Thinking Anglicans

mid-July opinion

Does Hywel Williams have the answer to one of the Church of England’s problems? He writes in The Guardian: Ditch the bossy-boot bishops. Rather than debating if women are eligible, the church should scrap the absurd post of bishop.

The archbishop of Canterbury spoke on the precious gift of Martyrs on BBC Radio 4.

Gerald Warner writes in the Telegraph about Why it is a mistaken policy for Rome to offer Anglicans converting en bloc a church within the Church.

Janet Street-Porter writes in The Independent that The C of E will die if it shuts out gays and women.

Ruth Wishart in HeraldScotland Why won’t men in frocks let women wear the trousers?

Christopher Howse writes in the Telegraph about Religious pilgrimages: The hard slog that refreshes the soul.

This week’s The Question at Comment is free belief is Can science explain everything? Here are the responses.
Monday: Sue Blackmore Science explains, not describes. The experience of consciousness seems incommunicable and ineffable. Yet science can hope to explain how it arises.
Wednesday: Mark Vernon Chaos theory and divine action. Physicist John Polkinghorne is often accused of offering up a God-of-the-gaps argument. But his work has subtler shades.
Thursday: Adam Rutherford Ever-increasing circles. The domain of knowledge amenable to science has only ever changed in one direction: at the expense of all others.
Friday: Keith Ward The parts science cannot reach. We need to distinguish in detail all the different sorts of explaining we do in life. No one key opens every lock.

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Jeremy Bates
Jeremy Bates
14 years ago

Gerald Warner: “Once any individual becomes convinced of the truth of the Catholic faith, he is under an immediate obligation to make submission to the Sovereign Roman Pontiff and any delay in doing so is a sin against the Holy Ghost, imperilling his salvation.”

Attitudes like this one are why my grandfather left the Roman Catholic Church.

Lister Tonge
Lister Tonge
14 years ago

Mr. Warner’s rather choosey attitude to the magisterium sound alsmost…..Anglo-Catholic. And he sounds like such a nice chap.

rjb
rjb
14 years ago

In my weaker moments, when I weary of Anglican infighting and ponder the attractions of crossing the Tiber, I read Damian Thompson and Gerald Warner and I think again.

Bill Dilworth
14 years ago

Again from Gerald Warner: ” If the Anglican liturgy is “a precious gift nourishing the faith”, why did the restored Catholic Church burn its author Cranmer as an apostate and heretic?”

It is refreshing to hear an RC admit that the Church was in the heretic burning business, instead of trying to pass on responsibility to “the secular arm.”

Rod Gillis
Rod Gillis
14 years ago

Hywel Williams wrote in his column “The contemporary Anglican surrender to management methodology has also added a new level of nausea to the traditional odium theologicum. It’s hardly surprising that parish clergy are starting to join Unite in order to defend themselves against bishops who venerate consultants McKinsey rather than the saints. But the real basis to the Anglican craze for episcopacy lies in a neurosis that is now almost five centuries old.”

It is an astute observation. It certainly resonates with what is going on here in Canada.

Davis d'Ambly
Davis d'Ambly
14 years ago

Gerald Warner’s piece is very clear. That’s the marvelous thing about Rome – no ambiguity at all.

Pluralist
14 years ago

Religion makes a lot of history-like, biography-like and science-like statements. When they claim to have history, biography and science impact, then those disciplines should be let loose. I still don’t get how Polkinghorne and Ward manage to make such doctrinal constructions out of the little amount of religious material they have to go on.

Rod Gillis
Rod Gillis
14 years ago

Bill Dilworth on Gerald Warner reminded me of this now somewhat ancient view. “It was after prolonged hesitation that the addition of this chapter was decided on….I am still sensible of two objections to doing so. One is that to place this chapter at this point in the book is inevitably to give the impression that the work of Archbishop Cranmer is in some sense the climax of all christian liturgical development, whereas the whole story in no more than that of an incident, and that of no central interest to the subject of liturgy as a whole.” So begins… Read more »

peterpi
peterpi
14 years ago

I loved Ruth Wishart’s piece. Every time women break through yet another stained-glass ceiling, they find that there are several more ceilings, replete with frescoes and friezes, to bust through. Somehow I thought 2014 was a firm date for the consecration of the first women bishop. If I’m reading her right, 2014 is the earliest possible date. If the 2012 Synod does not pass women bishops by 2/3 vote in all three houses, it starts all over again? With doubtless even more hurdles thrown up, literally and metaphorically, to block them? It’s a wonder modern women put up with us… Read more »

Bill Dilworth
14 years ago

“the few Anglo-Catholics still using some form or other of the text from the Book of Common Prayer (are there any?)”

