Is Missouri Better Off with Matt Harrison?

 "You may discuss Missouri doctrine and practice after we kick you out!
Did someone say Brats and Beer?"

I recall when Missouri had to get rid of Kieschnick as Synod President. They put on a big campaign and got Harrison in.

Otten went along with this by letting Harrison and Crew serenade him with "The Ballad of Herman Otten," Harrison playing his banjo. Too bad Otten did not reveal this at the time.

Nor did Harrison reveal his Gollum-behind-the-scenes, Paul McCain. Once Harrison had the prize, Paul McCain romped around the Purple Palace executive offices again, his angry and vindictive grin adorning his various chins.

Apparently, Kieschnick was a much better judge of character than Harrison.

This may slant my objective coverage, but Kieschnick has always been my Facebook friend, even when I criticized him. Harrison unfriended me, as so many UOJ fanatics have. Of course, McCain went sour when I questioned Barry's leadership spine, long before that.

For me, the deal-breaker is dishonesty, especially when publishing lies. McCain, like Glende and Ski, never had the training to write anything on his own. Concordia at Ft. Wayne is an ideal place for poorly trained, dictatorial blowhards:

• Paul McCain
• Jay Webber
• Jack Cascione
• Jim Heiser.

Like Walther, they could call themselves pastor - even bishop - without anything more than  superficial language training. But they were experts - just ask them. Their highest level of thinking is "repeat after me." They only know their required reading from seminary, the favorite epigrams of their professors, and expect everyone to be in awe of their shallow, misguided, and toxic insights.

For instance, Heiser teaches his sheep that NOT belonging to ELDONA is unScriptural. Does that remind anyone of Bishop Martin Stephan, who considered himself the sole Means of Grace in Europe? Missouri still reflects much of that triumphalism, legalism, and clericalism. One can only be a member of the cult by agreeing completely with the leader, whether he is Harrison, Heiser, or Otten.

So McCain took the work of Roman Catholic scholars, who are very good at propping up the papacy with their fables, yarns, and fabrications - and published them as his own - on his late, expunged blog, called Cyberbrethren. Did anyone wonder about that cute title? McCain was early in amalgamating the Net and stained-glass English.

I do a fair amount of writing, editing, and alas - editing of student papers. My plagiarism alarm is easily tripped. When someone who barely spoke English wrote about music like an MA in musicology, I googled the text. No surprise - it was word for word from a musicology source and written by someone with graduate degrees in the subject.

When Matt Harrison's Gollum sent out "his" columns fairly reeking of incense and Catholicism, I did the same checking. Whoa, Nellie. Back up. The McCain posts were from The Catholic Encyclopedia, almost verbatim - the almost being a sure sign of deliberate plagiarism. A few were taken almost verbatim from the blogs of his Lutheran friends. I traced them and cited the original sources, reporting the plagiarism on this blog. Nothing happened for a time. McCain's boss said it had nothing to do with Gollum's job at  Concordia Publishing House, a sue that will sue anyone for seeming to take a nickel from their income.

 Disagree with McCain?
Double-secret probation.

Eventually Cascione stopped linking the McCain posts and Cyberbrethren sank back into the ancient mists of subnet masking, HTML coding, and deceit. No apologies for the deceptions came forth from the consecrated and consecrating lips of Cassione, McCain, or Harrrison.

We should stop and check out the associates of people who claim to be leaders. Luther's associates were so brilliant in their Biblical work that they extended the Lutheran Reformation and its justification by faith orthodoxy out - far past the Book of Concord in 1580.

Stephan surrounded himself with boot-licker pastors who failed to notice the bishop's syphilis or his many young mistresses. The same dictatorial dishonesty found its way to America and appears untouched today.

The new LCMS decree, established and revealed from the throne of Harrison's heart, makes public discussion of Missouri doctrine and practice a cause for removal from the sanctified rolls of the synod.

That has been the rule in the WELS and the Little Sect on the Prairie,  a characteristic typical of cults.

Heiser has exceeded the ambitions of his episcopal peers. No one is allowed to cast his eyes upon a publication which has not undergone the bishop's vetting, or anything lacking his imprimatur. One cannot even party with the bishop unless that person is completely within the fold - certified, enrolled, and approved by fellow submissive clergy. Until then, he is "unScriptural," according to them. Not kosher. Not allowed to make unclean that which is purified by bonafied membeship in the ELDONUTs. The laity cannot party with the bishop either. They are a lower order.

 The cult brags about itself as a threat.

 Jay Webber should approve -
100% chasuble.
That is what really matters.

 St. Ignatius Seminary, ELDONA,
almost doubled its enrollment,
but the second student decided against
attending the Little School House on the Plains.

I wonder if all those who conspired to replace Kieschnick with Harrison are happy now. Their ability to rebel against Harrison is muted by the new excommunication law. Note well - the resolution passed. The LCMS is just as much a thrall of the Harrison papacy as it is of the ELCA-Thrivent domination game.