Turnings (III)

This will be close to my last post as the "Anglican Curmudgeon". While I maintain my curmudgeonly skepticism toward today's idols (religious and otherwise), I can no longer claim the moniker "Anglican".  I do not presume to speak for others, but only for myself. And the objective truth is that I am no longer a member (or adherent) of the Anglican Communion, whatever grouping of denominations may lay claim to that name. 

Your Curmudgeon has followed the example of G.K. Chesterton, who came in time to realize that the grand Protestant experiment, without a magisterium, could do nothing but splinter into further denominational fragments, regardless of their claimed heritage. Like my model G. K., I have been received into the Roman Catholic Church. (See the first post in this series for more background.) 

It was one thing to criticize from the inside looking out, but it is not the same from the outside looking in. Removing myself from ECUSA made me indifferent to its fate.  Whether the Anglican Communion is on a different downward path may still be an open question, but the ECUSA-led schism in its ranks no longer attracts my attention -- so I am ceasing to write on that subject, as well. Quod scripsi, scripsi -- I will leave this blog up for the time being, so that the Guide can serve as a quick locator for specific topics.

The blog will therefore become a sculpture in amber of ECUSA's inexorable decline, chiefly the consequence of its flouting of its own and this country's laws for its leaders' short-term purposes.

The desultory legal contests ECUSA engaged in are now, thankfully, entirely resolved, with the exception of the final battle in the Supreme Court of South Carolina. For the sake of completeness, I will reserve my final post(s) on this blog to comment on how that battle turns out.  Until then, the reader can choose from among its more than 1,300 posts to date, indexed topically by the Guide. (There is, alas, no index to the almost 7,000 comments, but if you know the commenter's name, you can use the blog's search engine to find whatever that commenter wrote.)

I have no regrets either on leaving the Anglican Communion, which also (along with its parent, the Church of England) now shows signs of the further splintering envisioned in the links indexed in this post, and in this one. The "Communion" of its title is now honored more in the breach than in the observance, and I remain pessimistic about the capability of its current leadership to welcome back into the fold those it has effectively spurned by embracing the Zeitgeist in derogation of its scriptural heritage. 

In short, what previously made me an Anglican -- the belief that while rejecting the authority of the Magisterium we as Anglicans could yet remain true to Christ's teachings as handed down to us from the saints -- has become impossible to sustain, thanks to the vacillation and inconstancy of our overseers (Greek: episkopoi). Nothing "episcopal" remains of the Episcopal Church (USA), because its bishops have deserted their posts, while in the process expelling from their ranks all who rejected their ad hoc interpretations of Holy Scripture. 

This site was never limited just to Anglican / Episcopalian topics -- there was a lot of leavening thrown in, as its motto says, "for good measure." For leavening to be of any use, there has to be dough, and I have not decided yet how best to keep baking content. Fortunately (or unfortunately), the political scene in these so-called United States is so dispiriting that I have no desire to add to the general cacophony. The trend may self-correct before long, but if not, the priority should be protecting one's family from the disintegration taking place before our eyes. 

As Margaret Thatcher once observed: "The trouble with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money" -- and although closer to that point than ever before, we are not there yet.