An aged, wise church father once said: “Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another-and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”

 To unpack the full meaning of this saying would take time, yet, I must express some things I am coming to learn about the Church.

It’s no secret. The words I mentioned above are likely the words of the apostle Paul. Paul the “aged” as he was sometimes called. These words are found in Hebrews 10:24-25.

The verse admonishes us to “consider” how we do things. This verse also warns us to be careful not to neglect “assembling” together. When one reads the entire Bible, which to the church’s shame, many haven’t, one will get a glimpse at a transcendent God. By reading the poetry and history one learns about the complex nature of this supernatural Being. Anyone who intently reads through the stories and parables, wars and genealogies, proverbs and enigmas, will get a deeper and richer sense of who God is, and what God is like.

God loves liturgy. In the old testament, there is a detailed narrative describing the Tabernacle, Feasts, and Offerings of God. This is apparently a topic of interest to God. This can be deduced from the fact that 50 chapters are devoted to the subject. It is more material than the entire book of Genesis, and twice as much material as in any New Testament book. Pages and pages of intricacy. Gold, silver, curtains, hooks, poles, altars, robes, uniforms, ceremonies, rituals. All of these are mentioned in exhaustive detail. Dimensions and order, appointed feasts and lunar positions. 

What is liturgy?  I love how the ever popular Wikipedia puts it:

A liturgy is the customary public worship done by a specific religious group, according to its particular traditions. The word may refer to an elaborate formal ritual such as the Eastern Orthodox Divine Liturgy and Catholic Mass, or a daily activity such as the Muslim salat (see Oxford Dictionary of World Religions, p. 582–3) and Jewish services. As a religious phenomenon, liturgy is a communal response to the sacred through activity reflecting praise, thanksgiving, supplication, or repentance. Ritualization may be associated with life events such as birth, coming of age, marriage, and death. It thus forms the basis for establishing a relationship with a divine agency, as well as with other participants in the liturgy. Methods of dress, preparation of food, application of cosmetics or other hygienic practices are all considered liturgical activities. Repetitive formal rites, in some ways similar to liturgies, are natural and common in all human activities such as organized sports venues.

Liturgy literally means: work of the people. The original greek lends to it a sense of a corporate belonging. A sort of unity brought about by the act of an individual or individuals.

We see many rich and holy forms of liturgy, and liturgical type of ministry throughout the Bible.  The Christian worship service comes from the synagogue service. It consists of many parts, two of which we can see in the events of Nehemiah 8. In Nehemiah 8:1-9, the people gather to hear the Scriptures and expository sermons, and in Nehemiah 8:10-12, they participate in a meal.

Liturgy. Call it ritual if you like. Call it religion if you like. We all practice it. Every group, every church, every denomination has a form of liturgy whether they are aware of it or not.

I am learning to appreciate it. I used to detest it actually. But I am learning more and more the value of liturgy. There was a time when the very word would conjure thoughts of some meaningless archaic ceremonies, or some life-less dead work. A type of “going through the motions” Christianity that I would certainly not subscribe to. I couldn’t have been more wrong. By adopting that mindset, I had allowed myself to be deceived by pride and determined individualism. I was rebellious, to be honest. By casting judgment, or drawing conclusions I was actually erecting walls between myself and these “religious trends” because I thought they were erroneous, rigid, or hypocritical. After all, I had read the whole Bible, and so thought I knew enough about Jesus to criticize His bride with angst and fierce justification. I thought I was a reformer, but really, I was just a new breed of  renegade. It wasn’t the denominations that had erected walls, it wasn’t the rituals or the traditions that put up walls to shut others out. It was me. And I had begun to focus more on walls than bridges. By making  extreme assumptions, I essentially divorced the majority of the Body of Christ. By self-imposing a schismatic worldview, I had unknowingly become just like every other non-conformist.

What’s worse, is that liturgy, something that God Himself  influenced and blessed, had gone from being something beautiful to being something ugly, restrictive, and useless.

Liturgy is beautiful. I am learning to appreciate liturgy of all types. I purpose to educate myself on the traditions of the ancient and recent past. I want to study the lives of the saints of the past and how they were used of God to shape the Bride of Christ with their diverse liturgy.

It’s all around us after all. Take baptism. Baptism is really just a ceremony isn’t it. No, more. I’ve heard it described as “an outward expression of an inward change.” We know Baptism is about a person who has found Jesus and wants to make a public statement that says “I identify with Jesus, and His life, death and resurrection.”. But we find, and the Holy Spirit confirms, that the statement itself, while accurate, aren’t enough to really explain the mystery behind the words. The ritual of  going under the water and coming up again is a holy pantomime. A ritualistic skit designed to include all who witness it, in what God is doing in the realm of the unseen. Liturgy is not our faith, but it is essential for us to demonstrate it. Liturgy teaches us. Repetition. Language. Culture. These all express invisible things that words cannot.

One could say the same of Theology. It seems so, systematic, brainy, cold. But we need it. We use it as a temporal, feeble and cracked wine skin to contain wine. The wine skin, is obviously not the wine, but it is the only practical way for us to contain it. Although, some folks use bottles, or jugs, or chalices, or maybe even one of those big Gatorade kegs..you see my point.

One of the pastors in my life described our church as one who should endeavor to love, value and honor the WHOLE Body of Christ. Even the one with the bells and the smells. 

So, I urge you, to embrace this beautiful mosaic of Jesus. The many faceted face of His glorious Church is changing and growing everyday, and will continue to do so until He returns. The church is organized, yes.and so it must be. But, it is an organism. It is alive. Let’s encourage one another to not place too much focus on the wine skin and so neglect the wine!

May you experience his blessing today! May you discover or rediscover the diversity and beauty that shows the mystery of Jesus. May the word of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ dwell in you richly .

And now a word from our sponsor:

Num 6:23-27
23 Speak unto Aaron and unto his sons, saying, On this wise ye shall bless the children of Israel, saying unto them, 24 The L-RD bless thee, and keep thee: 25 The L-RD make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: 26 The L-RD lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace. 27 And they shall put my name upon the children of Israel; and I will bless them.

For more interesting study, check out these links: 

http://www.kencollins.com/glossary/liturgy.htm

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/

http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/hall.htm

Reaction to the fine print on the Pope’s offer to welcome dissatisfied Anglicans into His Church is beginning to filter in.  And the first indications are that those who want to leave will also want to take their church buildings and a hefty bon voyage bonus  with them in cold hard cash.

Over at Forward in Faith,  +John Fulham writes: “For some of us I suspect our bluff is called! This is both an exciting and dangerous time for Christianity in this country.  Those who take up this offer will need to enter into negotiation with the Church of England about access to parish churches and many other matters.  This situation must not be used to damage the Church of England but I do believe we have a valid claim on our own heritage in history.”

The salaries, pensions, etc. of these new Roman Catholic clergy are to be paid by their congregations. “Under the structure as published by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith the onus for paying for the new clergy, the ordinary in charge or “bishop”, the seminaries and other costs, will be down to the ex-Anglicans themselves,” notes Ruth Gledhill in the London Times.

At the Guardian, Andrew Brown observes: the mood in the rest of the Church of England is hardening against them. There is a general resentment of the humiliating way in which this was sprung on the Archbishop of Canterbury (who will go to Rome later this month, and deliver a speech on the 23rd; it is not thought that the Pope will be present, looking embarrassed, when he does so). The demands of the Anglo-Catholics that they be paid off and given their churches as well when they go are greeted with something between incredulity and anger. No one knows whether their congregations will follow them. It might just be that this tremendous edifice will be greeted with a rather embarrassed silence, like the competence of erection manifesting itself in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.”

Also at the Guardian, Graham King notes: “From the Church of England, special financial provision for the clergy who may take up this offer will not be made available and there must be strong doubts whether church property or parsonages legally can be transferable.”

The fat is in the fire over buildings and salaries. If the CofE can’t be bullied in giving up both, the number of congregations that jump ship may be smaller than the number of priests and bishops who want to leave.

[Episcopal News Service] The text of an Apostolic Constitution, that outlines provisions to accept groups of former Anglicans who wish to enter into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church, was released Nov. 9 by the Vatican.

The full text of Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus is available on the Vatican website here.

