It’s one thing for an internet Anon to weigh in on questions of doctrine. But this guy was Chaplain to the Queen, fled to Catholicism, and is seeing the same ideological rot spread in his newfound home.

Often, the most ardent activists for a political cause are the people who find they’ve been crushed under the weight of a negative outcome. Gavin Ashenden, who once served as Queen Elizabeth’s chaplain, has taken to Substack to explain the dangers he sees lurking in the Catholic Synod’s latest response to the challenges of maintaining orthodoxy in the face of increasing cultural press to accept sexual mores that conflict with Scriptural authority.

He’swarningCatholic leaders that they are in danger of walking into a trap.

For those unfamiliar, the Church of England — and the Anglican Church worldwide — faced a growing crisis as very different factions were pulling the institutional church in opposing directions. In England proper, there is a commingling of political and religious influence, with 26 Bishops and Archbishops serving as the ‘Lords Spiritual’ in England’s House of Lords. It’s hardly surprising that the ‘establishment’ faction has found itself pulled along with changing social and political norms for a very long time.

Way back in 1986, an English comedy show ‘Yes, Minister’ even underscored that point by mocking the Church as skewing to apostasy:

Hacker:“Humphrey, what’s a Modernist in the Church of England?”Sir Humphrey:“Ah, well, the word ‘Modernist’ is code for non-believer.”Hacker:“You mean an atheist?”Sir Humphrey:“No, Prime Minister. An atheist clergyman couldn’t continue to draw his stipend. So, when they stop believing in God, they call themselves ‘Modernists’.”

Unlike Jesus, these bishops and archbishops had temporal authority, but lacked any moral authority. Not surprisingly, they yielded ground (always after the culture around themself had already conceded it) to ascendant secular moral values.The Global Anglicans — who are still being killed for their faith in many parts of the world — held firm to scriptural authority… especially among thriving congregations in Africa and Asia. In time, there were schisms, breakaway congregations remained in communion with that Anglican Church globally, but split from the authority of churches they saw as increasingly apostate.

Last year came the final straw. The incoming Archbishop of Canterbury was already seen as having abandoned orthodoxy in multiple important senses was NOT accepted as the voice of the other Archbishops (a title equal in authority to that of Canterbury’s new Archbishop, Sara Mullally.) Aletter of rebukewas written by the other Archbishops who declared her apostate and unfit for the role of leadership.

That’s the schism and context from which Gavin Ashenden observes the latest Catholic Synod.

He finds their use of ‘Paradigm Shift’ an alarming signal of surrender, and is strenuously calling for proper attention to be given to this before this wedge issue does to Catholicism what it has already done to Anglicanism.

Source: Clash Daily