and they encourage sodomy.

You are 100% right about Gnosticism. The maleness of Jesus is part and parcel of the incarnation. Those who worship some idol of the "divine feminine" have to deal with Jesus physical, fleshly maleness - so they "spiritualize" him. That's classic Gnosticism, and this is why "Corpus Christi" (the Body of Christ) had to be recast as "Spiritus Christi" (the Spirit of Christ). Spirits have no physical attributes of sex.

We see this creeping Gnosticism all over the Church, and we Lutherans must fight against it in our midst. The sacraments are downplayed, the holyness of the sanctuary, chancel, and altar are treated only as symbolic, most of our churches are devoid of physical art (iconography and stauary), and most of our churches have swapped the traditional crucifix for the iconoclastic plain cross.

Once again, Gnosticism, even seemingly "innocent" attempts to fit in with the Protestant mainline, are baby-steps toward "Her Church." The mark of Antichrist according to St. John is to deny the fleshliness of Jesus.

There is also the blatant connection to Eve's sin in the Garden of Eden - the attempt to take that which is not hers to take and to upset the hierarchy established by God (which includes the need for us to submit sexually to the way we have been designed).

The "gender issue" is the current wedge Satan is using to infiltrate and destroy the Church. We must take comfort that not even the gates of hell will conquer the Bride of Christ. We pastors must unambiguously preach and teach the truth and denounce these sorts of things that will only get more and more common as the last days approach.

Thanks again for your thought-provoking comments!

Rev. Larry Beane said...

Dear David:

Yes, that's the one. Thanks for the correction, I didn't have the article in front of me. I first read about this tragedy in the July 23, 2005 Ottawa Citizen while on vacation in Canada.

I've been holding onto the article to write about it - of course, about a month after clipping the article, we had some bad weather here in New Orleans that changed a lot of plans. ;-)

Anyway, I found the article fascinating, an absolutely classic example of Gnosticism as well as Montanism - both heretical deviations from the Christian faith. It's fascinating to listen to women clergy from any sect - they spend all their time talking about gender, and never talk about the Gospel. They will prattle on self-servingly about "social justice" and "inclusion", but they just don't seem concerned about the Atonement.

Furthermore, by definition, they must reject the Church's tradition, and into the vaccuum comes all sorts of un- and even anti-Christian rituals and doctrines (e.g. paganism, worship of earth, goddess-worship, incantations and spells, bizarre fixations with menstruation and abortion). By necessity, they seek to emasculate God, to nullify his masculine revelation to us. It's not enough that they want to serve God on an equal plane with male ministers (which seems to most egalitarian-minded Americans to be just and fair), they seek to change God into something that matches them. In so doing, they are tacitly admitting that they lack the ontological qualifications to be a minister of the God of orthodox Christianity.

This whole so-called "gender" issue (gender is a grammatical, not a biological, term) is raging in every confession within the Christian Church, and it is manifesting itself not only in women's ordination but also in the homosexuality controversies. The "gender" issue is today the front line of battle between the Bride of Christ and Satan.

Feminism has been elevated to the status of a religious revelation, and Satan is still whispering in the ears of women "Did God really say...?" Men are still aiding and abetting their wives in the ancient sin of bucking God's authority and divinely-mandated hierarchy.

I need to upload a book cover to my blog. It is the dust jacket of "Women Priests and Other Fantasies" by Rev. Vincent P. Micheli. A smiling woman "priest" is elevating a host and chalice, dressed in vestments (which include the theme of serpents and apples). Behind her, holding her arm and covering her eyes is a hideous horned demon. His pointed tail wraps around her other arm, and points down, toward hell.

A similar sentiment can be found in Ulla Hindbeck's essay in the journal Logia from the year 2000 (I believe the Reformation issue). Miss Hindbeck is a former priestess in the (Lutheran) Church of Sweden.

Rev. Larry Beane said...

David:

Thanks for posting that article - it's very illuminating.

The mockery of holy marriage with Disney tunes makes a lot of sense, considering Callan's subsequent move to misapply the term to unnatural and deviant sexual liasons. Ironically, "Zippedy Doo Dah" comes from a very politically incorrect film that Disney won't release on video in the U.S. (though they don't mind allowing the Japanese to buy it).

For all of their whining and hand-wringing, left-wing Catholics are given a *huge* amount of freedom and leeway within the Roman Church - even under conservatives like JP2 and B16.

I went to a Jesuit High School back in the late 70s and early 80s (I was there in the "year of three popes"). At that time, the school took a hardline pro-life stance. In subsequent years, the school became co-ed, and now has adopted a pro-abortion view. One of my former teachers (who is still teaching), a warm and kindhearted Jesuit priest in his 70s, sadly refers to God in the feminine gender.

Even in those days, my high school practiced open communion and allowed a woman Baptist minister to preach at Mass. Far from admonishing them, the bishop used to visit our school. But there was no gay or abortion agenda back then (though the seeds were sown). They have only moved further leftward over the years (as the seeds have sprouted and borne fruit). How much further will (or can) they go?

Will Pope Benedict execute the authority of his office and defrock priests and bishops who are in open rebellion? Or is the RC hierarchy afraid of another reformation?