Hallelujah! (in case you missed it)

with a tip of the hat to Stand Firm (we will see if this works, my first try at embedding video)-

+Andrew Burnham sets sail from the Grey Havens

Damian Thompson writes on the last Mass and sermon of +Andrew Burnham as an Anglican bishop.

...on your journey of discipleship, look not to me but to the Lord whom we serve. He alone can teach us how to be pilgrims on the way that leads to Paradise.

Amen. Godspeed, Andrew Burnham.

Several friends have asked me why I would consider "crossing the Tiber" since it would mean accepting all sorts of "strange" doctrine. I usually respond that I do not find Benediction strange, or veneration of Mary (having been raised an Anglo Catholic). The doctrines I find strange are women priests and bishops, communion of the un-baptized, using the Qu'ran in place of the letters of Paul, making the Nicene Creed optional, denying the Real Presence, and the various and sundry other new doctrines of TEC and Western Anglicanism in general. For the record, I also think the folks in Sydney who advocate lay presidency just don't get it either.

Whether I follow him (or his US equivalent) to Rome, or not, I pray that Bishop Andrew and the Ordinariate are successful, that the Catholic Church is enriched by their presence, and perhaps itself regains some of what it has lost, as those who follow the good bishop regain something they have lost. And ask their prayers for those of us they leave behind.

Advent

O Come....
I have never been good at waiting. If a friend asks me for a stock tip, I tell him he would be better off asking me what I bought 6 months ago. Most of the stocks I've bought do well over long time periods, but they often don't do well at all in the first few months. I tend to move too soon. I suspect I do this in terms of the Church as well. Which is not to say that I am quick to adopt the latest "new thang" in religious revisionism, but rather that I react to those new things often before I've really developed my thinking. So, over the years, I have tended to react to TEC innovations and heresies with an immediate emotional response, rather than with a methodical, researched and documented response.

Unfortunately, modern communications make this all too easy. I log into a website and launch a diatribe, or a barb, or toss down a gauntlet (depending on whether I've logged into Stand Firm, MCJ or Covenant). Used to be that I would have several books at my elbow, and while some comments were "one liners", the better ones were more like short essays- utilizing quotes, Bible verses and references to the writings of theologians of 20 centuries to substantiate my point. Nowadays, I am more likely just to fire something off the top of my head, based on a bad memory and virtually no analysis.

I haven't posted on this blog lately because this is the place where I am hoping to better discipline myself, to prepare what I have to say, or at least read through the drafts a couple times in an effort to communicate what I really want to say. To present ideas and analysis.

In Advent, we await the Second Coming of our Lord. A day that, I suspect, most of us anticipate with both hope and fear. Hope for His return, but at the same time knowing that we are not yet prepared, in our selves and our souls, for that day. What I know I must learn, yet, in order to be ready is to defend the Faith in a calm, orderly and, for want of a better word, scholarly fashion. It is not enough to launch a "zinger" now and then when heresy rears its head. What is called for instead is sufficiently reasoned argument to convince those who oppose Christ and His Church- whether they be non-believers or the heretics in our own house. So I will try to better prepare, try to remain silent when I have nothing to offer but caustic humor. And I ask your forgiveness, and His, for the times when I fail, and my rude sense of humor comes to the fore on Stand Firm or MCJ.

A letter worth reading....

15 "Catholic minded" bishops have written a letter to the clergy of the Church of England. Rather like several of the recent pastoral letters from the various individual "flying bishops" and others, I find this statement melancholy, but it is well worth the read.
Letter from the bishops

The Fatherhood of God

Get thee unto Fr. Chris' Adiaphora blog, where he has reprinted the excellent essay "The Fatherhood of God" by the Very Rev. Robert Munday, Dean of Nashotah House.
http://grkndeacon.blogspot.com/2010/06/fatherhood-of-god.html.

Clerical attire

As most of my Anglican friends (and no small number of my other friends) know, I frequently post over at the StandFirm and T19 websites. This morning, a fellow poster, Conego, who I believe is an Anglican priest in Portugal, put up a response to questions about vestments and clerical attire from one of our more Evangelically minded friends who was not so familiar with such things. He related the several prayers the priest recites while vesting, which brought back memories of being in the sacristy with Dad when I was very young, which in turn has me musing on a related subject which has been a particular gripe of mine in recent years.

