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FORMER FEMALE EPISCOPAL PRIEST LINKS WOMEN'S ORDINATION TO LGBT ACTIVISM

FORMER FEMALE EPISCOPAL PRIEST LINKS WOMEN'S ORDINATION TO LGBT ACTIVISM
Alice Linsley warns of 'grave danger to the Catholic Church'

by Jules Gomes
ChurchMilitant.com
January 21, 2020

ROME (ChurchMilitant.com) - A former Episcopalian female "priest" is warning of the "grave danger" of women's ordination as it is inextricably linked to homosexual activism, rooted in feminism and perpetuates confusion about gender and the Eucharist.

Ordaining women priests is a revolt against Catholic orders, a rejection of the Fathers' teaching and a denial of the authority of Scripture, writes Alice Linsley in a hard-hitting essay in the Anglican journal VirtueOnline.

Linsley, who served as a priest in the Episcopal Church of the U.S.A. (ECUSA) for 16 years, renounced her orders and quit her denomination "as it moved toward a radical revision of the Gospel, setting aside the apostolic Tradition for its social justice agenda."

"As with many Anglicans, I believe that the Episcopal Church erred in 1976 when it departed from the all-male priesthood," observes Linsley, a pioneer in the field of biblical anthropology.

Speaking to Church Militant, the biblical scholar who has spent the last decade reflecting on the problem of women's ordination, explained how "the priesthood is an ordinance of Christ and is, therefore, perpetual."

"Those who reject the sign and ordinance, necessarily reject the Faith once delivered. Setting aside this Christology invites grave dangers to the Catholic Church," she remarked.

Linsley links women's ordination with the LGBT agenda noting that the first woman "canonically" ordained priest in America was a lesbian who served as Integrity's first co-president while lesbians had been among the "Philadelphia Eleven" -- 11 women who were the first women ordained priests in ECUSA in 1974, two years before ECUSA's General Convention authorized women's ordination.

In America, "the ordination of women and homosexuals was so intertwined from the beginning that it is difficult to treat these as separate questions. Both have been framed as 'equal rights' issues, revealing a profound misunderstanding of the priesthood," Linsley states.

She demonstrates how Louie Crew, founder of gay activist organization Integrity, supported women's ordination when more lesbians were ordained in Washington, D.C. in September 1975.

Crew said that more 'irregular' ordinations of women took place "after our convention."

In Washington at the time, on a missionary journey to our new chapters in the east, Jim Wickliff and I yielded to the counsel of friends who advised that our visibility at the ordination might put in jeopardy lesbians among all early ordinands," Crew explained.

In 1977, New York Episcopal bishop Paul Moore ordained Ellen Marie Barrett, Integrity's first co-president.

"Breaking catholic orders was necessary to opening the priesthood to partnered gay and lesbian persons," Linsley insists.

A former Anglican priest and theologian who converted to Catholicism told Church Militant that his faith in the Church of England was "completely shaken" after he became convinced of the "umbilical cord linking women's ordination to the homosexual infestation of the clergy."

"I would count the votes at general synod meetings and notice how it was women priests who voted overwhelmingly in favor of an LGBT agenda. I saw the intrusion of the intersectionality," he said, elaborating:

The women clergy would lament how oppressed they were not long ago having been denied ordination by the partiarchy. Similarly, gay and transgender folk were now oppressed by the heteropatriarchy and cisgender hegemony and it was the duty of previously oppressed feminists to show solidarity with them. The gospel according to Gramsci had taken over the Church of England.

The Catholic theologian said he was "gravely concerned" about the "virus of women's ordination" now attacking the Catholic Church, since "the most enduring and frightening characteristic of a computer virus is its ability to reproduce and transmit itself to other systems, spreading the infection."

He also pointed to the virus now spreading rapidly through the breakaway "conservative" Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) -- which "under Archbishop Foley Beach has begun the well-rehearsed process of tearing itself apart as its bishops couldn't agree at their recent meeting whether to continue to allow ordaining women."

"In 1994, Pope John Paul II spoke ex cathedra on female ordination, observing that the male priesthood had been 'preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church and clearly taught by the Magisterium in recent documents.' He stated that the Church has 'no authority to confer priestly ordination on women,'" Linsley reiterates, explaining that local synods had no authority to set aside the all-male priesthood.

"The Church is not a democratic body in which dogma, doctrine and the received Tradition are changed or set aside by a vote," she notes.

Moreover, women's ordination is rooted in "ideological feminism" which "must oppose biblical headship as an expression of the sovereignty of God [the] Father and God [the] Son."

Linsley explains how this logic is extended to transgenderism and thus perpetuates gender confusion: "Why draw the line at male and female language for God? On this slippery slope we may slide into casting God as transgendered or, like a crossdresser, being one gender but appearing as another."

Consequently, Linsley added, a female priesthood rejects the authority of Scripture and Tradition as the use of "revisionist language," changes traditional prayers according to current whim and "invents narratives to work around Scripture and Tradition since [feminist clergy] have dismissed the received Faith as sexist, patriarchal and outdated."

Similarly, women clergy cause confusion about the Eucharist by reframing it "to avoid the reality of Jesus, the Male God. The product is sadly inferior as it resembles pagan commemorative feasts" she noted.

"Women priests are evidence of the Western Church's love of innovation," Linsley concludes, lamenting that the ordination of women ultimately undermines women's ministries. She warns that the feminization of the clergy will discourage men's participation in the Church.

Catholics rose in protest last week and blocked the consecration of a female Episcopal bishop in a Virginia Catholic church, despite the efforts of Richmond Bp. Barry Knestout to go ahead with the service.

END

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