The Wolf in Our Midst

The article by Lee Penn in this issue on the recent General Convention of the Episcopal Church is “must” reading, not only for our Episcopalian readers but even more so for our Catholic readers.

Why? Because if Catholics want to see what the Catholic Church would look like if liberal Catholics get their way, all they need do is look at the Episcopal Church, which incarnates the wish list of liberal Catholics: a national church not controlled by a foreign see (be it the See of Rome or the See of Canterbury); bishops elected by dioceses, not appointed from above; approval of contraception and abortion; married priests and women priests and out-of-the-closet homosexual priests, junking the doctrine of the Indissolubility of Marriage, thereby allowing “remarriage” in church after divorce; approval of shacking-up and homosexual unions (with official rites for the latter soon to come), “inclusive”-language liturgies, and openness to importing trendy New-Age (neo-pagan) rituals into Christianity, etc.

But could this happen in the Catholic Church? If in, say, 1970 you asked if all of this could happen in the staid Episcopal Church, almost every Episcopalian would have said, “Never!” Alas, it has happened. Could it happen in the Catholic Church, at least, say, in the U.S. and Europe? Don’t be so quick to say “Never!”

You may or may not know that the NEW OXFORD REVIEW was born as an Anglo-Catholic (Episcopalian) magazine in 1977. We soon saw the handwriting on the wall, and in the summer of 1983 we became Roman Catholic. And, boy, are we glad we did!