THE TAOS TATLER.

This time, it’s Lutherans heading toward oblivion, but it’s more complicated than the Church of England’s collapse.

There isn’t only one Lutheran Church; in fact, there are dozens of them, resulting from schism after schism, and other reasons. There are, however, three main branches, and one of them, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ECLA), is the faltering branch. Students of churches heading to the dustbin of history should have no trouble guessing why. The venerable commentator Bill Donahue, President of the Catholic League, explains it to those who have yet to guess it.

As we have noted many times before, the more “progressive” a religious organization is, the less members it tends to have. This is certainly true of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA). It was formed in 1988 when three Lutheran denominations merged amidst disagreements with more traditional-minded Lutheran denominations.

To say that the ECLA is not “traditional-minded” is a whopping understatement. Mr Donahue provides the savory details concerning the beliefs of the ECLA.

The ELCA rejects the Christian definition of marriage, namely the union of a man and a woman. Instead, it believes in gay marriage, the union of two people of the same sex who are barred by nature from creating a family. It also rejects what science teaches about the sexes, which is that sex in binary—one is either a man or a woman. Instead, it believes the fiction that the sexes are interchangeable.

Hoo, boy! That’s quite a curriculum those swingin’ Lutherans offer. You have to wonder how their creed is worded, if they have one. Getting down to the numbers below will obviate any further explications concerning the soon-to-be late Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

In 1988, when the ELCA was born, it had 5,251,534 members. In 2020, the figure was 3,142,777. Its own Office of Research and Evaluation determined in 2022 that it will have fewer than 16,000 worshippers left on an average Sunday by 2041. This is happening despite a desperate attempt to be “proactive in evangelism and outreach.” This led one Lutheran observer to conclude that “according to current trend’s, the church will basically cease to exist within the next generation.

Many Protestant churches in America are likely to share a fate similar to the ECLA, but not all of them. Conservative and evangelical churches will likely be with us for some time. It is all but certain though, that mainstream Protestant denominations professing liberal or left-wing beliefs, including the Presbyterian Church USA and the United Methodist Church, are likely over time to see their worshipers dwindle to insignificance, leading to their church going extinct. Liberalism simply doesn’t sell.

h/t GWR and WJT

A possible addition to the Catholic Church?

The Church of England is in its dying days, according to the estimable Dr David Virtue of Virtue on Line.  That said, this writer has been hearing the death knell for the C of E for as long as he can recall, so could this finally be the end? It could be. There is compelling evidence backing up these latest predictions of the Church of England’s coming demise. 

One disastrous, but also typical move of the Church’s own doing, is the all-but-certain election of an Iranian-born refugee who could be the first female archbishop of Canterbury in the C of E’s 1428 year history, which is bound to lose the church even more of its few remaining worshipers. Virtue quotes an unnamed source, presumably well-connected and in the know, who says: “Like a wounded Serengeti lion, the death of the Church of England is only a matter of time.”

“They are playing chess on the deck of the Titanic. There are just three orthodox members – one clergy, two lay out of 17 people in the selection process. The Good Ship Lambeth is about to go the same way as The Episcopal Church, led to the cliff’s edge by [Archbishop] Welby, and pushed.”

 “It is all over. Welby filled the House of Bishops with his liberal management stooges. They voted for the Living in Love and Faith (LLF) report, without going through the legal requirements for any change, and they will get one of their own for ABC. Someone who ticks as many diversity boxes as possible has the best chance.”

More evidence the C of E is done for is that only 1.5 percent of the English populace attends Sunday services, a good indication the institution has had it.

So what’s to become of the Church of England when she closes her gates for good? This blogger believes the best solution for the C of E is to right the wrong of 491 years ago when the half-mad King Henry VIII broke with Rome because Pope Clement VII wouldn’t grant him an annulment of his marriage to Catharine of Aragon. It was on that rickety foundation that the Church of England was founded, and with a foundation like that, it was bound to fail. It has taken nearly 500 years, but it now appears the ill-founded institution has finally reached the end. Now, the one and only thing that can save England’s church is to reunite with Rome.

Happily, there is an already existing means in the Catholic Church that would serve as a new home for the English Church, the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, which is part of the Anglican Ordinariate. Founded in 2011, its purpose is to be a means for former Anglicans in England, America, and elsewhere to become Catholics, but still maintain many of the wonderful institutions of the Anglican Church, including its marvelous liturgy and music.

No doubt many observant Church of England worshipers would blanch at having to pray for the Pope, but when the C of E does finally collapse, and an accord can be reached merging the two institutions, an admittedly enormous task, those loath to embrace the Bishop of Rome may have second thoughts.

