Lavinia Byrne, Devil's Disciple?

Devil's Disciple

Lavinia Byrne is a former nun who was kicked out of the religious life by the Vatican for obstinate, persistent heresy, notably advocating for priestesses. She used to be a panentheist, maybe she still is. 

Church Builder

Panentheism is a Hindu doctrine that says God evolves with the universe but is somehow beyond it. It was big in the '80s and '90s, making for good academic book fodder: Oh! you're a Professor who teaches philosophy of religion and you're a Christian, but you're also a Hindu! Whoa. Here, sign this publishing contract. 

Whatever, Lavinia was into it. I know, she told me.

She also argued, like they always do, that unless the church ordains women, it'll shrink and die, because no one will go to church. She champions the Anglican experiment. George Weigel has this to say, via Let Nothing You Dismay:

Hard experience should have taught us by now that there is an iron law built into the relationship between Christianity and modernity. Christian communities that know and defend their doctrinal and moral boundaries (while extending the compassion of Christ when we fail to live within those boundaries, as we all do) survive in modernity; some actually flourish and become robustly evangelical. Conversely, Christian communities whose doctrinal and moral boundaries are eroded by the new orthodoxy of political correctness, and become so porous that it becomes impossible to know if one is “in” or “out,” wither and die.

But Where Are The Women?

That is the sad state of Anglicanism in the North Atlantic world today: even splendid liturgical smells-and-bells can’t save an Anglicanism hollowed out by the shibboleths of secular modernity. Why British Catholics like Lavinia Byrne can’t see this is one of the mysteries of the 21st-century Church."

Mystery? I don't think so. They see what they're proposing perfectly well and it isn't the advance of Christianity, or anything like it. Empty pews are precisely part of the plan; they're after an entirely new religion and the destruction of the church. They've nearly got it too, with Anglicanism.

Just. Say. No.

So what does that make Lavinia Byrne? The Devil's Disciple.

Just in case you wondered what I really think,

LSP