A young priest explains Canon

[The Liturgist]

You are now more scary (in a good way) to me than ever.

That may (or may not) change when you find my secret underground research facility!

 

[Shane R]

I was under the impression that the more traditional BCP editions like the 1928 American BCP only ever had an Epistle and Gospel lesson for communion (as opposed to the three lessons we see in some liturgies of the time like the Ambrosian and Mozarabic rites and some Methodist and Lutheran service books, and also of course the unpleasant three year lectionary, although on feast days like for St. Luke, the Episcopal Church has lessons that are not taken from the RCL or the old, less unpleasant three year lectionary the RCL replaced*), but on some rare occasions the Epistle could be replaced by an Old Testament prophecy, like in the Roman Rite, but not the Byzantine Rite, but that the Gospel would always be from Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Is that not correct?

That is correct. It's a private opinion of mine that the few places that are read in Acts and Revelation could probably be read appropriately as Gospel readings.

 

[Ain't Zwinglian]

Holy Innocents: Rev. 14 beginning at v. 1

As of this point in time, the LCMS does not officially remember Holy Innocents (Jan 22, 1973, Roe v Wade) as a day of mourning. Although, Holy Innocents is observed in a lot our churches. Do other liturgical church bodies observed this date? @Shane R states his church uses Rev. 14. What verses of Scritpure do other church bodies use?

 

[Xeno.of.athens]

As of this point in time, the LCMS does not officially remember Holy Innocents (Jan 22, 1973, Roe v Wade) as a day of mourning. Although, Holy Innocents is observed in a lot our churches. Do other liturgical church bodies observed this date? @Shane R states his church uses Rev. 14. What verses of Scritpure do other church bodies use?

On December 28, the Catholic Church celebrates the feast of the innocents. This feast commemorates the massacre of the holy innocents, the children killed by King Herod shortly after the birth of Jesus. [Feast of the Innocents: Meaning, Devotion, Prayers]

Some, perhaps very many, Catholics associate this feast with the deaths of children in abortion.

 

[Ain't Zwinglian]

On December 28, the Catholic Church celebrates the feast of the innocents. This feast commemorates the massacre of the holy innocents, the children killed by King Herod shortly after the birth of Jesus. [Feast of the Innocents: Meaning, Devotion, Prayers]

Some, perhaps very many, Catholics associate this feast with the deaths of children in abortion.

You are right. Lutherans do Holy Innocents on 12/28. This is official. I don't know the name by which 1/22/73 is used for mourning for our nations' aborted children. We should use 1/22 in our lectionaries especially in this political climate where every third campaign ad is pro choice.

 

[The Liturgist]

As of this point in time, the LCMS does not officially remember Holy Innocents (Jan 22, 1973, Roe v Wade) as a day of mourning. Although, Holy Innocents is observed in a lot our churches. Do other liturgical church bodies observed this date? @Shane R states his church uses Rev. 14. What verses of Scritpure do other church bodies use?

I don’t know of any liturgical churches which observe the feast of the Holy Innocents on January 22nd, since this is an ancient feast commemorating the murder of the infants in the cities of Bethlehem and Ramallah by King Herod “the Great” (not the same Herod who would behead St. John the Baptist, who himself survived presumably on the basis of either being outside the area of the mass infanticide or else, as suggested by the Protoevangelion of St. James, which is not canonical, but which does agree to a large extent with Orthodox Holy Tradition concerning the life of the Theotokos and certain other details around the nativity of Christ our True God, and His illustrious forerunner St. John the Baptist, by means of a miraculous escape involving prayer. Which I rather like - as far as New Testament pseudepigrapha is concerned, the Protoevangelion of St. James is the least objectionable by far (

abortion being an acceptable thing, and worse, something actively promoted by some of the extreme left wing mainline churches (actually all of them, as far as I am aware - if anyone is aware of any exceptions, let me know, but in many cases mainline churches have actually donated money or lobbied on behalf of what is euphemistically called “reproductive health” - which is horrifying, since even the Pagan Romans regarded abortion as evil, although they were fine with post-partum infanticide and the decision to engage in infanticide could be made by the father at any time until the child reached the age of majority. One theory as to the very rapid growth of Christianity is that prospective mothers were attracted to it by the early church having a prohibition not just on abortion but also infanticide - by making sure that anyone who wanted to wed them was a convert or a cradle Christian, they had ecclesiastical recourse, since the early church would excommunicate a man who procured infanticide, and indeed would excommunicate them for quite a long time, it being one of those offenses, like adultery and other forms of murder, which could have a 30 year penance before one would be readmitted to the Eucharist (with the exception being if the penitent became morbidly ill, in which case the pre-sanctified Eucharist would be brought to them).

In the Western churches, the Feast of the Holy Innocents is traditionally celebrated on December 28th, whereas in the Eastern Orthodox church, it is celebrated on December 29th, and in the Syriac Orthodox, on December 27th (in both the Eastern and Syriac Orthodox churches, that is according to the Julian Calendar or the “Revised Julian”* or Gregorian Calendar, depending on the jurisdiction), and the Copts celebrate this feast on the 3rd of Tobe, which is January the 11th on the Gregorian calendar (December 29th, like the Eastern Orthodox; Christmas is of course celebrated on the 29th of Koiakh, and during the month of Koiakh, beautiful Marian hymns are sung, which focus on the Mariological character inherent in the Advent season, which begins before Koiakh, for the Copts, like most Christians outside of the Roman Rite, observe six weeks in Advent, but since the month (like all months in the Coptic calendar except for the intercalary month) is 30 days long, the first 28 days through Christmas Eve represent the Nativity Fast in full swing.

