Last night a further 40 Anglicans in Sevenoaks were received into the Catholic Church, joining groups who had already converted earlier in the week in Oxford, London and Tunbridge Wells.
James Bradley, formerly the assistant curate at St John’s the Baptist Anglican church in Sevenoaks, said: “I’m very excited. It has been the culmination of a lot of prayer and it is a wonderful opportunity for all of us.”
In response to criticism of the USCCB statement, Cardinal Wuerl’s 13-page resource highlights the complementary role that should be played between bishops and theologians.
“It is the privilege of theologians to delve more profoundly and systematically into the meaning of the faith, according to the ancient adage, ‘fides quaerens intellectum’ (faith seeking understanding),” the cardinal wrote. “Since this faith is handed on by the Church through the ministry of the magisterium, the bishop and the theologian have a special relationship that can and should be reciprocally enriching.”
“Bishops benefit from the work of theologians,” he continued, “while theologians gain a deeper understanding of revelation under the guidance of the magisterium. The ministry of bishops and the service rendered by theologians entail a mutual respect and support.”
This week, the plots hatched behind closed doors in the Vatican last year will be played out in the open as the former bishops lead dozens of clergy and hundreds of worshippers in taking up this historic offer.
They will be confirmed in services that will mark a significant watershed in the Anglican Church’s long-running battle over moves to allow women to become bishops.
It represents a new beginning for those entering the Catholic Church, but their departure has deeply wounded the Church of England, which is already riven by bitter rows over gay clergy, and now faces an exodus of traditionalists.
The ministers of Christ, then, know their calling: it is high, difficult, dangerous; but most honorable. Earthen vessels as they are, to them is committed the precious treasure of the gospel. Each stands in his lot a prophet of God. Each is clothed with an office which Christ himself disdained not to wear. Each must look to his great Master, not only as the subject of his teaching, the source of his power, the judge of his conduct, the dispenser of his rewards, but likewise as the perfect exemplar and model to which, in all things, he is to strive to conform himself. According to his measure, he is to endeavor faithfully to teach as Christ taught. For a minister, then, to speak with authority, is something more and higher than a talent; it is a clear and solemn duty. To speak thus, not merely gives dignity and efficiency to the ambassador, it reflects honor on the Master that sent him, it brings instruction and edification to the people addressed by him. Although, then, my dear brethren, I am deeply and unaffectedly aware that I am myself deficient in that method of authoritative teaching which a minister of Christ ought to have; yet my sense of the deficiency may make me appreciate more highly the value of the gift. I have consequently hoped that some thoughts which have occurred to me, concerning a remedy for my own infirmity, may, not altogether without profit, be addressed to you; who, perhaps, in a lesser degree, have experienced a like deficiency. For this purpose, I have availed myself of the present occasion, when I have been requested by him that is set over us in the Lord, to offer you something in the way of exhortation or doctrine, concerning our common duties.
I am fully persuaded that there is no man who is heartily engaged in those duties, who has not, day by day, an ever growing sense of their arduousness, and of his own insufficiency for them. I pity that man who finds the ministry of the gospel easy. Never can it be easy to him that is faithful. He must be a witness against the people among whom he lives, and testify to them, privately and publicly, their sins. Many times he must assure them with all plainness that they are evil and have done exceedingly amiss, and deserve the deep and burning indignation of God. He must call them to forsake all that they naturally love, and to look for happiness to a Being they have never seen, and in a world they have never entered. To speak such words is easy, but to speak them with authority, so that they shall pierce, like a sword, the hearts of those we address, oh! how difficult! how rare! How, then, shall we have this authority? If you see any better method than that which I am about to suggest, I pray you communicate it to me, for, on this subject especially, I covet to be instructed. For my own part, I see no certain way, but to look into the sources of that power which the great Prophet of the Church, the exemplar and the model of all who come after him as teachers therein, ever exercised in speaking to men, to see how far these are open to us, and to reduce to practice what we find applicable to our own case.
We cannot fail to observe, then, in the first place, that one ground of that authority with which Christ ever spoke, was His own perfect knowledge that He was commissioned and empowered by God to proclaim His truths to man….
On most days, Brother Al Mascia pedals his bicycle cart through downtown Detroit handing out much-needed food to homeless people.
Mascia, 56, is lean and lithe, and handles the cart with ease.