An earlier ENS article, “Vatican proposal to welcome former Anglicans generates mixed reactions, commentary,” is available here. An Opinion column by Bill Franklin, “Vatican Apostolic Constitution explained,” is available here.

This was the title of a candid New York Times  interview with conservative Anglican Bishop, Robert Duncan.

As the archbishop of the Anglican Church in North America, you are known as the leader of a conservative — and even ultraright — movement that was founded last year in a break from the Episcopal Church. Do you plan to convert to Catholicism now that Pope Benedict has opened his doors to Anglicans?

I wouldn’t characterize us as ultraright. We don’t beat up folks. We are sort of mainstream right. I am very pleased that the Vatican has done this, but my call now is to lead all those Anglicans who stand where Anglicans have always stood.

Have you had any contact with the pope?

I corresponded with him as Cardinal Ratzinger in 2003, when we had the first national gathering of Episcopalians and Canadian Anglicans who realized they couldn’t go on with the Episcopal Church or the Anglican Church of Canada.

Was this at the time that the Rev. Gene Robinson was being consecrated by the Episcopal Church as the first openly gay bishop?

It was between the time he was confirmed and ordained. He’s a likable enough guy, but the problem is he’s leading a whole generation astray. I don’t believe he should be a bishop.

You and Robinson were fellow students at the General Theological Seminary in New York.

Yes. That was in the early ’70s. He was living a heterosexual lifestyle at the time. He was married. Then he left his wife and later committed himself to a male partner. I don’t wish him ill.

We should point out that you were deposed from ministry of the Episcopal Church by the presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, after you threatened to have your diocesein Pittsburgh secede.

That was a year ago, but what’s interesting is that virtually no one in the Anglican world accepted that sentence. Within two weeks of being deposed, I was received at Lambeth Palace in London by the archbishop of Canterbury, who continues to consider me a bishop.

Bishop Schori heads the Episcopal Church in this country, and you opposed her election in 2006?

She was the least qualified, the least experienced, of the candidates, but I hoped that what she would bring if she were elected was the kind of grace that women often bring. She turned out to be far harder, far less willing to bend or compromise, than any of the men.

Where are you from?

I was raised in Bordentown, N.J., at Christ Episcopal Church in Bordentown. It’s a very special place. It’s where I was married, where I met my wife. It’s just a great parish church.

What was your childhood like?

My family knew a lot of turmoil, and there were a lot of things that happened in the house that were very unhappy. My mother was emotionally disturbed. She was a very difficult person. There were times when I was not sure I’d wake up in the morning because of her violence.

And your father?

He just died last week.

I’m sorry. Were you close to him?

Again, not greatly close to him. I tried to be a faithfulson. He didn’t know how to handle my mother.

How large is this new denomination of yours?

In June, when the Anglican Church in North America was constituted, there were 702 congregations. Right now there are 755.

Is there any truth to the popular notion that the Anglican Church was created by Henry VIII just so he could annul his marriage? He wanted to ditch Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn.

There’s no question that the Anglican Church, the Church of England, was created as an aspect of state policy. It had a very bad beginning. It had a very secular, very political beginning. God used it for good.

I see a lawsuit was filed by the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh to take away both money and property in your control as the longtime bishop there.

There is an ongoing lawsuit. They may get the stuff, but we’ll get the souls. They may get the past, but we’ve got the future.

The interview was here.

What Gay Uganda looks like, when he's being himself.

A bill introduced last month in the Ugandan parliament would require citizens to turn in the names of suspected LGBT people so the government can put them to death. I kid you not.

Having Gay sex in Uganda is already a capital crime. I kid you not—the death penalty.

Ugandan LGBT activists have asked supporters in the international community to protest at Ugandan diplomatic missions around the world a week from today, Nov. 9.

I’ve been contacted about this by an activist-friend in Chicago. There are no definite plans at this time, nor any word on actions at the Ugandan embassy in Washington.

I have suggested to my friend the response I consider most appropriate. It’s in the pulled quote below.

Meanwhile I’m watching in amazed disbelief the reaction of The Episcopal Church to this news. They want Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to ride to the rescue of Ugandan Gay people.

Not a snowball’s chance in hell—no one would believe Rowan if he tried—but he’s not going to try.

Yet here are Episcopalians thinking he’s s’posedta Do Something.

How foolish can you get? How naive?

Uganda is one of the most Christian countries on earth (officially anyway). Some 40% of Ugandans are Catholic, 35% Anglican, 5% Muslim, and most of the rest follow native religions.

Considering that the pope is the world’s leading Gay-basher, and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, Maine has bankrolled that state’s referendum tomorrow for a “people’s veto” of the new Gay marriage law—a diocesan staffer is Yes on 1’s campaign manager, and parishes have actually passed the plate at Mass for donations to save Maine from queers—what do you suppose is the position of Ugandan Catholics on the bill to require every citizen of the country to turn informer?

The Anglicans are with them every step of the way to Stamp Out Homos Once and For All. (That’s where the Archbishop of Canterbury’s supposed to come in, to tell them not to—the same Archbishop who convened a thousand Anglican bishops last year for a theological tea party, except for the Gay bishop of New Hampshire, who wasn’t invited.)

Yet my church, the most progressive of American mainlines, actually thinks that writing e-mails to England is going to save Lesbos and queerboys in Uganda.

The blog Episcopal Café posted an item today about the proposed law, “The challenge Uganda is presenting to the (Anglican) Communion,” which has prompted 10 comments so far, all from opponents of the bill. A few people, some of the church’s better minds, are teeth-gnashing a bit over this extreme example of unchristian Christianity. But their proposed action, e-mails to Lambeth Palace in London, is like asking a slave-trader to weigh his conscience before proceeding. Slave-traders weighed their boats and totted up the profits.

It’s a pathetic display of gutless liberalism. Propose an action, as I did to my friend Brent in Chicago, that would actually get the attention of the Ugandan government, and the Episcopal conversation ceases.

No wonder we’re still apologizing for our complicity in slavery 150 years later. We didn’t lift a finger for the slaves way back when, and we’re not lifting a finger for black-skinned queers today.

Don’t take my word for it; go to the Gay Uganda blog. See for yourself.

Here’s what I wrote on Episcopal Café. It went over like a lead balloon.

Sexual Minorities Uganda, a GLBT activist group, has issued a call for international protests at Ugandan diplomatic missions a week from today, Nov. 9.

In response, some interest is stirring in Chicago, but Uganda doesn’t have a working consulate there. I don’t know if there is action planned in DC.

I think it’s foolish to expect anything out of Rowan. He lost his moral authority years ago. The last thing he’s going to do is to stir the Gay pot.

Ditto with TEC. A hundred bishops went to Lambeth, but the Gay one had cooties. This is a job for the laypeople.

+++

My suggestion: go to Starbucks or Whole Foods and dump Ugandan coffee for the cameras. THAT will get attention in Kampala like nothing else.

(Pay for what you dump, of course.)

Dumping Ugandan coffee would be, well, impolite. Un-Episcopalian. Civilly disobedient perhaps. Attention-getting. A bit gauche, actually. We like the nice people at Starbucks, you see, and Whole Foods too.

But boycott Ugandan coffee and the president will hear about it; that’s why I suggested that method.

Uganda is so poor economically (rich in other ways, and please bear that in mind) that the Kampala government is trying its damnedest to open the country to development, open up to tourism, and recover from Idi Ah-Mean. Uganda wants to sell product—if only so the profits can line the military’s pockets. Threaten their coffee crop and they’ll be on it like flies on poop.

Amidst a massive national paranoia about the dangers of queerdom (which, of course, diverts attention from what’s actually wrong with Uganda), the only way to hit these people is with dollars.

That’s what they expect wicked Americans to do, yet it’s never occured to them we might go after their coffee crop. It’s one of the few ways they make money.

But Episkies think that’s, like, rude or somethin’. Not the Middle Ground we think we’re famous for. (No one else thinks we’re famous for anything.) We must work through channels, you see; so let’s give Rowan what-for, as if he has any influence whatsoever on Uganda, and as if he would exercise it even if he did.

The esteemed Archbishop is under strict orders from the Crown: “Do not allow the Anglican Communion to break up while we are alive.”

I don’t blame the Queen at all for that. But I do blame Rowan. He is the Neville Chamberlain of church politics, an appeaser constantly outflanked by ruthless men.

