Letter to the faithful on the Notification sent to Speaker Nancy Pelosi

I came away with a different understanding of the archbishop's letters and statements. He says he had spoken with her many times about her stance on abortion, but at a certain point she stopped responding to his requests for pastoral meetings. He also says he spoke with other bishops and prayed and fasted. It was when she elevated her position by saying she would push for Roe to become federal law that he had to take the next step. In his letter to Pelosi, he detailed quite clearly why he had to take that step. Actually, though, it wasn't strictly her support of abortion. The archbishop told her that she at least needed to stop referring to her RC faith publicly while being an abortion advocate and refrain from receiving communion. She didn't follow either of those. I get that she might have wanted to still receive the grace of holy communion. But why not refrain from referring to her RC faith? Regardless, under those circumstances I wouldn't characterize the archbishop's ban as ad hoc or lacking in due process.

By the way, Pelosi isn't excommunicated. That would ban her from receiving communion anywhere. The archbishop banned her from presenting herself, or being admitted, to holy communion in the San Francisco archdiocese.

Somebody raised the point about holy communion being about receiving grace, not withholding it to coerce conformity. I think the Church's position on this comes from 1 Corinthians 11:

The Church holds that support of abortion puts a person in a state of grave sin, so a ban or excommunication is meant to protect the person from "eating and drinking judgment against themselves." As the archbishop said, the ban was pastoral, not political. Sure, some might dismiss that as disingenuous. I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt. It's unfortunate that many in the media and the comment sections are interpreting it as a "slam" or some kind of standoff or whatever.

This raises lots of questions about Roman Catholic politicians (or members of other religions) putting aside their religion when performing the the duties of their political role. Would RCs have to recuse themselves from certain things? Would they not be able to accept a position that wouldn't allow them the option of recusing themselves?

I at first thought of Senator Feinstein telling Amy Coney Barrett during her senate approval hearing that the dogma lived loudly within her. Did Feinstein have a point? Not necessarily, because Justice Coney Barrett's job as a justice is to interpret questions of law. It's not about her personal position on the topic at hand. So if she's applying principles of US jurisprudence, she's doing her job without her religious beliefs entering the picture.

Does the same idea apply to the Speaker of the House? According to this webpage, I think it might: https://www.thoughtco.com/speaker-of-the-house-of-representatives-3322310. If she's getting behind an issue that the House is considering, it sounds like it would be because the parameters of her job require her to take that position. Unless I misunderstand (I don't follow the news that closely), she has been quite partisan. But I'm probably oversimplifying it.

Whatever Pelosi's thoughts are, I'd think she'd offer a stronger response than saying the archbishop is inconsistent. As for her saying the archbishop doesn't support LGBT+, that's hardly a surprise.

If Church leadership is inconsistent on matters, why does she continue to be RC? I suspect it's because there are plenty of liberal clergy who validate her position. She can still receive communion in DC, and it doesn't seem likely that she'll be excommunicated. Against that background, Abp. Cordileone will look like either a hero or a tyrant.

 

I think this is the crux of the matter for a lot of RCs. It is almost impossible to leave a cult mentality, especially when one has been brainwashed since childhood into thinking that their cult (RC) is the one and only "true" way to God and when they have been trained by fear and guilt. It was easier for me because I wasn't born and raised into the RCC. I was raised by agnostics who let me decide for myself what I wanted to believe. My faith journey has taken me through Buddhism and other faiths, and also through a pretty destructive guru cult as well, all in my search for truth/God. I was lucky in that my early upbringing made it possible for me to question things and to make choices for myself, but it is hard to break away from a cult mentality, especially when that cult instills fear into its members by making them feel they will somehow be damned or lost if they leave.

The RCC does this fear and guilt based mind control very well. I was a member of the RCC for many decades but during that time I still questioned things. In the end, breaking away was one of the most difficult things I have ever done but I knew I was 'no longer in communion with the church' and finally accepted this even though a tiny part of me sometimes wondered if I had damned myself.

