Lambeth Caption Contest 7

(photo from Times Online)

WHAT?!! We're out of Vegemite?!!

please post your own suggested captions!

But what's for dinner?

Looks like Rowan Williams has jumped on another Schori bandwagon. Nothing like a worthwhile secular cause to help distract from the primary spiritual, theological, moral and ecclesiastical crises facing the Anglican Communion Lambeth Anglican Fellowship.

Last Monday, at the Lambeth Conference, Bishop Winston Halapua from Polynesia spoke about a meeting of churches from various Pacific islands where the subject for discussion had been neither social justice nor personal ethics, but the bare fact of rising ocean levels. Within a very few years, the likelihood is that several small islands will simply become uninhabitable.

Nothing could have brought home more directly the issue that the conference discusses this Saturday – the church's responsibility for the environment. While scepticism about climate change is still given astonishing prominence in some western media, the day-to-day reality of rising water levels is not a matter of debate for our colleagues in the Pacific. Part of the importance of the Lambeth Conference to us all in the Anglican Church is that it lets us hear these things in first hand detail.

Okay, archbishop... but if anyone has served or eaten beef at the Lambeth Conference, I'm afraid we won't be able to take your concern as genuine. After all, your buddy Dr. Schori already warned us in her theologically profound Easter sermon this year:

When atmospheric warming, due in part to the methane output of the millions of cows we raise each year to produce hamburger, begins to slowly drown the island homes of our neighbors in the South Pacific, are we truly sharing good news?

First cast out the beef out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast the steak out of thy brother's eye.

Bible Study, Episcopal style

Dr. Schori helps us understand the real meaning of Jesus' parables:

So fear not, keep looking, and give thanks that when you find a glimpse of the kingdom of heaven, it is around us, even if it smells pretty fishy or whether it sounds like a riot in the wee hours of the morning.

The Episcopal church smells of death and decay, rocking with the shrill sounds of conflict and dissension.

Apparently that's a good sign.

Welcome to Dr. Schori's vision of the Kingdom of Heaven.

The true cost of apostasy

For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still. For the people turneth not unto him that smiteth them, neither do they seek the LORD of hosts. Therefore the LORD will cut off from Israel head and tail, branch and rush, in one day. The ancient and honourable, he is the head; and the prophet that teacheth lies, he is the tail. For the leaders of this people cause them to err; and they that are led of them are destroyed. Therefore the Lord shall have no joy in their young men, neither shall have mercy on their fatherless and widows: for every one is an hypocrite and an evildoer, and every mouth speaketh folly. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still. For wickedness burneth as the fire: it shall devour the briers and thorns, and shall kindle in the thickets of the forest, and they shall mount up like the lifting up of smoke. Isaiah 9

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The apostate leaders of the Episcopal church continue to lead their sheep-like congregations into heresy and damnation. For every one parishoner who has the intelligence and courage to leave the hell-bent organization, there are ten who will stay put, sliding slowly into apostasy, for lack of courage, or awareness, or care. Not the ones who seek out the apostasy of their free choice... the ones who blindly trust their faithless clergy, are caused to err, and are destroyed. And for this, I believe, those leaders shall be held accountable when they appear before the Throne.


But there are those who leave for whom they shall also be held accountable. For by profaning of the Church and of Scripture, these leaders have caused some to despair of those things as well... to throw out the good and the true because of the stink of the evil.

Make no mistake, our Lord Jesus Christ intended for His people to be a sacramental people, episcopally led, corporately worshiping. This is the clear model the apostles themselves spread as part of the initial deposit of the faith. For Christ sent them out into the world not just to bring a covenant, but also to bring a community. The Word made Flesh gave to His Bride the Church not just His words in Scripture but also His Flesh in Sacrament... and saved and redeemed and gave her, as well, her own body; a body brought together under the headship of His apostles and, from that source, of His bishops, the inheritors of that apostolic authority.

This is Christ's will for how His people, His Church, should live and for how they are to receive His greatest gift, His very flesh: given to His Church, in His sanctuaries, by His bishops. This is how His grace and favor are most intimately given to His people, according to His own promise.

Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. John 6

And yet, reacting to the corruption and apostasy and spiritual evil that has infected the Episcopal House of Bishops, who have rejected that faith and that apostolic succession, many of the faithful are abandoning not just the apostasy but also the episcopacy and the sacraments. They are choosing, because the Episcopal church has abandoned His Word, to flee by abandoning His Flesh and His Bride as well. Because the Episcopal church has followed moral and ethical apostasy, they react against it by pursuing sacramental and ecclesiastical apostasy. They are wise to leave an organization which has abandoned Christ and so ceased to be the Church... but foolish to also abandon the Church in an effort to return to Christ.

Sadly, all too often, one reads of reactions like the following -- reads of those who, fleeing from a false church which has abandoned (along with forsaking Scripture) the apostolic succession, valid sacraments, and the true life of the Church to which Christ calls His people... flee to another place which has abandoned those things as well.

I have waited long enough and if something of massive global proportions does not happen in the very immediate future, then I will have lost faith in our conservative leadership once more and I will leave my very conservative TEC diocese for a non-denominational church or perhaps I’ll even quit going to church all together.

For these souls as well shall the apostate and the complicit leaders of the Episcopal church be held accountable.

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But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in... Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves... Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness.... Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell? Matthew 23

A Mirror-Mirror Schori?

Ever since she came into supreme executive power, Dr. Schori has been leading the charge of persecution and deposition against traditionalist Episcopal priests and bishops. Of course, this had already been quietly going on for years through misuse of the Title IV canons, a little legal trick started by the lovely bishop Bennison.

But Schori really ramped things up. In her brief tenure to date, she's already made a habit of charing into dioceses -- as she did in Virginia -- and forcing them to sue departing parishes, even if they had, internally, worked out and agreed upon an amicable protocol. When the diocese of San Joaquin voted by an overwhelming majority, all in accordance with its canons and proper procedures, to reaffiliate, she violated PEcUSA's own procedures, laws, and voting protocols to illegally attempt to depose San Joaquin's bishop and illegally install her own puppet diocese in its place. She has threatened to depose bishop Duncan because she does not like the views he has expressed or the way his own diocese has been voting.

In other words, she apparently has no reservations at all about storming into Episcopal dioceses to enforce her agenda on its people, leadership and policies -- even if it requires violating PEcUSA's own canons and procedures to do so.


And yet, when asked recently whether she would ask Gene Robinson to step down -- an individual whose ordination has done more to destroy international Anglican relations that anything that the bishops she has been suing and deposing have... and whose ordination represents, indeed, a rejection of the Christian and Anglican norms to which those other bishops have been attempting to be faithful -- she responded:

That’s certainly not within my purview. He’s (Bishop Robinson) the bishop of the diocese of New Hampshire and such a response would be a matter between him and his diocese and certainly not anything I would expect.

How about dem apples, eh? When a diocese does something she doesn't like -- such as upholding traditional Christian belief, or even failing to aggressively persecute those who do -- she's happy to storm in and start shoving people around. But when it's a fellow relativist and apostate (and particularly one who embodies PEcUSA's homosexualist heresy)... ah, all of a sudden she's a hands-off administrator and stickler for protocol.


Could it be that this woman is a two-faced double-dealing dishonest conniving bald-faced liar? Why... that would be such an uncharitable conclusion! No, I think there's a much "nicer" explanation... which must therefore, logically, be the true one. Star Trek fans will remember what the real explanation turned out to be when Mr. Spock was discovered acting out of character, right?

Good Mr. Spock

Evil Mr. Spock

You got it... a Spock from a parallel dimension!

Obviously, this must be the case with Dr. Schori. One Schori, who is a stickler for PEcUSA's canons and protocols -- and so refuses, on principle, to take any disciplinary action or interfere in the administration or choices of another diocese -- and the other, the mirror-mirror Schori who steamrolls over all laws, canons, protocols and procedures to impose her apostate policies, regardless of what the local people, congregations, priests or bishops want.

I mean, we all know what a good, honest, straight-forward leader -- one who always acts with respect, integrity, legality, and care for her people -- Schori is, right? So it must be a parallel-dimension twin who is doing all that other stuff, right?

Evil Dr. Schori

Eviler Dr. Schori

Yeah. That's it.