Never, ever, ever appoint a theologian as Archbishop of Canterbury. Appoint a church politician who’s ready for the slings and arrows; get a professional. Rowan Williams is an amateur, cowardly, intimidated.

My message to Episcopalians: Never put your hopes in this guy, who’s stabbed you in the back repeatedly.

If the dialogue on Episcopal Café is any indication, “the most progressive mainline church” can’t even dump a cup of Ugandan coffee in protest.

What would it cost, two bucks?++

Although a temporary truce between Libertarians and Republicans has been in effect for the Tea Parties, divisions over legalizing marijuana, domestic espionage, abortion, torture, gay marriage, the separation of church/state, immigration, and de-militarization are starting to toll. The schism between Libertarians and Republicans is widening.

Source:
http://progressivenation.us/2009/10/28/the-growing-rift-between-libertarians-and-republicans/

From my favorite Orthodox blog, Prof. Peter Gilbert’s De Unione Ecclesiarum –

I finally have some good news to report. Today I received an e-mail from the Managing Editor of the journal Communio, informing me that the Summer 2009 issue is now, at last, in print, and that they have decided to feature my article on “John Bekkos as a Reader of the Fathers” on their website. A link to the website, showing the contents of their current issue, is http://www.communio-icr.com/latest.htm; a permanent link to the article, in PDF format, is http://www.communio-icr.com/articles/PDF/gilbert36-2.pdf

A few choice bits from the article, emphasis mine (but please read the whole thing before commenting) –

John Bekkos, who served as Patriarch of Constantinople during the years of the Union of Lyons (1275–1282) and who not merely accepted that union as a practical political necessity but defended it on the grounds of its theological truth, is not a popular man in much of the Christian East; many people view him as a traitor to Orthodoxy. He earns this reputation by virtue of having defended the view that the Latin doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit, the teaching that the Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son as from a single principle, is reconcilable and compatible with Greek patristic tradition.

… How far John Bekkos did or did not convert to Catholicism is a legitimate question; but it is not the question I chiefly wish to ask in this paper. I mention it here merely to give one specimen of new thinking about John Bekkos, thinking that presents some hope that long-entrenched views about him—the automatic assumption of his estrangement from the mind and heart of Orthodoxy—might be due for reassessment. Bekkos is increasingly being recognized as an early practitioner of what is now called “ecumenism.” The word “ecumenism” did not exist in Bekkos’s day, and it may be doubted whether he would have looked favorably on all modern varieties of it—whatever people may say about him, John Bekkos was not a doctrinal relativist—but that Bekkos was, in some sense, a thirteenth-century Orthodox ecumenist can hardly be denied. What is vital to note is that Bekkos consciously modeled his “ecumenism” upon the practice of the fathers of the Church. He saw the effort to move beyond verbal differences to a recognition of fundamental doctrinal agreement, where such agreement in truth existed, as an essential part of the fathers’ theological work. Christian faith is, in the final analysis, a faith not in words, but in things—and intellectual effort is sometimes needed to get beyond mere words to the realities that words signify. The fathers were willing to engage in that intellectual effort in order to preserve the unity of the Church; Bekkos saw himself as following in their footsteps.

… I would contend that his reading of the fathers of the Church provides real insight into what the fathers, or some of them at least, were saying. To dismiss John Bekkos as an “anthologist,” a man who “juggles texts” or collects them mechanically without any genuine insight into their meaning, is to perpetrate a gross misrepresentation. Bekkos was a theologian; and his continuing ecumenical significance has to be based on the very real possibility that some of his readings of the patristic evidence are true.

The central part of the present article attempts to substantiate the claim that Bekkos’s patristic interpretation is an insightful one, that is, that he sees important aspects of the fathers’ teaching that others have missed. In particular, I shall argue (a) that Bekkos rediscovers something that may be called “Old Nicene” theology, (b) that, in line with this theology, Bekkos identifies a certain “logic” to the way the fathers speak about divine substance, (c) that crucial to Bekkos’s understanding of the trinitarian doctrine of the fathers is a recognition of what I would call “referential causality,” and (d) that, contrary to the claims of some, the reliability of most of Bekkos’s patristic citations is not in doubt, and that, for those texts whose genuineness is in doubt, there is reason to think that at least some of them are authentic.

… Whether or not one calls John Bekkos’s change of mind regarding the orthodoxy of the Latin Church a “conversion,” it seems undeniable that John Bekkos did, in fact, change his mind about the orthodoxy of the Latin Church as a result of the things he read while in prison in 1273 and immediately after his release from jail—basically, as a result of an intense study of the Greek Church fathers and of the interpretations of the fathers given by men like Niketas of Maroneia and Nikephoros Blemmydes. After publicly stating that the Latins were heretics, he came to see them as orthodox Christians, differing from Christians of the Greek Church, not in the essentials of their belief, but in the manner in which the one, common faith was expressed.

… John Bekkos was not a juggler of texts or an anthologist, but a man who was concerned to state the logical coherence of traditional Christian belief in the Trinity, and to state it in such a way as to show that the insights of the Latin and Greek Christian traditions are ultimately harmonious. He saw, and I think saw correctly, that the Filioque debate had deep historical roots; this debate arose out of earlier misunderstandings concerning person and substance in God. Bekkos sees Photius and Gregory of Cyprus as teaching, not Cappadocian theology pure and simple, but a kind of neo-Cappadocianism that, by radicalizing the person/substance distinction through logical premises which the Cappadocians themselves do not state, draws from this distinction consequences which the Cappadocians themselves do not draw. They could not have drawn these consequences, because to do so would have disallowed much of their own stated thought; they would not have done so, because they recognized that those who spoke differently than they did nevertheless shared with them one faith.
The Cappadocians practiced a kind of ecumenism; John Bekkos, in his role as bishop and teacher, thinks that he is authorized and obliged to do the same in the circumstances of his own time. The Cappadocians, in their day, articulated the mystery of the Trinity in a way that differed, in some significant respects, from the way St. Athanasius or St. Epiphanius or Pope St. Damasus articulated it; yet the Cappadocians strove to maintain communion with St. Athanasius and St. Epiphanius and Pope St. Damasus. Similarly, St. Maximus, in his day, recognized that the Latin-speaking Church articulated the mystery of the Holy Spirit’s procession in a way that differed from the way most Greek-speaking Christians did; yet he strove to maintain the bonds of communion, and said that he had never known the fathers to disagree with each other in thought, even though, very often, they disagree with one another verbally. John Bekkos thinks that reasons of Christian truth and love oblige him to imitate these holy men.

… Trinitarian language becomes meaningless if it loses its concrete moorings in the revelation of God in Christ. John Bekkos understood that, as there is no approaching the Father except through the Son, so there is no knowing the Holy Spirit’s eternal relation to the Father except, implicitly or explicitly, through the Son. The Spirit does not lead to the Father except through the Son, nor does the Spirit come forth from the Father to us except through the Son. When theologians deny a mediation of divine being, when they confidently assert an ontology that makes the Son’s mediation of the Spirit’s ousia impossible, one must ask how they have acquired this mystical knowledge of the Father that shunts the Son off to the side.

John Bekkos did not shunt off the Son. He worshiped God the Logos, and logic played a role in how he worshiped him. He had no use for a “spirituality” that was not true rationality, just as he had no use for any new Spirit who is not through the Son. He was a diligent, painstaking researcher who cared about fact, because he cared about truth; but he did not worship the status quo. Pachymeres and others testify to Bekkos’s faith that, even if his own generation failed to appreciate what he had tried to do, future generations would understand. Time may yet prove him right.

The Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh has just issued a statement titled “Statement Concerning Announced Intent to Appeal Ruling in Diocesan Assets Case.” It reads:

We are disappointed that the former leaders of this diocese, who now call themselves the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh, have decided to appeal Judge Joseph James’ October 6, 2009, ruling that a 2005 settlement agreement prevents those former leaders from continuing to hold and administer the diocesan assets.

Judge James found that the 2005 Stipulation and Order – that both sides agreed to before those former leaders left the Episcopal Church – clearly and unambiguously requires that the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh of the Episcopal Church of the United States be the rightful trustee of those assets.

We stand ready to defend our position and the Court’s ruling on appeal. At the same time, we will continue to cooperate in the orderly transition of diocesan property, and when the time is right, to engage in a dialogue on other issues between us that still need to be resolved.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports Anglicans appeal ruling on property division.