A friend passed along a fine piece from the Free Press, by Madeline Kearns, with the otherwise dreadful title, How Catholicism Got Cool. The story relates the happy news that there is an increasing popularity of Catholicism among the young, resulting in a boom in adult baptisms. A couple of examples from Kearns’s report:

The Diocese of Lansing in Michigan reported a 30 percent spike from the previous year, 633 converts, which is the highest they’ve seen in over a decade. Father Ryan Kaup, at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Catholic center, baptized 20 students alone—“the highest we’ve ever had”—and gave rites of initiation to an additional 50 who were coming into the church from other Christian denominations.

This phenomenon is not just limited to the US. Churches in France and the UK are reporting similar and substantial upticks in adult baptisms.

The reasons for this startling increase in baptisms and confirmations into the Catholic Church are varied and many. Starting at the top, appropriately, Kearns cites our new Pope, Leo XIV, “who church leaders hope will turbocharge the country’s Catholic boom (the hyperlink leads to a Fox News report reporting precisely that).

Otherwise, Kearns’s story presents several touching accounts of various young Catholic converts, who tell their varied stories of how they found their way to Holy Church and what, in particular, attracted them to H⁷er: the ceremony, ritual, fellowship, the Sacrament of Reconcilliation (confession), and even the music(!) to some, caused them to explore Catholocism more deeply, leading them, eventually, to RICA, the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (or, as it was called long ago, “adult baptism”). From there, they received instruction and, in time, became full-fledged communicants of the Holy Catholic Church. This writer must admit, even a few years ago, he would not have expected to see an article of this nature.

Notwithstanding the many uplifting accounts of some of Holy Church’s newest communicants, regrettably, there is a surprising and substantial fault in this report, an omission, which is thus: nowhere in these accounts are any mentions of what raises Holy Church above all others, and that is the Real, or Actual Presence of out Lord in the Eucharist. No protestant denomination can make that claim. In fact, it is for that reason alone that I made the decision many years ago to become a Catholic. As a matter of fact, a few years ago I told the story of my conversion in this blog, and, gentle reader, with your forbearance (and because of a certain slothfulness in me), I am republishing a relatively short excerpt of it below. If you read it back then, by all means, skip over it, but I am hopeful those who have not read it before will gain important insight into such a vital element of Catholic worship. Here goes:

Some years ago, Good Friday, I was seated in a pew at my beloved Anglo-Catholic parish in Manhattan, the Church of the Resurrection, E. 74th St. The Mass of the Pre-Sanctified was being celebrated. For those not in the know, it is a liturgy long ago removed from the Catholic Missal, having been abolished in the reforms of 1955. It is, however, still celebrated by Anglo-Catholics.

During the mass, I was marvelling at the beauty of it, the chants, the clouds of billowing incense, and the celebrants resplendent in their black vestments. Then something strange happened. Amid the glory and pomp, I distinctly heard a voice, not mine, in my head say to me: “Jesus is not here.” I was startled by that, and after mass pondered the meaning of it while riding the uptown train to Washington Heights, where I lived. I continued to ponder it for quite some time after.

One day, while walking down Ninth Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen to my job, I again heard a voice in my head, but this time it was clearly mine, and it solved the mystery I had been pondering all the while. The voice told me: “You have to go to Rome.”

What was clear to me hearing “Jesus is not here” from that unrecognized voice (though I have speculated whom it might have been), Despite all the glorious trappings and, especially for me, the spectacular music in my little Church, music that towered over the offerings of most small Catholic churches, Our Lord was not there and that absence made me realize, sadly, it was time to leave it for one where He cound be found.

Note: those wishing to read the entire account of my conversion may find it here. Confessions of a Catholic Convert.

h/t BAS

Ecumenical time tunnel

From LifeSite News:

A Catholic parish that serves as an ecumenical parish, [St Bede’s in Williamsburg, VA] with the Episcopal (Anglican) community allowed the ‘ordination’ of a female Episcopal “priest” inside the shared worship space and then accepted her as co-pastor.

Notwithstanding the bizarre event that took place in this incident, Bickerstaff assumed a Catholic Church allowing Protestant services to take place in it violated Church law in some capacity or another. Not so, surprisingly. The Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism by the Pontifical Council on Christian Unity, paragraph 137 (1992), states in part:

 [If] priests, ministers or communities not in full communion with the Catholic Church do not have a place or the liturgical objects necessary for celebrating worthily their religious ceremonies, the diocesan Bishop may allow them the use of a church or a Catholic building and also lend them what may be necessary for their services. 

