by Jan Mahood
Episcopalians for Traditional Faith

“SUPER-SIZE ME!” must be the motto of the Episcopal Church’s (TEC) Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music (SCLM). This group of revisionists has inflated our already distorted liturgy with so much fetid hot air that it would bob up heavenward if it weren’t tethered firmly to this world by the leaden language in which it’s written.

Turn to page 185 of The Blue Book, the reference text of TEC’s 76th General Convention (GC), scheduled for launch on July 8 in Anaheim, California.First the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, then the revised 1979 Rite I and Rite II, then further departures from scripture, apparently now are giving way to something called “Enriching Our Worship,” a series of rites seemingly inspired not by love of God and our neighbor but by love of ourselves in all our unrepentant self-indulgence.

To see proposed revisions to the liturgy, which no longer accurately  can be called a Prayer Book, go to pages 185-583 in the 800-page Blue Book and behold what your pledges and offerings have bought.

Of the 400 pages given over to SCLM’s super-sizing, 60 are awash with “Rachel’s Tears, Hannah’s Hopes: Liturgies and Prayers for Healing from Loss Related to Childbearing and Childbirth,” wherein the destruction of an unborm baby is downgraded to “a difficult decision.”

SCLM has been busy indeed, carrying out the mandate given them by the 74th GC to come up with a post-abortion healing rite. Read the result. To see how SCLM has been burning through your money at posh resorts and in well-appointed offices paid for by your pledges, wade through page after page after page of “Rachel’s Tears, Hannah’s Hopes,” most of it morbidly obsessed with all the specific ills, pains, regrets, and abominations that feminine flesh is heir to, with emphasis on abortion.

After you’ve read this offensive wallow in self-indulgence, please advise your delegates to GC to vote against Resolution A088 (Post-Abortion Healing Service).

The victim for whom we pray in all this is not the innocent baby, but the woman who has snuffed out her child’s life. Should the Church, heretofore concerned with Life Everlasting, be leading the ranks of the Culture of Death? Should it not be encouraging marriage, self-mastery, abstinence, and adoption, rather than selfishness, mutilation, and murder?

Sometimes pregnancy actually results in a live birth. In a “Rachel’s Tears” prayer that applies to this blessed event, a woman’s labor pains are compared with Christ’s suffering on the cross. Today’s revisionists miss no opportunity to downplay Christ’s incomparable sacrifice. Is this blasphemy? Never mind. That’s a topic for another article. It’s bad enough that in a list of songs to accompany these rites, SCLM has included – are you ready? — The feel-good anthem of the ‘60s, “Kum Ba Yah!”

1928 Book of Common Prayer Says It All

Compare all this verbose, self-indulgent wailing and wallowing with the concise, reverent, dignified prayers of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer that address reproductive events, the death of a child, illness, confession, and absolution.
Here, as in so many things, less is indeed more; it’s certainly more to the point. The entire 1928 BCP, which addresses our every passage through this life and beyond, totals only 611 pages. That’s enough to encompass any evil that befalls us and any joy that elevates us.

“And I Want to Be One, Too!”

To add to the appalling paean to women’s reproductive “choice,” SCLM is promoting a list of “Holy Women, Holy Men” who are candidates for a new Church Calendar. As you scroll down the seemingly interminable list of names, some worthy, some not-so, you’ll be tempted to ask yourself, “Who are these people? Hey, what about me? Shouldn’t my name be in there somewhere?”

Take a look. You won’t believe it. While you’re at it, check how much of your hard-earned cash has been siphoned into these SCLM projects — and how much SCLM is asking TEC to authorize for yet more liturgical super-sizing. It’s all right there for you to read, in the Episcopal Church General Convention website.

ETF is opposed to both the post-abortion ceremonies and the long list of “holy” folk who would be added to more than 200 individuals listed in the super-sized Lesser Feasts and Fasts, a recent addition to the growing pile of books with which we worship.

You, I, and all baptized persons are considered saints of God. Why not just declare this in one sentence and be done with it?

Let’s hope the delegates to GC don’t continue to throw our money at SCLM to continue their super-sized attack on our sensibilities and the liturgy and then claim:

“The Holy Spirit made me do it!”

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