A group of 55 congregations that split last year from the Episcopal Church announced today that they will appeal a court ruling that awarded all centrally held diocesan assets to the 27 congregations that remained in the Episcopal Church.

“We believe we have to make this stand,” said the Rev. Jonathan Millard, rector of Church of the Ascension in Oakland and chair of the Alliance for an Anglican Future.

The group also announced that it was changing its name to The Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh. It was formally known as the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh (Anglican). The group they split from is known as the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh of the Episcopal Church of the United States…

• “Conservative bishops who say they represent almost half the world’s Anglicans urged fellow believers on Sunday to reform the Anglican Communion rather than take up Pope Benedict’s invitation to join the Roman Catholic Church. The “Global South” group, which last year seemed close to quitting the Communion, said those opposed to gay clergy and other liberal reforms should “stand firm with us in cherishing the Anglican heritage (and) pursuing a common vocation.”" See Developing nation Anglicans decline pope’s offer @ Reuters
• Massachusetts Episcopalians and Catholics this weekend weighed the Vatican’s invitation for traditionalist Anglicans to become Catholics, with some vehemently rejecting the idea and others saying its impact is unclear until more details are known. During his sermon at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Salem yesterday, the Rev. Paul B. Bresnahan said the Catholic Church was essentially offering itself as a “safe refuge for bigotry,’’ and he “must respectfully decline’’ the pope’s invitation. “This really sends a terrible message to the gay community, as well as to women, which is half the population of the world,’’ he said in a phone interview. “It’s about time we embraced these folks in a kinder, gentler way than we are now.’’See Few of area’s Episcopalians leaping to join Vatican flock  @ Boston Globe
• ” I may be a bit late in weighing in on the Roman Catholic attempt to lure away Episcopal priests, but that’s because I’ve been busy ministering to an Episcopal congregation that’s quickly growing, largely thanks to all the disaffected Roman Catholics (we fondly call them “recovering Catholics”) who keep showing up at my church. In the past three Sundays alone, they’ve increased the size of my congregation by nearly 15%. Of the rest, about 70% are former Roman Catholics, and my church is probably not unusual among Episcopal churches in these statistics. … In the likely event that there isn’t much of a response, both in this country and, I’m guessing, throughout the Anglican Communion, maybe they’ll actually grasp the high regard most of us have not only for our Catholic, but also — and for some of us, especially — our Protestant heritage. And from the demographics of my church, it would seem many of their own flock are starting to appreciate that heritage, too.” See Memo to Rome: Some of Us Like the Reformation @ Huffington Post (blog)
• ‘Back to the entertainingly trenchant Diarmaid MacCullough. “In one sense, this is a storm in a teacup, stirred by an elderly cleric in the Vatican with a private agenda and a track record of ill-thought-out policy moves. In another, it is a fascinating moment in a confrontation as much a struggle for the soul of the Church of Rome as of the Church of England. Once we have got past the screaming headlines, we should keep an eye open for the real story.”’ See All roads lead to Rome? @ Sydney Morning Herald
• “Pope Benedict’s latest bid to expand the conservative wing of the Roman Catholic Church (“Vatican seeks to lure Anglicans,” Monitor Nation & World section, Oct. 21) may come back to bite him.” See Concord Monitor
• “Anyone wondering where God might be in all of this?” See NJ.com
• “Father David Moyer of the Church of the Good Shepherd in suburban Philadelphia was ecstatic last week when he heard Pope Benedict’s invitation to disaffected Anglican priests, parishes and individuals to join the Roman Catholic Church. “I was overwhelmed with joy and thanksgiving,” said Fr. Moyer in an interview. “I’m still in a state of shock.” His parish could easily become the first Anglican church in North America to respond to Pope Benedict’s offer.” Unless the current court action to remove “Fr.” Moyer works. See  Philadelphia Anglican church could be first to join Catholics

[Episcopal News Service] The Chatham County Court on October 27 ruled that the property of Christ Episcopal Church in Savannah, Georgia, must be used for the mission of the Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Georgia following some two years of litigation with the breakaway congregation.

The court order, signed by Judge Michael L. Karpf, said it is “entirely satisfied that a trust over the property exists in favor of the national church and the Diocese of Georgia. Accordingly, the court finds that the church property reverts to the control of the Bishop of the Diocese of Georgia for the uses and purposes of the Episcopal Church and that plaintiffs are entitled to immediate possession.”

Noting that “it is undisputed that the Episcopal Church is hierarchical” and that Christ Church “submitted itself to the discipline of the national church and diocese” when it became a parish in 1823, the court held that the church’s discipline “impl[ies] a trust for the benefit of the national church, which became an express trust with the enactment of the Dennis Canon.” The Dennis Canon was passed by the General Convention in 1979 to state that a parish holds its property in trust for the diocese and the Episcopal Church.

After hearing of the court’s decision, Bishop Henry I. Louttit of Georgia said, “For centuries, Christ Church has lived up to its tradition as ‘The Mother Church of Georgia.’ We have been gratified and strengthened by Episcopalians throughout our state and nation who have strongly supported our efforts. I am excited that the worship and ministry of the Episcopal Church will resume at Christ Church with strong leadership, sustained growth, and an amazing sense of joy.”

The dispute began in March 2006 when the church’s former rector and members of the vestry “covertly and without prior notice to the Episcopal Bishop of Georgia or the congregation changed the church’s articles of incorporation to disavow Christ Church’s 217-year affiliation with The Episcopal Church,” according to the continuing congregation’s website.

In November 2007, the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia filed a petition to Chatham Superior Court to regain “all real and personal property” of Christ Church, Savannah, whose vestry had voted unanimously to place the congregation under the care of John Guernsey, a former Episcopal priest who had been consecrated as a bishop in the Anglican Church of the Province of Uganda.

The continuing congregation has since been worshipping at St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church in Savannah.

“While we were worshipping in borrowed space, waiting for the court to allow us to return to our home on Johnson Square, we truly experienced an amazing spiritual renewal,” the Rev. Michael S. White, rector of the continuing congregation, said in an October 28 statement. “We came to see experientially what scripture proclaims to be true – that the church really is the people and not the building in which we meet.

“As we return to Johnson Square for our first service, we do so a changed people. We are excited to bring the truths of church that we have experienced, while in exile, back to our beautiful historic church. The mission, ministry, and community that we shared during this time away actually attracted many new families who were not part of Christ Church Episcopal before we had to leave our historic home.”

Established in 1733 by General James Oglethorpe, founder of the Georgia colony, Christ Church is known as the “Mother Church of Georgia. The Episcopal Diocese of Georgia covers the southern two thirds of the state of Georgia, including Savannah, Augusta, Albany, Thomasville, Valdosta, and Brunswick.

Reactions to Pope Benedict’s effort to recruit dissatisfied Church of England clergy continue to rumble across the internet.

• “[P]roperty matters and theology are not the only stumbling blocks on the road to Rome. There is another elephant in the vestry. It is one that is not spoken about openly; it is suppressed by a potent mixture of political correctness and traditional church hypocrisy. But it’s high time it was aired. It is this: a very significant proportion, perhaps even a majority in some dioceses, of Anglo-Catholic clergy are homosexual men. Everyone with a ministry in the Church of England knows this.” More of Sex is a stumbling block for Anglicans on the road to Rome –or if gay Anglican priests object to women bishops so much, they will have to abandon their partners, says George Pitcher.
• “The irony of the week’s events is that, in the Church of England, the unravelling of its historic compromise between Catholic and Protestant factions may end up leaving it to go forward smaller but clearer about what it is and isn’t. In Catholicism, by contrast, the Pope’s apparent opportunism will bolster numbers but risks further confusing the faithful about precisely what it is their church stands for.” More of Peter Stanford: After 500 years, has the Pope outfoxed the Archbishop?“
• “Up till now, Rome has been handling Anglicanism with the velvet glove. Traditionally, however, it has a very iron hand. Pope Benedict XVI was the “panzer cardinal”, the gritty enforcer behind the friendly public face of John Paul II. As Pope, he’s turned into a teddy bear — but it would serve the Anglican high order well to remember that this particular teddy bear is not fuzzy around the edges. Eventually, the noose will tighten,” warns David Starkey in The Pope wants his church back.
• “Pope Benedict is set upon restoring the Roman imperium. He makes no concessions to the Anglican communion. On the contrary, he wants to preserve the medieval, centralistic Roman system for all ages – even if this makes impossible the reconciliation of the Christian churches in fundamental questions. Evidently, the papal primacy – which Pope Paul VI admitted was the greatest stumbling block to the unity of the churches – does not function as the “rock of unity”. The old-fashioned call for a “return to Rome” raises its ugly head again, this time through the conversion particularly of the priests, if possible, en masse. In Rome, one speaks of a half-million Anglicans and 20 to 30 bishops. And what about the remaining 76 million? This is a strategy whose failure has been demonstrated in past centuries and which, at best, might lead to the founding of a “uniate” Anglican “mini-church” in the form of a personal prelature, not a territorial diocese. But what are the consequences of this strategy already today?” More of The Vatican thirst for power divides Christianity and damages Catholicism by Hans Kung