With that cleared up, let’s turn to the fun part of this event. According to LifeSite News,

Just before the start of a February 16 Sunday worship service . . . that featured a Catholic Mass immediately followed by Kirk-Clunan’s first Episcopal “Eucharist” as a “priest,” a laywoman reading parish announcements congratulated the Episcopalian on her “ordination.” There followed immediate applause from the ecumenical congregation. The announcer also encouraged the congregants to stay for both liturgies to promote “Christian unity.”

So, the Bishop, His Grace Barry Knestout and Monsignor Joseph P. Lehman of St Bede’s okayed this craziness and apparently no rules were violated. Moreover, Bishop Knewstout permitted the ordination of a female Episcopal bishop in 2020, showing that he is just ducky about such ecuminism. Still, what kind of impression does this tell the pewsitters, in St Bede and others, about the sanctity of Catholic teachings; that whatever whacky acts the Episcopal Church may engage in, while strictly against Catholic teachings, are nonetheless tolerated by the Church when taking place in a consecrated setting? Has Msgr Lehman at any time explained to his parishioners that what the Episcopalians are doing in their church is by no means acceptable to the Catholic Church?

It seems to Bickerstaff that ecumenism is merely another word for relativism or moral equivalency, where passing judging on other ideologies is frowned upon. Pope Leo XIV might want to have a long look at The Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism by the Pontifical Council on Christian Unity and see if some major changes can be made in a document, which dates from a different time in our Church. Or, maybe, simply consigning the whole thing to the Papal dumpster.

From AOL:

The FBI disseminated a document suggesting conservative Catholics are an emerging violent extremist threat far more broadly than previously known, according to materials released by Congress.

. . . [N]ewly-released documents show that FBI field offices across the U.S. received a memo suggesting traditionalist Catholics may be budding extremists and that the memo was not created by “a single field office,” as the FBI suggested to Congress in 2023.

This is old news, of course, save for the not terribly surprising revelation it is a far larger scandal than originally thought. The big question is, why was this investigation launched, and who ordered it? TLM-ers are not many in number, do not advocate violence, and are not well known outside of the Catholic Church.

Outrageous speculation, no doubt, but is it possible the FBI investigation was launched at the behest of a high-ranking Catholic in Justice or the Bureau, who had an abiding dislike of the Latin Mass and its proponents; someone who believed he or she was doing the Church a service by trashing the reputations of benign TLM-ers?

Far-fetched, to be sure, but not impossible to believe of the Biden administration, which set new lows for sleaze.

Disclaimer: your Tatler is an ardent proponent of the Latin Mass.

The Latin Mass group of Santa Fe, after being booted from one location to another, has at last found welcome in the historic Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Santa Fe, our nomadic existence, Deo volente, coming to an end. Thanks to the pastor and the good offices of the archbishop, our Latin Mass group no longer has to worry if every Mass celebrated might be the last in a particular location.

That is the good news. The bad, or better put, sad news is that our celebrants and worshipers, some of whom come from afar, are only guests in this church. Much as we are grateful to its pastor and the archbishop for providing space in this gorgeous church, we are still outsiders, Catholics, to be sure, but visitors, not members of the flock, though it must be stressed the archbishop and pastor bear no blame for this.

That is the story with most Latin mass groups in New Mexico and elsewhere. There are exceptions, an example being in New York, where Cardinal Dolan appears to look the other way at the restrictions imposed by Pope Francis on the celebration of TLM, only asking that in churches offering TLM, the Novus Ordo Mass be celebrated as well. An example is the busy Shrine & Parish Church of the Holy Innocents in Midtown Manhattan, offering four daily masses, one of them TLM. Latin mass worshipers are as much a part of the parish as other Catholics.

The above example, however, is the exception, not the rule, in most other states and regions. That is a pity because it creates, in effect, two churches under one roof, with TLM-ers distinctly second class, not part of the parish. That points to a contradiction with the Nicene Creed, which states our belief in “one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church.

Those who prefer to worship our Lord praying the Traditional Latin Mass, as well as all Catholics, should be concerned about this unhealthy situation. We hope and pray Pope Leo XIV will address the problem so that all Catholics are equal in the Catholic Church.

Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Santa Fe

Godawful dress:

If you are a Catholic, you believe in the real presence of Christ in the eucharist. In other words, Jesus is here in flesh. Can’t people do better, coming to mass in a t-shirt emblazoned with the name of a favorite ball team on it? Is it really too much effort to put on a jacket and tie, or a dress, or nice slacks?

