Francis Young Election of the 12th Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich
Colin Coward Unadulterated Love The Pearl of Great Price
Archdruid Eileen The Beaker Folk of Husborne Crawley Archdruid Eileen’s Sermon on AI
Anon Surviving Church Who is my Neighbour?
I notice Francis Young omits the provision in the Act which threatens any Canon failing to appear in person at the election is liable to have all their goods confiscated. As Francis won’t be there, one can understand this omission!
This absurd charade was nearly done away with many years ago in a late night sitting of The Commons. Unfortunately Enoch Powell rambled on and it remains on the Statute Book.
The penalty for not electing the person nominated by the Crown is to be subject to the provisions of the statute of praemunire. However, any penalties imposed by that statute have been repealed, so that although the offence remains there is no penalty. Members of the College of Canons do not risk incarceration in the Tower. (Phew!)
Bishops have been elected by cathedral chapters (or in former times by the prior and convent in some of the cathedrals) since ancient times. It hurts no one to retain this historic election process, perhaps the oldest elections still taking place in England, albeit somewhat residual. It gives an ecclesiastical legitimacy over and against appointment by the Crown.
I think you’re succumbing to historical romance. It seems a redundant farce to me.
One person’s historical survival is another person’s redundant farce.
The only occasion since the Reformation which it was not a redundant farce was in the celebrated election to the see of Hereford in 1847. The then dean and antiquary, John Merewether, had been promised a bishopric by the dying William IV. Merewether had helped organise the tory party in elections for the borough of Hereford (both parliamentary elections and elections for the corporation), and reckoned this to be a credible justification for a bishopric. Merewether had hoped to be preferred to the see of St David’s in 1840, but was passed over by the whig Melbourne. Then, when Sir… Read more »
Thank you. Very interesting. Always impressed by your precise historical knowledge. I would not agree however that David Jenkins was heterodox. Unconventional for some admittedly, but not heretical. Much misrepresented, misunderstood and unfairly castigated by some.
How right you are.
His braying detractors were all too often those who had never read a word he had written.
He was vilified by tabloid newspapers rather than those with a mote of theology.
Absolutely. Although I worry about the kind of God some more conservative fellow Anglicans proclaim, I stop short of calling them heterodox. But anyone who calls one of my episcopal heroes (a small, select club!), and therefore by extension me, a cradle Anglican, heterodox, risks crossing a theological red line. It’s a dangerous term, best only used in extremis.
Yes, I used the word ‘heterodox’ deliberately instead of ‘heretical’, in the OED meaning of “not in accordance with established doctrines or opinions”: I certainly did not wish to charge Jenkins with heresy. However, even if he was deliberately, and perhaps maliciously, misquoted about the ‘conjuring trick with bones’ (as has often been noted) he did remark that “I wouldn’t put it past God to arrange a virgin birth if he wanted. But I don’t think he did.” Whether that makes a cleric heretical is not for me to judge. However, I would suggest that for a significant section of… Read more »
I interviewed Bp Jenkins for our theological college newspaper. Having heard he was pastoral, I asked what he said to the dying. He replied that he hadn’t visited someone who was dying since his Oxford college chaplain days (many years earlier). Then, he said, he’d visited the college porter who was dying. ‘We just don’t know, do we?,’ asked the porter. ‘No, we don’t know,’ replied Jenkins. As one of our tutors commented, ‘Janet didn’t have to give him much rope for him to hang himself.’
Thank you for that crushing reply.
Oh dear! I shouldn’t rely on obituaries, should I? Especially ones written by the likes of Denis Nineham who, when asked by Mollie Butler (Rab’s second wife) at Trinity if he believed in the resurrection, said “of course not – please pass the mustard” (as recounted by his son-in-law, also an expositor of St Mark and liberal fellow-traveller, John Drury).
I suppose even New Testament scholars deflect theological starters at dinner tables. Perhaps in more appropriate circumstances the answers might have been somewhat different. I am aware that Alpha uses the dinner table as place for evangelisation but not all of us are keen to indulge in religious small talk as stand-up entertainers or dinner party arguments under alcohol.
Given Janet’s reply my source for his pastoral touch came from clergy in the diocese
And Jenkins was strong on the doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity. I remember when he visited Lincoln he was asked how he would sum up the Gospel. He replied. “God is, he is, as he is in Jesus. So there is hope.” And then said with a smile. “As you can see, I am very firm on the Chalcedonian Definition. And yes by all accounts he was a good pastor, which is not always the case with academic bishops.
Though I should add that the preferment of the advanced broad churchman, Percival, was over the opposition of the queen who objected to his sympathy for disestablishment (Rosebery insisted upon it), and the preferment of Henson was made by Lloyd George over the objections of Davidson and Gore (who argued that Henson’s views about the Virgin Birth were highly suspect).
Merewether is of interest to church musicians. He was the brother-in-law of the young Samuel Sebastian Wesley in his first cathedral appointment as organist and chief of the Vicars Choral at Hereford. In fact Wesley eloped with the Dean’s sister and it proved to be a long-lasting and happy marriage. Merewether evidently was something of a martinet, trying to instil discipline in the Vicars Choral by imposing fines for non-attendance, a problem which apparently beset many English cathedrals in the 19th century. Later in his career, notably at Winchester, the same charge was laid against Wesley! ‘Hereford’, sung to “O… Read more »
Thank you, as ever. Merewether received the deanery of Hereford in 1832 chiefly because he had been curate at Hampton, Middlesex, in which capacity he had been instrumental in reconstructing St Mary’s and in building the chapel of ease of St John’s at Hampton Wick in 1829-30. Hampton took in Bushey, which meant that he had the pastoral care of the then duke and duchess of Clarence, who became king and queen in 1830; indeed, he became chaplain to princess Adelaide (as she then was) in 1824. Wesley had been Merewether’s organist at Hampton in 1831-32, and the dean arranged… Read more »
The Wilderness dates from 1833 and was Wesley’s break-out composition (despite being labelled as ‘not cathedral music’ and failing to win a Gresham medal), and was written in his first year at Hereford. But the sparse forces you describe were, surely, for Blessed be the God and Father, which was first sung on Easter Day the following year, with a handful of trebles and the aforementioned butler – presumably because clerical vicars choral were all away in parishes on such an important Sunday. Great as The Wilderness and Blessed be the God and Father are, my own great favourite, not… Read more »
Not only did the Dean’s butler supply the bass part, but SSW himself sang the tenor part from the organ loft.