The Koiakh Psalmody, as it is called, is celebrated as Vespers in parishes, although it also has a Midnight Office and Matins, which are mainly celebrated in monasteries, but are accessible elsewhere, and this is regarded as one of the high points of the Coptic Orthodox liturgical year, and it should be said the Coptic Rite is exquisitely beautiful, and its beauty, like that of the Syriac Orthodox and East Syriac liturgy, is under-appreciated in the West, although not to the extent of the Armenian liturgy, which contains treasures most people are totally unaware of, such as the beautiful celebration of the Feast of St. Stephen on December 26th, when all deacons wear crowns to celebrate the Protomartyr.

The Armenian liturgy also features its own distinct style of iconography and an exquisite indigenous style of church decoration, which is particularly prominent in Jerusalem, where the Armenians have had more influence on the shared spaces in Jerusalem and Bethlehem than the Greeks or Latins, even as the external architecture was dominated by those churches), not to mention splendid music, and it is also the only liturgy where the Nativity is celebrated together with the Baptism of Our Lord on Epiphany (which in other Eastern churches, became purely a feast of the Baptism of our Lord and was called Theophany, because on that occasion, God the Son our Savior was incarnate, God the Holy Spirit became visible as a dove descending from the Heavens onto Him, and God the Father made Himself heard, one of only two instances where we know that the voice heard was that of the Father, the other being on Transfiguration) whereas in the West, it became known just as Epiphany and focused on the adoration of Christ by the three Zoroastrian magi.

Because the Armenians celebrate Christmas and the Baptism of our Lord and the visitation of the Magi as one event, and thus wait until January the 6th, on the Gregorian Calendar, and likewise the same date onJulian Calendar in Jerusalem, which works out to be January 18th on the Gregorian, making them the last church in Jerusalem to celebrate the Nativity (after the Latins on December 25th and the Greeks, Armenians, Syriac Orthodox, Copts and Ethiopians, on January 7th).

Interestingly, they also commemorate the Holy Innocents on the same day, but the lection from Matthew 2 (verse 13 through to the end of the chapter) is appointed for January 8th, which follows the Syriac Orthodox practice of celebrating this feast two days after Christmas on December 27th. Additionally, one rather dated and unreliable source reports that the event is further commemorated on May 11th, based on a belief that this massacre happened after roughly that amount of time had elapsed from the birth of our Lord until the Massacre of the Innocents, which makes sense, although it seems a bit of a dark event to include in the otherwise festive Eastertide, and it is not a major feast by any means, indeed, I have not been able to verify from any other source that the Armenians do this. In recent months we have had an Armenian member intermittently active, @Tigran1245 , and I hope he might be able to shine some light on this issue for us, as I would really very much like to know for sure what the Armenian practice is on this event, and I have a mind to call their seminary to find out otherwise.

At any rate @Ain't Zwinglian I realize this is rather more of an answer than you were expecting, I should think, but what can I say? i am what I am and I do what I can, to quote Popeye the sailor-man, and also a rather amusing character from a video game related to The Matrix. Oh, and we must not neglect the footnotes:

* In contrast, the blasphemous Infancy Gospel of Thomas, not to be confused with the sayings document often called “The Gospel According to Thomas”**, is the most objectionable semi-psuedepigraphical work of New Testament-related apocrypha, attributing with blasphemous impiety evil and perverse actions to our sinless Savior in his childhood, which is so horrible and so blasphemous that I will not repeat it, but I believe this is the Gospel of Thomas that was, according to an Early Church Father, not written by St. Thomas as one would think, but rather by one of the three disciples of Mani, the Persian false prophet, each of whom was given a name to ingratiate him into the community he was sent to, thus, the disciple he named Thomas was sent to the Syrian Christians, who deeply venerated St. Thomas the Apostle, who had evangelized many of them, as well as those of Mesopotamia and Kerala in India along a land-sea trade route established by Alexander the Great, which had a significant Jewish population and substantial numbers of Syriac Aramaic speakers along the route who St. Thomas could communicate with without too much difficulty, while those sent to Egypt and the Far East were given the name Hermes and Buddha, reflecting the popularity of the cult of Hermes Trimegistus, the syncretic deity formed from Hellenic and Egyptian Pagan interaction, with Hermes Trimegistus being a fusion of Thoth and Hermes (known to the Romans as Mercury), and naturally the use of the name Buddha for the disciple Mani sent to the Far East is self explanatory. It was there that his religion had the most long-term success, thanks to a combination of syncretism and dissimulation, and the only surviving Manichaen temple is in China, disguised as a Buddhist temple, but with enough subtle references so that its true identity can easily be verified even by contemporary researchers and indeed anyone with a knowledge of the Manichee religion can identify it, while anyone with a knowledge of Buddhism would find it … unusual, since the differences while subtle are enough to put it in what one might call an architectural uncanny valley (not unlike the differences between the innumerable Mormon local “stakes” one will see in Utah and surrounding environs and traditional Christian churches built in the same period, such as the lack of a visible cross, apparent iconoclasm, et cetera.

** This work shares much in common with the Synoptic Gospels, and I suspect it had genuine origins, but it contains obvious interpolations that could be Ophite or Bardesanist or otherwise of a Docetic emanationist sect based on a belief in secret knowledge, which we see evinced in verse 1 (the work is not divided into chapters), which makes it more dangerous, since liberal scholars have foolishly assumed it is an older and more reliable text than the synoptics themselves, some dating it to 50 AD or earlier, when in fact it alludes to doctrines which we know to have become popular in the second century among the large swathe of heresies St. Irenaeus of Lyons debunked in his classic Against Heresies, which was in turn quoted by St. Epiphanios the bishop of Salamis in his Panarion (which I would translate as “First Aid Kit” although literally it means “Medicine Chest” given his amusing rhetorical device of associating each heresy with a noxious, poisonous or venomous critter), which in turn was quoted by St. John of Damascus in his Fount of Knowledge.***

*** This combines an heresiological section that also features an exhilarating criticism of Islam (which he viewed, like most of his contemporaries, correctly I should add, as a heretical offshoot of Christianity), and also of Iconoclasm and Nestorianism and certain other heresies which did not exist during the fourth or second century, with some philosophical material and the celebrated Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith. At any rate, I highly recommend all three of these works and can assist members interested in reading them. Also of interest, if one is going to do that, would be the Rudder, the collection of Eastern Orthodox canon law, which I will be doing a series on in General Theology as soon as I complete a study of how it differs from the Roman Catholic nomocanon.

