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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Schismatics and Episcopi neo-vagantes
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busyknitter
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# 2501
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Posted
It's certainly not universal in conevo churches. Our last vicar was very definitely conevo (we're now out to advert for what we are calling an Anglican Evangelical), and the one before him and they were both happy to provide gluten free for anyone needing it.
Posts: 903 | From: The Wool Basket | Registered: Mar 2002
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
I can't imagine a theological rationale for not providing the elements in a form that the faithful are able to consume. That's pretty close to crazy.
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arse
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TomM
Shipmate
# 4618
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
I can't imagine a theological rationale for not providing the elements in a form that the faithful are able to consume. That's pretty close to crazy.
Well to imagine a rationale, what I'd suggest is along the lines of for the sacrament to 'work', it requires proper form (for the Eucharist, the Institution Narrative), proper intention (to celebrate the Eucharist as the Church does) and proper matter (actual bread and actual wine).
If one also assumes that proper bread is made of wheat, then for it to be the Body of Christ that the communicant receives it needs to be wheat based bread to begin with, and therefore to contain gluten.
But none of that makes anything like as much sense without some fairly catholic theology of what happens in the Eucharist.
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Callan
Shipmate
# 525
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Posted
I suspect that Prayer Book Fundamentalism may be at fault. The BCP specifies the finest wheaten bread, so wheaten bread it must be. I can't imagine the Real Presence is a doctrine much taught at Jesmond.
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How easy it would be to live in England, if only one did not love her. - G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 9757 | From: Citizen of the World | Registered: Jun 2001
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Callan:
I suspect that Prayer Book Fundamentalism may be at fault. The BCP specifies the finest wheaten bread, so wheaten bread it must be. I can't imagine the Real Presence is a doctrine much taught at Jesmond.
I'm a bit doubtful that they were the kind who have that much respect for the prayerbook - are they Doc Tor?
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arse
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Augustine the Aleut
Shipmate
# 1472
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
This may be of interest from Canada.
quote:
The House of Bishops of the Ecclesiastical Province of BC & Yukon in the Anglican Church of Canada has registered its objection to the episcopal election of the Rev. Jacob Worley in the Diocese of Caledonia.
He will not be consecrated bishop because he served the Anglican Mission in America under license from the Province of Rwanda in the geographical jurisdiction of The Episcopal Church without permission of The Episcopal Church.
Offhand, I think that this is the first time in Canadian Anglican history that an election has been set aside in this way.
Posts: 6236 | From: Ottawa, Canada | Registered: Oct 2001
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stonespring
Shipmate
# 15530
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by TomM:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
I can't imagine a theological rationale for not providing the elements in a form that the faithful are able to consume. That's pretty close to crazy.
Well to imagine a rationale, what I'd suggest is along the lines of for the sacrament to 'work', it requires proper form (for the Eucharist, the Institution Narrative), proper intention (to celebrate the Eucharist as the Church does) and proper matter (actual bread and actual wine).
If one also assumes that proper bread is made of wheat, then for it to be the Body of Christ that the communicant receives it needs to be wheat based bread to begin with, and therefore to contain gluten.
But none of that makes anything like as much sense without some fairly catholic theology of what happens in the Eucharist.
Here in the US the RCC, or at least multiple dioceses of it, allow for some kind of special bread to be used for people with gluten issues. I have seen it be distributed to a boy with some kind of gluten issue. I do not know if such bread is completely free of gluten. They also allow some kind of wine that is dealcoholized or has undergone minimal fermentation to be used for people with issues with alcohol. I think the rule is the bread has to originally come from wheat, but it can be altered to remove as much gluten as possible in special cases, and the wine has to come from grapes and must undergo at least some fermentation but perhaps also can be altered to remove as much alcohol as possible. I'm not an expert, though. These elements may not work for people with celiac disease (or severe forms of it) or for people who cannot have any alcohol whatsoever. However, RCC theology believes that the Body and Blood are fully present in both the bread and the wine, so receiving in only one form is perfectly ok. If someone was not able to receive either the bread for people with gluten issues or the wine for people with alcohol issues - if such a case has ever existed, I do not know what accommodation, if any, could be made, but I do not know if the RCC has ever issued a ruling on such a real or hypothetical case.
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Bishops Finger
Shipmate
# 5430
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Posted
Maybe they haven't, but I can't imagine the RCC not coming up with some solution acceptable to all.
JPC are just batshit crazy, ISTM. Whatever happened to pastoral concern for those less fortunate than others?
IJ
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Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service. (Wilkie Collins)
Posts: 10151 | From: Behind The Wheel Again! | Registered: Jan 2004
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:
Originally posted by Callan:
I suspect that Prayer Book Fundamentalism may be at fault. The BCP specifies the finest wheaten bread, so wheaten bread it must be. I can't imagine the Real Presence is a doctrine much taught at Jesmond.
I'm a bit doubtful that they were the kind who have that much respect for the prayerbook - are they Doc Tor?