Wasn’t the Act created so the dictator and bully Henry VIII could appoint whoever he wished?
Not really no. It simply codified in English law what had for hundreds of years been the actual case — that the monarch had made the nomination and the chapter or convent had elected the king’s nominee. The act also codified that there was no requirement in English law for input from the Bishop of Rome. There are instances of chapters or convents electing someone else through the Middle Ages, but not very many I think.
…and it is a complete waste of money as presumably the lawyers who attend have to be paid. So unnecessary.
Might there be a freedom of information request for someone to make to obtain the cost of this ceremony?
Personally, I’m torn between Shamus’ and Simon’s positions on this one.
I suppose it’s hopelessly irrelevant/superficial to call to mind Bob Cratchit’s ‘It’s only once a year, sir,’ as mitigation for his [Christmas] Day Off with pay, to which Scrooge responds that’s it’s a poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket every twenty-fifth of December?
‘It’s only once every five or ten years, sir’ (and it does make us members of Colleges of Canons feel slightly more involved in the machinery of Church and State).
So, with whom do we identify, Cratchit or Scrooge? NB this isn’t meant as an entirely robust and critically informed contribution to the debate…
I must share a story that the Founder of my former Monastic Community at Roslin, the late Father Roland Walls recounted to me and others. Father Roland was a Guest of the late Archbishop Robert Runcie and old friend of his and Father Roland had been invited to preach at the Consecration of Bishop Eric Devenport as Bishop of Dunwich and Bishop Keith Arnold as the First Bishop of Warwick, this Consecration took place in St Paul’s Cathedral in the Autumn of 1980. Archbishop Runcie took Father Roland with him on the Eve of this Consecration as his Guest to… Read more »
And yet the process of capitular election and subsequent confirmation, was, I think, part of the argument that the Church of England had maintained the apostolic succession, providing legal documentary evidence of each stage of the proceedings. Very far from Erastianism.
One might so hope…
Regarding an episcopal election, this is one of those instances where the Church of England looks very odd to the majority of the Anglican Communion.
This is because no other churches of the Anglican Communion have 13th century (and earlier) inheritances imbedded in their history. Conge d’elire etc. Is your note more in the direction of asking why the CofE remains established (where this inheritance is legally relevant) given the different character of other churches of the communion? Or, how this affects its relationship with other churches of the Communion, the entirety of which are not established by law. For which it has served as some kind of “mother church.” I ask because it gets at the matter of catholicity (in the general sense) as… Read more »
And by the way, this is a subset of “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life” for its own sake and within the nexus of proclaimed faith.
Chemin Neuf in France, for example, grounds all ecumenical progress in 1) the work of the Holy Spirit and 2) the Communion of Saints as our precursors in The Holy Spirit’s prevenient work for His Body through time.
Sorry, I wasn’t making a theological observation, and to be quite honest, I don’t understand most of your question. I’m not proud of that, I just don’t.
I was simply saying that to the rest of us, the word ‘election’ means something completely different. Not right, or wrong – just odd.
As I said, I don’t understand large parts of your question, but if thew point you’re making is that the thing that anchors the entire Anglican Communion in the communion of saints and catholicity is the structure of establishment and the English crown—well, I can’t make sense of that.
I was simply pointing out that in the earliest baptismal confession preserved in the Apostle’s Creed, Christians profess to believe in the communion of saints. I belong to a church that isn’t my own local congregation only but stretches through time, as critical to the identity of what it means to be a Christian. The Church of England’s 13th century canon law is part of that history and identity. As is the calendar of saints, their prayers, writings, homilies, healings, public witness to Christ. Their lives of sanctity upon whose shoulders we stand in Him. I fear that to lose… Read more »
So a Catholic in South Korea or a Lutheran in Tanzania or an Anglican in Papua New Guinea is missing something fundamental in their Christian identity because their churches were never established by law? I’m with Tim here.
You are asking me this?
https://www.baylorpress.com/9781481312790/convergences/
I think the majority of church going members of the Church of England see themselves belonging to a Church which has continuity with the Church begun here in Canterbury ( where I live), with the arrival of St Augustine and don’t see their church as a completely new creation of the Reformation. Obviously from a Roman Catholic perspective this is controverted but the Revised Catechism describes the C of E as the ancient Church of this land, catholic and reformed.It further declared it proclaims and holds fast the doctrine and ministry of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. I… Read more »
Here in the north I’ve never heard anyone speak of continuity with the church begun by St Augustine of Canterbury. Canterbury practices didn’t arrive here until after the Synod of Whitby. We look to Aidan, Cuthbert, Cedd, Chad, and of course Hild.
Or perhaps a little earlier when the dreaded St Wilfrid turned up at Ripon?
Wilfrid was later than Aidan, Cedd, and Chad.
It’s true Wilfrid brought Canterbury traditions, but they weren’t widely accepted until the Synod of Whitby decided to follow Rome rather than Ireland.
Apologies. I meant Wilfrid’s arrival at Ripon preceded the Synod. Not intended to cast a slur on the primacy of Aidan in the North (or at least his primacy post the Saxon Advent — of course we know Christianity was in these islands before either Augustine or Aidan)
Some of us here in the south look to Queen Bertha.
All well and good as an internal matter in Great Britain. FWIW, I am not talking about that (significant though it may be). Someone like Bede–to choose one significant figure among myriad others–did not think of the saints of the church catholic as British chiefly or only. The idea would have puzzled him. Just for avoidance of doubt, I am not talking about catholicity through time viz., the communion of saints, as something to which Catholic Christians in Britain appealed (allegedly) in the manner you seem to do that. I am talking about an Etienne Harding, for example, who crossed… Read more »
Of course that’s why the dominant and rising evangelical brand of Cof E churches in England seem to have no Anglican heritage whatsoever. They make common cause with Anglicans in some parts of the communion over one irrelevant topic. They claim orthodoxy but have little knowledge of what Orthodoxy really focosses on. It is something of a cuckoo in the Anglican nest.
