Thinking Anglicans

letters about seceding US dioceses

This week, in the Church Times a letter was published from Canon Giles Goddard which is reproduced at InclusiveChurch.

See Letter to Church Times 7th December 2007. The Church Times copy is here (subscription only until Friday).

The earlier letters to the editor to which this is a direct response can be found here, at Bishops Iker and Duncan, and the Episcopal Church in the United States.

The original letters to the bishops can be found here (Duncan) and here (Iker).

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david wh
david wh
16 years ago

Canon Goddard wrote: “We hope the Archbishop of Canterbury will … make clear that the recent actions of the Southern Cone in both the USA and Canada are wholly unacceptable to the Communion at large.”

I think that Canon Goddard has a very short, or selective memory. ++Rowan, with the rest of the Primates, made clear to TEC and ACC at Dar-E-Salaam that their approval of sinful sexual relationships is completely unacceptable to the Communion. Extra-terratorial action, on the other hand, was said to be regretable but may be justifable..

drdanfee
drdanfee
16 years ago

Reply to Mr. Houlding of London: Quote Is one to be persecuted for clinging to the faith once delivered to the saints? Unquote Sir, only when one’s clinging presuppositionally to certain conservative religious views is also preached to require one to steal the money and the property while loudly denouncing historic Anglican leeway for all the Anglican mixed middles, as well as the Anglican lefts. Stealing things only for yourself, which are otherwise held in trust with others for others, is one offense which cannot pass apostolic muster for very many Anglican believers. Deliberately collapsing the institutional leeway which Anglican… Read more »

Leonardo Ricardo, San Juan, Puerto Rico
Leonardo Ricardo, San Juan, Puerto Rico
16 years ago

HELP, SOS/D, HELP some of your sisters and brothers at The Diocese of San Joaquin at The Body of Christ:

Support for Faithful Episcopalians in San Joaquin and Introducing the Ad Campaign

Remain Episcopal
2067 W. Alluvial
Fresno, CA 93711

“So how can we help? We can pray. We can send messages of encouragment. We can offer financial support.” Fr. Jake

http://frjakestopstheworld.blogspot.com/

Ford Elms
Ford Elms
16 years ago

“She knows full well that a small minority of disgruntled Episcopalians, well-financed by wealthy conservatives, were plotting and scheming, long before the election of the current Bishop of New Hampshire, to get The Episcopal Church excluded from the Anglican Communion.”

Exactly! And the funding is available precisely because it helps to destabilize TEC, thereby silencing an anti-Bush voice. This is being done to any other church that opposes the Righteous Republican agenda.

John Henry
John Henry
16 years ago

“We hope the Archbishop of Canterbury will take at least as firm a line as the Presiding Bishop is doing, in responding to the request of the Canadian church. He should make clear that the recent actions of the Southern Cone in both the USA and Canada are wholly unacceptable to the Communion at large.”

Good for Canon Giles Goddard. A voice of reason at a time when people shoot from their hips. Still, he may be too optimistic about Rowan Cantuar.

Leonardo Ricardo
Leonardo Ricardo
16 years ago

HELP (again) ++KJS and +++ABC Please send spiritual “recovery teams” into the Diocese of San Joaquin THIS WEEK (and soon in Pittsburgh, Ft.Worth, Quincy)…send them to Deanerys to reassure Episcopalians/Anglicans face-to-face they are loved, needed, wanted and WE welcome and include EVERYONE at the Body of Christ…send representatives from the Anglican Consultive Council, Lambeth, Primates and beyond! This is a case of “disaster relief” for Episcopalians/Anglican Communion (use the same funds to rent buses, house participants and run newspaper/print ads that we use for other natural disasters). Help STABALIZE this insanity and the harm it has casued tens of thousands… Read more »

Charlotte
Charlotte
16 years ago

Well, here’s one more item for all to ponder. From a separatist blog comes the following e-mail statement, circulating to all members of the Network in the USA. It marks the moment of final separation as December 18th. I suppose ++Rowan will just have to delay his Advent letter again, eh? –quote– Dear Network, The next major milestone in the development of Common Cause is next week, when the Common Cause Leadership Council gathers in Orlando, Florida on December 18 for its inaugural meeting. The Council comprises the head bishop, a clergy representative, and a lay representative from each Partner.… Read more »

drdanfee
drdanfee
16 years ago

I tell you conservative Anglican realignment is all Daffy Duck good fun, a plot fine as to make Walt Disney himself more than proud of apostolic cartoon sketching traditions – so do read over the draft covenant over at Fr. Tobias’ blog.

