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SCREWTAPE PROPOSES AN EPISCOPAL TOAST (19)

SCREWTAPE PROPOSES AN EPISCOPAL TOAST (19)
With Apologies to C.S. Lewis

By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
February 24, 2012

My dear Wormwood,

What an absolute stroke of genius. You managed to turn that DEPO business on its head and use it to our benefit. Totally brilliant, my dear Wormword. Orthodox Episcopalians had hoped that they could use Delegated Episcopal Pastoral Oversight to get out from under liberal and revisionist bishops. You have turned it round making it possible for liberal priests and parishes in the Diocese of Albany to get out from under that dreadful Love fellow and his evangelical catholic orthodoxy and freely join an arch-liberal bishop like Gladstone Adams, without doubt one of the worst in The Episcopal Church and a bishop much to our liking.

He once gave a pass to a pedophile priest who later got caught and jailed. He then gave himself a pass for covering it up and managed to destroy an orthodox Episcopal priest in the process. This man is totally with us. You need to encourage more like him. Keep infiltrating the remaining handful of orthodox dioceses and undermine them. We think you should turn your considerable skills on the Diocese of South Carolina. See if you can wreck more havoc there. To date, Bishop Mark Lawrence has managed to stick it to Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori keeping her hands off properties as well as Lawrence. It is very important that you whip her into a frenzy about this, once again, and make her feel unloved and rejected. You could even foment some discord among the Forum crowd.

It seems that Mrs. Jefferts Schori has outed herself quite openly by abandoning traditional sexual morality and dumping Jewish law (which she misinterprets). Excellent. Instead, she wants a new world order where traditional Christian understandings of morality are abandoned. This is such sweet music to our ears, Wormwood.

This pseudo morality of hers must be played up and disseminated as widely as possible. The Africans won't buy it, but there are some decidedly weak Anglican links in Asia and Latin America that she can exploit and we along with her.

Sex is such a malleable and pliable behavior and so self-justifying. The Council of Hades drank a toast to her continuing push for immorality and making it acceptable to the masses, especially to Episcopalians. That she writes this with an eye to justifying the current situation by destroying traditional understandings of sexuality found in the Hebrew law and giving favor to TEC's acceptance of post-modern sexual norms is precisely the kind of undermining of the church's very moral foundations that we want her to embrace and promulgate.

We notice that her train of thought is seeping quite nicely into all the mainline Protestant denominations. Add a little pop psychology, "me too" triumphalism, (a speech or two from Gene Robinson whining about the need for homosexual acceptance) some "feel your pain" emotionalism, a dose of victimhood add a little neutered theology to the mix and, hey, presto, we have them all in the bag.

We especially like that line in her book "God is at work in all this 'inappropriate sexual behavior.'" I doubt our father could have come up with a better line. He was actually heard chortling so loudly when he read this that many feared he had lost his mind. Fortunately, that's not possible. His deviant mind grows better with time.

Jefferts Schori calls prostitution a creative survival. Her motto seems to be "Do what it takes," and don't judge with critical and simplistic standards, i.e. the Jewish law. In making such pronouncements, she has dismissed the entire Christian heritage as well as the Jewish law and the prophets. This is stunning Wormwood, you need to make sure the other mainline denominations buy this hook, line and sinker. Add the word "fundamentalist" to anyone who believes in straitjacket thinking and the whole Western Protestant church is ours.

In time, she will dismiss the Ten Commandments as she has the much bally-hoed Covenant that she said is past its shelf life. Her theology creates a life void of hope and redemption that is much to be desired. MAKE sure such voids are filled with pleasure, endless hours of texting, e-mailing, iPodding, pornography and much more. Never allow a vacuum, Wormwood. It is in moments like these that people start thinking and we certainly do not want that to happen. (We were alarmed to read that Richard Dawkins, in a debate with Rowan Williams, opened the possibility that God might exist and has moved from his outright atheism to agnosticism. This is terribly dangerous, Wormwood. It is a short hop from there to theism and true belief. THAT would be a total disaster.)

This is precisely the kind of false hermeneutic that we like. At the end of the day, Jefferts Schori has undermined the very morality she has sworn to uphold. What we are observing is the nation's most prominent religious institutions and a number of its political leaders accompanying her in this.

We are now seeing moral relativity being carried over into the political sphere in spades. We have politicians screaming that they don't want government peering into the bedrooms of the nation, but support the government to fund contraceptive devices, birth control pills, free abortion, and drugs to fight HIV/AIDS without anyone daring to call into question the sexual behaviors that cause all this disease and death. That Santorum fellow is positively dangerous. Get those politicians back on track talking money, jobs and the economy. We don't want them to think they are being endangered by practices that can destroy their very souls.

Make sure Jefferts Schori continues to tear down all boundaries and Biblical understandings of sexual morality that leads her church and all humanity into a nightmare of confusion and chaos. Her own church's endorsement of LGBTQI is increasingly destructive of traditional standards for sexual behavior. Under no circumstances must she actually SEE women and men involved in the sex industry and how it degrades women for men's pleasure. Let her feel liberated from all sexual restraints and keep further distancing herself and her church's real teachings from the liberation and redemption offered by Him.

On no account must she speak of a Savior who longs to redeem their lives. Blending together the identity of homosexual and lesbian priests with female priests is an added epistemological and moral stereotyping that should be exploited to the hilt.

The other thing we notice with much glee is that she is seeking to change the Episcopal Church into multi-faith centers practicing blended spiritualities. Wormwood, you need to keep pushing the Washington National Cathedral as the locus of the new World Spiritual Order. That Bishop Budde woman is hopelessly lost. Make sure she keeps wandering endlessly and hopelessly in the desert of her own labyrinth till her head falls off.

Above all, Wormwood, keep alive the notion that God is infinitely tolerant and given to sudden changes of mind - a divinity that is endlessly pliable and will keep up with the multiple moral changes of Jefferts Schori and TEC's House of Bishops.

It was Victor Hugo who once famously said, "When God desires to destroy a thing, he entrusts its destruction to the thing itself. Every bad institution of this world ends by suicide."

The Episcopal Church's Presiding Bishop is heading with gadarene speed toward the cliff's edge. See that she encounters no impediments, Wormwood. We want them all to go down together.

END

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