I think some of the decline in numbers in Western churches (Anglican, especially) is a direct result of the modern habit of clergy dressing in common "street clothes." Anglicans, especially, since their clericals tend to resemble Roman (although in recent years, many have taken to grey suits and pastel shirts even when wearing a collar, to look more "Protestant", I suppose), and they are often mistaken for Roman priests as a result. Which can lead to some snickering and whispering anytime an Anglican priest appears in public with his wife. The avoidance of such tittering has a lot to do with why they wear street clothes. But they miss so many chances for evangelism as a result. Every time it happens, one has the perfect opportunity to engage another person in a conversation explaining what Anglicanism is all about. Even as a kid, I can remember the various first days of school. "What does your father do?" the teacher would ask. I knew that if I answered "Dad is a priest" there would be inevitable laughter, but the teacher would also give me 5 minutes to explain how that could be. I doubt I brought anyone into the church at that age, but certainly Dad had the occasional success with people who were "shocked" to see him holding hands with Mom, or wondered why a priest was in the park with several small children ("Are those your nephews and niece, Father?")

It seems that in the modern day, too many clergy treat the priesthood as a "9 to 5" job, and think that the collar is a hindrance of some sort during their "free time" or "off hours." But they will still admonish the laity on Sunday morning for not being active in Evangelism or not volunteering enough of the laity's free time to church activities.

Archbishop of Canterbury 'The finality of Christ in a pluralist world'

"And so out of these two powerful and heavily-charged texts comes the classic Christian conviction: what we encounter in Jesus Christ is simply the truth. It is the truth about God and the truth about humanity. Not living into that truth and accepting it, has consequences because this is the last word about God and God's creation. So we speak of the finality of Christ. There's nothing more to know. Or we speak of the uniqueness of Christ. No one apart from Jesus of Nazareth expresses the truth like this."

http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/2789

I have been highly critical of the Archbishop of Canterbury. And then, just when I have myself whipped up into a rhetorical fury, he comes along and gives one of his brilliant and beautiful lectures. This one is a couple months old, but did not receive due attention at the time. If you are an Episcopalian in a foxhole looking for a reprieve from KJS inspired syncretism, sit back in your comfy chair and read through this lecture a couple times.

Synod must fight totalitarian bullies

By Peter Mullen, CEN
The whole of this is well worth reading:
http://www.anglican-mainstream.net/2010/05/20/synod-must-fight-totalitarian-bullies/

"The integrity which opposes the ordination of women is no mere misogynist whim. It is a theological integrity and it was outlined as long ago as the 1940s by the great Christian apologist C S Lewis: 'Suppose the reformer begins to say that God is like a good woman. Suppose she says that we might just as well pray to Our Mother which art in heaven as to Our Father. Suppose that the Incarnation might just as well have taken a female form. Suppose the Second Person of the Trinity be as well called Daughter of God as Son of God. Suppose finally that the mystical marriage betwixt ‘Christ and his Church’ were reversed, that the Church became the Bridegroom and Christ the Bride. All this is involved in the claim that a woman can represent God as priest.'"

TJ's note: Whether one agrees, or not, with the Anglo Catholic position on the ordination of women, there can be little argument that it is THE traditional position of the Church.

Is there an Anglican Communion?

What is a "communion of churches?" Does the organization known as the Anglican Communion still qualify to use the word? Until about 2007, there were any number of difficulties within the Communion, brought about primarily by the Episcopal Church in the US and the Anglican Church of Canada deciding to break the Vincentian canon on issues of sexuality. In 2007, the Primates of the Communion met to determine a course of action, and this course was announced to the world in a communique, and subsequent press conference with the Archbishop of Canterbury and Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. A process was laid out to assure adequate episcopal oversight for those in the US and Canadian Churches unable to abide the changes the leadership of those two churches had instituted, in other words, provisions were made for those who maintained the faith as it had been held- everywhere, always, and by the whole Church. Additionally, a series of steps were recommended to reconcile the US and Canadian churches with the other Churches of the Communion.

And then, well, the plan was dropped. Never formally, or officially, no second vote was taken. The Archbishop of Canterbury just stopped the process dead in its tracks. TEC and ACoC went on their way, deposing a dozen bishops, including one from the Church of England, and hundreds of priests, and in the process, breaking communion with tens of thousands of laity, hundreds of parishes and 4 entire dioceses. To this day, those tens of thousands remain out of direct communion with either the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Church of England.

Meanwhile, at the macro level, many of the churches of the Communion are not in communion with each other. A priest from TEC can no longer (with the rare exception of those who can demonstrate that they have resisted the TEC innovations) transfer to Nigeria, and a Nigerian bishop visiting the US would not receive communion in the majority of the dioceses or churches. If there is to be no communion, what is the point of the Anglican Communion?

The silence and inaction have gone on too long. It is time for difficult choices to be made, if any communion, or Communion, is to be preserved in the Anglican world.