“

The Church of England has been the religious expression of that independent national identity which signaled the rise of Britain as a significant world power. Hatched by Henry VIII and nurtured by his daughter Elizabeth I, the Church of England was an expression of that combination of tolerance and arrogance that marked the English governing class. It sat light to doctrine, and tried to accommodate many. But while that seemed a gentle thing to do, it did so because it actually laid claim to governing and controlling all.

Now, as the pope looks to put an end to this facet of Britain’s character, there are ghosts smiling a little ruefully. For one, the Duchess of Windsor (a k a Wallis Warfield Simpson of Baltimore), denied the opportunity of being queen because the Church of England disapproved of divorce. The Catholic recusants, who huddled in priest-holes rather than acknowledge the monarch as supreme governor of the church, will be smiling a little grimly, too. In time to come, I confidently predict, there will be others smiling ruefully, too — such as the “liberal” Anglicans left behind, who will watch a pope (I guess 20 years from now) ordaining women to the Catholic priesthood.” More of A. N. WILSON in the NY Times

Nobody likes a party pooper.

I am probably the last Catholic blogger today to post the following sermon delivered by Stanley Hauerwas on Reformation Sunday in 1995. I noticed that Bryan Cross had posted this sermon at Called to Communion earlier today, and since this morning I have seen it reposted on several other Catholic sites. So if you happen to drop in here after having already read all the other Catholic blogs in the blogosphere today, well, here it is…again.

Stanley Hauerwas is the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke University. He makes some good points in the sermon reprinted here (there, and everywhere). Hauerwas comes out of the gate admitting that he doesn’t like the fact that the Protestant celebration of the Reformation is a perpetual event, because it is a celebration of failure on a cosmic scale. I’m not endorsing Hauerwas as a theologian, but I do believe he honestly, and bravely, steps out from the crowd in this sermon and boldly goes where not many Protestants are willing, or able, to go.

These are not his words, but it occurs to me that celebrating the Reformation annually (and I used to do so in a big way) is like celebrating the day you divorced your wife each year when the date rolls around. And no matter how lousy you might believe your wife was, wouldn’t it be twisted to annually whoop it up and celebrate the tragic event! Very strange. What was I thinking as a Protestant when I annually celebrated schism in the Body of Christ? Sometimes we have the opportunity to look back at ourselves and just shake our heads at our thoughtlessness. Thank you Lord!

What is so gloriously wonderful about division in the body of Christ? Really! Oh yeah, now I remember: Doctrinal purity (according to your own interpretation or that of your pet theologian) trumps Christian unity. Sorry, I forgot.

Stanley Hauerwas

Sermon originally delivered on October 29, 1995

References: Joel 2:23-32 – 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18 – Luke 18:9-14

I must begin by telling you that I do not like to preach on Reformation Sunday. Actually I have to put it more strongly than that. I do not like Reformation Sunday, period. I do not understand why it is part of the church year. Reformation Sunday does not name a happy event for the Church Catholic; on the contrary, it names failure. Of course, the church rightly names failure, or at least horror, as part of our church year. We do, after all, go through crucifixion as part of Holy Week. Certainly if the Reformation is to be narrated rightly, it is to be narrated as part of those dark days.

Reformation names the disunity in which we currently stand. We who remain in the Protestant tradition want to say that Reformation was a success. But when we make Reformation a success, it only ends up killing us. After all, the very name ‘Protestantism’ is meant to denote a reform movement of protest within the Church Catholic. When Protestantism becomes an end in itself, which it certainly has through the mainstream denominations in America, it becomes anathema. If we no longer have broken hearts at the church’s division, then we cannot help but unfaithfully celebrate Reformation Sunday.

For example, note what the Reformation has done for our reading texts like that which we hear from Luke this morning. We Protestants automatically assume that the Pharisees are the Catholics. They are the self-righteous people who have made Christianity a form of legalistic religion, thereby destroying the free grace of the Gospel. We Protestants are the tax collectors, knowing that we are sinners and that our lives depend upon God’s free grace. And therefore we are better than the Catholics because we know they are sinners. What an odd irony that the Reformation made such readings possible. As Protestants we now take pride in the acknowledgement of our sinfulness in order to distinguish ourselves from Catholics who allegedly believe in works-righteousness.

Unfortunately, the Catholics are right. Christian salvation consists in works. To be saved is to be made holy. To be saved requires our being made part of a people separated from the world so that we can be united in spite of-or perhaps better, because of-the world’s fragmentation and divisions. Unity, after all, is what God has given us through Christ’s death and resurrection. For in that death and resurrection we have been made part of God’s salvation for the world so that the world may know it has been freed from the powers that would compel us to kill one another in the name of false loyalties. All that is about the works necessary to save us.

For example, I often point out that at least Catholics have the magisterial office of the Bishop of Rome to remind them that disunity is a sin. You should not overlook the significance that in several important documents of late, John Paul II has confessed the Catholic sin for the Reformation. Where are the Protestants capable of doing likewise? We Protestants feel no sin for the disunity of the Reformation. We would not know how to confess our sin for the continuing disunity of the Reformation. We would not know how to do that because we have no experience of unity.

The magisterial office-we Protestants often forget-is not a matter of constraining or limiting diversity in the name of unity. The office of the Bishop of Rome is to ensure that when Christians move from Durham, North Carolina to Syracuse, New York, they have some confidence when they go to church that they will be worshipping the same God. Because Catholics have an office of unity, they do not need to restrain the gifts of the Spirit. As I oftentimes point out, it is extraordinary that Catholicism is able to keep the Irish and the Italians in the same church. What an achievement! Perhaps equally amazing is their ability to keep within the same church Jesuits, Dominicans, and Franciscans.

I think Catholics are able to do that because they know that their unity does not depend opon everyone agreeing. Indeed, they can celebrate their disagreements because they understand that our unity is founded upon the cross and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth that makes the Eucharist possible. They do not presume, therefore, that unity requires that we all read Scripture the same way.

This creates a quite different attitude among Catholics about their relation to Christian tradition and the wider world. Protestants look over to Christian tradition and say, ‘How much of this do we have to believe in order to remain identifiably Christian?’ That’s the reason why Protestants are always tempted to rationalism: we think that Christianity is to be identified with sets of beliefs more than with the unity of the Spirit occasioned through sacrament.

Moreover, once Christianity becomes reduced to a matter of belief, as it clearly has for Protestants, we cannot resist questions of whether those beliefs are as true or useful as other beliefs we also entertain. Once such questions are raised, it does not matter what the answer turns out in a given case. As James Edwards observes, “Once religious beliefs start to compete with other beliefs, then religious believers are – and will know themselves to be -mongerers of values. They too are denizens of the mall, selling and shopping and buying along with the rest of us.”

In contrast, Catholics do not begin with the question of “How much do we need to believe?” but with the attitude “Look at all the wonderful stuff we get to believe!” Isn’t it wonderful to know that Mary was immaculately conceived in order to be the faithful servant of God’s new creation in Jesus Christ! She therefore becomes the firstborn of God’s new creation, our mother, the first member of God’s new community we call church. Isn’t it wonderful that God continued to act in the world through the appearances of Mary at Guadalupe! Mary must know something because she seems to always appear to peasants and, in particular, to peasant women who have the ability to see her. Most of us would not have the ability to see Mary because we’d be far too embarrassed by our vision.