 

[Ain't Zwinglian]

I don’t know of any liturgical churches which observe the feast of the Holy Innocents on January 22nd, since this is an ancient feast commemorating the murder of the infants in the cities of Bethlehem and Ramallah by King Herod “the Great” (not the same Herod who would behead St. John the Baptist, who himself survived presumably on the basis of either being outside the area of the mass infanticide or else, as suggested by the Protoevangelion of St. James, which is not canonical, but which does agree to a large extent with Orthodox Holy Tradition concerning the life of the Theotokos and certain other details around the nativity of Christ our True God, and His illustrious forerunner St. John the Baptist, by means of a miraculous escape involving prayer. Which I rather like - as far as New Testament pseudepigrapha is concerned, the Protoevangelion of St. James is the least objectionable by far (

abortion being an acceptable thing, and worse, something actively promoted by some of the extreme left wing mainline churches (actually all of them, as far as I am aware - if anyone is aware of any exceptions, let me know, but in many cases mainline churches have actually donated money or lobbied on behalf of what is euphemistically called “reproductive health” - which is horrifying, since even the Pagan Romans regarded abortion as evil, although they were fine with post-partum infanticide and the decision to engage in infanticide could be made by the father at any time until the child reached the age of majority. One theory as to the very rapid growth of Christianity is that prospective mothers were attracted to it by the early church having a prohibition not just on abortion but also infanticide - by making sure that anyone who wanted to wed them was a convert or a cradle Christian, they had ecclesiastical recourse, since the early church would excommunicate a man who procured infanticide, and indeed would excommunicate them for quite a long time, it being one of those offenses, like adultery and other forms of murder, which could have a 30 year penance before one would be readmitted to the Eucharist (with the exception being if the penitent became morbidly ill, in which case the pre-sanctified Eucharist would be brought to them).

In the Western churches, the Feast of the Holy Innocents is traditionally celebrated on December 28th, whereas in the Eastern Orthodox church, it is celebrated on December 29th, and in the Syriac Orthodox, on December 27th (in both the Eastern and Syriac Orthodox churches, that is according to the Julian Calendar or the “Revised Julian”* or Gregorian Calendar, depending on the jurisdiction), and the Copts celebrate this feast on the 3rd of Tobe, which is January the 11th on the Gregorian calendar (December 29th, like the Eastern Orthodox; Christmas is of course celebrated on the 29th of Koiakh, and during the month of Koiakh, beautiful Marian hymns are sung, which focus on the Mariological character inherent in the Advent season, which begins before Koiakh, for the Copts, like most Christians outside of the Roman Rite, observe six weeks in Advent, but since the month (like all months in the Coptic calendar except for the intercalary month) is 30 days long, the first 28 days through Christmas Eve represent the Nativity Fast in full swing.

The Koiakh Psalmody, as it is called, is celebrated as Vespers in parishes, although it also has a Midnight Office and Matins, which are mainly celebrated in monasteries, but are accessible elsewhere, and this is regarded as one of the high points of the Coptic Orthodox liturgical year, and it should be said the Coptic Rite is exquisitely beautiful, and its beauty, like that of the Syriac Orthodox and East Syriac liturgy, is under-appreciated in the West, although not to the extent of the Armenian liturgy, which contains treasures most people are totally unaware of, such as the beautiful celebration of the Feast of St. Stephen on December 26th, when all deacons wear crowns to celebrate the Protomartyr.

The Armenian liturgy also features its own distinct style of iconography and an exquisite indigenous style of church decoration, which is particularly prominent in Jerusalem, where the Armenians have had more influence on the shared spaces in Jerusalem and Bethlehem than the Greeks or Latins, even as the external architecture was dominated by those churches), not to mention splendid music, and it is also the only liturgy where the Nativity is celebrated together with the Baptism of Our Lord on Epiphany (which in other Eastern churches, became purely a feast of the Baptism of our Lord and was called Theophany, because on that occasion, God the Son our Savior was incarnate, God the Holy Spirit became visible as a dove descending from the Heavens onto Him, and God the Father made Himself heard, one of only two instances where we know that the voice heard was that of the Father, the other being on Transfiguration) whereas in the West, it became known just as Epiphany and focused on the adoration of Christ by the three Zoroastrian magi.

Because the Armenians celebrate Christmas and the Baptism of our Lord and the visitation of the Magi as one event, and thus wait until January the 6th, on the Gregorian Calendar, and likewise the same date onJulian Calendar in Jerusalem, which works out to be January 18th on the Gregorian, making them the last church in Jerusalem to celebrate the Nativity (after the Latins on December 25th and the Greeks, Armenians, Syriac Orthodox, Copts and Ethiopians, on January 7th).

Interestingly, they also commemorate the Holy Innocents on the same day, but the lection from Matthew 2 (verse 13 through to the end of the chapter) is appointed for January 8th, which follows the Syriac Orthodox practice of celebrating this feast two days after Christmas on December 27th. Additionally, one rather dated and unreliable source reports that the event is further commemorated on May 11th, based on a belief that this massacre happened after roughly that amount of time had elapsed from the birth of our Lord until the Massacre of the Innocents, which makes sense, although it seems a bit of a dark event to include in the otherwise festive Eastertide, and it is not a major feast by any means, indeed, I have not been able to verify from any other source that the Armenians do this. In recent months we have had an Armenian member intermittently active, @Tigran1245 , and I hope he might be able to shine some light on this issue for us, as I would really very much like to know for sure what the Armenian practice is on this event, and I have a mind to call their seminary to find out otherwise.

