You know what? We give up. We're tossing in the biretta, shelving the Vulgate, dousing the thurible. When we get a chance, we're going to take down that icky old icon on the sidebar, and put up a picture of the Praying Hands. Or maybe a Jesus-fish.
You heard it here first, baby: we're going Protestant.
It has a been a struggle, all these years, trying to speak up for a vision of the church that was both evangelical, as described by the Book of Concord, and catholic, as adumbrated by millennia of Christian tradition. Life within our church is so distorted that people hear "Evangelical Catholic," and they just assume it means "cigar-smoking weasel who likes his gays in the closet and his women self-hating, watches Fox News, forwards chain emails about Nancy Pelosi's war on Christmas, and prays for the intercession of Saint Arthur Carl Piepkorn."*
Outside our church, people just stare at us and and say, "Huh. I didn't know Lutherans [wore those clothes] [used that ceremony] [knew those saints] [believed that doctrine]." You get tired of it after a while.
The last straw, though, was a few months back, when a reader accused us of Pre-Raphaelitism. We looked about the rectory sitting room, at our well-worn Morris chair and the lovely Burne-Jones print over the grating, and wept. It took us half an hour of reading Swinburne just to recover. ("Queen Yseult" mind you, not that creepy "Dolores" or anything. Get your mind out of the gutter).
Well, we're done now. Starting today, this blog is devoted to mass market neo-Pietism, with maybe a dash of post-Calvinist rationalism. We're buying a Hawaiian shirt for Sundays, and subscribing to Church Sound System Monthly. In fact, we're looking for a warehouse to rent for our weekly Un-Service Praise-a-Thon, because it's more ... umm ... authentic than a "traditional church."
If that doesn't work out, we'll try the Prosperity Gospel.
So, sure, it's been a great run. Thanks for clicking by. We hope you'll join us in our move to the dark side of the force, but if not, well, have fun stuck in your dying church preaching a not-so-believable message of "grace" to twelve senior citizens who never really got it anyway. We're moving on to better things!
Yours truly,
Father Anonymous
P.S.: Vobis dies stulti Aprilis festivus exoptamus!
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* Which, seriously, we once heard Robert Wilken do.
7 comments:
Do I hear the warbly strains of 'Ancient Words' . . . ?
Help us cope.
-- Anna
I almost posted NOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Everybody always gets me on April Fools. I figure that's my gift. The gullible pasty who makes this day fun for everyone.
Aaaah. Makes it all worthwhile.
Tibi gratias ago ut nobis consternationes solatus.
doesn't read quite the same here in NZ on April 2 ;)
Bosco+
May I be the first to congratulate you on the massive increase in this blog's popularity following your wise decision to start telling people what they want to hear. Personally I can't wait to read your pronouncements on what God hates - it's what the world needs a lot more of. May I also be the first to congratulate you on your unexpected rise to high office in your church.
@Anonymous -- whenever I hear that Contemporary christian song "Ancient Words", I always want to bang my head on something. Because they never say the actual ancient words that are supposed to be so powerful....
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