Surely this will be a way forward for us all?

At: http://jintoku.blogspot.com/2007/12/daft-anglican-covenant.html

Robert Ian Williams
Robert Ian Williams
16 years ago

Have you heard the latest Sydney diocese has congratulated San Joaquin for preserving the Faith once delivered to the Saints. Does that include the Holy Communion service interpolated as the Mass in Many San Joaquim parishes, and prayers for the dead…excluded from liturgy in Sydney diocese. Sydney refused the Australian Prayer Book because of its liturgical innovations , which are modest by the standards of San Joaquin. Indeed San Joaquim actually use alchoholic wine at their Masses…Sydney parishes generallay favour fruit juice. Nice one Sydney…you praise San Joaquim…yet some one with the Anglo-catholic theology of Schofield would not even be… Read more »

Pluralist
16 years ago

DrDanFee, the best commentary Tobias Haller has provided is the one where he points out that Rowan Williams’s occasional words cause people to hang on to his every utterance for clues, and the slightest wink or nod. Thus, in seeking not to attract too much attention, he gets people eyeballing him all the time for the slightest clue. This must be what has happened.

http://jintoku.blogspot.com/2007/12/entrails-of-primates.html

Mark Wharton
Mark Wharton
16 years ago

It is time liberal Anglicans realised that Catholics and Evangelicals are working together because we want to preserve the faith of the universal church. The Catholic wing stopped worrying about chasubles along time ago, we know that the basis of our faith is JESUS CHRIST and not a sociological substitute.
Also I see no difference between and a woman priest and a a lay president at the mass. Neither is ordained and neither can effect the sacrament! Both are equally invalid!

Erika Baker
Erika Baker
16 years ago

“It is time liberal Anglicans realised that Catholics and Evangelicals are working together because we want to preserve the faith of the universal church.”

And here I was thinking that’s what we all do.
You do mean faith, don’t you, not a particular set of beliefs within that universal faith?

Ford Elms
Ford Elms
16 years ago

“we know that the basis of our faith is JESUS CHRIST and not a sociological substitute.” Would you care to indicate what you consider is the basis for MY faith? You barely know me, you have little idea what I believe, yet, in typical Rightist fashion, you imply I do not believe in Christ. Odd, since I receive His Body and Blood every Sunday, and go to a parish where, even now, a woman deacon can cause consternation. Odd that the first prayer on a Sunday begins “Almighty God,….” and ends with “…through Jesus Christ our Lord”.” Indeed, pretty much… Read more »

Robert Ian Williams
Robert Ian Williams
16 years ago

If you take the Bible seriously , ” two cannot walk together lest they be agreed. ” Both evangelical and Anglo-Catholic interpretations are contradictory. St Paul is very strong worded on having nothing to do with those who preach another gospel. One sides preaches that Holy Communion is a memorial meal on a table…the other that it is the propitiatory sacrifice for the living and dead. One worships the consecrated host as God, the other throws the bread crumbs in the bin. One preaches that you become a Christian through bapstism, the other by accepting Jesus into your heart. One… Read more »

choirboyfromhell
choirboyfromhell
16 years ago

Yeah, sure, whatever Mark Wharton. Keep spouting your irrelevance and we’ll just keep laughing.

Lapinbizarre
Lapinbizarre
16 years ago

So Mark, you truly believe that a male generative organ is an essential accoutrement of a valid priesthood? Good to be reminded that Bronze Age religion is alive and kicking.