The unanswered question is where a genuinely Anglican revival, in the spirit of John Donne et al might come from.
I do not purport to understand what you call the “rising evangelical brand of CofE churches” with which I have no affinity. They are your confreres, not mine. I agree the CofE is a confusing welter of entities held together due to a unique polity in the provinces of the Anglican Communion.
Christopher I don’t think the position of the CofE vis a vis the Anglican Communion does anything to hold it together. Conservatives use *some* aspects of the Anglican Communion as a reason to suppress any development in the war about human sexuality. Their chief allegiance to the CofE seems to be that it’s a good boat to fish from. As I say, they are a cuckoo in the nest of what the CofE has been for hundreds of years – as you identify quite clearly in your comments.
As you wish. It is not a concern of mine. I am not within the confusing welter of the established reality that is the CofE. Fishing boat of anglers at obvious incoherent odds.
You are referring to the conservative wing of the evangelical tradition – which I agree has been dominant. But please do not stick the label ‘they’ across the whole diverse and evolving tradition. One of the most consistently stimulating courses I taught at an evangelical theological college was on Anglican history.
Yes that’s very fair comment David and I agree with what you say.
But I am concerned at where the John Donne’s of the future might be in a CofE that is dominated by conservative evangelicals who have little interest in that rich part of our history.
I was responding to Perry’s observation that ‘the majority of church going members of the Church of England see themselves belonging to a Church which has continuity with the Church begun here in Canterbury ( where I live), with the arrival of St Augustine’.
Many of us see ourselves belonging to a church which has continuity with the earliest Christians and missionaries from our own area, not with St Augustine of Canterbury. But of course they were all part of the church catholic and the communion of saints. No one is disputing that.
I guess my question was why, if they saw themselves seamlessly as part of the one Catholic Church, one would then see them as distinctive in some different sense?
I didn’t say seamlessly a part of. The Irish church, from which Christianity spread to Scotland and northern England, had its own distinctive practices. So much so that after the Synod of Whitby, many of the monks of Lindisfarne went back to Ireland rather than adapt.
Can’t follow that local scottish idea, as they didn’t. My hunch is that after the age of Henry 8th, and then following the age of apologists and preachers like Donne, trying to understand and promote a ‘reformed catholic identity’ (trying to be generous here; Donne disagreed with Andrews); move on several centuries, given the formal split with the Catholic Church; some people in the British Isles sought to give to them a prominence as distinctive they themselves would have queried.
Sorry. I am repeating myself here.
If there was no difference between Irish and Roman Christianity, why have a Synod at Whitby, to decide whether to follow Roman practices or Irish ones?
If this calendar disagreement is meant to bear the weight of some unique distinctiveness, celtic vs roman, I think you are grasping at straws. We had a similar disagreement at Nicaea. The East and West had different calculations.
Most modern scholars speak of the idea of distinctiveness as overstated historically, and as part of a post-reformation protestant invention. Kirk as anti-episcopal and anti-catholic, etc.
I agree that the distinctiveness has sometimes been overstated, but that doesn’t mean there were no differences. Would the Lindisfarne monks have gone back to Ireland solely because they didn’t want to change the date they celebrated Easter? The differences may have been cultural as much as theological of course – the religious art of Ireland and Lindisfarne were very distinctive and suggest an equally distinctive culture. Women had a more powerful role too; Hild presided over a double monastery of men and women, and trained several bishops. As far as I know that was not happening in Rome, though… Read more »
I’m just not sure of the point of all this. Is it, that after the break with Rome via Henry 8th, it has been thought useful to claim an indigenous “celtic” legacy, so as to appear to have your own saints and distinctivenesses, vis-a-vis Rome? I think important historical figures within Britain would be surprised at this. as they would have thought of themselves far closer to the Catholic Church in their day, than the protestant body that emerged in the 16th century. As noted by others, this celtic vs roman reification is of recent vintage. Would a Hild alive… Read more »
Surely it is possible for people to see themselves “seamlessly as part of the one Catholic Church”, and yet still have different approaches to theology or spirituality based on their life experience or geographical context. The last four Popes, for example, were all seamlessly part of the same church, yet they had very different approaches to their task, and endless ink has been expended describing how their different approaches can be understood by studying their upbringing, education and church career. Similarly the South American liberation theologians would have seen themselves as fully part of the Catholic Church, and were in… Read more »
Thank you Simon, the tis exactly what I’m trying to say.
It’s my pleasure to give you some support Janet. You and me against the Patriarchy.
it seems to me that you have an entirely rational desire to follow an interest in this area of spirituality, which has personal resonance for you as both a woman and a northerner.
Why this seems to offend Anglican Priest I will leave it to others to reflect on.
I am not offended! I am bemused and confused.
I am pleased to hear you are not offended. It’s just that you pushed back so strongly against Janet Fife’s Celtic comments that I did begin to wonder what was going on.
After all, you are very fond of Provence (as you have mentioned before). And you say below that “Provence is rightly proud of its distinctive Catholic heritage”.
Surely Janet and I can say, similarly, that Britain is equally proud of it’s distinctive Catholic heritage.
I am sure you are! The difference is, of course, that you are in the Church of England, in a church where this heritage was cast off by Henry VIII. Unless I don’t understand, that catholic heritage was severed. Would those you take pride in confess to being in your present church? No. That is what I don’t understand. Offended? I wonder why you might think that. Proud of a distinctive Catholic heritage that does not belong to your protestant ecclesial reality as it has declared itself. It just seems to be antiquarianism without any organic ecclesial reality. You might… Read more »
My understanding is that what Henry VIII did was to abolish any jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome in England. He very specifically did not change the liturgy or other practices of the Church. Dissolution of the monasteries had already begun with papal approval before the break with Rome. Reform in a more protestant direction was begun under his son Edward VI and his advisers. And I think there continued to be those with a more “high church” understanding of the English Church through the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, and on into the 19th. All this is — like… Read more »
Thank you, but I would add the caveats that there were some notable doctrinal shifts during the 1530s, quite apart from the reforms to the jurisdiction: (i) the decline of masses for the dead and the rejection (at least on the part of Cranmer by 1536) of purgatory; (ii) the ‘evangelical’ Bishops’ Books of 1537-38 (the second edition of which placed a greater degree of emphasis upon justification by faith and predestination); (iii) the authorisation of an English Bible in 1537 (and again in 1540); (iv) the decline of the medieval concept of transubstantiation (despite still cleaving to the notion… Read more »
And, of course, there were Catholics in the realm. Hence, in time, the Popish Recusant Act and the efforts of James I to eliminate them. James I was not a “reformed catholic” but a Protestant.