Therefore Catholics understand the church’s unity as grounded in reality more determinative than our good feelings for one another. The office of Rome matters. For at least that office is a judgement on the church for our disunity. Surely it is the clear indication of the sin of the Reformation that we Protestants have not been able to resist nationalistic identifications. So we become German Lutherans, American Lutherans, Norwegian Lutherans. You are Dutch Calvinist, American Presbyterians, Church of Scotland. I am an American Methodist, which has precious little to do with my sisters and brothers in English Methodism. And so we Protestant Christians go to war killing one another in the name of being American, German, Japanese, and so on.

At least it becomes the sin of Rome when Italian Catholics think they can kill Irish Catholics in the name of being Italian. Such divisions distort the unity of the Gospel found in the Eucharist and, thus, become judgements against the church of Rome. Of course, the Papacy has often been unfaithful and corrupt, but at least Catholics preserved an office God can use to remind us that we have been and may yet prove unfaithful. In contrast, Protestants don’t even know we’re being judged for our disunity.

I realize that this perspective on Reformation Sunday is not the usual perspective. The usual perspective is to tell us what a wonderful thing happened at the Reformation. The Reformation struck a blow for freedom. No longer would we be held in medieval captivity to law and arbitrary authority. The Reformation was the beginning of enlightenment, of progressive civilizations, of democracy, that have come to fruition in this wonderful country called America. What a destructive story.

You can tell the destructive character of that narrative by what it has done to the Jews. The way we Protestants read history, and in particular our Bible, has been nothing but disastrous for the Jews. For we turned the Jews into Catholics by suggesting that the Jews had sunk into legalistic and sacramental religion after the prophets and had therefore become moribund and dead. In order to make Jesus explicable (in order to make Jesus look like Luther – at least the Luther of our democratic projections), we had to make Judaism look like our characterization of Catholicism. Yet Jesus did not free us from Israel; rather, he engrafted us into the promise of Israel so that we might be a people called to the same holiness of the law.

I realize that the suggestion that salvation is to be part of a holy people constitued by the law seems to deny the Reformation principle of justification by faith through grace. I do not believe that to be the case, particularly as Calvin understood that Reformation theme. After all, Calvin (and Luther) assumed that justification by faith through grace is a claim about God’s presence in Jesus of Nazareth. So justification by faith through grace is not some general truth about our need for acceptance; but rather justification by faith through grace is a claim about the salvation wrought by God through Jesus to make us a holy people capable of remembering that God’s salvation comes through the Jews. When the church loses that memory, we lose the source of our unity. For unity is finally a matter of memory, of how we tell the story of the Reformation. How can we tell this story of the church truthfully as Protestants and Catholics so that we might look forward to being in union with one another and thus share a common story of our mutual failure?

We know, after all, that the prophecy of Joel has been fulfilled. The portents of heaven, the blood and fire, the darkness of the sun, the bloody moon have come to pass in the cross of our Savior Jesus Christ. Now all who call on that name will be saved. We believe that we who stand in the Reformation churches are survivors. But to survive we need to recover the unity that God has given us as survivors. So on this Reformation Sunday long for, pray for, our ability to remember the Reformation – not as a celebratory moment, not as a blow for freedom, but as the sin of the church. Pray for God to heal our disunity, not the disunity simply between Protestant and Catholic, but the disunity in our midst between classes, between races, between nations. Pray that on Reformation Sunday we may as tax collectors confess our sin and ask God to make us a new people joined together in one might prayer that the world may be saved from its divisions.

Nobody likes a party pooper.

I am probably the last Catholic blogger today to post the following sermon delivered by Stanley Hauerwas on Reformation Sunday in 1995. I noticed that Bryan Cross had posted this sermon at Called to Communion earlier today, and since this morning I have seen it reposted on several other Catholic sites. So if you happen to drop in here after having already read all the other Catholic blogs in the blogosphere today, well, here it is…again.

Stanley Hauerwas is the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke University. He makes some good points in the sermon reprinted here (there, and everywhere). Hauerwas comes out of the gate admitting that he doesn’t like the fact that the Protestant celebration of the Reformation is a perpetual event, because it is a celebration of failure on a cosmic scale. I’m not endorsing Hauerwas as a theologian, but I do believe he honestly, and bravely, steps out from the crowd in this sermon and boldly goes where not many Protestants are willing, or able, to go.

These are not his words, but it occurs to me that celebrating the Reformation annually (and I used to do so in a big way) is like celebrating the day you divorced your wife each year when the date rolls around. And no matter how lousy you might believe your wife was, wouldn’t it be twisted to annually whoop it up and celebrate the tragic event! Very strange. What was I thinking as a Protestant when I annually celebrated schism in the Body of Christ? Sometimes we have the opportunity to look back at ourselves and just shake our heads at our thoughtlessness. Thank you Lord!

What is so gloriously wonderful about division in the body of Christ? Really! Oh yeah, now I remember: Doctrinal purity (according to your own interpretation or that of your pet theologian) trumps Christian unity. Sorry, I forgot.

Stanley Hauerwas

Sermon originally delivered on October 29, 1995

References: Joel 2:23-32 – 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18 – Luke 18:9-14

I must begin by telling you that I do not like to preach on Reformation Sunday. Actually I have to put it more strongly than that. I do not like Reformation Sunday, period. I do not understand why it is part of the church year. Reformation Sunday does not name a happy event for the Church Catholic; on the contrary, it names failure. Of course, the church rightly names failure, or at least horror, as part of our church year. We do, after all, go through crucifixion as part of Holy Week. Certainly if the Reformation is to be narrated rightly, it is to be narrated as part of those dark days.

Reformation names the disunity in which we currently stand. We who remain in the Protestant tradition want to say that Reformation was a success. But when we make Reformation a success, it only ends up killing us. After all, the very name ‘Protestantism’ is meant to denote a reform movement of protest within the Church Catholic. When Protestantism becomes an end in itself, which it certainly has through the mainstream denominations in America, it becomes anathema. If we no longer have broken hearts at the church’s division, then we cannot help but unfaithfully celebrate Reformation Sunday.

For example, note what the Reformation has done for our reading texts like that which we hear from Luke this morning. We Protestants automatically assume that the Pharisees are the Catholics. They are the self-righteous people who have made Christianity a form of legalistic religion, thereby destroying the free grace of the Gospel. We Protestants are the tax collectors, knowing that we are sinners and that our lives depend upon God’s free grace. And therefore we are better than the Catholics because we know they are sinners. What an odd irony that the Reformation made such readings possible. As Protestants we now take pride in the acknowledgement of our sinfulness in order to distinguish ourselves from Catholics who allegedly believe in works-righteousness.

Unfortunately, the Catholics are right. Christian salvation consists in works. To be saved is to be made holy. To be saved requires our being made part of a people separated from the world so that we can be united in spite of-or perhaps better, because of-the world’s fragmentation and divisions. Unity, after all, is what God has given us through Christ’s death and resurrection. For in that death and resurrection we have been made part of God’s salvation for the world so that the world may know it has been freed from the powers that would compel us to kill one another in the name of false loyalties. All that is about the works necessary to save us.

For example, I often point out that at least Catholics have the magisterial office of the Bishop of Rome to remind them that disunity is a sin. You should not overlook the significance that in several important documents of late, John Paul II has confessed the Catholic sin for the Reformation. Where are the Protestants capable of doing likewise? We Protestants feel no sin for the disunity of the Reformation. We would not know how to confess our sin for the continuing disunity of the Reformation. We would not know how to do that because we have no experience of unity.

The magisterial office-we Protestants often forget-is not a matter of constraining or limiting diversity in the name of unity. The office of the Bishop of Rome is to ensure that when Christians move from Durham, North Carolina to Syracuse, New York, they have some confidence when they go to church that they will be worshipping the same God. Because Catholics have an office of unity, they do not need to restrain the gifts of the Spirit. As I oftentimes point out, it is extraordinary that Catholicism is able to keep the Irish and the Italians in the same church. What an achievement! Perhaps equally amazing is their ability to keep within the same church Jesuits, Dominicans, and Franciscans.

I think Catholics are able to do that because they know that their unity does not depend opon everyone agreeing. Indeed, they can celebrate their disagreements because they understand that our unity is founded upon the cross and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth that makes the Eucharist possible. They do not presume, therefore, that unity requires that we all read Scripture the same way.

