Now the Light Goes On: Holy Mother Rome Beckons

The Germans have an expression, "Nun geht das Licht an. (Now the light goes on.)" I was thinking about the rampant Romanism at Concordia, Ft. Wayne, and the reasons for the gradual switch from the Robert Preus years.

Then I remembered how the Ignorati at LutherQuest (sic) kept bringing up my degrees from Notre Dame. They overlooked how many Ft. Wayne faculty members had Notre Dame doctorates, which those men earned while LCMS pastors and seminary professors, not as LCA members. So I reminded them about Notre Dame being the school of choice for Ft. Wayne. The Ludiquesters also brought up my synod memberships, until I listed Robert Preus' many affiliations. I pointed out that Al Barry had more synods than a dog has fleas (WELS, ELS, some little sect meeting in a basement in Minneapolis, LCMS).

Notre Dame is famous for being a center of Roman Catholic and Protestant worship training. The school dominates all others in this area, serving as the Microsoft of high churchism in America. Proof is how WELS, Missouri, and the ELS went along with ELCA in adopting the Roman Catholic liturgical calendar and recently invented pericopes. Yes, even the new gay-friendly liturgical colors were minted at the Vatican.

The three-year cycle of readings has displaced the historic one-year cycle. Luther's sermons in the 8 or 5 volume set are based on the ancient pericope series. It is funny how the Lutheran apostates are promoting The Frog in the Kettle while volunteering to be frogs in the kettle. The results are predictable.

Here is a chilling exchange from Virtue Online:

Ackerman: The Church of England has always been 20 to 30 years behind the United States, and we are already witnessing within England a similar phenomenon that has resulted in continuing churches formally or informally applying to Rome moving to Eastern Orthodoxy and or attempting to create a separate province. My hope is that the phenomenal division and hemorrhaging that has taken place in The Episcopalian Church will be an example that the English will look at very carefully as they consider their future.

VOL: As many as 1300 Anglo-Catholic priests in the Church of England are preparing to flee to Rome, many more will wait out another vote sometime in the future in the hope that some sort of provision will be made for them. Some Anglo-Catholic leaders have asked for a Third Province. In your opinion do Anglo-Catholics in the CofE have a prayer of surviving or is their trajectory the same as that of Anglo-Catholics in the Episcopal Church?

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Brian P Westgate has left a new comment on your post "Now the Light Goes On":

What do you mean by "the gay-friendly liturgical colors?"

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GJ - All of the sudden, WELS and the other sects had to follow ELCA and Rome in using peacock blue and gold and such like for their liturgical colors. They never did before. They got along quite well without the Roman cycle of readings. The apostate leaders (like your Tiefel guy) know that the sheep will follow anyone with a title - right off the cliff. The congregations think they are following new synodical guidelines. Ha. Rome is deliberately making its worship style the norm for all Christians, so it is natural for people disturbed about their sect to join Holy Mother Rome, the Real Church.

The LCMS, WELS, and ELS apostate leaders are ecumenical by default. They have no doctrinal bearings so they wander around.

Gay-friendly anecdote: I mentioned a pastor in South Bend, who was high church long before that was even discussed in the LCA. A pastor who graduated from seminary with this man said, "Oh, he was the only high church guy at the seminary who wasn't gay." That does not make high church automatically an alternate lifestyle, as they say in polite circles, but the Lavender Mafia is over-represented among those sinuflecting to Rome.

Stan Hauerwas Explains Al Just and Pastor Tabor - WELS Church Workers

"One reason why we Christians argue so much about which hymn to sing, which liturgy to follow, which way to worship is that the commandments teach us to believe that bad liturgy eventually leads to bad ethics. You begin by singing some sappy, sentimental hymn, then you pray some pointless prayer, and the next thing you know you have murdered your best friend."

- Stanley Hauerwas

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GJ - Hauerwas was hired to teach at Augustana College, where Mrs. Ichabod and I met. Her sister baby-sat for his son when he taught at Notre Dame, which led me to apply there.

Hauerwas is the most famous theologian to have taught at Augustana, and they canned him in one year. He took a pay cut to teach at Notre Dame. When the pope visited Notre Dame, he ordered the administration to get rid of its Protestants teaching theology and its liberation (Marxist) theologians. Robert Wilken (LCMS, ELCA, later Roman Catholic) went to Duke. Hauerwas (Methodist, now Episcopalian) went to Duke. Frank and Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenz (liberation and feminist theologians) landed at Harvard.

Hauerwas is considered the best theologian in America, honored recently by giving the Gifford lectures in Europe. All this is rather ironic since Augustana did not want to keep him.