All these things you know better than I.
Catholic heritage was not cast off by Henry VIII, and certainly not by the whole country. That is what we’ve been saying. The C of E is both Catholic and Reformed (not Protestant) as the prayer book says. And we see ourselves as standing in continuity with those who came before us. I’m surprised you don’t understand that, since you call yourself Anglican Priest.
This thread has gone several different directions, and has evolved. First it was Celtic good, Rome bad. That idea was put to the test. Then it was OK, Celtic is Catholic, but still distinctive and “ours” in some special way. When it was pointed out that the Celtic saints did not think of themselves in this way, the question arises: where did this idea come from? My speculation was that after the Protestant Church of England was in place, there was a struggle to understand its catholic heritage. That persists — just what is the Communion of Saints that we… Read more »
I have been quite careful in this thread not to use the term ‘Celtic’. I have referred instead to the practices of the Irish church, which in some respects differed from those of the Roman church. I think the term ‘Roman’ caused some confusion, which is why eventually I suggested ‘Italian’. And throughout I asserted that of course the Irish Christians and those who followed their traditions thought of themselves as part of the Church catholic. Nor have I been guilty of such a gross oversimplification as to suggest ‘Rome bad, Celtic good’. As with all human endeavours, both had… Read more »
James I was a Protestant. He got passed the Popish Recusant Act, making Catholicism illegal. He was not Catholic and Reformed. He was the head of the Church of England and tried to unite Scotland and Ireland as Protestant countries. The King James Bible was the official vernacular Bible vis-a-vis the Vulgate and what would be the Douay-Rhiems. It was in this period that English Catholics at Oxford were forced to decamp to France (Douai). Donne’s parents were Catholics. Then we have Charles I (executed as a Catholic). Cromwell (Puritan). Charles II and the Treaty of Dover (a secret meeting… Read more »
Do you have any evidence for asserting that “Charles I [was] executed as a Catholic”? I thought it was well understood that he died a member of the Church of England? Or are you simply saying he had a “Catholic” understanding of the CofE?
“His religious policies, coupled with his marriage to a Roman Catholic, generated antipathy and mistrust from religious groups such as the English Puritans and Scottish Covenanters, who thought his views too Catholic.”
Catholic not “Catholic.”
“The Treaty of Dover, signed in 1670, was a secret agreement between King Charles II of England and King Louis XIV of France. The treaty included a clause where Charles II promised to convert to Catholicism and publicly declare his conversion at a later date, in exchange for financial subsidies and military support from France. The treaty also stipulated a joint attack on the Dutch Republic, aiming to dismantle the Dutch Republic as a colonial power.” Catholicism, not “Catholicism.” Charles and Louis le Grand were first cousins. Louis agreed to pay him a secret pension of 230,000 Pounds when his conversion was… Read more »
Yes, the story of Charles II is well-known. I remember learning it in school history half a century ago. My comment was about your use of the word “Catholic” in reference to Charles I — and of course my quotes are there because I am quoting your use of the word, not because I am scared of the word or using it in some other sense. In this latest comment you clearly use the word “Catholic” to refer to those in communion with Rome. I was trying to clarify whether or not that was your meaning in the comment about… Read more »
The larger point of my comment is that Catholic means having to do with the Catholic Church. A real entity. One that existed in Britain before and after the days of Henry VIII and Thomas Cranmer. Charles I was married to a Catholic. He was suspected of harboring Catholic affections. His son did indeed harbor these, as the first cousin of Louis XIV. This is a different thing to speaking as if Anglicanism in the CofE didn’t claim to be Protestant. James I did not think it was ‘catholic and reformed.’ James didn’t oppose “Catholicism” and Charles I wasn’t attracted… Read more »
“Anglicans are expert at digging around in the attic of history so as to find precedence for just about anything.” Maybe my report will become a meme. lol. There is a part B to that line, or at least to the bishop who delivered it. I was present at a talk he was giving on the then state of the ARCIC question. The priest sitting next to me, a female priest as it happened, turned to me and said: ” He [said bishop] is one of our great speakers. Unfortunately he is not one of our great listeners.”
Maybe this has been done already on this thread; but if not, perhaps interlocutors could define from the perspective of history what they mean by ‘Catholic’? Although it may end up increasing the thread count so to speak. I assume everyone here has or has read Diarmaid MacCulloch’s, The Reformation. So I will not enter a long quote from his Introduction, just the first three lines: “Who or what is a Catholic? This Greek word has become one of the chief battlegrounds in western Latin Christianity, for it is used in different ways that outside observers of Christian foibles find… Read more »
The questions remains. Would these historical figures see themselves as more aligned with present ecclesial realities in the CofE or in the Church Catholic? If the latter, what is this exercise about? Antiquarianism?
You are not in the church of “celticism.” You belong to a church whose historical creator (of the breach with Rome) eliminated the life of religious in his realm, and became the Head of the Church of England.
I don’t see the point in speculating what historical figures from the past might think of the church today, any more than wondering what King Oswald would have made of the Windsors and today’s monarchy. We are products of the past, but that doesn’t mean the past would understand us.
