“One Size Fits All” Marriage

Meeting in Anaheim, California July 8-17, the House of Bishops and House of Deputies passed Resolution C056, whittled down from a total of 19 proposed resolutions on the subject. This measure calls for the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music (SCLM), in cooperation with the House of Bishops, to invite Church-wide participation in collecting and developing resources and rites for blessing same-gender relationships. SCLM is to report to General Convention 2012. It is widely expected that some form of same-gender marriage rites will be presented at this time for GC action.  

Cut-and-Paste Marriage

The marriage service won’t be deleted from the classic 1928 Book of Common Prayer, or even from the 1979 book, the first publication in an incremental series of departures from our religion. However, if there’s a new prayer book in our future, don’t expect to see it there at all — or in the online mix-and-match liturgy being planned by Church revisionists.

At a media briefing during GC, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori described a blizzard of rites that will be available on the Church’s website. This online do-it-yourself liturgy will accelerate the revisionists’ ‘”Make It Up As We Go Along” program. It effectively will consign books to the parish dumpster. The 1928 Book of Common Prayer, along with its pale imitation the 1979 Prayer Book, will go out the window as bishops, priests, and laity cut, paste, and improvise.

(To illustrate that the revisionists now regard the 1979, once the “new” prayer book, as old-hat, a joking remark at a meeting during GC of the Prayer Book, Liturgy, and Church Music Committee:”That noise you hear is the 1979 Prayer Book people outside picketing!”)

Gone will be the elegantly-wrought words and phrases of reverence, truth, and beauty of the scripture-based 1928 BCP and every Book of Common Prayer since 1549. Kids raised on politically-correct newspeak will cut and paste at will, with the blessing of their youth ministers.

A program called Enriching Our Worship, or EOW, will practically guarantee the cut-and-paste method. The ponderous rites being penned by the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music (SCLM) would never fit between the covers of a conventional book. (See “Super-Size Me” on this website.)

Think about it. A Church bureaucrat, putting in time until his generous pension kicks in, out of touch with the people in the pews, or an internet-savvy kid who knows how to cut and paste but not how to say the Nicene Creed, can simply highlight the text of “Solemnization of Matrimony,” — an institution ordained by God, adorned by Christ at Cana, and practiced for 2,000 years as the basic building block of society — raise a finger, and click DELETE.

Hang onto your 1928 Prayer Book if you want a traditional wedding. Or click on the Prayer Book image on this website and go to pages 300 and then 267. Compare these sacred vows and blessings with the words of a writer to whom the assignment was “jobbed out,” as Clay Morris, former chairman of SCLM, described the process to ETF during an interview in Anaheim.

Problem Solved

At General Convention, Barbara Harris, a retired suffragan from Massachusetts, made clear the revisionists’ plans to scuttle traditional marriage. She delivered the sermon, called a “teaching,” to the assembled throng at a service held by Integrity, the Episcopal Church lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender organization.

Harris checked all pretense of civility and “inclusiveness” at the door. Warming to a friendly audience, she mocked “the self-professed orthodox.”

“Inclusiveness” must mean that all the baptized are included, as Integrity’s motto professes — only some are more included than others in this, the revisionists’ Orwellian world.

She offered a “solution” to the marriage dilemma during the service, which was as spectacular and colorful as a Broadway musical. The evening’s biggest laugh — and there were a lot of laughs and cheers during the event — erupted when Harris, her voice dripping venom, mocked marriage:

“Now let’s talk about maaarriage,” she scoffed, drawing out the word scornfully, as the congregation went wild.

Harris recommended that both heterosexual and homosexual couples have civil ceremonies, then proceed to a church for some form of blessing. Thus all partnerships would be the same. The SCLM will be crafting this blessing, the great leveler, for the next three years.

Presto! “Equality” is achieved. “Justice” is realized. Holy Matrimony between one man and one woman is abolished from the Episcopal Church.

Problem solved.