The idea of the cart came from the Franciscan friar’s memories of growing up surrounded by street vendors in New York. The food cart fits over the bicycle’s front end.
The cart, purchased from California with the aid of a benefactor, was outfitted with foldable countertops, insulation and a battery for lighting. It holds Thermos bottles of coffee and hot chocolate. Some days, Mascia dispenses muffins and cookies. On really good days, he has hot, homemade breakfast sandwiches donated by churches.
Parishioner Suzi Ragle, who has played organ at the church since she was 14 and joined the church 33 years ago, says Patterson has brought a breath of fresh air to the church.
“Beverly’s messages hold you in the palm of her hands,” Ragle says. “She always has something interesting to say. Her message is down to earth and the best way I can describe it is mesmerizing.”
Patterson says that her philosophy for life is “Love God and love your neighbor. Everything falls into place from there.”
“Come as you are to Jesus and let Jesus work and mold you from there,” she says. “I’m the vehicle, he does the work, I’m just there.”
Read more: mySouTex.com – Stepping through the open door
I’m ordained, 37, single (never married), with experience pastoring in large churches. Given my credentials, I had zero anxiety initially. Then I started reading “job requirement” phrases like these in pastoral job applications:
-“We are looking for a married man”
-“Preferably married”
-“Is married (preferably with children)”
These churches explicitly were not looking to hire someone single–like Jesus or Paul. I then was surprised to discover that even though the majority of adult Americans are single (52 percent), that only 2 percent of senior pastors in my denomination are single! Something was clearly amiss.
Read it all and note part two is there.
Follow up: the New York Times ran a piece on this there.
Father Thomas expressed the belief that learning about exorcisms is today more necessary than ever, because there are more Catholics who are involved in paganism, idolatry and the occult (psychics, tarot cards, Ouija boards, crystals, Wicca, séances, and the like), so there are a lot of people who are opening a lot of doors to the diabolical.
Certain signs would indicate possible demonic activity in someone. For example, “if somebody was able to speak in a language that he had no prior competency in, or if someone would foam at the mouth or have a lot of rolling of the eyes,” Father Thomas said.
Another sign of a diabolical attachment can be found “if the person were not able to walk into a church or be close to any Catholic sacramental: holy water, a crucifix, the sacrament of the Eucharist, the sacramental anointing of the sick, or someone wearing some kind of a Christian symbol. If these caused a reaction, it certainly would be a sign.”
When C.S. Lewis gathered with his colleagues in The Inklings to discuss their shared faith and latest endeavors, they met at a pub in Oxford called the Eagle and Child.
The parish hall of St. Alban’s Chapel at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge is larger than the Eagle and Child and it’s not serving draft beer, but the premise is similar: Gathering together for a meal and lively discussion of higher things.
The Rev. Andrew S. Rollins uses “Lunch with C.S. Lewis” to make some of the grand concepts of Christianity ”” the goodness of God, suffering, heaven and hell ”” accessible to an audience not limited to scholars.
In days long gone, Roman Catholic priests regularly made deathbed house calls, even in the middle of the night with little notice, to pray over the dying and anoint them with holy oils.
The candlelight ritual, popularly known as last rites, continues in hospitals, nursing homes, hospice houses and private homes. But it happens less frequently because priests ”” the only ones who can perform the service ”” are in short supply.
Although fewer Catholics are seeking what’s officially known as the sacrament of anointing of the sick, those who do want it could be at risk of reaching their final hours without the prayer-whispering presence of a Roman-collared priest unless they plan ahead.
[Gail Stevenson]…recalled Rev Harry Robinson’s world renowned ministry which she described as “very powerful, very transforming and very Biblical”. Visitors to Vancouver ”“ especially from Toronto and England ”“would come to St John’s because of his preaching. She said the ministry carried on under Rev David Short, describing it as “a seamless transition”¦ very evangelical, very Biblically based”.
–From an ANIC description of testimony given in court in 2009
Coles’s background as a lean, Leftie Eighties pop icon and his metamorphosis into portly Anglican priest may not have fazed Mr Somerville, but it has surprised some of the parishioners in St Mary the Virgin, the magnificent medieval C of E church in Finedon, Northamptonshire, where Coles will be installed on April 12. ”˜”˜Some thought I had been Lionel Richie from The Commodores,’’ he says. ”˜”˜Others thought I had come from a commune. It did cause quite a bit of confusion.’’