I think you are misunderstanding me. I have never said that the Irish-influenced British Christians did not see themselves as part of the Church catholic – to the contrary I said they did. Nor have I ever said or implied a comparison to protestants or the Kirk. They were catholic Christians who preferred the customs of Irish catholic Christians to the customs of southern British Christians which were closer to the way things were done in Rome. Perhaps it would be clearer if I said ‘Italian’ rather than ‘Roman’? Nor do I see why you think it strange that people… Read more »
Thanks for this comment. With regard to your 2nd line I’d like to flog again the book I’ve been referencing by Timothy Joyce OSB. He would be of the same mind as you with regard to the past. His closing chapter tilted, Contemporary Vision, talks about Celtic spirituality as a viable spirituality for the church of today. He notes the ” preservation of some of this [Celtic] spirituality in the people, their language, their cultural ways of poetry and music, and in the very land itself.” These are are markers that O’Donohue points to as well. It is interesting that… Read more »
last line should read –so ably.
If the 5th and 6th centuries John Cassian and Caesarius of Arles established double monasteries in the Midi, and under the latter’s rule the abbess was to be governor. The English double communities were a Gallic import (though the Gallic custom was influenced greatly by Columbanus). Chelles, near Paris (founded by Balthild, the East Anglian queen of Clovis II), was arguably a model for Whitby. Double communities were banned at the Second Council of Nicaea (787), but they survived in some parts of France and Germany, and there is the famous (specifically English) example of the Gilbertine Order after 1130,… Read more »
What that suggests to me is a similarity of Gallic and Celtic culture in these early centuries, not necessarily a uniformity of Gallic, Celtic and Roman culture. Celtic and Gallic cultures were open to strong female leadership in secular and religious contexts. Patriarchy was imposed here later than it arrived in Rome
Certainly a few hundred years earlier (evidence from Caesar’s Gallic Wars for example) the culture of Northern France and Britain was very closely linked, and these things change slowly
Cassian and Cassionites (pre Benedict) left eastern Europe and came to Provence. The story of the “three Mary’s” is foundational to Christianity’s arrival in Gaul. I take groups up the chemin des rois to see the grotto of Mary Madelene, south of St-Maximin-Sainte-Baume (holy cave in Provencal). One of the reasons these foundational stories seem credible is that Cassian had no reason to visit this cave, unless the tradition weren’t already firmly fixed. He also visited the Abbey found by St Honorat on the island presently off the coast of Cannes (where I also take pilgrims). We are told that… Read more »
This is interesting data, thank you. But one must bear in mind that going back even to the time before Christ, Provence was the region bordering the Mediterranean port of Marseilles, and was heavily influenced by Roman culture. In fact the name Provence, etymologically, derives from “Provincia Romana“, the name given to that region in Roman times.
In those early centuries the Roman influenced culture in Provence was very different to the culture in middle and northern France, and in Britain.
Funny you say that. I have a very different sense of the cultural situation in Provence, where my wife and I have spent a good deal of time, and where I take pilgrims (St Honorat, Segries/Moustiers, Senanque). A deep sense that the boat conveying the three Mary’s, Lazarus, Sarah “without sail or rudder” landed not in Rome, but in the Camargue. The chemin des rois climbing to Sainte-Baume was trodden by Saint Louis and numerous French Kings. It rivaled the routes to Rome and to Santiago in the Middle Ages. St Honoratus was from northern Gaul and he arrived at… Read more »
PS–I was at Vespers at St-Benoit-sur-Loire in the Loiret in June. (An hour from our home in France, south of Paris). You may visit the crypt and find relics of Benedict of Nursia. Naturally, the monks at Monte Cassino dispute this!
Thank you, Froghole.
The French monastics did have a profound influence on developments in Britain; Martin of Tours and Germain particularly. In fact my last parish had a Saxon foundation church dedicated to St Germain. Hild was said to have visited there when it was a monastic cell.
Your observation is fair enough Janet ( living in Whitby). But such was the importance of Augustine’s mission that Archbishops of Canterbury see themselves in a succession from him.We await the 106 th. But the important point I was trying to make was that we in the Church of England don’t see their Church as the creation of Henry VIII but as in a continuity from the medieval church albeit reformed at the Reformation And if we see ourselves as a Reformed Catholic Church (;the term is often used). What does that mean now, especially after the Second Vatican Council?… Read more »
Perry, you’re right that most of us see ourselves in continuity with Christians from the earliest times of Christianity in these isles.
Of course, those of us in the northern province relate more to the Archbishop of York than to the Archbishop of Canterbury, but I know that, as you say, Archbishops of Canterbury see themselves as successors of Augustine.
Immodestly it may appear, but this is the topic of the book I referenced above.
https://www.baylorpress.com/9781481312790/convergences/
I have a section on Vatican II toward the end. And a chapter on the convergences between Ratzinger/Benedict and BS Childs (and also Congar, du Lubac, and Paul Beauchamp).
An essay for the Radner FS (2025) also covers ecclesial division and ecumenical horizons.
If interested.
‘Celtic vs Roman’ remains – in the words of the late Patrick Wormald – “maddeningly eradicable from the minds of students”. Attending a RC ordination, I was struck by the inclusion of St Piran, a Cornish saint, in the Litany of the Saints. The ordinand was from ‘down West’, and this fittingly fused the particular and the catholic. At the Reformation we threw out the Litany of the Saints, with the (unforseen?) consequence that most Anglicans have come to view the saints primarily as long-dead exemplars to be followed, to the neglect of the saints as our ‘lively’ partners in… Read more »
So moving when the Cardinals sing the litany of the saints as they process into the Sistine Chapel to elect a new Pope. One of my most memorable and moving ecumenical moments was when the Catholic priest asked me (Anglican priest) to read the litany of the saints at a RC baptism.
Perhaps Anglicans might us the Litany of the Saints saying “pray with us” as the response?
Good Anglican compromise, Perry (or have those days gone?). As is “join in our prayer”, which I’ve heard sung in a middle-to-catholic parish church – and without anyone swooning, walking out, or threatening to write to the bishop in green ink.
I used the litany of the saints in the form “with us” at the Easter vigil procession to the Font and no one batted an eyelid and in a church I would describe as ” sunny side of middle”. When I had a parish I used to ask for names of particular saints people wished to include for personal or other reasons. It proved very popular. My own liturgical formation at college was mostly historical. When I was an Anglican student in a Roman Catholic context I encountered a thing called “Pastoral Liturgy” which frankly I found more helpful when… Read more »
We read the Te Deum at Morning Prayer this morning. What a glorious canticle reinforcing just these truths.