There was one (1) BCP service a year when I was there. I don't think they adopted Common Worship, so it's probably still ASB.
Real Presence was anathema. Communion was a memorial, and not salvic in any way.
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Forward the New Republic
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TomM
Shipmate
# 4618
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Bishops Finger:
Maybe they haven't, but I can't imagine the RCC not coming up with some solution acceptable to all.
Oh indeed, I wasn't suggesting anyone actually believed that model, just that it wasn't that difficult to get to one.
If on the other hand one applies a little thought to doing theology, it is also a reasonably straight forward question to resolve - after all, if you've convinced yourself wafers are really bread...
I think the official RC teaching is that the wine must have begun fermentation, but the process can then be stopped and the limited alcohol present removed; and I think the bread must have some wheat in it, but only at minimal levels - such that it acquires more gluten from the priest's fingers than it contains itself.
See here
[ 16. May 2017, 16:00: Message edited by: TomM ]
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chris stiles
Shipmate
# 12641
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Posted
Do we actually have definitive evidence that they explicitly ban the use of gluten free bread in the services on a continuous basis? [The anecdote was about the relative of a posters friend].
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chris stiles
Shipmate
# 12641
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
You will never get an answer to the question.
I'm genuinely trying not to be difficult - just trying to ascertain whether or not it was official policy or something a particular staff member being difficult on a particular occasion(s).
IME such groups don't change their position on things and aren't particularly shy about mentioning their distinctives - so if there was such a policy it would go back years and be fairly well known.
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
Members of the church aren't encouraged to question the leadership, or talk to other members about their disagreements. 'Disturbances in the force' expressed in public are dealt with, shall we say, pastorally.
You are literally left believing "Am I the only person who feels like this?"
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Forward the New Republic
Posts: 9131 | From: Ultima Thule | Registered: Jul 2005
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Bishops Finger
Shipmate
# 5430
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Posted
Is JPC a church or some sort of Gulag?
![[Confused]](confused.gif)
IJ
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Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service. (Wilkie Collins)
Posts: 10151 | From: Behind The Wheel Again! | Registered: Jan 2004
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busyknitter
Shipmate
# 2501
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Posted
It's the sister of a close friend of mine (she's godmother to my son). We've talked about it on more than one occasion, including during the past week, as my friend is also coeliac and finds the whole thing as upsetting as her sister does.
Posts: 903 | From: The Wool Basket | Registered: Mar 2002
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Bishops Finger:
Is JPC a church or some sort of Gulag?
Well, no. You are of course free to leave whenever you wish, but the skill is in making you not wish that. As I said here,
quote:
And having been told, week in, week out, that there were no other faithful Christians in the whole of Tyneside, made it difficult psychologically to go, even if we already knew it wasn't true.
For those who only engage lightly with its structures and strictures, there's not much friction. Start voicing doctrinally unorthodox opinions (or even politically and socially left-wing ones), and the wagons begin to circle. With you outside.
For all its size, there is a not an insignificant amount of churn in the membership list. (At least, there was when I was administering it.)
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Forward the New Republic
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chris stiles
Shipmate
# 12641
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by busyknitter:
It's the sister of a close friend of mine (she's godmother to my son). We've talked about it on more than one occasion, including during the past week, as my friend is also coeliac and finds the whole thing as upsetting as her sister does.
I'm not doubting the incident, I just wondered how widespread it was and what their reasoning was (given the speculation in this thread).
IME, when movements like that have a distinctive belief that's somewhat heterodox, it generally originated at the same time as the movement itself (anything new is automatically suspect), and they'll take pride in explaining it as part of some bigger principle (usually trotted out in the annual sermon that's intended to teach the wider thing that it's attached to - also the occasion for fulminating against some real or imagined social ill).
Posts: 4035 | From: Berkshire | Registered: May 2007
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busyknitter
Shipmate
# 2501
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Posted
Possibly, I'm inclined to agree with DocTor on this one. Going by my experience of the conservative mindset elsewhere and also the fact that there is very little governance information on the JPC website I think it might be the sort of environment where people are expected to accept what they are told about a while range of issues and not question the leadership overmuch. This is often backed up through reference to scriptural authority, the need for unity etc and is very difficult to push against without things getting messy.
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
On a side issue: Doc Tor, why the heck were you involved in this crowd?
That's a very pertinent question, and not at all a side issue, because in attempting to answer it, it touches on several issues surrounding the present controversy.
JPC was recommended as a good student church - I was going to Christ Church Fulwood in Sheffield at the time. And they weren't wrong. It was (1987) a good student church, lots going on, offers of free food, and lots of other students. It was, then, a conservative evangelical church, much like the one I'd just left, much like Greyfriars in Reading which I'd also irregularly attended.
It moved. I moved, yes, but so did the church, and we moved in opposite directions. Over the 20 years I was there - I worked in the church office for 2 of those - the Authoritarian Right-ward drift became simply too much, not to ignore, because I didn't ignore it, but it was too much to fight. I was tired of disagreeing and being disagreeable.