At any rate @Ain't Zwinglian I realize this is rather more of an answer than you were expecting, I should think, but what can I say? i am what I am and I do what I can, to quote Popeye the sailor-man, and also a rather amusing character from a video game related to The Matrix. Oh, and we must not neglect the footnotes:

* In contrast, the blasphemous Infancy Gospel of Thomas, not to be confused with the sayings document often called “The Gospel According to Thomas”**, is the most objectionable semi-psuedepigraphical work of New Testament-related apocrypha, attributing with blasphemous impiety evil and perverse actions to our sinless Savior in his childhood, which is so horrible and so blasphemous that I will not repeat it, but I believe this is the Gospel of Thomas that was, according to an Early Church Father, not written by St. Thomas as one would think, but rather by one of the three disciples of Mani, the Persian false prophet, each of whom was given a name to ingratiate him into the community he was sent to, thus, the disciple he named Thomas was sent to the Syrian Christians, who deeply venerated St. Thomas the Apostle, who had evangelized many of them, as well as those of Mesopotamia and Kerala in India along a land-sea trade route established by Alexander the Great, which had a significant Jewish population and substantial numbers of Syriac Aramaic speakers along the route who St. Thomas could communicate with without too much difficulty, while those sent to Egypt and the Far East were given the name Hermes and Buddha, reflecting the popularity of the cult of Hermes Trimegistus, the syncretic deity formed from Hellenic and Egyptian Pagan interaction, with Hermes Trimegistus being a fusion of Thoth and Hermes (known to the Romans as Mercury), and naturally the use of the name Buddha for the disciple Mani sent to the Far East is self explanatory. It was there that his religion had the most long-term success, thanks to a combination of syncretism and dissimulation, and the only surviving Manichaen temple is in China, disguised as a Buddhist temple, but with enough subtle references so that its true identity can easily be verified even by contemporary researchers and indeed anyone with a knowledge of the Manichee religion can identify it, while anyone with a knowledge of Buddhism would find it … unusual, since the differences while subtle are enough to put it in what one might call an architectural uncanny valley (not unlike the differences between the innumerable Mormon local “stakes” one will see in Utah and surrounding environs and traditional Christian churches built in the same period, such as the lack of a visible cross, apparent iconoclasm, et cetera.

** This work shares much in common with the Synoptic Gospels, and I suspect it had genuine origins, but it contains obvious interpolations that could be Ophite or Bardesanist or otherwise of a Docetic emanationist sect based on a belief in secret knowledge, which we see evinced in verse 1 (the work is not divided into chapters), which makes it more dangerous, since liberal scholars have foolishly assumed it is an older and more reliable text than the synoptics themselves, some dating it to 50 AD or earlier, when in fact it alludes to doctrines which we know to have become popular in the second century among the large swathe of heresies St. Irenaeus of Lyons debunked in his classic Against Heresies, which was in turn quoted by St. Epiphanios the bishop of Salamis in his Panarion (which I would translate as “First Aid Kit” although literally it means “Medicine Chest” given his amusing rhetorical device of associating each heresy with a noxious, poisonous or venomous critter), which in turn was quoted by St. John of Damascus in his Fount of Knowledge.***

*** This combines an heresiological section that also features an exhilarating criticism of Islam (which he viewed, like most of his contemporaries, correctly I should add, as a heretical offshoot of Christianity), and also of Iconoclasm and Nestorianism and certain other heresies which did not exist during the fourth or second century, with some philosophical material and the celebrated Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith. At any rate, I highly recommend all three of these works and can assist members interested in reading them. Also of interest, if one is going to do that, would be the Rudder, the collection of Eastern Orthodox canon law, which I will be doing a series on in General Theology as soon as I complete a study of how it differs from the Roman Catholic nomocanon.

Wow!

We do have a fair amount of "precious feet" Lapel pins worn on Sundays around 1/22 by both men and women.

 

[The Liturgist]

You are right. Lutherans do Holy Innocents on 12/28. This is official. I don't know the name by which 1/22/73 is used for mourning for our nations' aborted children. We should use 1/22 in our lectionaries especially in this political climate where every third campaign ad is pro choice.

Well, I would propose that the Feast of the Holy Innocents has direct applicability to mourning the victims of Roe v. Wade. A decent and conservative Episcopalian priest at the parish in St. George Utah used the occasion to preach a sermon about the victims of child abuse, which is a pressing issue in that community due to the abuse that happened in the nearby Short Creek area (divided between Park City, Utah and Colorado City, Arizona, the latter home to the remaining members of the FLDS heresy, which still regards the vile child molester Warren Jeffs, who is serving a life sentence in the Texas State Penitentiary after recording himself harming a young child in the “Zion Temple” the sect had constructed on its ranch in Texas, and there are multiple dimensions of FLDS child abuse, including in addition to the forced marriage of child brides that happened before the arrest of Warren Jeffs and probably still happens to this day, albeit in greater secrecy, such as forced child labor by teenage boys (with the less productive boys being exiled from the community and winding up homeless at age 15 on the streets of St. George, where they tend to fall prey to the criminal elements, in order to preserve the high ratio of females to males their community requires).

And if that wasn’t bad enough, it was in Washington County where Jodil Hildebrandt, a devout member of the official non-polygamous LDS church who was licensed as a mental health clinician and who had received numerous accolades from various senior Mormon clergy, was orchestrating, together with their mother Ruby Franke, the sadistic torture of the two youngest children of Ruby Franke, a 12 year old boy and a ten year old girl, but the 12 year old boy heroically escaped the property despite his emaciated condition and made it to the home of a helpful neighbor (whose resonant voice sounds like that of a bishop who is a close personal friend of mine), to request that the police be called. Had this not happened, the two children would likely be dead, particularly since Jodi Hildebrandt was searching for an isolated property in the deep desert in Arizona where, far away from neighbors, she and the mother Ruby Franke would be free to “discipline” the children with impunity without concern of being observed or overheard by the neighbors in the suburban area which they turned into a hell for those two innocent children.

