Tuesday, June 4, 2013

The Devil's Servants in Religion

Edit:  Father Barron is often horrible, or just uninspiring, of dubious orthodoxy.  Of course, an Episcopalian woman dressing up as a bishop is a slow moving and easy target, but here's an excerpt:



But Bishop Jefferts Schori reads it as a tale of patriarchal oppression and intolerance. She preaches, "But Paul is annoyed, perhaps, for being put in his place, and he responds by depriving her of her gift of spiritual awareness. Paul can't abide something he won't see as beautiful or holy, so he tries to destroy it." The Bishop correctly points out that the girl was saying true things about Paul and his friends, but demons say true things all the time in the New Testament. Think of the dark spirits who consistently confess that Jesus is the Holy One of God. That a Christian bishop would characterize the demonic possession of a young girl as something "beautiful and holy" simply beggars belief. 
But things get even more bizarre. We are told in Acts that the girl's owners are furious that Paul has effectively robbed them of their principal source of income and that they therefore stir up controversy and get him thrown in prison. But on the Bishop's reading, Paul is just getting what he deserved: "That's pretty much where he put himself by his own refusal to recognize that she too shares in God's nature, just as much as he does -- maybe more so!" She seems to rejoice that a mid-first-century Philippian version of the liberal thought police had the good sense to imprison the patriarchal Paul for his deep intolerance of fallen spirits! You see why this sermon reminded me of that New Yorker cartoon. 
That night in prison, we are told, Paul and Silas sang hymns of praise to God and preached the Gospel to their jailors. Jefferts Schori reads this, strangely, as Paul coming to his senses at last, remembering God, dropping the annoyance he felt toward the girl, and embracing the spirit of compassion. Wouldn't it be a lot simpler and clearer to say that Paul, who had never "forgotten God," quite consistently showed compassion both toward the possessed girl and the unevangelized jailor, delivering the former and preaching the Gospel to the latter?


13 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm surprised I haven't seen that picture on Eccles and Bosco yet.

Anonymous said...

I didn't read this yet. I am not immune to shock.
I saw the picture and had that spontaneous shock
response. What a caricature. God will not be
mocked. The Devil stalks. Every devil has his day but Ultimately, God is not mocked.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous 4 June 10:09 AM, You surly will see this at Eccles's. The Anonymous Flower is one of his favorites.

Yeh. Fr. Baron is at best uninspiring, at worst horrible.
I have been a couple of times Shocked at his effeminate
theology

schmenz said...

That photo of the Bishopess is hilarious. It shows their utter preposterousness.

"One picture is worth a thousand words."

Anonymous said...

Hello schmenz, I see you around. Today at marie therese,
who almost never fails to irritate. Do you have a web address?
aly

Anonymous said...

And these women have such a poor fashion sense.

Anonymous said...

What is she Bishop of? I don't see a Cross.

Anonymous said...

She is a rainbow bishop, don't you see that? Her ministrant is a leprechaun.

Anonymous said...

Well yeh, I did see that. Do you think there is no
Cross because she's not sure if there is Hell but if
there is, all her blasphemy "in the Name of the Cross" will
guarantee her Reservation? Do you think she thinks of
Jesus Christ as she thinks of St. Paul?

Tancred said...

Maybe she doesn't want the responsibility of anyone following her?

Anonymous said...

This is why I always look around here for insights and answers. If you are right she will probably be
pretty successful and will probably find a new vocation. Maybe stand up comedy down at The Queer Peer
Pub .

schmenz said...

Hello, aly: Well, I do comment here and there when I think I have something mildly interesting to say, and have on occasion contributed to The Eye-Witness blog.

I know what you mean by the lady in question. She seems to have a good heart but is badly misguided on some rather important religious questions (she is hardly the only one). Also, I do think she should worry less about "creeping sharia" than she should about the machinations of certain other tribes.

Anonymous said...

She looks exactly like what she is: a clown in a third-rate circus---the kind that also had freak shows in side tents. Whatever one affirms about the Episcopal denomination (false and heretical though it has always been), at least in the past they had one thing that at times we Romans forgot: a sense of dignity and beauty. Now even that is gone for them. The good news is that Anglicans of good will are waking up and leaving that old corpse; the bad news is that the True Church, at least officially, does not offer a very different fare, except in traditional pockets of orthodoxy. RC