Pluralist
16 years ago

“Catholics and Evangelicals are working together..
no difference between and a woman priest and a a lay president at the mass. Neither is ordained and neither can effect the sacrament!” Mark Wharton

Slight problem there then, for the near future.

The “sociological substitute” Jesus might be more historically and culturally accurate.

Davis d'Ambly
Davis d'Ambly
16 years ago

Surely I’m not the only person here who is sick unto death with the outrageous accusation that “liberal” Anglicans do not have faith in JESUS CHRIST. I have found no sociological substitute to the Triune God whom I worship and adore with my every breath.

Shame on you sir!

drdanfee
drdanfee
16 years ago

Thanks MWH for confirming what we all so frequently suspect – that this is about preserving things traditional. And of course that must include the innate high privileges to indulge in ethical or religious trash talk (via flat out false witness and often via half-truths highlighted and driven by rumor or stereotypes) – and occasionally under certain church life or cultural circumstances – actually mistreat – queer folks. Such bad people simply cannot under any circumstances for any reason be allowed to investigate, study, and come to any alternative point of view. Let alone base that view on anything acceptable… Read more »

Cynthia Gilliatt
Cynthia Gilliatt
16 years ago

If a priest must ‘be like’ Jesus in gender, how about in the ability to speak Hebrew and Aramaic and [likely] Greek and to [probably] get along in Latin [the centurion]. How about being Jewish? How about being an itinerent teacher with no fixed home, no steady source of income …

Sounds like for some folks you don’t really have to BE like Jesus, you just have to … like Jesus. well I won’t be vulgar. You can figure out what rhymes.

Fr Mark
Fr Mark
16 years ago

Mark Wh: if you don’t think that a woman can be validly ordained then you have already parted company with the Anglican Church, except in certain parts of the world (now, I wonder where they could be…?). Perhaps Roman Catholicism would be a more honest option for you.

Malcolm+
16 years ago

“Surely I’m not the only person here who is sick unto death with the outrageous accusation that “liberal” Anglicans do not have faith in JESUS CHRIST.” No, Davis, you’re not. Of course, in order to justify their hatred, they need to lie about us. It is the way of haters. They lie about those they want to hate. They claim that “liberals” don’t believe in Jesus. They claim that homosexuals are all child molesters. They claim that Jews kidnap gentile children and kill them. Yes, yes, yes, I grant that theswe are things at three different scales of dishonezsty. But… Read more »

JCF
JCF
16 years ago

“Neither is ordained and neither can effect the sacrament! Both are equally invalid!”

And that, Mark Wh, is exactly THE POINT: Conservative (nay, Reactionary) Evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics (nay, Anglo-neo-Papists) BOTH consider each other “not ordained” and “equally invalid”.

Their marriage (for the sake of bashing the queers/queer-lovers) is the very *definition* of “…made in hell.”

david wh
david wh
16 years ago

Malcolm+ wrote: “They claim that “liberals” don’t believe in Jesus.”

I would certainly say that most liberal posters here seem to have an approach to their Christianity that is uncannily like that prevalent in western society at the moment (ie postmodern) – picking and choosing bits and using them as decoration on their id-centred philosophical framework.

Fr Mark
Fr Mark
16 years ago

David Wh: I don’t think it’s at all strange that the “liberals” have a mindset uncannily similar to that of the rest of society at the moment. What is stranger is that the “conservatives” are stuck in the mindset and moral assumptions of the 1950s – every bit as much a societal construct, just one that is now old-fashioned and out-dated, and not an appropriate basis for speaking to western European society in 2007.

Stephen Roberts
Stephen Roberts
16 years ago

david wh: “picking and choosing bits”

For pity’s sake this is dull. Usury! Remarriage after divorce! Is that not “picking and choosing bits” too?

People / the Church have reinterpreted scripture since Adam was a boy.

david wh
david wh
16 years ago

Fr Mark, ‘conservatives’ are stuck in the mindset and moral assumptions of Christ and the apostles – that was pretty unpopular then, and in the 1950s too – just for different reasons!

