Future of Anglicanism

Bishop Duncan of Pittsburgh gave an address at Nashotah House that's worth a read. "The Future of Anglicanism: an end to Western hegemony."

(Image from CS monitor article).

Why I haven't a clue

It is common now to see blogs where the author writes a statement on Why I left the Episcopal Church or Why I left the Roman Catholic Church, or "Why I am staying Anglican." (notice he didn't say "Episcopal.") I had hoped to avoid such a statement. I hate Church politics but it is difficult, or even impossible, to separate politics from anything else. As my friend Adam Clayton says in Rattle in Hum, you can't separate politics from music, from sport, from art, etc.... For better or for worse this is true.

Bishop Ackerman recently gave an address to the assembly of Forward in Faith. In it he bluntly says "there is no safe place for Anglo-Catholics" in America. I was stuck by the inherent fatalism in this statement, but I think he's right. Everything hinges upon the creation of a new province. Something that has never happened before. And which may never happen.

As an Anglo-Catholic in the Episcopal Church I am caught between a rock and a hard place. Whether we like it or not, practicing Traditional Catholic Anglicanism demands you make a political decision.

This has been made much more clear to me now that I live in central PA. There are no Anglo-Catholic parishes in the Episcopal Church in the Diocese of central PA. So, I am screwed. I recently decided to visit a continuing church (ACA) in Willamsport (about 45 mins. North of Norry). I was frankly surprised how little it mattered to me where I worshiped. (I guess I am not so shallow after all ;-) The church of the incarnation meets in a old store front. They use the 1928 BCP and the Anglican Missal. Their service was practically identical to GASP's service (my church in Balto). It was paired down due to the fact that they don't have an organ, there was no musical accompaniment at all and no choir. But this did not bother me. The essentials where there. In fact I found that stripping the service to its essentials can be helpful. I found that the worship was much more intentional. I'm not saying that I would do away with the organ all together but it can become more performance less prayer....

After the service I got the chance to speak with the priest. He thinks its insane that a person with my Catholic views would remain in TEC. He was an Episcopal priest himself until he was deposed, back in 2004, for wanting to join Forward in Faith. (There is no safe place.)

It is clear that TEC has walked away from the Catholic faith the evidence is every where (our PB-elect doesn't even believe in the after-life, views the scriptures simply as metaphor, denies Jesus Christ's gospel of eternal salvation by grace through faith.) TEC is so far beyond the pale of Anglicanism even the basic tenets of Christianity are rejected. So, why am I still in this church and why am I applying to be a postulant in this church? How could I ever promise obedience to bishops who aren't even Christian? (BTW, a Christian is someone who can say the Creeds and believe every word). I feel that it is indeed a cop out to want to be a part of a church just because there are still 3 Anglo-Catholic bishops left.

This ACA priest wants me to join them. I'd like to but I can't for the opposite reason I can't support TEC. I share their faith (and the particular expression of that faith) but I can't sign up to join a church which has a structure I don't agree with, namely the fact that the continuing churches (all 50+ of them) spilt from each other due to the egos of the bishops which started them. This is not Catholic. If the churches which split back in the 70s had stayed together it would be a completely different story. I would join their church right now. The priest I spoke with claims that the ACA is no longer political.... well if that's true than unite with your brother and sisters in the rest of the continuum. I have more hope for a separate province than I do with the continuum reuniting. I think it will happen but the current bishops will have to die first (crude but true). I think the responsibility of reuniting the continuum will lie with the next generation. They are taking steps but they should do much more.

So, I'm screwed.

As a member of the Episcopal Church discerning a call to the priesthood, I need support. Which means support from other churches in TEC (and who would give me support?). I don't want to leave TEC; I want TEC to believe what it says it believes (see Creeds and BCP). So who should be the one leaving? The liberal EC who want to contradict what it means to be Anglican and Christian or the orthodox in TEC?

I wait with bated breath for the Primates meeting in Feb. 07 where TEC will be kicked out of the Communion (or at least be given reduced status as Canterbury suggested) opening the way for a new province for orthodox parishes.....

"Internet Assembled Philosophy"

Bad Vicar Video

Male & Famale

by Joan White from New Directions

If one considers the apparent sincerity of the Islamist suicide bomber, one can see that the conviction does not tie in with what is known of Godhead, either as a Muslim or as a Christian. The first I knew of the idea of female ordination was the claim that many women had heard a call, a vocation. This did not disturb me: I, myself, have heard such a calling, beginning at the age of four, to be a teacher. The idea, however, that God had called these women to serve as eucharistic priests came to me as a severe shock.

When I argued that the tradition did not allow for this, I was patiently given to understand that at the time of the Last Supper of our Lord, women were not allowed public positions and so this all had to wait. Reading Christina Rees’s article [ND September] develops this idea. There is a continuum in which women (and men) are called to extend and fulfil the work Jesus started, because he could not complete it all at that time.

To my mind, however, there is, was and ever shall be nothing which God is unable to do. God is Lord of all creation, and has no need for the kind offers to complete what he left half-done, nor has he, from his utterances, any use for acts of envy, ambition or dissatisfaction with the created roles he established for men and women at his creation.

We can ask, legitimately, why he gave his vocations to the males, and it requires female meditation to tease out the answers. The secret lies in the donation to the female of the act of creation of all the people of the earth. This is a divine sharing, which men have treated with contempt, as an excuse for their own envy. Women, resenting this attitude have rejected their privilege in favour of worldly status on a par with men.

The sacrifice of the cross, equal in creative pain to the extremity of childbirth, is a true rebirth of humanity, and once this symbol is grasped and accepted it is easy to see why women are not sacrificing priests. Women have their own elevated role in renewing the earth, and men are charged with tending the humanity whose spiritual life has been atoned-for in the priesthood of Christ.

Women priests and bishops make as much sense to God’s intentions as male pregnancy and lactation. If we honour God and his created order, it is time to reorder our ideas in obedience, respect and recognition. The current impertinence, foisted upon an unsuspecting Church by a very few misguided people, however articulate, is ungodly. There is no room in our human society for the vanity of the ordination idea, for the harvest needs labourers and quickly.