I am grateful to have stumbled into Anglicanism to help me get away from the RCC. But most born and bred RCs aren't going to be able to make this break, so they live in a duality of wanting to be considered RC but not being able to agree with all the beliefs and/or rules. This looks like hypocrisy on the part of people like Pelosi, but like a lot of RCs, she probably considers herself a 'good Catholic' while at the same time believing that she can disagree on certain points without ceasing to be a member of the RCC. And she probably feels supported by the fact that some clergy do agree with her - the RCC has just as many disagreements among clergy and laity as the Anglican Communion, but they try to do it silently so they don't get punished by being excommunicated. An RC priest friend of mine vocally supported female ordination and was laicised. He tried to 'repent' and be made a priest again - to play along as it were, but his Bishop wouldn't allow it, perhaps realising that his actual opinions hadn't change, just his behaviour. Another Bishop might have allowed it but he was unlucky enough to be under one who was inflexible. I did suggest he try the Ordinariate or Anglicanism, but this priest friend just couldn't bring himself to leave the RCC.

All I can say is that it is very hard to be an RC today. There are so many conflicting attitudes that one has to be very careful what they say or do and where and when they say or do it. This drives dissent underground and causes people to behave in ways that appear hypocritical but are often just a survival mechanism to stay within the organisation that tells you it is the ONLY way to heaven and to leave is to damn yourself.

Although I am an Anglican now, I can honestly say that a big part of my continuing participation in this religion is the fact that I can have opinions that differ from others. On this forum, we see the variety of differing opinions, and that makes me feel good about my decision to become Anglican. If suddenly I were told that I had to conform to the same opinion as everyone else in all faith related matters or be damned, then I would be the first one out the door of the Anglican church. My relationship with Jesus isn't dependent on fitting into a mold that others make, it is based on my own understanding of the Gospels and my personal experience of His presence in my life. I joined a church more for the social interaction and faith support, but not to be told what to believe. When I was received into the Anglican church, the Bishop asked me to renew my baptismal promises and to accept the Creed, and since I could do all of that honestly, I did so. My brother once told me that although he was happy to go to Mass (RCC) with his Catholic wife, he could never become RC simply because he couldn't honestly recite the Creed and agree with the beliefs in it. I admire him for his honesty and desire not to be hypocritical.

I actually feel sorry for RCs like Pelosi who are unable to leave the church because of their brainwashing, but who are also unable to conform to all of its conditions - and there are millions of RCs just like her. Pope Emeritus Benedict wrote in one of his books that he could see the Church becoming smaller in the future, because of all the dissent, and that it would probably break into smaller 'home churches' like in the early days of Christianity. I am not sure about this, because cult brainwashing is strong, but there is a possibility that there will be further division in the RCC somewhere down the track. Already there are severe divisions between the more 'liberal' Catholics and the 'rad-trad' Catholics, the ones who like the OF (Ordinary Form) of the Mass as opposed to those who prefer the EF (Extraordinary Form). The arguments about this are endless on RC forums - ad populum (facing the people) vs ad orientum (facing the altar) and vernacular vs Latin etc etc. The forum discussions get quite heated until they are locked to avoid more argument.

Pelosi will just receive Communion from a different priest in a different diocese. That seems to be the only solution for RCs today.

 

I've met several people who fit that description and was shocked by how militant and judgmental they were. The word didn't come to me at the time, but that kind of RC certainly does seem cult-like. Leaving the Church would be unthinkable to them.

Most RCs I know are cafeteria Catholics whose religiosity pretty much stops at the Ten Commandments. Their reason for staying RC is because they grew up with it and have it as part of their individual, family, and maybe ethnic identity. It's what they know when it comes to having ceremonies for life events like a new child, marriage, and funerals. I think that's what makes most cafeteria Catholics reluctant to leave. They're already getting their way by ignoring what they don't like and utilizing what they do. I think people with that kind of relationship to religion are also intimidated to walk into a new religious group.

I don't know how far Pelosi's religiosity goes, but I get the impression that it's more the life-long association than a fear of damnation that would motivate her to stay in the Church.

 

If you haven't been in a cult then it is hard to understand the subtlety of brainwashing that occurs. The "cafeteria Catholics" you talk about do exactly as you say - they take what they want, leave what they want and just stay because of family/culture/tradition and in my experience the majority of RCs are really nice people. But underneath they are still brainwashed not to leave the RCC. They might not acknowledge that it is fear that keeps them trapped, they refer to it as culture or upbringing, but that is because they aren't aware of the brainwashing. What good would brainwashing be if the person were aware of it? If someone leaves the RCC, the faithful don't necessarily condemn them, they feel sorry for them for losing the state of grace and they pray like mad for them to see the error of their ways and come back to the 'one true church'.

