Anglican Priest Smears the Virgin Mary

With a twisted logic which I wish I could call ingenious, Fraser writes,

Furthermore, Jesus didn’t much care for the whole nuclear family thing, insisting that the most important paternity one could claim comes from God, not from one’s biological parents. Hence the Christian requirement to be born a second time – the water of baptism being more existentially prevailing than the blood of family. This, as St Paul puts it, is a metaphorical rebirth by adoption into a new, non-biological family. Which is why, to my mind, the best Christmas gatherings reflect this – when those seated around the table are, as well as blood relatives, an assortment of “aunties” and “uncles”, adopted as part of an extended family. Or, even more radically, when Christmas lunch is cooked with strangers; the lost, the lonely and the homeless.

None of which is to disparage Mary one bit. A spirited young woman from Galilee, pregnant and unmarried, she sung about how God would pull down the mighty from their thrones and lift up the lowly. It doesn’t matter where you come from or who your parents are. Early Christians answered the likes of Celsus in the wrong way. When they charged Jesus with being illegitimate, they should simply have replied: “So what if he was?”

Surprise, surprise! It turns out that Revd Fraser is not only a political left winger, but he’s a strong advocate for the LGBT agenda with its denigration of the family.

So in a national paper on Christmas Eve an Anglican priest writes a scandalous article claiming that Mary was a spunky teen sex kitten, Jesus was illegitimate and that’s not only perfectly okay, but its actually preferable to such boring, uptight, repressive concepts like chastity, family fidelity and the Holy Family as a model for human happiness, Christian perfection and a stable society.

Furthermore, didn’t the vicar follow his train of thought? If Mary was not a virgin then she conceived Jesus through natural means. If that is true then some fellow–maybe Joseph–maybe who knows–is Jesus’ father, and if some one night stand stud is Jesus’ father then God is not his father, and if God is not his father, then he’s not God’s Son and if he’s not God’s son, then the whole doctrine of the incarnation is false too, and hey, what a smart thing for a Christian minister to publish in a popular newspaper for Christmas Eve!

Not only does a high ranking Anglican priest (Fraser is a former canon of St Paul’s Cathedral, a contributor to BBC radio’s religious output and a syndicated national columnist) publicly spit in the face of the Blessed Virgin Mary and deny the incarnation of the Son of God,  but in doing so he just as surely insults all his fellow religionists who do actually believe the Christian faith not to mention flipping the bird to over a billion Catholics from the Holy Father down to the simplest, devout Catholic child.

This outrage is just as public and just as blasphemous, ignorant and despicable as the ISIS terrorists who haul statues of Mary out of Catholic churches, smash them with a rifle and urinate on them.

And from the Anglican hierarchy? Any hint that what Fraser has written is perhaps a little bit out of line? Any suggestion that it might have been ecumenically insensitive? Was there any sort of reproof of Revd Fraser?

Not a word, and their silence shouts out that most Anglican bishops, theologians and clergy think Rev’d Fraser is a pretty smart guy because he has put into print what most of them think anyway.