Thus, as I see it, the feast of the Holy Innocents, who are regarded as glorified saints by the Orthodox, as the first to die for Christ, unwittingly, in contrast to St. Stephen the Protomartyr (whose feast is adjacent to their feast in the Syriac Orthodox tradition), but nonetheless, we regard them as saved through the special mercy of Christ, and this holiday is a good time to pray for all children who have been harmed or are still being harmed, because even after we have rewarded our own children with gifts on Christmas, and enjoyed with them the celebration of the Nativity of Christ our God, which is a celebration of childhood itself, and a reminder that our own salvation requires of us that we enter the Kingdom of Heaven like little children, and not with the pompous arrogance that accompanies our supposed maturity, well, for those of us who are not humbled by the images of He who is infinite, and by whom all things are made, being Himself wrapped in swaddling clothes, having willingly put on our frail and limited human nature in order to restore and glorify it, remaking man in His same image in which we were originally created, before we tarnished ourselves by rejecting God and embracing sin, the consideration of the Holy Innocents who themselves died for the ego of a particularly sinful and miserly old ruler, who would die soon anyway, and whose order to kill the children of Bethlehem was entirely insane, ought to be enough to induce a sense of humility, for if this is what age bring us - paranoia and a willingness to kill large numbers of children based on an imagined risk of being deposed by an infant, who would not reach adulthood until after King Herod “the Great” was dead, but Herod could not accept his own impending death, and thus saw fit to impose it upon innocent children instead.

Likewise, those who cause children to be aborted in the womb before even taking their first breath are like King Herod - they presume, for selfish reasons, whether they are abortion doctors, or men who coerce their wives, mistresses or lovers into having an abortion lest they be burdened with the responsibilities of fatherhood, thus terminating a life for their own personal convenience, or indeed, some women who have abortions in order to maintain their youthful appearance and promiscuous appearance.

There are also women who are pressured into having abortions by economic factors - where abortions are legal, it becomes increasingly likely that a young single woman without financial means who becomes pregnant will be pressured by their employer and in some cases even government social workers into having their baby killed before birth, because the employer does not actually want to deal with the requirements of paid maternity leave, or the disruption to productivity caused by training a replacement employee, and what is more it is all too easy in many companies to find some reason to fire someone (particularly in those with “at-will” employment, which increases jobs but also increases the risks associated with jobs, so it is a trade off) as a pretext or excuse, when the real reason is something else, a desire to not have to deal with a pregnant employee who might have morning sickness or other issues and who will require maternity leave. And indeed, those who get away with this would never threaten such an employee explicitly, but rather would make a point to fire one pregnant employee without a good reason, and to let the memory of the event and whispers about it between employees, reaching new hires, to carry the message.

The situation of the young single parent is one which is absolutely rigged to create demand for abortions, and especially so with minority populations such as African Americans. Indeed many have referred to the abortion crisis, quite accurately I think, as a hidden genocide, one occurring under the pretext of a woman’s right to choose, but the reality is that the “Pro-Choice” movement is not defending choice at all, but rather is creating a set of circumstances in which single mothers from minority backgrounds in low-income situations are being forced into abortions. They are being denied the choice, through socio-economic manipulation, of having their baby, even if they want to do so, and even if abortion is against their personal religious convictions. Some courageously defy the system, although sadly not all are successful in raising their child, with some losing custody due to various problems which are comorbid with their situation.

Given all of the above, it should come as no surprise to anyone that the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, was a eugenicist. And while in her public remarks she made every effort to endear herself to the leaders of the African American community, her actions speak louder than words, and the particular emphasis she placed on birth control for African Americans suggests that she did regard their population as excessive, and historic attempts by Planned Parenthood to sugarcoat, evade or otherwise deflect from this issue are reminscent of their attempts to deflect from other more recent scandals in their history, for example, the child sex trafficking scandal, their long-term response to the 2011 video covered seven years later by the Catholic News Agency here: Did Planned Parenthood cover up child abuse and sex trafficking?

So when we consider all of this evil, I think it is entirely appropriate for the Feast of the Holy Innocents to be used as an occasion for prayer in response to all forms of the abuse of children, including, but not limited to:

• Abortion
• “Euthanasia”, that is to say, physician-provided homicide of children, which has been legalized in Belgium, the Netherlands and other European countries, where doctors can end the life of children without the consent of the child (who cannot give informed consent in any case owing to their minority).
• Sexual abuse.
• Sexual trafficking
• Human trafficking for purposes of slave labor in construction and related projects, by the FLDS, and in sweatshops in Asia and Latin America and elsewhere.
• On a related note, the often highly abusive and otherwise psychologically harmful conditions experienced by child actors in cinema and television productions.
• The mistreatment of child volunteers, for example, by authorities who shut down youth projects without consideration of the adverse impact this could have on the youth.
• The war crime of child soldiers, who continue to be deployed in conflicts in less stable regions.
• Inadequate nutrition, which is a problem both within the US and other civilized countries, and also in the developing world, and which is particularly acute in failed states and dictatorships like North Korea.
• Inadequate pediatric healthcare, which is another problem existing the world over, along with sadistic pediatricians including some who abuse their patients.
• The abusive manner in which corporal punishment is employed in schools in some countries, including in parts of the US, for instance, the deeply disturbing incident in which a single mother was coerced into allowing her five year old son to be paddled by the female principles of his elementary school, with a threat of referring her to the state agency responsible for child protective services if she did not comply - she secretly filmed the principal and vice principal paddling the boy and uploaded the video, which went viral.*
• Likewise, there is the issue of girls being paddled by male staff, and boys by female staff, and also given the increase in homosexuals in the public school system, even where this is not allowed, there are still obvious cases of impropriety and sexual perversion in the US public schools.*
• The harmful religious and moral vacuum created by the abolition of school prayer through the efforts of the ACLU, which has the strange effect of making the elementary school, middle school and high school in the US one of the few such institutions in government where one will not find chaplains, in contrast to the military, hospitals, county jails, state and federal prisons, and some government-funded universities, which further hurts children.
• The indoctrination of so many children by the media, increasingly, via TikTok and other new media platforms which are intentionally designing programming to be hypnotic and to completely capture the attention of the child, in such a way as to make it impossible for them to stop watching. But this indoctrination is not new - I remember when TinyToons came out, and a youngster I babysat at the time enjoyed watching it, and I was deeply troubled by the inclusion of an obvious political remark (I think it was TinyToons, it may have been Animaniacs, which was produced by the same people).