When your Tatler was an Episcopalian, the only two things right about that  church gone haywire was the music (a future gripe) and people dressing for church, as if it were important to them.  So, too, did Catholics before Novus Ordo. Whatever myriad things are wrong with NO, the real presence is still with us at mass. Dress for it. If you have no dress clothing and can’t afford expensive new clothes, thrift shops are a terrific source for nice clothes for next to nothing. There’s no excuse for not dressing up for our Lord.

It really was not that long ago this was typical church dress.

Anti-Catholicism is the last acceptable prejudice in the US and abroad (though lately, anti-semitism among the elites has been making a stylish comeback). Be as offensive as you like; trash our stand on abortion, same sex marriages, remarriage after divorce, women in the priesthood, the real presence, purgatory, etc., and you’ll have elites and academics laughing themselves silly.

A case in point is graduate student Joseph Willette, who was recently awarded a doctorate in music at the University of Nebraska. As part of his doctoral fulfillment, he presented an original composition, a scathing satire of the mass.

From the College Fix:

A doctoral student at the University of Nebraska recently orchestrated a drag performance appropriating the Catholic Mass for the final recital of his musical degree.

Hoo, boy, and what did that entail?

Doctoral student Joseph Willette said in an Instagram video that the performance “truly feels like the culmination of [his] past couple of years studying music composition as well as gender, sexuality, and queer communities.”

You don’t say. There’s a video, if you like.

Mass of Perpetual Indulgence for chamber orchestra, electronics, soprano solo, and drag performer was written to bridge the gap between queerness and spirituality, to sanctify queer people and celebrate our lives and communities,’’ the video description states.

“Amalgamating musical styles ranging from disco to opera, art song to EDM, this appropriation of the traditional Mass blurs the lines between the sacred and the profane,” it states.

Ho hum, it doesn’t sound much different from the zillions of other artistic achievements of this ilk over the last 50 years. What it comes down to is, as long as left-wing academics, meaning most of them, regard anti-Catholicism as a valid art form, mediocrities like Joseph Willette will provide a steady stream of it to their superiors, in graduate schools, and most others. If we can somehow rid the colleges and universities of the left-wingers, demand for anti-Catholic product will dry up in no time.

[Note: There is ambiguity about the accuracy of the post below. Both the governments of Egypt and Greece, as well as the monks, are insisting it is not true. Still, reliable news sources, including The Times of London, are reporting that the Egyptian government’s liquidation of St. Catherine’s Monastery is still a possibility, although it has not yet happened. Other sources are standing by the original story, as reported here. Until there is some agreement among news sources concerning this matter, the post on this blog will remain unchanged.]

St. Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai

From the Greek City Times

According to orthodoxia.info, the oldest functioning Christian monastery in the world, St. Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai, along with all its properties in Egypt, is being transferred to the Egyptian state.

Nearly fifteen centuries after its founding by Byzantine Emperor Justinian, and having survived remarkable historical challenges, the world-renowned and respected St. Catherine’s Monastery is on the verge of being converted into a museum.

If, dear reader, you suspect the putative religion of peace® had a hand in this organized thuggery, mπράβο! Macte virtute! You’re right on the mark!

This assault, which began during the era of the Muslim Brotherhood, has been carried out through judicial pressures and attacks aimed at closing the world’s oldest monastery.

Happily, unlike in the the past, when Christian organizations tended to meekly accept, or put up only token resistance to expropriations like the above, then quietly move on, the monks of St Catherine’s, perhaps learning from the tactics of radical left protesters, are planning to fight tooth and nail the confiscation of their property.

They plan to inform all Christian churches and other monotheistic religions, as they believe this action by the Egyptian state is the worst event in the monastery’s 15 centuries of existence, effectively abolishing it.

They monks plan to urge the Greek government to protest to the Egyption government. However, the monks should also take their protests where they might receive a more efficacious reaction, and that would be the White House and its present occupant. Whereas objections of the Greek government lodged with its Egyptian counterpart  likely would not carry much weight in Cairo, the chacteristic bluster and threats to trade relations, or the like, from President Trump, just might get through to Abdel Fattah Saeed Hussein Khalil El-Sisi, the president of Egypt, giving him cause to reconsider.

Or, if the president is too involved with other businesses, he could turn the matter over to Vice Predident Vance, a practicing Catholic; not the same as Greek Orthodox, but Catholicism’s kissing cousin. Too, the actions against St Catherine’s Monastery should be of great concern to the Catholic Church and Pope Leo XIV, and Vice President Vance is in a position to bring it to the pope’s attention, as well stress the urgency of the matter, though it should hardly be necessary.

If the outright theft of St Catherine’s Monastery can rise to the level of international outrage, the situation will stand a decent chance of  satisfactory resolution, i.e., forcing the thieves to return their booty to its rightful owner.

h/t WJT