Month: May 2010

Episcopal Church is Going to the Dogs

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It’s easy to make fun of the lunacy in the liberal wing of the Episcopalian Church (and the commentators at First Thoughts have a number of clever retorts), but this latest example of Episcopalian inclusiveness gives me the creeps. Sure, bless the animals. I bless the family dog or cat whenever I do a house blessing. But providing a “worship service” for animals crosses a line that ought not be crossed; even more, it reveals a line that should have remained invisible let alone crossed.

The Rev. Thea Keith-Lucas holds Pippin.

Worship services for animals will, in the end, erase the line between man and animal. This is more than the “Naked Ape” nonsense that pours out of Darwinian sociological paradigms. This adds a patina of false sanctity (worship is serious business) to a person’s love of their animal that has no place in the Church.

In theological terms, animals, and all of creation glorify God when acting according to their nature. A flower in bloom glorifies God; it functions according to its created nature, it has become what God created it to be. But the creation has no moral agency, only man does, and this moral dimension is also why liturgical worship is reserved for man, and man alone. Bring dogs into the sanctuary and, down the road, man becomes nothing more than a sophisticated dog.

Maybe the commentators are right. The best way to handle this is to relentlessly mock it.

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First Things Blog

Calvary Episcopal Church of Danvers, Massachusetts, has just announced it will begin offering a monthly worship service for dogs. Besides being driven to the service by Starbucks-jittered suburban elites in trademark Volvo station wagons, the canine faithful will enjoy the unique pleasure of being lived through vicariously.

“Perfect Paws Pet Ministry,” as Calvary officials call it, will include a form of communion and prayers offered for the pets. While surely a natural outgrowth of American Episcopalianism, what really bugs me about it is the rank discrimination involved. Calvary Episcopal has announced that only well-behaved dogs may attend, and feline and equestrian companions are roundly excluded from the economy of salvation. Why not invite the local strays, or, better, invite them to preach?

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Greece: a nation at war with itself

On the ‘edge of the abyss’

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By John Couretas on the Acton blog:

From the Greek daily Kathimerini:

Witnesses said that protestors marching past the building ignored the bank employees’ cries for help and that a handful even shouted anti-capitalist slogans. [ … ] It took a statement from President Karolos Papoulias to best sum up Greece’s dire situation and the frustration that many people are feeling with the political system. “Our country has reached the edge of the abyss,” he said. “It is everybody’s responsibility that we do not take the step toward the drop. Responsibility is proved in action, not in words. History will judge us all.”

From columnist Alexis Papachelas, in the same paper:

Now we have an intelligentsia that is hooked on patron-client exchanges and mediocrity, and a political establishment whose biggest concern is keeping its piece of the pie safe. On the flipside of the same coin we have a culture of protest in which anything goes and which tries to justify every “accident,” like yesterday’s murder of three working people by a hooligan who flipped them the finger when he saw them choking on the smoke of his firebomb. Now that we have succeeded in running the country into the ground, it is time to either rise to the occasion or kneel to the developments. The deal with the IMF and the EU will bring a lot of pain to a lot of people who are not to blame for the situation. We can’t throw money at the problem because we have none.

George Will on the welfare state:

The chief beneficiaries of the welfare state ethos are the organized interests on whose behalf most government interference with the economy is undertaken. These interests receive the lion’s share of the subsidies which, drawn from general tax revenues or imposed by government-enforced restriction of competition, are our major means for redistributing wealth. As a result, the net effect of government manipulation of the economy is negative for the poor. That is, one clear result of the expansive activism of our expanded government is a lower living stand for the poor.

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‘We have reached consensus on the autocephaly procedure’

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As the Inter-Orthodox Preparatory Commission for the agenda of a Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church continues its work, the issue of granting autocephaly and the diptych order has come up to its attention in the period of 2009-2010. The leader of the Russian Orthodox delegation at the Preparatory Commission meetings, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s department for external church relations, expounds the work of the Commission in an interview to the editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, S. V. Chapnin.

– Your Eminence, the Inter-Orthodox Preparatory commission’s decisions on the procedure of granting autocephaly, adopted in December 2009 in Chambesy, make it possible to speak about a serious step made in the development of inter-Orthodox cooperation. How different were the initial positions of the Churches, and can one say that the search for consensus was difficult?

– According to the resolution of the Pan-Orthodox Pre-Council Conference, which took place in June 2009, the Inter-Orthodox Preparatory Commission was to consider the way in which an Orthodox Church can declare its autocephaly and autonomy as well as the order of diptychs, which are lists prescribing the order in which the names of the heads of Local Churches are mentioned during the liturgy. During the six days of its work, the Commission managed to consider two of the above-mentioned issues, namely, autocephaly and autonomy, while the discussion on diptychs had to be put off till the next meeting of the Commission.

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Russian Orthodox Church accuses Europe of dual standards in freedom of expression

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H/T: OBL News

Moscow, May 5, Interfax – The Moscow Patriarchate is concerned by the fact that the freedom of expression in Europe often does not apply to religious communities.

“In the Western world today there is often the freedom to criticize any religious view, but at the same time tough censorship of religious symbols and religious approaches,” Deputy head of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations Hegumen Philipp (Ryabykh) has told Interfax-Religion.

That was his comment on the statement by Council of Europe Secretary-General Thorbjorn Jagland that the criticism of religions, “their myths and ideas” meet the European norms of democracy.
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