Cafeteria Catholics also unknowingly condemn their children to the brainwashing by not only baptising them, getting them confirmed etc, but so many of them also put their children into Catholic schools to do the brainwashing for them. I did this because I didn't feel I could adequately teach my child what she needed to know about the faith. Her school was lovely, her teachers supportive and kind, and her priest was a decent guy. And they all slowly brainwashed her so when she became an adult and didn't want to go to church anymore, she had to deal with the fear and guilt of that conditioning.

One thing I have seen happen over and over with cafeteria Catholics is that a family will all go to Mass together until the children are out of high school, then they consider their job done and stop going except for big days like Easter or Christmas. The kids tend to fall away after that, or they go to the opposite extreme and start considering convents or priesthood. But the parents feel they have done their job in raising the kids as 'Catholic'. All they have really done is expose them to the brainwashing so they have to deal with the fear and guilt themselves.

Do I sound harsh? Yes, I know I do. I am not saying there aren't very good Catholics who are sincere and mean well. I was one of them. But I am saying that the RCC is a cult because to leave it means certain damnation. No, not all RCs believe this, but the RCC does, and deep down inside, every RC knows this too. And by the way, The RCs and the RCC don't refer to themselves this way. They are 'Catholics' and the church is the 'Catholic Church'. There are different churches within this, the Latin churches and the Eastern churches, but they only use Roman Catholic to differentiate themselves from one of these other 'Catholic' Churches. The Anglicans are not 'Catholic' churches, they are Protestant churches. If that doesn't tell you something, well you aren't paying attention to what they really believe.

Ask yourself, if an Anglican decides to change to another Christian denomination, do you believe they are damned or can't go to heaven? I have never asked an Anglican this before but I do hope the answer is no. I considered becoming a Quaker (Society of Friends) at one point in time, and also did check out a couple of other Christian denominations. I choose to become an Anglican because the liturgy is very similar to the RC one so it felt familiar to me, the people seemed welcoming and inclusive, there seemed to be less focus on sin and more on God's love and mercy, and it didn't seem to condemn people who weren't Anglican. I thought, if I leave this church, they won't condemn me. Am I right or not? I am really interested to know.

But ask an RC priest what happens if someone leaves the RCC. The really good ones will say something non judgmental but if you read the Catechism you will see what the RCC really believes. As I said before, there are a lot of priests who don't believe everything the RCC teaches but they have to be careful what they say.

Now the RCC is not like Scientology - they are not going to send people to your door if you try to leave, they don't have to. They already have you afraid of hell and they figure you will repent on your deathbed, if not before, and ask for Last rites then. Scientology blew it by not making people feel that leaving would damn them. I have never been a Scientologist so I don't know all their brainwashing techniques, but it does seem they rely more on actual physical fear than spiritual fears. Cults can be ranked from benign to destructive or somewhere in between. It's not for me to do that ranking for other people.

I do know that when I recently posted a comment on YouTube regarding a video of a little girl emptying the chalice at her first Communion (very cute), there were many replies from people who obviously hated the RCC because of the priest scandal. I had posted something about my own child's First Communion class and got replies asking if she had also had a class on priests fiddling with children etc. The anger was palpable. My child was never molested, so I considered the RCC to be a fairly benign albeit insidious cult. But parents of abused children would no doubt consider it a destructive cult. And the fact that priests were allowed to get away with such things for so long would support that. We all have different experiences.

But to clarify, finally, I am not judging the individual RCs, I am judging the organisation of the RCC. The best thing that ever happened to it was the Reformation. But guess what guys? Those of you who were never RCC will have a hard time at the end but I can just confess to a RC priest, get absolution and Last Rites and I will be saved. Of course, I have to be sincere, whether I mean it or not.

 

This is what makes Roman Catholicism a 'cult', the fact that it has labeled itself as 'the one true church'. The one true church is INVISIBLE and it comprises all those who rely upon the atoning merit of Jesus Christ entirely for their salvation, knowing that in themselves they are undeserving of God's Grace. Salvation itself has been hijacked by the RC sect and it claims itself the only purveyor of it, it is available nowhere else, and only the Roman Catholic church has receipt of it. That's what makes it a sect and a cult. A big sect, and a big cult admittedly.