There certainly are on this side of the pond.

Rod Gillis
Rod Gillis
14 years ago

Interesting to know Bill. It’s mostly the old fashioned conservative Anglo-Catholics who do so over here–and as afar as I can tell, music and liturgical supplements are the coping mechanisms of choice. I wonder what Ratzinger will do, within the ordinariate, to “rehabilitate” the BCP?

Pat O'Neill
Pat O'Neill
14 years ago

Rod:

It may be a consequence of differences in the CoE and TEC BCP, as well as a difference in preference for the dominant liturgy to be used.

In most TEC parishes, the Eucharist is the preferred Sunday morning worship, rather than Morning Prayer or some other service. And TEC’s Eucharistic liturgy tracks the English-language RCC mass pretty closely (as a former RC I can certainly testify to that), so an Anglo-Catholic on this side of the pond is definitely in his comfort zone.

Bill Dilworth
14 years ago

“It may be a consequence of differences in the CoE and TEC BCP, as well as a difference in preference for the dominant liturgy to be used…In most TEC parishes, the Eucharist is the preferred Sunday morning worship, rather than Morning Prayer”

Yes, our BCP has always been more Catholic than the the 1662 book, thanks to the Scottish Episcopal Church.

It should be noted that the “difference in preference” noted above is not simply the preference of the local congregation or priest, but the stated position of ECUSA in its current edition of the BCP.

Rod Gillis
Rod Gillis
14 years ago

Pat O’Neill posted “Rod:It may be a consequence of differences in the CoE and TEC BCP, …In most TEC parishes, the Eucharist is the preferred Sunday Liturgy…And TEC’s Eucharistic liturgy tracks the English-language RCC mass pretty closely (as a former RC I can certainly testify to that), so an Anglo-Catholic on this side of the pond is definitely in his comfort zone.” Thanks Pat. I’m in Canada. The practice here in the ACC is pretty much the same as TEC. One difference,we have two books in use; the 1962 Canadian BCP ( which owes a lot in to the Scottish… Read more »

Malcolm+
14 years ago

I agree with Rod that our Canadian BCP is more amenable to Anglo-Catholics than the 1662 English book. Indeed, many liturgical reactionaries in canada have tried to cloak themselves in the Anglo-Catholic mantle. (In this diocese, they were quite distressed when they invited some American 1928 afficionado to speak and he actually endorsed the Canadian BCP as being a more successful and faithfully catholic revision than either the English ASB or the American 1979 BCP.) In any event, I am moved to recall the observation of my then bishop (subsequently Primate) Michael Peers who thought it odd that a liturgy… Read more »

Father Ron Smith
14 years ago

” The notion that formal adherence to objective truth can be made conditional upon being allowed to retain the cultural expression of schismatic practices defies the spirit of conversion.” – Gerald Warner, Telegraph – This sentence alone ought make Catholic Anglican Dissidents think again about submitting to the allure of the Roman ‘Ordinariates’. If they thought this sort of certitude of R.C. dogmatic theology to be their cup of tea, they should surely have submitted whole-heartedly to the Roman Magisterium – without further consideration of the validity of their Anglo-Catholicism. The sheer hubris of this ‘magisterial’ viewpoint is what makes… Read more »

drdanfee
drdanfee
14 years ago

Super thanks to JSP for this bit: Quote I want a church that reconnects with our population and offers support to the needy. A church that’s open to all. A church that cares for the elderly and blesses all unions, including same-sex civil partnerships. I don’t want a church that’s run like a private members’ club, with special rules and regulations and exclusions. I suspect that middle England would agree with me. Last week, the Daily Mail printed a letter from a female reader who said, “I would rather have a good woman priest than a mediocre male one. God… Read more »

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