This creates a quite different attitude among Catholics about their relation to Christian tradition and the wider world. Protestants look over to Christian tradition and say, ‘How much of this do we have to believe in order to remain identifiably Christian?’ That’s the reason why Protestants are always tempted to rationalism: we think that Christianity is to be identified with sets of beliefs more than with the unity of the Spirit occasioned through sacrament.

Moreover, once Christianity becomes reduced to a matter of belief, as it clearly has for Protestants, we cannot resist questions of whether those beliefs are as true or useful as other beliefs we also entertain. Once such questions are raised, it does not matter what the answer turns out in a given case. As James Edwards observes, “Once religious beliefs start to compete with other beliefs, then religious believers are – and will know themselves to be -mongerers of values. They too are denizens of the mall, selling and shopping and buying along with the rest of us.”

In contrast, Catholics do not begin with the question of “How much do we need to believe?” but with the attitude “Look at all the wonderful stuff we get to believe!” Isn’t it wonderful to know that Mary was immaculately conceived in order to be the faithful servant of God’s new creation in Jesus Christ! She therefore becomes the firstborn of God’s new creation, our mother, the first member of God’s new community we call church. Isn’t it wonderful that God continued to act in the world through the appearances of Mary at Guadalupe! Mary must know something because she seems to always appear to peasants and, in particular, to peasant women who have the ability to see her. Most of us would not have the ability to see Mary because we’d be far too embarrassed by our vision.

Therefore Catholics understand the church’s unity as grounded in reality more determinative than our good feelings for one another. The office of Rome matters. For at least that office is a judgement on the church for our disunity. Surely it is the clear indication of the sin of the Reformation that we Protestants have not been able to resist nationalistic identifications. So we become German Lutherans, American Lutherans, Norwegian Lutherans. You are Dutch Calvinist, American Presbyterians, Church of Scotland. I am an American Methodist, which has precious little to do with my sisters and brothers in English Methodism. And so we Protestant Christians go to war killing one another in the name of being American, German, Japanese, and so on.

At least it becomes the sin of Rome when Italian Catholics think they can kill Irish Catholics in the name of being Italian. Such divisions distort the unity of the Gospel found in the Eucharist and, thus, become judgements against the church of Rome. Of course, the Papacy has often been unfaithful and corrupt, but at least Catholics preserved an office God can use to remind us that we have been and may yet prove unfaithful. In contrast, Protestants don’t even know we’re being judged for our disunity.

I realize that this perspective on Reformation Sunday is not the usual perspective. The usual perspective is to tell us what a wonderful thing happened at the Reformation. The Reformation struck a blow for freedom. No longer would we be held in medieval captivity to law and arbitrary authority. The Reformation was the beginning of enlightenment, of progressive civilizations, of democracy, that have come to fruition in this wonderful country called America. What a destructive story.

You can tell the destructive character of that narrative by what it has done to the Jews. The way we Protestants read history, and in particular our Bible, has been nothing but disastrous for the Jews. For we turned the Jews into Catholics by suggesting that the Jews had sunk into legalistic and sacramental religion after the prophets and had therefore become moribund and dead. In order to make Jesus explicable (in order to make Jesus look like Luther – at least the Luther of our democratic projections), we had to make Judaism look like our characterization of Catholicism. Yet Jesus did not free us from Israel; rather, he engrafted us into the promise of Israel so that we might be a people called to the same holiness of the law.

I realize that the suggestion that salvation is to be part of a holy people constitued by the law seems to deny the Reformation principle of justification by faith through grace. I do not believe that to be the case, particularly as Calvin understood that Reformation theme. After all, Calvin (and Luther) assumed that justification by faith through grace is a claim about God’s presence in Jesus of Nazareth. So justification by faith through grace is not some general truth about our need for acceptance; but rather justification by faith through grace is a claim about the salvation wrought by God through Jesus to make us a holy people capable of remembering that God’s salvation comes through the Jews. When the church loses that memory, we lose the source of our unity. For unity is finally a matter of memory, of how we tell the story of the Reformation. How can we tell this story of the church truthfully as Protestants and Catholics so that we might look forward to being in union with one another and thus share a common story of our mutual failure?

We know, after all, that the prophecy of Joel has been fulfilled. The portents of heaven, the blood and fire, the darkness of the sun, the bloody moon have come to pass in the cross of our Savior Jesus Christ. Now all who call on that name will be saved. We believe that we who stand in the Reformation churches are survivors. But to survive we need to recover the unity that God has given us as survivors. So on this Reformation Sunday long for, pray for, our ability to remember the Reformation – not as a celebratory moment, not as a blow for freedom, but as the sin of the church. Pray for God to heal our disunity, not the disunity simply between Protestant and Catholic, but the disunity in our midst between classes, between races, between nations. Pray that on Reformation Sunday we may as tax collectors confess our sin and ask God to make us a new people joined together in one might prayer that the world may be saved from its divisions.

The former Archbishop of Canterbury has branded as “inexcusable” the Catholic Church’s failure to warn his successor of their plans to admit disaffected Anglican priests.

Lord Carey of Clifton told The Times that he was “appalled” that Dr Rowan Williams only learned of Rome’s intention to publish a new Apostolic Constitution to allow the move two weeks ago.

“I think in this day and age, this was inexcusable that Rome decided to do this without consultation,” he said. Full story: Salisbury Journal

• The head of Kenya’s Anglican Church, Archbishop Eliud Wabukala, has rejected the Pope’s offer to allow disaffected Anglicans to join the Catholic Church. He told the BBC it would not be easy for African Anglicans to enter into full communion with Catholics. See Kenya Anglicans reject Pope offer.

• “There is increasing speculation that Papua New Guinea might go to Rome as an entire province into the new Anglican ordinariates unveiled by Rome this week. You can read the latest Times report here, Libby Purves’ analysis and the tale of two priests who might go with their congregations. My own hints at this in a couple of articles, made without naming the province, have been well and multiply sourced. However, today I have spoken to Chris Luxton, general secretary of the Papua New Guinea Church Partnership. She insists this is untrue, that the province values its relations with the Anglican Communion too much to go and even that Rowan Williams himself is to visit soon. But will there still be an Anglican Communion to have relations with? One post asking if it is the end has been receiving a hit every eight seconds since the news broke.” Ruth Gledhill, see Papua New Guinea: ‘We don’t want to go to Rome!’
• “From a Canadian perspective I do not foresee a groundswell of response to these provisions.  I say this knowing that even among those who have separated themselves from the Anglican Church of Canada, there is an abiding desire to remain in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury, and to maintain a place within the family of churches we know as the Anglican Communion.”  See Statement from the Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada
• Predictions that 50 bishops as well as thousands of clergy and laity might leave the worldwide Anglican Communion for the Roman Catholic Church have followed a Vatican announcement of new procedures for admitting discontented Anglicans. … The Times newspaper in London in an editorial described the Vatican announcement as “potentially the most explosive development in Anglicanism since the Reformation,” in which the “most learned of primates [Williams] has been outclassed as a politician.” The bishop of Fulham in London, John Broadhurst, chairperson of Forward in Faith, an Anglican group that opposes women bishops, predicted that up to a thousand Church of England clergy would leave for Rome. A Forward in Faith statement said it had been the, “fervent desire of Anglican Catholics to be enabled by some means to enter into full communion with the See of Peter whilst retaining in its integrity every aspect of their Anglican inheritance which is not at variance with the teaching of the Catholic Church.”… After his election as pontiff in 2005, Pope Benedict said that his first priority would be to work “to reconstitute the full and visible unity of all Christ’s followers.” See New Vatican announcement takes many Anglicans by surprise
• AFRICAN Anglicans do not need the Pope’s intervention over consecration of gay bishops, the Archbishop of the Church of Uganda, Henry Luke Orombi, has said.  … Orombi said such measures by the Vatican are not called for in the African Anglican Church, which he said had successfully resisted liberalism from Western countries.See ‘Pope’s offer not vital for Africa’ – Orombi.
• “”It is not an act of aggression,” the Archbishop of Canterbury insisted as the Vatican’s metaphorical tanks drew up outside Lambeth Palace on Tuesday. Not even his admirers quite believed him, and few saw Pope Benedict’s back-channel deal with Anglo-Catholics opposed to women bishops as “not a vote of no confidence”. It looked much more as if the Pope had launched a small craft to ferry the disaffected back across the Tiber, a move to asset-strip the Anglican communion of those bits the Vatican might find useful. It was an uncompromising recognition of the fissiparous state of Anglicanism and the failure of Rowan Williams’ long, hard struggle to hold it together. … Lambeth was on dodgier ground trying to explain why the Vatican should appear to ride roughshod over 40 years of ecumenical work, and why it was given only a fortnight’s notice, leaving a visibly uncertain Archbishop of Canterbury to lean on the protection of the Archbishop of Westminster at their joint press conference.” See Church of England: Imperial Rome.
• How will the Apostolic Constitution work in practice? No one knows: it is not even published, and even then the outcome will depend on local negotiations. Several hundred Church of England clergy are likely to join the scheme, but will their congregations follow? “Some congregations will be divided, and you will get parishes where the vicar wants to go and the people don’t, and vice versa,” says Stephen Parkinson. “The dream solution is for St Aloysius-by-the-Gasworks to be received en masse, priest and people – but, even if there is total agreement, what about the church? Rowan Williams is always telling the American bishops to be generous to those who want to leave and take their buildings with them, but will he practise what he preaches over here? “And what happens to institutions such as the Anglican shrine at Walsingham, which may well want to join the scheme? These are tricky issues, though I notice that Rome has not set any sort of deadline, so presumably people will have plenty of time to make up their minds.” See The Vatican opens its arms to Anglicans – and tightens its grip.
• “[C]convert clergy may not find life as good as they had hoped, despite being freed from the terror of meeting woman priests and having to bless civil partners rather than excoriate them, Vatican-style, as “intrinsically disordered”. Despite the modified prayer book they will find their style and even pastoral advice gravely restricted; they may flinch at the uncompromising voice of the Vatican after the gentle bleating of Cantuars. Anglicanism was founded on uneasy compromise, and this has, over centuries, made it kindly and even humble: a mixed salad of a faith. Catholicism is older, darker, strong raw meat. It may choke them.” See Converts may choke on raw meat of Catholicism.