All of these issues of cruelty to children are related and they all require our prayer.

* Note that I am not advocating against all forms of corporal punishment, rather, I am concerned about specific aspects as to how corporal punishment is being administered in public schools in the United States, which are an institution that I have a very low regard for. Which perhaps has something to do with the fact that the one year I attended a public school rather than a parochial school, in fourth grade, the two female teachers of the class, which was a class for advanced students, who were very intelligent, seemed determined to compensate for our intelligence by engaging in various cruel acts, some targeting the entire class and some targeting individual students. For instance, remarks they made to one of my friends, a Sikh boy named Hartaj who was very intelligent, had the effect of convincing him that he was “not very smart, not very strong, and not very skilled at anything”, which I knew was false. His parents owned a grocery store, and we would build forts in the parking lot in the back with plastic shipping crates, which were strong enough to carry our weight, which was amazingly fun, as was hanging out in the office that overlooked the interior of the store (for purposes of spotting shoplifters or thievery among the cashiers) and pretending we were on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. Likewise, other students with insecurities were targeted and made to feel more insecure about that, for example, my friend Aaron, who was a Quaker, and whose parents were vintners, and also professionals in some line of work, and quite well off. Aaron was short, and was made to feel insecure about his stature. And also the entire class was subject to torments, such as the lobster incident, which I will not discuss in this thread, but I believe I have told some members of the forum about it.

The principal of the school was aware of the problem and also became aware I was being singled out, and took measures to protect me from them, including, later in the school year, as the end approached, allowing me to leave their class and hang out in his office whenever I couldn’t handle it. He was very supportive and in this manner, prevented me from being routinely or permanently traumatized in the manner that my classmates were. Unfortunately the two teachers had tenure, so he was unable to do much about it, other than have our class be visited by the arts teacher with unusual frequency (we did probably twice as many arts projects as any other class, and other arts-related activities), and also trying to moderate their unpleasantness by supplementing them with a young teaching assistant who was a sort of apprentice teacher, something I had never encountered in parochial schools, who was a very nice young lady.

The lady who taught the fifth graders in the program was much more well regarded, and so things probably would have been quite alright had I stuck around for another year, but my overwhelming desire was to return to the LCMS parochial school where I had been for third grade, which was a paradise, even of its own accord, but especially compared to that public school.

At any rate, I was blessed with a very happy childhood, and the experience of those unpleasant teachers only made the overall experience that much better. So this makes me that much more interested in ensuring that the abuse of children, which I witnessed being done more severely than what happened in my case, since unfortunately unlike me, the other students did not have a close relationship with the principal, and just had to endure the pyschological abuse that was meted out.

I will say for the record that at the time, in the early 1980s, there was no corporal punishment at this school, and I don’t think any public school in California had it, but its absence did nothing to discourage sadists from pursuing the profession as teachers.

I am also troubled by a large number of youtube videos by public school teachers in the US complaining about how poorly behaved students have become, recently. While I believe this is probably true, due to the problems of electronic addiction and the media they are subjected to via tiktok and other sources, I am of the opinion that there are no bad students, only bad teachers. This obviously includes the parents, but the anger and resentment towards children expressed in these videos by public school teachers (if desired, I can find some), is deeply disturbing.

Thus I will say, all of these are issues of child suffering, from abortion to mistreatment to malnutrition to trafficking and slavery, are ones to pray for on the Feast of the Holy Innocents.

In the Orthodox Church, we ask them for their intercession, together with other child martyrs, such as St. Abanoub, St. Alexis, St. Dmitri Ivanovich, St. Peter the Aleut, St. Justus and Pastor, and all guardian angels assigned to children, along with the holy archangels St. Michael, St. Gabriel, St. Raphael, and St. Uriel and all bodiless powers, and all the Saints, especially our most glorious lady Theotokos and Ever Virgin Mary, as we pray to our Lord God who is everywhere present and fills all things to protect and watch over these children who made in the image of the likeness of the Father as revealed by the Son, who reign with Thee, our Holy Spirit, ever one God, now and ever and unto the ages of all ages.*

* This prayer I composed on this occasion based on a prayer to the Holy Spirit from our divine office - it is not an official liturgical prayer, but formal prayers for the children exist in a variety of forms, including akathists, molebens and other services.

 

[Ain't Zwinglian]

Well, I would propose that the Feast of the Holy Innocents has direct applicability to mourning the victims of Roe v. Wade. A decent and conservative Episcopalian priest at the parish in St. George Utah used the occasion to preach a sermon about the victims of child abuse, which is a pressing issue in that community due to the abuse that happened in the nearby Short Creek area (divided between Park City, Utah and Colorado City, Arizona, the latter home to the remaining members of the FLDS heresy, which still regards the vile child molester Warren Jeffs, who is serving a life sentence in the Texas State Penitentiary after recording himself harming a young child in the “Zion Temple” the sect had constructed on its ranch in Texas, and there are multiple dimensions of FLDS child abuse, including in addition to the forced marriage of child brides that happened before the arrest of Warren Jeffs and probably still happens to this day, albeit in greater secrecy, such as forced child labor by teenage boys (with the less productive boys being exiled from the community and winding up homeless at age 15 on the streets of St. George, where they tend to fall prey to the criminal elements, in order to preserve the high ratio of females to males their community requires).