His heady days as a rock star have come in handy, though. ”˜”˜I was talking to a couple of the teenagers the other day and one cheekily asked: ”˜Have you ever been in a nightclub?’ They were taken aback when I said, ”˜Oh yes, the last one was Amnesia in Ibiza,’ and reeled off half a dozen more. It’s amazing how a bit of street cred can help with the youngsters. They won’t feel you understand them if all they see you as is a paragon of virtue.’’
The president of the Vatican bank has said that more than a renewal of capitalism led by economic experts and industrialists, what the global economy needs most are good priests to renew man.
Reviewing a book called “The Disease of the West” by Italian economist Marco Panara in today’s L’Osservatore Romano, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi says that the “real disease” of the West is “the nihilism that has uprooted man from any absolute truth and led him to become a materialist, pursuing a satisfaction that is ever more materialistic.”
“The disease of Western man,” adds Gotti Tedeschi, “is his distance from God and the tendency to drown his anxieties in consumerism.”
Two senior priests of the Diocese of Fort Worth have left the breakaway Anglo-Catholic diocese for the Anglican Ordinariate.
On March 8, Bishop Jack Iker announced that his number two man, Canon Charles Hough, and Fr. Louis Tobola had resigned their posts effective March 31.
The bishop noted Canon Hough had served as Canon to the Ordinary for the past 17 years, and he and Fr. Tobola had each served for over 30 years in the diocese. “Though they have not yet resigned from the ordained ministry, they are expected to do so at the time the Ordinariate is established for former Anglicans who wish to come into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church,” Bishop Iker said.
Self-supporting ministers (SSMs) feel “ignored, overlooked, and under-used” in their ministry, new research unveiled in the Church Times this week suggests.
A survey of about 900 SSMs across the UK, undertaken by the Revd Dr Teresa Morgan, a Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, who is an SSM in the parish of Littlemore, paints a picture of stagnation after ordination for SSMs, who make up 27 per cent of clergy in England.
Almighty God, the root and fountain of all being: Open our eyes to see, with thy servant John Donne, that whatsoever hath any being is a mirror in which we may behold thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Last week, the Rev Dr Christina Beardsley, vice-chair of Changing Attitude, a network of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and heterosexual members of the Church of England, was one of the voices featured on 4Thought.tv’s week of short films featuring trans people and faith.
While the US Episcopal church developed a maverick reputation within the Anglican communion for blessing same sex marriages and ordaining gay and lesbian clergy, the House of Bishops of the General Synod of the Church of England’s report Some Issues in Human Sexuality, issued in 2003, contained a chapter titled “Transsexualism”. Currently, one can find about a half dozen trans clergy in the UK and US. These numbers are imprecise, as some clergy do not wish to go public beyond the scope of their individual parish or diocese ”“ a concern that’s understandable given that the trans community seldom receives even the legal protections afforded gays and lesbians .
Beardsley, who was ordained for 23 years prior to her transition in 2001, observes that “some within the Church of England feel the issue of trans clergy has been settled” by citing such cases as the Rev Carol Stone and the Rev Sarah Jones. However, she says: “Not all trans clergy have been supported by their bishop, as these two priests were, and some have been excluded from full-time ministry because of Church of England opt-outs from UK equality legislation.”
Derrick Montgomery, an openly gay pastor at Fayetteville’s United Ministries in Christ, says the issue was long buried in churches, only to become apparent in the past decade.
“In the church I grew up in, there were gay individuals,” he said. “They just kept quiet, and nobody made an issue of it.
“But over the past several years, churches are being forced to deal with the issue. It’s a difficult issue, and we certainly aren’t insensitive to that. But we find it to be in keeping with the spirit of God to accept all those who wish to worship, not limit ourselves to certain categories.”
Perhaps the most public schism came in the U.S. Episcopal Church, where the ordination of an openly gay bishop in 2003 led to hundreds of churches breaking away from the denomination. The church ordained a second openly gay bishop last year.
Thus I find it hard to resist the anxiety that one of the things being celebrated in this 400th year is a construction of Britishness of the sort beloved by American tourists and those who find modern Britain just too difficult or too diverse. Which is why the KJB can share the feel of other fantasy constructions like Midsomer – a place recently described by its executive producer as “the last bastion of Englishness” because of its all-white cast.