Could it be that the CofE will now see the same kind of conflict over churches and property that conservatives have inflicted upon the Episcopal Church in recent years?

If so, how will the Archbishop of Canterbury respond to congregations that become Roman Catholic but want to keep their church building, grounds and bank accounts?

Some media reports have already mentioned the feelings of “some” Roman Catholics that “their” churches were stolen from them by King Henry VIII. Are these claims the first signs of a coming property war in the UK?

For the record: the churches Henry VIII appropriated are now part of a state church. At times these congregations have been supported by laws requiring people to attend and support their local parish whether or not these individuals believed Anglican doctrine – an inconvenient truth tha muddies the water about who “deserves” to own these buildings. To suggest that these churches belong to the Roman Catholic Church based on pre-reformation ownership seems dubious at best and down right ridiculous at worst.

Whether going off on their own, aligning with a foreign bishop or joining the Roman Catholic church, conservative congregations face a tremendous hurdle when faced with the prospect of leaving the church they love (and the accounts that parish has amassed).

This LA Times report shows how the Pope’s new idea is being received at some CofE congregations:

The parishioners at St. Savior’s come from various backgrounds: Afro-Caribbean countries, Eastern European nations, Britain itself. But it may be that all roads are leading them to Rome.

The East London church is Anglican in name but Roman Catholic in spirit and worship, with the “smells and bells” of traditional Roman Catholic liturgy. Father David Waller sticks to the Vatican’s line on doctrines such as transubstantiation — the transformation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus — and teachings such as the ban on contraception. Neither he nor his congregation believes in allowing women into the priesthood.

So Pope Benedict XVI’s stunning announcement this week of a new dispensation that would, in effect, give traditionally minded Anglicans their own niche within the Catholic Church seems almost too good an offer to pass up.

• “It would have been difficult to mistake New York City as a stronghold for the disaffected Anglicans, upset about the church’s acceptance of women and gays in leadership positions, whom the Vatican announced this week it would be wooing to join the Roman Catholic Church.But that point was made even more clear when Bishop Lawrence C. Provenzano, who represents the 146 congregations in the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island (including Brooklyn and Queens), dashed off a response giving his take on the Tuesday announcement. “At the heart of all of this is the reality that the Roman Church is willing to welcome angry, reactionary, misogynistic, homophobic people,” he wrote. ” See Liberal Episcopalians Unimpressed by Vatican’s Bid @ NY Times
• “The Anglicans knocking at the door of the Vatican are doing so, it seems, because they don’t have much respect for women or gay men. I really struggle with Catholic doctrine on these two issues but that same doctrine is now the attractive lure that draws these new converts in. I say “converts”, but I worry that spiritual matters are not the main criterion here. I don’t get a sense that these Anglicans are commencing a journey towards belief in transubstantiation. It feels more like they’re seeing my Church as a safe haven for homophobes and misogynists. I, like many liberal Catholics, have been fighting an angst-ridden battle with that image of Catholicism for many years. I want people to be drawn to the Catholic Church because it travels the road to truth, not because they want to hang out in its dingy cul-de-sacs.” See My Church is not a safe haven for bigots @ Times Online
• “The Times of London published a handy list of some Catholic beliefs Anglican converts would have to embrace. Social conservatives who are upset by the Anglican Church’s acceptance of female priests and openly gay bishops are unlikely to have trouble adopting the Catholic beliefs that only men can become priests and that, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it, “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered” and “under no circumstances can they be approved.”Ideas that might be harder for Anglicans to accept include the concept that the Pope is infallible, at least at certain moments, that Mary was the product of an “immaculate conception,” and so born without sin, and the belief known as transubstantiation, which means, essentially, that the communion bread and wine are not just symbols but actually become the body and blood of Christ.” See Catholic Beliefs Might Give Anglicans Pause
  New York Times
• “Some Ottawa Anglicans who’ve broken away from their church are rebuffing Pope Benedict XVI’s recent invitation to join the Roman Catholic Church. On Tuesday, the Vatican announced it would allow Anglicans to join the Catholic Church while keeping their identity and liturgical traditions. Seven parishes in Ottawa have parted ways with the Anglican Church of Canada after parishioners became disillusioned with its increasingly progressive stance, including its ordination of women, election of openly gay bishops and blessing of same-sex unions.” See Ottawa Anglicans reject Pope’s offer@ CBC.ca
• “For now, however, it seems an almost baldly political move, made at a pace more reminiscent of modern politics and public relations than the traditional ecclesiastical creaking of the wheels. That is troubling to me. Churches are supposed to be about eternal truths and freedom of conscience, not what amounts to an unfriendly take-over bid for a franchise. And it does not seem to have occurred because of some deep resolution of the theological disputes between Anglicans and Catholics, but merely by a shared abhorrence of women priests and openly gay ones. If you want to switch churches, prejudice seems a pretty poor reason for doing so. But this is so sudden it will take some time to absorb and it’s a little hard to take in. Stay tuned.” See The Pope’s Anglican Blitzkrieg @ The Atlantic.

From Vertograd Orthodox Journal, Newsletter No. 76, Oct. 21, 2009 (via the Irenikon listserv):

“To all intent and purposes, mutual recognition of each others Mysteries already exists between us. We do not have communion in the Mysteries, but we do recognize each others Mysteries”, declared Archbishop Hilarion (Alfeev) on the air during a broadcast of the program “The Church and the World” on the television channel “Russia”, on October 17th (video and text, http://vera.vesti.ru/doc.html?id=237432).

“If a Roman Catholic priest converts to Orthodoxy, we receive him as a priest, and we do not re-ordain him. And that means that, de facto, we recognize the Mysteries of the Roman Catholic Church”, explained Archbishop Hilarion.

Responding to the question of whether Roman Catholics can receive Communion from the Orthodox, or Orthodox Christians from the Roman Catholics, Archbishop Hilarion said that such giving of Communion should not take place, inasmuch as “eucharistic communion has been broken” between the Orthodox and Roman
Catholics. But, at the same time, he made clear that in some cases such
Communion is possible: “Exceptional cases occur, when, for example, a Roman Catholic is dying in some town where there is no Roman Catholic priest at all in the vicinity. So he asks an Orthodox priest to come. Then in such a case, I think, the Orthodox priest should go and give Communion to that person.”