Those who are baptised by the Roman Catholic church though are definitely Christian, not just heretical cult members. They are disciples of Christ through the faith of their parents, the church or in later life through their own faith in Christ's Atonement, but not through membership of the Roman Catholic 'club', 'organisation', 'sect', 'cult' or 'church'.

That is exactly why it is possible for Roman Catholics to remain faithful to Christ while yet leaving the Roman Catholic 'denomination', (or for that matter, any other denomination, sect or cult), which exclusively but illegitimately tries to claim Christ's authority over them, in order to make them keep the particular rules of the cult.
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I don't think being a Quaker or Anglican is a one or the other but not both sort of decision. Canon Paul Oestreicher who is a "name" in the world of religion was both Anglican and a Quaker. In 1985 as wikipedia says-

In 1985 the Diocesan Synod elected Oestreicher Bishop of Wellington, New Zealand. The Anglican Church leadership declined to ratify this election.

This diocese which is the one I live in, possibly to the shame of Anglicanism didn't ratify his election. The reason, although Wikipedia doesn't say so, was because he was also a Quaker and wouldn't give up being so.

This is the one of the few examples of institutional prejudice I can think of in the Anglican church.

 

This is more about theological confusion than anything. Anglicans should prevent the heterodox from assuming positions of teaching authority in the church. The fact that they so often don't is a far larger reason for concern.

It's a problem many Anglicans have had ever since the Oxford movement. Do Anglicans even have a theology (as Reformed and Lutheran churches do)? Or is it just a giant bag into which you stuff everything and then hope some sort of consensus emerges out the other side?

 

Yes, this is how things should be viewed (but aren't by RCs). When I became a RC I didn't think it was joining a cult, but a profession of faith in Jesus. I think Anglicans can see this but a lot of RCs can't, or at least the hierarchy can't.

 

One of the reasons that I decided against the Society of Friends is that a person can't just choose to join - they have to apply to be accepted as a member, and sometimes the decision can be no and they can be rejected. I think it is because they are very big on 'community' and want to make sure the person fits into their community and will contribute to the community. But the very concept brought up bad feelings in me from my school days when I was not a very popular person. I don't hold it against the Quakers as it is their right to choose their own form of membership, but it just didn't sit right with me - it felt like some kind of popularity test. I do like their silent prayers, but I can do these myself.

When I became an Anglican, it was more a matter of personal choice. Sure, I had to ask to be received, but it was a simple matter of asking the priest, who asked the Bishop when he could come to our parish and do it. And for a year before that happened, I was still allowed to receive Communion in my parish. The only delay for me was COVID restrictions but once they were all lifted, the Bishop came and I renewed my baptismal promises and accepted the Creed, and the Bishop shook my hand and welcomed me into the church and everyone clapped and then we went on with the Mass. It was simple and sweet.

 

Quakers are heretics, you know that right? They were heretics upon first emerging in the 17th century, and were labeled as such and even tried for heresy in Church courts. And since then they've even dropped a belief in Christ from their 'doctrine', so they're worse now than what they were in the 17th century.

I'm glad for that kind of institutional prejudice. Not all prejudice is bad; we've already prejudged that Quakerism is a spiritual sickness, and there's nothing new that can be learned from talking to any individual adherent of it. It's bad even before we talk to them. We do want to be prejudiced about all those who preach falsehood and oppose God and the Church.

 

You can't even honestly call them Christians. Hyper-Charismatic Universalist Gnosticism probably describes their belief system most accurately.

 

I actually worked at a Quaker school for most of a year (as the janitor, not a teacher). They were part of the 'evangelical Friends'. What this meant in real life was they really closely resembled the Churches of Christ. They had wonderful stained-glass windows in their church and no one knew what the scenes were. I was appalled that they were so Biblically illiterate. The preacher had a drinking problem and secretly told me that he drove 26 miles to Williamsburg to buy beer so none of the members would see him in the beer store.

 

I did not know that! And I suspected you might be mistaken, so I poked around a bit on the web and came across this brief video in which a Quaker describes "9 core Quaker beliefs" as he understands it.
https://quakerspeak.com/video/9-core-quaker-beliefs/
No primacy of Scripture.
No mention of the redemption or atonement wrought by Christ.
No mention of man's need of redemption.
And many wonky, off-kilter ideas about God, Jesus and man. You are correct, the Quaker beliefs are heretical! Thank you for bringing this up.

