Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Yet Another Bishop Popes...

This time His Grace John Lipscomb of Southwest Florida. I think his departure for Rome from the Episcopal Church is the most significant in years. Lipscomb and his counterpart +Herzog of Albany, who took the swim last March, could hardly be considered Anglo-Catholic. Both of them, egregiously, supported women's ordination (unlike +Steenson, whose leaving for Rome in September was not a huge surprise) but Herzog at least was Roman Catholic well into adulthood before converting to the Episcopal Church. Holy Mother Church has an uncanny ability at luring back even the most wayward members of her flock (think Lord Marchmain in "Brideshead"). Lipscomb has been Episcopalian for many years (coming from a Baptist upbringing) and his Tiber crossing serves as a clarion call to Anglicans everywhere: it is not just Anglo-Catholics who are embracing the full Catholic Faith, unable to abide the new-age, Gnostic cultists proliferating in the Anglican Communion, but also more mainstream protestants who realize only the Holy Catholic Church can fend off the onslaught of the heathen.

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