Monday, June 16, 2008
ROLLING ALONG WITH THE WANDERING BISHOPS
I've been researching the "consecrations" of bishops at St. Stan's in St. Louis by Emmanuel Milingo, hosted by renegade Polish priest Fr. Marek Bozek. Given Milingo's reputation for scandal, I decided to look further at the Moonies, since Milingo has associated himself with them.
Recall that among the four bishops "consecrated" there was George Augustus Stalings, Jr., founder of the Imani Temple African American Catholic Congregation.
Stallings is nothing if not controversial. He is deeply entrenched in the Unification Church. So deeply that his wife was chosen for him by Rev. Sun Myung Moon according to CESNUR, (Center for Studies on New Religions). From the website:
Now, Stallings is creating a stir among his church members over whom he has decided to marry. Stallings, who leads the Imani Temple, is preparing to wed a young Japanese woman handpicked by Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon.
Turning to Wikipedia I learned that
In 2001 Roman Catholic Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo married Maria Sung, a Korean acupuncturist, in a Blessing ceremony presided over by Rev. and Mrs. Moon. In the same ceremony George Augustus Stallings, founder of the Imani Temple African-American Catholic Congregation, married Sayomi Kamimoto, a Japanese Unification Church member.[4] At the same ceremony was Minister Benjamin Muhammad, the national director of the Million Man March and the Million Family March and a representative of Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam.[5] Former Ugandan President Godfrey Binaisa married a young Japanese woman by the Blessing ceremony in 2004. At that time, Godfrey was 84 years old.
Stallings likes to claim he is Catholic. His Imani Temple beliefs, however, paint a different picture.
There is a biography of Stallings at one of the Unification Church websites--one dedicated to "True Parents". There you can read:
Stallings also announced that his unsanctioned African American organization would permit abortion, birth control, divorce, homosexual activity, women in the priesthood, and marriage among priests...
He announced this on the Phil Donohue show according to Time:
Last February, after Stallings proclaimed his total split from Rome on the Phil Donahue show, the archdiocese excommunicated him and all Catholics in his flock. At that time, the priest announced that his organization had abandoned Catholic teachings against abortion, birth control, homosexual activity and remarriage after divorce. His planned consecration as a bishop this week is to be performed by a like-minded prelate from an obscure white denomination, Archbishop Richard Bridges of the Independent Old Catholic Church in Highland, Calif. As a bishop, Stallings will be able to ordain his own schismatic priests.
The consecration at St. Stan's was not the first.
The Time article also gives another hint as to why Stallings may be creating his own religion. After his run-in with Cardinal Hickey:
The archdiocese also received repeated allegations about homosexual activity but was unable to substantiate them.
BishopAccountability.org has posted a Washington Post article that makes a similar claim:
After his days sorting mail at a D.C. law firm, 22-year-old Derek Edwin Brown liked to go dancing in gay clubs. His favorite was Tracks DC, near the Washington Navy Yard. There, one night in April 1987, he met an older man.
"We talked for a while and exchanged numbers," Brown said. "I didn't know anything about him -- just a guy named George."
The guy named George was a Roman Catholic priest, the Rev. George Augustus Stallings Jr.
Brown, now 25, said he and Stallings, 42, were lovers for the next two years, during which time he lived in Augustus Manor, the priest's house in Anacostia. For nine months of that time, Stallings employed Brown as a pastoral assistant at St. Teresa of Avila parish. Brown and other employees said that much of the time he was out of the parish on trips with Stallings.
Brown and Stallings were consenting adults, but Stallings was sworn to celibacy in a church that considers homosexual activity a sin. Brown said Stallings knew parishioners were whispering about their relationship. "It bothered him, but all people could do was insinuate," Brown said. "He didn't think it would catch up with him."
For years, Cardinal James A. Hickey and other officials of the Archdiocese of Washington had heard of parishioners' concerns that their talented priest might be involved in homosexual activity, which Stallings denied, a church official said.
Hickey also had heard something more serious. In 1986, he received a signed letter from a parishioner who alleged that Stallings was having sex with a boy in her family, a church official said. The woman wouldn't provide more information, and Hickey could not confirm her allegation....
In a dramatic confrontation, according to Stallings, Hickey ordered him to seek psychiatric treatment for an "excessive ego" at a church hospital known for treating priests with sexual disorders.
Stallings, calling the order an insult, walked out of Hickey's office. Thirteen days later, he labeled the Roman Catholic Church racist and announced he was forming his own church, the Imani Temple African-American Catholic Congregation.
Wandering Bishops generally fall under the category of Gnostic. Sun Myung Moon and the Unification Church are no exception. An article at CESNUR tells us:
The basic story of the Unification Church’s origins is fairly well known. Founder-leader Sun Myung Moon was born in North Korea. He frequently visited the Korean mountainside, which he found conducive to prayer, and on Easter Sunday 1935 he received a vision of Jesus, who commissioned him to complete his unfinished work. The crucifixion was not part of God’s original plan of salvation, and it prevented Jesus from becoming married and fathering sinless children. If these commonly known facts about the movement’s origins have been found inimical to mainstream Christianity, the less well-known details of the UC’s inception have distanced it further from the Christian churches. Indeed, from the entire movement has been amidst sectarianism, as should be apparent from the fuller account that follows here. ...
After his inaugural vision, Moon continued to pray and study the Bible, and claimed further revelations, not only from Jesus, but also from other religious leaders such as Confucius, Lao Tsu, the Buddha, and even God himself...in brief, they were characterized by an emphasis on prophesying, visions, trances and consultations with spirits, together with a questioning of the traditional Christian doctrine of the second coming: instead of Jesus returning on the clouds of heaven, they looked for a new messiah, a Lord of the Second Coming, to be born on earth ó more specifically in Korea....Moon and his followers established their own organization æ the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity in Seoul, Korea, in 1954. ...
The UC’s initial attempts therefore involved promoting itself as a brand of charismatic and ecumenical Christianity, with a view to being seen as part of the mainstream Christian tradition....
The only organization with which Unificationists had limited success was a small local Spiritualist group, led by the Rev. Louis Lusardi and Julian Levi. Lusardi and Levi came to Unificationist meetings regularly during 1961 and 1962, and Unification members, being amenable to contacting discarnate spirits, attended Lusardi and Levi’s weekly meetings, which took place in rented premises. There appear to have been tensions between the Unificationists and Spiritualists, however: UC members felt that Lusardi and Levi were more concerned to boost attendance at their own meetings than with studying the Principle; Lofland also hints that the pair may have been homosexual partners, and hence unlikely to have fitted in with the Unification Church....
As new religions progress, they occasionally gain acceptance into the mainstream fold, as happened with Seventh-day Adventism, and, even more strikingly, with the Worldwide Church of God. At the turn of the 21st century, however, Unificationism seems no more likely to gain recognition by mainstream Christians. Moon continues to use his own personal shaman,[15] and the movement’s spiritism seems to be given even greater emphasis. Soon Ae Hong - Sun Myung Moon’s late mother-in-law (known to members as Dae Mo Nim, or ‘revered mother’), who died in 1989 - has now become a cult figure and the focus of a sacred shrine at Chung Pyung, Korea, where a medium æ Mrs Hyo Nam Kim æ claims to be spiritually linked with her, and where members have recently been asked to undergo substantial periods of spiritual training...
Jesus and Muhammad allegedly proclaimed Moon as the saviour and messiah
You can't get much more Gnostic than that.
This is what Fr. Marek Bozek brought into a supposedly Roman Catholic Polish church in St. Louis.
Thanks to Susanna for ferreting out these links.
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!