I agree with your position.
Thank you for mentioning Patrick Wormald – my tutor. A very brilliant but troubled person, not least in his relationship with alcohol, and very mercurial (though capable of great charm). Latterly living alone (the late Jenny Wormald was as great a scholar as he was). After returning from the famous annual conference of medievalists at Kalamazoo he fell off the wagon for the last time after being offered complementary drinks on the return flight. He was found at home some time after he had died. A great waste, though at least much of the materials for the second volume of… Read more »
Many thanks for this. I only know Patrick Wormald vicariously – mainly through James Campbell’s The Anglo-Saxons. I understand he did much to overturn the prevailing orthodoxy that the Anglo-Saxons were, at best, uncouth; at worst, barbarians (I would have love to imagine a conversation between him and Seamus Heaney!).
As for Nicholas Orme, I agree. Knowledgeable as he is accessible. Perhaps he’s a victim of the tired old notion of the SW Peninsula being something of a backwater.
And for good measure. Patrick was the son of Rev Brian Wormold Dean of Peterhouse who wrote very ably on Clarendon ( but sadly published very little). Brian converted to Roman Catholicism in 1955.He lived into his 80’s but it was said he never recovered form Patrick’s death.
Many thanks to you and to Mr Sheath. Mention of James Campbell is salutary, for Campbell was, in think the pre-eminent Anglo-Saxonist of modern times. He was an essayist like, say, Trevor-Roper, but his essays were always breaking new ground, and his main achievement was to stress the sophistication of Anglo-Saxon government and military institutions: much of the English state of today was built upon the foundations established by the Anglo-Saxons, and most especially in the tenth century. Wormald had two intellectual godfathers: Michael Wallace-Hadrill (of CCC), and Campbell at Worcester. To see Campbell and Wormald together was a treat:… Read more »
Wormald: “From the days of George Buchanon, supplying the initial propaganda for the makers of the Scottish Kirk, until a startlingly recent date, there was warrant for an anti-Roman, anti-episcopal and, in the nineteenth century, anti-establishment stance in the Columban or “Celtic” Church. … The idea that there was a “Celtic Church” in something of a post-Reformation sense is still maddeningly ineradicable from the minds of students.”
Thank you for that! The reference to Buchanan would surely have come from Jenny as one of the leading historians of early modern Scotland, and from her (and, therefore, his) reading of Ian Macfarlane’s superlative 1981 biography (Macfarlane held the Buchanan chair at St Andrews). Indeed, I recall being quizzed on my knowledge of Buchanan in one of my first term tutorials. Thinking Anglicans may wish to know that Buchanan did more than any other single person to make James VI & I what he became (saving perhaps Mar and Morton in the political sphere), and – along with his… Read more »
Thank you to Froghole, Anglican Priest, and others, and to Thinking Anglicans for enabling this fascinating thread. A joy to encounter James Campbell, William Thomas, and the others in the Cloud of Witnesses to encourage us in our pilgrimage and to shed light on the waste of our wraths and sorrows.
Many thanks, Dr Doll. I suspect that you will be aware of Campbell’s 1975 survey of the development of Norwich, which is excellent and profoundly erudite, as might be expected. He was also the go-to person for reviewing works on the history of the city. He grew up in Lothingland and attended Lowestoft GS – he was viscerally hostile towards the boundary changes of 1974 (as he expressed to me in pungent terms), so regarded himself as a Suffolk man, but regarded Norwich as the local metropolis, and regarded his work on the city as an act of local piety… Read more »
https://ojs.st-andrews.ac.uk/index.php/TIS/article/view/965/774
Might be of interest.
Thank you, Froghole, that series is new to me.
Campbell was indeed hostile to the boundary changes of 1974 declaring in a lecture the verse from Deuteronomy ” Cursed be he that removeth his neighbours landmark” !
Thank you for a fond memory of my professorial alma mater at St Mary’s College (1998-2006). Scottish History has remained important there. I recall walking into chapel behind the esteemed historian whose son has now followed him, at Harvard. James K. Cameron. My (Glasgow) colleague Mark Elliot wrote the tribute for him at the James K. Cameron symposium Try research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk
The romanticised view of the ‘Celtic Church’ should be approached with a similar level of caution that we learnt to apply to Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Both claim, or have claimed, a special place in English, or British, consciousness; yet wilted under exposure to rigourous scholarship.
It helps to make a distinction between Celtic ‘Church’ and Celtic Spirituality. Institutions may successfully suppress but cannot necessarily repress a cultural heritage. The notion of a Celtic spirituality can be successfully tested on what O’Dononhue and others knowledgeable on the subject advance. It based on (1) a particular geography with a landscape that is formative of people (2) legends and myths, some with pre-Christian origins, that come from that place (3) A language e.g. Irish or Scottish Gaelic. Language is especially significant in any cultural manifestation. O’Donohue’s book Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom is filled with examples.… Read more »
With respect to your closing paragraph, I suggest it can be either. But, on the Gamelian principal, if it is of God it should endure.