The irony of all this is that the Bible is, in fact, one of the most powerful forces for multiculturalism that the world has ever known. Those who worship the one God need nothing else in common in order to recognise each other as brothers and sisters. In Christ there is neither rich nor poor, Greek nor Jew, black nor white. Which is why the idea that we might use the Bible as a way of harking back to some lost world of simple monocultural Englishness is such a complete nonsense. It really ought to go without saying: God is not an Englishman.
With the human ability to think under fire from relativism, priests and theologians need to study more philosophy, the Vatican says.This was one of the main points of the “Decree on the Reform of Ecclesiastical Studies of Philosophy,” which Benedict XVI approved Jan. 28 (the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas), and Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education, presented Tuesday.
The cardinal explained that the Church is always adapting to respond to the needs of changing historical-cultural circumstances, and that many ecclesial institutions today are lacking in philosophical formation.
This absence is particularly noteworthy at a time “in which reason itself is menaced by utilitarianism, skepticism, relativism and distrust of reason’s ability to know the truth regarding the fundamental problems of life,” he reflected.
On March 13, Bishop Mouneer Anis of Egypt reported that the Rev. Hamdy Doud, the assistant rector of Christ the King Church remained in Tripoli, caring for the church.
Two of the three clergy have been evacuated from Libya as have the Western expatriate members of the congregation, Bishop Anis reported. However, a number of Anglican Africans remained in the city, unable to flee.
“It is my responsibility to keep the Christian presence here,” Fr. Hamdy told Bishop Anis, adding that he and the city’s “Roman Catholic priests are having a good time of fellowship in spite of the crisis in Libya.”
It was a traditional ordination at St. Jerome Parish Saturday for a man with a non-traditional path to priesthood. Deacon Russell Arnett, now Father Arnett, was first ordained in the Episcopal Church where priests are allowed to marry. Now Arnett is the first priest to enter the Archdiocese of Milwaukee through what is called the “Pastoral Provision.”
The link for this was typed incorrectly yesterday, alas–KSH.
This is my Lenten talk from this past Wednesday at the Church of the Holy Comforter in Sumter, South Carolina, as part of their series on the cross. It is an mp3 file,it lasts a little more than 30 minutes and you may find the link here.
You may also be interested in the brochure for the whole series there (pdf).
Responding to the shortage of clergy, addressing a “lack of confidence among Anglican Christians”, Christian education and fund-raising are among the priority areas which Bishop-elect Claude Berkley intends to focus on when he takes over as head of the Anglican Diocese of Trinidad and Tobago (TT).
The solemn Eucharist for Berkley’s consecration and ordination took place yesterday (also observed as the Feast of St Patrick) at Holy Trinity Cathedral, Port-of-Spain before a packed congregation. Tents and chairs accommodated the additional persons who could not be seated inside the church. In identifying the issues he would work on, 53-year-old Berkely said he shared a common approach with the outgoing Bishop Calvin Bess.
Speaking to reporters after the more than three-hour Eucharist, Berkley said, “we have the non- ending matter of fund-raising. We need some funds to get our projects done and repair a range of buildings and put the infrastructure in place to do further work.”
This is my Lenten talk from this past Wednesday at the Church of the Holy Comforter in Sumter, South Carolina, as part of their series on the cross. It is an mp3 file,it lasts a little more than 30 minutes and you may find the link here.
You may also be interested in the brochure for the whole series there (pdf).
A Church of England vicar has been arrested as part of an investigation into bogus marriages.
Reverend Canon Dr John Magumba was arrested at his home in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, as part of the UK Border Agency (UKBA) inquiry.
The 58-year-old, originally from Uganda, is team vicar for three churches in south Rochdale.
A parish shaken by the departure of its vicar following his defection to the Catholic Church has been told to rally round and pray by the Bishop of Plymouth.
Parishioners filing into the Parish Church of St Mary The Virgin in St Marychurch were visited by the Right Rev Canon John Ford…a week after vicar David Lashbrooke told his congregation he was unhappy with the way the Anglican Church was going and he had decided to convert to the Catholic faith, taking part of the congregation with him.
Bishop John, who conducted the parish mass on Sunday, told the congregation that despite the ‘hurt, incomprehension, and shifting plates of the Church’, it was best to ‘pray and reflect’ rather than become angry.