Ford Elms
Ford Elms
16 years ago

“If a priest must ‘be like’ Jesus in gender” There is an argument that what is important in the Incarnation is that God takes on our humanity, not specifically maleness. In that instance, to claim that only a man can be a priest because only a man can act ‘in persona Christi’ seems to suggest that it is His maleness that is important specifically. On the premise that what is not assumed is not redeemed, this ‘in persona christi’ argument suggests that women are not redeemed because God in Christ only assumed male humanity. Dodgy, that. “What is stranger is… Read more »

Ford Elms
Ford Elms
16 years ago

“Fr Mark, ‘conservatives’ are stuck in the mindset and moral assumptions of Christ and the apostles”

You might be able to make yourself believe that, but it’s pretty obvious to everyone else that this isn’t the case. The Emperor has no clothes.

Fr Mark
Fr Mark
16 years ago

David Wh: No, you are not stuck in the mindset of the time of the Apostles. I don’t know how well-informed you are about it, but it certainly didn’t resemble contemporary Evangelicalism.

JPM
JPM
16 years ago

>>>”Fr Mark, ‘conservatives’ are stuck in the mindset and moral assumptions of Christ and the apostles”

Ward Cleaver and Ozzie Nelson were apostles? Fascinating!

Malcolm+
16 years ago

D Wh: “liberal posters here seem to have an approach to their Christianity that is uncannily like that prevalent in western society at the moment (ie postmodern) – picking and choosing bits and using them as decoration on their id-centred philosophical framework” The pot doth lecture the kettle on its blackness. “conservatives” seem to have an approach to their Christianity that is uncannily like that prevalent in western society at the moment (ie postmodern) – picking and choosing bits and using them as decoration on their id-centred philosophical framework. As others have pointed out, the “conservatives” are hypocrites on usury,… Read more »

Göran Koch-Swahne
16 years ago

And aping the Anarchy in High Places.

Representing what is worst in the Culture they abhore and denigrate.

O well… life’s little ironies (from iron).

MDT
MDT
16 years ago

There have been a number of comments about sex and the priesthood (sex as in being male or female). The questions being debated on this thread are largely ones about the rationality of it all, a philosophical sort of approach. My own concern would be entirely about Tradition, following St. Vincent’s rule of “what has been believed everywhere, always and by all”. I’ve found that one to be difficult to get past, at least for me. If someone has a good way of cutting through this, I’d love to hear it; I have no reason to disbelieve in ordaining women… Read more »

Göran Koch-Swahne
16 years ago

MDT wrote: “”what has been believed everywhere, always and by all”. You do know this is a lie? And that when he wrote his Commonitorium pro catholicae fidei antiquitate & universitate Saint Vincent des Lérins was out to promote his teacher’s Johannes Cassianus’ novel semi-pelagianism? Which he wanted to place above Scripture, Church and Tradition? In the Pastoral letters the same phrase is found : “as in all the other Congregations of the Saints”. So every time someone comes up with something brand new, every time someone wants to change Scripture, Church and Tradition, they come up with this. Wee… Read more »

Erika Baker
Erika Baker
16 years ago

MDT
this post was a joke, wasn’t it.
Please explain how ANY tradition can ever develop if you don’t EVER allow its beginning.
And please explain, precisely, how you live a life exactly mirroring 1st century Christianity.

Ford Elms
Ford Elms
16 years ago

“what has been believed everywhere, always and by all”. By which definition, the “Catholic Faith” has never existed. And, as to adhering to what we have received, when did we ever do that? I mean, the Church most certainly has developed in the past 2000 years. I doubt Paul would recognize much, he might even be a bit peeved over what he saw. This argument is bad enough coming from Anglo-catholics who ought to have enough knowledge of Church history to know how things have changed. It is even worse coming from Evangelicals, whose beliefs and practices represent a far… Read more »

Göran Koch-Swahne
16 years ago

“For whatever biblical, theological or philosophical reason, the bulk of Christians throughout time and space have believed that priests are to be men.”

I would rather suggest that because of their Social structures they haven’t given it a thought.

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