 

Yes, as labeled by many denominations basing their creed upon Nicea and the Apostles creed, which the Church of England does, but. I'd rather be befriended by a peaceful, persecuted Quaker than by a Persecuting, hypocritical, Bible Bashing Puritan, back when Puritans 'escaped persecution?', (actually they got into trouble for doing it), in England, so within 50 years of arriving in America, they could do their murdering more effectively on the Quakers there, without the hindrance of the Law of the Realm.
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I must take exception to the charge of murder, since those particular Quakers were executed after due process of the existing laws, wherein they were banished but kept returning to where they had been forbidden to dwell. Though I do not agree with the intoleration policy established by law in the Mass. colony at that time, it is nonetheless inaccurate:

• to characterize those Quakers' deaths as murders
• to characterize Puritans' motive for departing England as "so... they could do their murdering more effectively"
• to call Puritans "Bible Bashing" (when nothing could be further from the truth).

In The Heritage of Anglican Theology, Packer writes that the Puritans saw themselves "as trekking from this world to heaven. The Puritans' conflict had to do with their acute awareness of the reality of Satan and his hosts, and their knowing that Christians on pilgrimage" (as in Bunyan's Pilgrims' Progress) "through this world to glory will be opposed by Satan and his hosts all the way." He goes on to say that the Puritans could be described in five terms: they were biblicists, they were pietists (in the sense that they felt "one's personal relationship with God is the most important matter in one's own life"), they were "churchly Christians," they were "two-worldly Christians" (seeing heaven as more important than earth), and they were "dramatic" (marked by awareness of the inner-life drama in which one must battle against sin if one is to remain a faithful believer). Packer writes further, "They were called Puritans because they wanted a purer church and a purer pattern of Christian life in the community." They objected in conscience to certain practices which they believed could draw churchgoers back into Romanism, and they felt compelled to resist those practices (though most did not wish to separate from the C of E but rather to continue its reformation in terms of Biblical principles).

 

Many English Anglicans to this day hate the Puritans for the Civil War; Puritans on their part suffered persecution during the Restoration and Great Ejection. From a historical and geographical distance, this antipathy does not resonate with me. In terms of theology, I think the Puritans had the better argument, and I think the Puritan-influenced Westminster Confession of Faith is absolutely majestic*. (In a bit of irony Anglicans didn't accept it but the Scots Presbyterians did, even after refusing to accept the BCP.) The rise of the Oxford movement in the 19th century just proved that the Puritans' fears of Roman revanchism were well-founded.

John Owen is probably one of the greatest theologians who ever lived, and it's an everlasting pity that many Anglicans disdain him because he's "one of those bloody Puritans". Alongside of him stands Jonathan Edwards, the greatest churchman America has ever produced in my opinion.

I do not accept the term "Puritan" as an epithet, but rather as an accolade.

*I should put in a disclaimer here that while my admiration for the Westminster Confession is substantial, I do have disagreements with parts of it. Particularly, the insistence on a presbyterian rather than episcopal form of church government. I think the episcopal form is preferable, though for practical rather than theological reasons.

 

It is fair to note at this point what Puritanism, whatever its original merits, ultimately became: a sort of empty unitarianism that doesn’t profess to believe much of anything. I have to think this was a gradual result of the outworking of the Puritans’ inner principles, rather than a historical accident. In other words, “you will know a tree by its fruits.”

 

That's one of the main things that has held me back from asking to be received into Anglicanism. From what I've seen of certain Episcopal churches, they're on the cusp of Progressive Christianity or agnostic universalism. I guess it's a matter of finding a church whose expression of Christianity you like and making sure it isn't in danger of closing in the foreseeable future.

This is the kind of Anglican church I'd want to be in:

53 minutes

 

Fair enough. I don't disagree in the main. It depends on which Puritan descendants you speak of, I suppose. Whatever American Puritanism had been early on, it was pretty much a memory by the early 1800's. Modern Congregationalists are but a faint shadow of their Puritan forebears.

But then, no modern Protestant church is what it used to be -- time and modern culture have corrupted all to some degree or other. This is not a problem specific to Puritan theology, but to Christianity as a whole. We live in a heretical and wicked age.

I think the future trend is towards historical orthodoxy rather than away from it, though. Time will tell.

 

I suppose in that case, one ought to ask whether and why it is necessary to have a theology at all.