And if that wasn’t bad enough, it was in Washington County where Jodil Hildebrandt, a devout member of the official non-polygamous LDS church who was licensed as a mental health clinician and who had received numerous accolades from various senior Mormon clergy, was orchestrating, together with their mother Ruby Franke, the sadistic torture of the two youngest children of Ruby Franke, a 12 year old boy and a ten year old girl, but the 12 year old boy heroically escaped the property despite his emaciated condition and made it to the home of a helpful neighbor (whose resonant voice sounds like that of a bishop who is a close personal friend of mine), to request that the police be called. Had this not happened, the two children would likely be dead, particularly since Jodi Hildebrandt was searching for an isolated property in the deep desert in Arizona where, far away from neighbors, she and the mother Ruby Franke would be free to “discipline” the children with impunity without concern of being observed or overheard by the neighbors in the suburban area which they turned into a hell for those two innocent children.

Thus, as I see it, the feast of the Holy Innocents, who are regarded as glorified saints by the Orthodox, as the first to die for Christ, unwittingly, in contrast to St. Stephen the Protomartyr (whose feast is adjacent to their feast in the Syriac Orthodox tradition), but nonetheless, we regard them as saved through the special mercy of Christ, and this holiday is a good time to pray for all children who have been harmed or are still being harmed, because even after we have rewarded our own children with gifts on Christmas, and enjoyed with them the celebration of the Nativity of Christ our God, which is a celebration of childhood itself, and a reminder that our own salvation requires of us that we enter the Kingdom of Heaven like little children, and not with the pompous arrogance that accompanies our supposed maturity, well, for those of us who are not humbled by the images of He who is infinite, and by whom all things are made, being Himself wrapped in swaddling clothes, having willingly put on our frail and limited human nature in order to restore and glorify it, remaking man in His same image in which we were originally created, before we tarnished ourselves by rejecting God and embracing sin, the consideration of the Holy Innocents who themselves died for the ego of a particularly sinful and miserly old ruler, who would die soon anyway, and whose order to kill the children of Bethlehem was entirely insane, ought to be enough to induce a sense of humility, for if this is what age bring us - paranoia and a willingness to kill large numbers of children based on an imagined risk of being deposed by an infant, who would not reach adulthood until after King Herod “the Great” was dead, but Herod could not accept his own impending death, and thus saw fit to impose it upon innocent children instead.

Likewise, those who cause children to be aborted in the womb before even taking their first breath are like King Herod - they presume, for selfish reasons, whether they are abortion doctors, or men who coerce their wives, mistresses or lovers into having an abortion lest they be burdened with the responsibilities of fatherhood, thus terminating a life for their own personal convenience, or indeed, some women who have abortions in order to maintain their youthful appearance and promiscuous appearance.

There are also women who are pressured into having abortions by economic factors - where abortions are legal, it becomes increasingly likely that a young single woman without financial means who becomes pregnant will be pressured by their employer and in some cases even government social workers into having their baby killed before birth, because the employer does not actually want to deal with the requirements of paid maternity leave, or the disruption to productivity caused by training a replacement employee, and what is more it is all too easy in many companies to find some reason to fire someone (particularly in those with “at-will” employment, which increases jobs but also increases the risks associated with jobs, so it is a trade off) as a pretext or excuse, when the real reason is something else, a desire to not have to deal with a pregnant employee who might have morning sickness or other issues and who will require maternity leave. And indeed, those who get away with this would never threaten such an employee explicitly, but rather would make a point to fire one pregnant employee without a good reason, and to let the memory of the event and whispers about it between employees, reaching new hires, to carry the message.

The situation of the young single parent is one which is absolutely rigged to create demand for abortions, and especially so with minority populations such as African Americans. Indeed many have referred to the abortion crisis, quite accurately I think, as a hidden genocide, one occurring under the pretext of a woman’s right to choose, but the reality is that the “Pro-Choice” movement is not defending choice at all, but rather is creating a set of circumstances in which single mothers from minority backgrounds in low-income situations are being forced into abortions. They are being denied the choice, through socio-economic manipulation, of having their baby, even if they want to do so, and even if abortion is against their personal religious convictions. Some courageously defy the system, although sadly not all are successful in raising their child, with some losing custody due to various problems which are comorbid with their situation.

Given all of the above, it should come as no surprise to anyone that the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, was a eugenicist. And while in her public remarks she made every effort to endear herself to the leaders of the African American community, her actions speak louder than words, and the particular emphasis she placed on birth control for African Americans suggests that she did regard their population as excessive, and historic attempts by Planned Parenthood to sugarcoat, evade or otherwise deflect from this issue are reminscent of their attempts to deflect from other more recent scandals in their history, for example, the child sex trafficking scandal, their long-term response to the 2011 video covered seven years later by the Catholic News Agency here: Did Planned Parenthood cover up child abuse and sex trafficking?