Concerning the Anglo-Catholic revival, in the work of Peter Nockles, John Walsh, and others there is abundant evidence of a pre-Tractarian High Church, strongly Catholic tradition with links to Jansenist and Gallican movements among RCs. Its sense of continuity was stronger with the ‘Primitive Church’ (Patristic) but it never denied its connection to the mediaeval church. The retention of cathedral establishments enabled the continuance of monastic traditions of worship, learning, and hospitality. The Tractarians (so often from Evangelical backgrounds) tended to want to dismiss the church of their fathers on a ‘They must decrease that we might increase’ basis, but… Read more »
Thanks to you and Allan both for the replies. To answer my own question ( which I deliberately did not do in my comment) I certainly identify as ‘Anglo-Catholic’. Celtic spirituality dovetails quite nicely. However my question was rhetorical. It was aimed at getting at underlying issues of authenticity with regard to recovered or revitalized traditions. I think most of us are aware ( and it is hinted at in this thread) of the controversy over the very notion of Celt and hence the authenticity of Celtic spirituality or a Celtic church. Anglican claims for catholicity have been received variously.… Read more »
“Anglicans are expert at digging around in the attic of history so as to find precedence for just about anything.” There is a true statement. One of the most damaging things of the reformation was the damage it did to an organic connection to a rich catholic past, able to accommodate the spiritual and intellectual charisms of folk as different as St Honorat, Cassian, Benedict, Harding, Bernhard, Dominic, Patrick, Ignatius (on his feast day today) and the list goes on. “Digging around in the attic of history” is one fallout.Another is the severing of Scripture from its rich history of… Read more »
Indeed, it is a statement with a very wide application to all theological orientations. I think Timothy Joyce would agree with your 2nd para.. See if interested his chapter, The Darkest Hour, the subsection, The Protestant Reformation in the book referenced previously. He notes the unique problems the reformation created for the Church and Society in Ireland most notably under Elizabeth I and following, sowing seeds for significant conflict going forward.
Thank you, Ruairidh. Was it at the time of the 1998 Lambeth Conference that the RC church historian Adrian Hastings wrote that if the RC Church should happen to disappear overnight, the Anglican Communion would be in a position to step in as a universal church? The burden and the opportunity of Anglican diversity.
I had a prof at uni back in 1972, an Irish Dominican, Doctoral degree from the Angelicum, who voiced the opinion that “if the Anglican and R.C. churches ever achieved full communion you would see them [Anglicans] coming over in droves [to the Roman rite] because it is so close to their [ Anglican] spirituality.” That was in the heady days following close upon Vatican II. What is interesting is that in the last number of years my Anglican diocese here has experienced an influx of Roman Catholics both lay and ordained. We have had former R.C. priests, and former… Read more »
As this whole thread reminds us, it is best to take the longer view. Affinities reveal themselves over time; the communion of saints works on us, prays for us that we may ultimately accept our Lord’s will that we should be one.
Thank you, Froghole, for spotting and correcting my clumsy typo; ‘ineradicable’ for ‘eradicable’.
In fact it was Anglican Priest who corrected it. Apologies to you both. It’s been a busy day.
Re: “…neglect of the saints as our ‘lively’ partners in prayer.” In the John O’Donohue interview I linked back on the July 9th thread, towards the end, he talks about the dead being all around us, our neighbours who are are helpers and give us sustenance and help, we don’t just pray for them but to them. Where does the soul go? Nowhere, the dead are in the here and now. That part of the conversation is at about the 44:33 minute mark.
One of the glories of TA is in introducing you to material, ideas and such like that otherwise would have passed you by. So many thanks, Ruairidh and TA, for that link of a few weeks back. That and John O’Donohue’s luminous and lovely poem, For Grief:
And you will have learned/To wean your eyes/From that gap in the air/And be able to enter the hearth/In your soul where your loved one/Has awaited your return/All the time.
Hello Allan, I have just received permission from his estate to use these lines in my book Le Grand Voyage. He helped me write “The Love that Grief Is.” Part Three of that work.
His Blessings book is a treasure and I highly recommend it.
My mother died when I was two, naturally denying me the rituals of farewell. As was not unknown at the time, her memory was quietly removed from our family history. Seven decades on, this and more recent losses can still throw me “back onto the black tide of loss” (O’Donovan). After my father’s death, I came across letters of condolence he’d received; no doubt sincere in their choice of proof-texts to support the belief that God is there to fill the void with compensations. Thank God, then, for the Communion of Saints, for poets such as John O’Donovan alongside us… Read more »
Dear Allan, I wish you all healing. One problem with typical accounts of loss and grief is the idea of closure or ‘getting over’ someone. O’Donohue’s poem tracks perfectly with complicated grief therapy when it speaks instead of integration. “The hearth in the soul where the loved one ha awaited your return” — here his poem and such therapy rhyme. When I lost my wife I was struck at how the French handled grief so much better than others in my experience. There was no stoicism or wisdom. Just pure lamentation. This joins up with the Communion of Saints for… Read more »
Heartfelt thanks for this, Christopher. Heaven deliver us from ‘closure’, ‘getting over’ and other banalities which serve only to oppress the bereaved.
I’m not surprised the French handle it better than on this side of the Channel. Common Worship sought to recover a pre-Reformation pattern of rituals surrounding death, but to little avail. The austere Protestant funeral has largely given way to the para-liturgical designer funeral. Those parish clergy who swim against the tide – on theological and therapeutic grounds – are surely on the side of the saints.
Thanks Rory very much for that link and Allan for the poem. What a saintly man John O’Donahue was. And how insightful and inspiring. He has much to say to the depressing wars the world is engaged in, and not least to the war in the Anglican Communion. He and Richard Rohr.
Indeed. I’d like to mention again a book I referenced in an earlier thread. ( dets below) by Timothy Joyce, OSB. As an Irish- American R.C. monk, he makes the point that what we see as ‘tradition’ is often relatively recent and at odds with much earlier sensibilities. Speaking of his own church prior to Vatican II, the Church of Vatican One, in a chapter titled, The Darkest Hour, he writes: ” It was characterized by a non-scriptural, non liturgical, non-mystical point of view. It was rather pietistic in its prayer forms, moralistic in its ethical approaches, legalistic in its… Read more »
Shortly after Vatican II closed, another Benedictine, Bishop Christopher Butler, described the RC Church before John XXIII as “the best of all possible religions, and everything in it an intellectual scandal.”
lol. I have not heard about that quote before. lol. I remember some conservative guys at uni in my phil and theology courses who wanted to go onto seminary. They were known as the ‘god squad’ –a riff on the old TV show The Mod Squad. One of them once said to me that “John 23rd let a breath of fresh air into the church; but when the poor man died someone forgot to close the window.” A lot of the enthusiasm for the revival of the Latin Mass is really a cover for undermining Vatican II. Pope Francis seems… Read more »
What is now the English Church has been going for something like 1700 years. Of course it looks odd to more recent organisations. So what?
Á bas les parvenus!