So when we consider all of this evil, I think it is entirely appropriate for the Feast of the Holy Innocents to be used as an occasion for prayer in response to all forms of the abuse of children, including, but not limited to:

• Abortion
• “Euthanasia”, that is to say, physician-provided homicide of children, which has been legalized in Belgium, the Netherlands and other European countries, where doctors can end the life of children without the consent of the child (who cannot give informed consent in any case owing to their minority).
• Sexual abuse.
• Sexual trafficking
• Human trafficking for purposes of slave labor in construction and related projects, by the FLDS, and in sweatshops in Asia and Latin America and elsewhere.
• On a related note, the often highly abusive and otherwise psychologically harmful conditions experienced by child actors in cinema and television productions.
• The mistreatment of child volunteers, for example, by authorities who shut down youth projects without consideration of the adverse impact this could have on the youth.
• The war crime of child soldiers, who continue to be deployed in conflicts in less stable regions.
• Inadequate nutrition, which is a problem both within the US and other civilized countries, and also in the developing world, and which is particularly acute in failed states and dictatorships like North Korea.
• Inadequate pediatric healthcare, which is another problem existing the world over, along with sadistic pediatricians including some who abuse their patients.
• The abusive manner in which corporal punishment is employed in schools in some countries, including in parts of the US, for instance, the deeply disturbing incident in which a single mother was coerced into allowing her five year old son to be paddled by the female principles of his elementary school, with a threat of referring her to the state agency responsible for child protective services if she did not comply - she secretly filmed the principal and vice principal paddling the boy and uploaded the video, which went viral.*
• Likewise, there is the issue of girls being paddled by male staff, and boys by female staff, and also given the increase in homosexuals in the public school system, even where this is not allowed, there are still obvious cases of impropriety and sexual perversion in the US public schools.*
• The harmful religious and moral vacuum created by the abolition of school prayer through the efforts of the ACLU, which has the strange effect of making the elementary school, middle school and high school in the US one of the few such institutions in government where one will not find chaplains, in contrast to the military, hospitals, county jails, state and federal prisons, and some government-funded universities, which further hurts children.
• The indoctrination of so many children by the media, increasingly, via TikTok and other new media platforms which are intentionally designing programming to be hypnotic and to completely capture the attention of the child, in such a way as to make it impossible for them to stop watching. But this indoctrination is not new - I remember when TinyToons came out, and a youngster I babysat at the time enjoyed watching it, and I was deeply troubled by the inclusion of an obvious political remark (I think it was TinyToons, it may have been Animaniacs, which was produced by the same people).

All of these issues of cruelty to children are related and they all require our prayer.

* Note that I am not advocating against all forms of corporal punishment, rather, I am concerned about specific aspects as to how corporal punishment is being administered in public schools in the United States, which are an institution that I have a very low regard for. Which perhaps has something to do with the fact that the one year I attended a public school rather than a parochial school, in fourth grade, the two female teachers of the class, which was a class for advanced students, who were very intelligent, seemed determined to compensate for our intelligence by engaging in various cruel acts, some targeting the entire class and some targeting individual students. For instance, remarks they made to one of my friends, a Sikh boy named Hartaj who was very intelligent, had the effect of convincing him that he was “not very smart, not very strong, and not very skilled at anything”, which I knew was false. His parents owned a grocery store, and we would build forts in the parking lot in the back with plastic shipping crates, which were strong enough to carry our weight, which was amazingly fun, as was hanging out in the office that overlooked the interior of the store (for purposes of spotting shoplifters or thievery among the cashiers) and pretending we were on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. Likewise, other students with insecurities were targeted and made to feel more insecure about that, for example, my friend Aaron, who was a Quaker, and whose parents were vintners, and also professionals in some line of work, and quite well off. Aaron was short, and was made to feel insecure about his stature. And also the entire class was subject to torments, such as the lobster incident, which I will not discuss in this thread, but I believe I have told some members of the forum about it.

The principal of the school was aware of the problem and also became aware I was being singled out, and took measures to protect me from them, including, later in the school year, as the end approached, allowing me to leave their class and hang out in his office whenever I couldn’t handle it. He was very supportive and in this manner, prevented me from being routinely or permanently traumatized in the manner that my classmates were. Unfortunately the two teachers had tenure, so he was unable to do much about it, other than have our class be visited by the arts teacher with unusual frequency (we did probably twice as many arts projects as any other class, and other arts-related activities), and also trying to moderate their unpleasantness by supplementing them with a young teaching assistant who was a sort of apprentice teacher, something I had never encountered in parochial schools, who was a very nice young lady.

I see abortion as a rejection of the gospel; a rejection of baptism.

****************************

Now for some good news....at church yesterday, the pastor informed us our high School youth will be going to an apologetics Seminar in two weeks held every two years.

Reality Apologetics: Washington

www.realityapologetics.com

This year's theme is centered around trusting the Word of God. Two years ago, it dealt with the Christian response to transgender issues. A few thousand kids show up at one of these mega mega mega churches which has the facility to put one of these seminars on. Church pays for everything including meals.

We call up one of our sister churches in the Seattle area and sleep on the carpet....saves $1,200 on hotels. There are alot of good seminars for our youth today.....as we didn't have when I was growing up.

The youth love this stuff.

 

[seeking.IAM]

(although I believe it would show up in the traditional Anglican Divine Office of Mattins and Evensong, perhaps my friend ...could confirm how it is used in the 1928 BCP and at least one of my other Anglican friends @seeking.IAM ...might be able to attest how Revelation is read according to their respective prayer books.

Forgive me, I have been absent from CF for awhile. Indeed, the lectionary of The Episcopal Church's 1979 BCP makes use of Revelation as a New Testament Lesson. Some notable ones include Christ the King Sunday, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th Sundays of Easter, Holy Innocents, All Saints Day, etc. to name a few.

 

[The Liturgist]

Forgive me, I have been absent from CF for awhile. Indeed, the lectionary of The Episcopal Church's 1979 BCP makes use of Revelation as a New Testament Lesson. Some notable ones include Christ the King Sunday, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th Sundays of Easter, Holy Innocents, All Saints Day, etc. to name a few.

Does it do that in the course of Holy Communion or the Divine Office?

 

[seeking.IAM]

Does it do that in the course of Holy Communion or the Divine Office?

Presumably both. I know I have heard it read from as part of Sunday liturgy/Eucharist. Now that you ask, I'll be paying more attention for it.