??? Really? Upstarts?
Newcomers….less baggage though
New kid on the block then?
Having a form of godliness, but denying its power?
As a former Chapter Clerk who had to organise the College of Canons meeting to elect a bishop, I can tell you it cost very little. We offered the College breakfast. The Diocesan Registrar attends but their costs are covered by their retainer – there’s no fee. It was a glorious occasion and great fun. Who doesn’t want to be declared a ‘contumacious vassal’. It was pageantry and history….definitely an expression of Anglicanism, whatever you make of that.
That “Who is my Neighbour?” article on Surviving Church is great. In my previous life, I wrote policy and procedure documents, and these days one of my jobs is teaching about it. I point out that good documents do not require interpretation, and in particular you should never write a document thinking “this isn’t quite right, but everyone knows what it means”. Just defining the people to whom a policy applies, in such a way that you don’t accidentally leave some people out or (almost as bad) include random bystanders, is hard. “Oh, everyone knows who we mean” is never… Read more »
I agree it’s a great article but it is describing a grim situation which sums up the utterly parlous state of much of diocesan safeguarding. It describes an impossible procedure which has been written, probably by committee, to try to codify all risks away and in the process has wrung out all vestiges of positive relationships and care to ensure that no one higher up the tree can be blamed for anything. It also gives real safeguarding a bad name .
The phrase ‘Lead by donkeys’ springs to mind – unless the Archruid Eileen thinks it was produced by AI
It does make me wonder who wrote it all and how many person days effort it took in total. Was there not 90% which could simply be cut and pasted from equivalent secular documents?
I have been arguing against the concept of ‘vulnerable adults’ ever since I started posting on TA.
I can’t recall your precise argument, but I too think it’s a problematic phrase. Everyone is, at times, vulnerable: when we are bereaved, or ill, or stressed, or drunk, or any number of other reasons. The phrase has lost all meaning when it potentially includes, at various times, everyone. If you mean “elderly” or “mentally ill” or “intellectually challenged” or whatever category you are talking about, then say so. This is a case where euphemism leads to such a lack of clarity that words cease to have meaning.
Whenever two or more people interact, there can be power imbalances, which are amplified if one has some kind of authority over another. One person in the relationship has then become, in simplistic terms, vulnerable. We see this in the secular world where managers can dismiss staff, for what may appear to be arbitrary reasons, particularly if one is working as a contractor or consultant, with a short termination notice. Similarly we see spiritual bullying, and the power imbalance does not all go one way. In some church situations, walking away is not an option. So we are all walking… Read more »
Which ones? The bishop of London seems to like the NHS way of doing things, which is the closest secular equivalent of the church. If like the BMA, bishops who fail to uphold the doctrine of the church could be struck off, then that would be a good thing. I recall lighting striking York Minister when a former bishop of Durham was consecrated. In that sense we are all vulnerable!
Out of interest, how often in recent times have Anglican clergy been deprived for not upholding the doctrine of the church (however that might be defined)? The last I can think of was Fr Anthony Freeman, who was sacked by Bishop Kemp of Chichester in the late 90s for publishing a book “God in Us” in which he expressed his belief that God is a human construct. In the USA, Anne Holmes Redding was unfrocked in 2009 by Bishop Wolf of Rhode Island for having become a Muslim three years earlier in 2006.
Your comment about “lighting striking York Minster when a former bishop of Durham was consecrated” must be challenged by Thinking Anglicans and other Christians. It did not, as enlightened people present will testify!
John Habgood described Alistair’s view as belonging to a world from which the Christian Gospel has delivered us.
I did, of course, mean Adrian’s view.
Adrian, David Jenkins served for ten years as Bishop of Durham after his consecration. So if God wanted to deprive the man of serving in that capacity, causing lightning to strike the building in which he was ordained several days after the actual event and many many years before the man actually died was hardly a very effective way of going about things. it prevented nothing and caused a few crackpot ideas about the reasons for lightning striking, which is a natural event, and not a supernatural one.
[Assuming Colin C is reading here] The essence of Jesus’ teaching and vision, the awareness of God’s unconditional, infinite love, was “evolved”, “adapted”, “corrupted”, following his death. By the time Paul appeared on the scene and started writing letters, circa 40-60 CE, and well before the Gospels and Acts were written, circa 60-100 CE, let alone before Councils of the Church and Constantine’s revolution corrupted the essence almost irrevocably. Colin, I’m curious as to how you defend yourself from the charge that, basing your beliefs on an “essence of Jesus’ teachig and vision” that predates Paul and Gospels (et al!),… Read more »
Some editions of the AV have our Lord’s words printed in red. If you read just the red bits of the first three gospels, you would have great difficulty in deriving from them the Christian religion as we have received it.
In other words, you would have difficulty fully comprehending Jesus’ message if you ignored all his actions other than his words; and also ignored what he is recorded as saying in one of the gospels and the letters and the Acts of the Apostles; and ignored the testimony of those whom he taught for three years; and ignored the testimony of his mother about his childhood.
Is that really surprising?
J C Fisher, thank you for asking how I would defend myself from the charge that I am essentially creating a Jesus in my own image. At the moment I’m catching up with TA occasionally, dealing with a rogue catheter and now the results of blood tests with a phone appointment with a Homerton doctor scheduled for Monday. Despite recovering well from the hip replacement surgery multiple other issues are presenting themselves. I may be no better at sorting out these priorities and my reaction to them than I am trying to understand the essence of Jesus’ teaching and what,… Read more »
Can I wish Colin Coward well for a speedy and successful recovery from his hip replacement? As one of many who affirm it gave them their lives back, I pray that you’ll live long to enjoy its benefits. As regards Anon’s piece, this sounds to me like a total betrayal of everything the renewal movement strove to achieve for many decades. Everything governed by diktat and regulations. So, effectively, the Holy Spirit has now been told he or she can only move in people who have the appropriate piece of paper? Didn’t Paul tell us never to restrict or quench… Read more »
i got a bit confused – it is not, of course, Anon’s piece which sounds like a betrayal, but the diocesan guidelines Anon complains about.
Or at least that is what I think John was saying.