The final straw came over a couple of things, which might seem minor, but weren't. Miss Tor was about to move up into the next tier of youth work (KS2 to KS3) where boys and girls were grouped on separate mats (while being in the same room). Also involving Miss Tor, when she was helping me check the microphones before a service. She climbed up into the pulpit, and I thought "This is the only time you'll ever be allowed up there."
It was then I knew we had to go. And it was a wrench. I'd been there 20 years. I knew lots of people there, had good friends there (and still do). And having been told, week in, week out, that there were no other faithful Christians in the whole of Tyneside, made it difficult psychologically to go, even if we already knew it wasn't true.
First church we tried thereafter, we stayed at. 8 years, now. Sorry. That was long.
Heartbreaking.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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chris stiles
Shipmate
# 12641
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
Apparently, this schismatic congregation has expunged the word 'catholic' from the creed and is liberal on the remarriage of divorcees - about which Jesus had much to say, unlike the issue of gays
There's another similarly conservative schismatic congregation on the South Coast that retains the word 'catholic' in the Creed and refuses re-marriage of divorcees - I'm not sure they are much of an improvement.
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dyfrig
Blue Scarfed Menace
# 15
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Posted
The thing that amuses me is how they seem to be as obsessed by the Power of Three to the same eztebt as the magical thinkers of the Oxford Sect trying to prove the Reformation didn't matter in the C of E.
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"He was wrong in the long run, but then, who isn't?" - Tony Judt
Posts: 6917 | From: pob dydd Iau, am hanner dydd | Registered: Apr 2001
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by dyfrig:
The thing that amuses me is how they seem to be as obsessed by the Power of Three to the same eztebt as the magical thinkers of the Oxford Sect trying to prove the Reformation didn't matter in the C of E.
Thanks, I like eztebt and will try to use it wherever possible from now on.
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arse
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dyfrig
Blue Scarfed Menace
# 15
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Posted
Oh, mock the blind person using an iphone why don't you.
That's racist [ding]
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"He was wrong in the long run, but then, who isn't?" - Tony Judt
Posts: 6917 | From: pob dydd Iau, am hanner dydd | Registered: Apr 2001
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
I wasn't mocking. I genuinely think it is a fine word.
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arse
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dyfrig
Blue Scarfed Menace
# 15
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Posted
I expect payment whenever you use it. My usual rates applly.
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"He was wrong in the long run, but then, who isn't?" - Tony Judt
Posts: 6917 | From: pob dydd Iau, am hanner dydd | Registered: Apr 2001
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fletcher christian
Mutinous Seadog
# 13919
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Posted
Posted by Leo:
quote:
Apparently, this schismatic congregation has expunged the word 'catholic' from the creed
Look again! It isn't the only thing they have expunged from the Creeds (they've made changes to both).
[ 19. May 2017, 18:11: Message edited by: fletcher christian ]
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'God is love insaturable, love impossible to describe'
Staretz Silouan
Posts: 5235 | From: a prefecture | Registered: Jul 2008
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
Members of the church aren't encouraged to question the leadership, or talk to other members about their disagreements. 'Disturbances in the force' expressed in public are dealt with, shall we say, pastorally.
You are literally left believing "Am I the only person who feels like this?"
That's a helpful situation to be in, ISTM. You can establish clearly that you're in the wrong church for you, and can then leave.
Not all churches are meant for people who want to question and disagree. Some people want clear rules, clear guidelines. They don't want to be engaged in (or observers of) endless debates about who's right or wrong.
The best thing is that our is a religion of diversity. There are churches for individuals who want the freedom to believe more or less whatever they feel is right, and churches for people who want a strong 'party line' to follow.
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
No, that won't do. People being encouraged to accept whatever they're told is dangerous. It's asking fot spiritual abuse. And do you think for a moment the leaders of these places share your generous "different strokes" attitude?
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
But that's the point. If your church leader doesn't accept 'different strokes', and you want different strokes, then you leave.
This, to me, is what Protestantism (and especially Nonconformist Protestantism) is about. We're not bound by the leader's or the hierarchy's methods, or by the tyranny of the group, for our salvation. We're free to go where we believe the spirit to be leading us. In fact, we could be compelled to go, because staying might, in our understanding, damage our souls.
There's no future for a Christianity where one single denomination provides all the liberty and diversity and/or strictness and clarity that every Christian will ever want. That's never going to happen, and it's not the sort of Christian 'unity' that I'd ever pray for.
Posts: 6668 | From: UK | Registered: Feb 2012
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
Apparently, this schismatic congregation has expunged the word 'catholic' from the creed and is liberal on the remarriage of divorcees - about which Jesus had much to say, unlike the issue of gays
What about divorced gays?
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Nick Tamen
Ship's Wayfaring Fool
# 15164
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by fletcher christian:
Posted by Leo:
quote:
Apparently, this schismatic congregation has expunged the word 'catholic' from the creed
Look again! It isn't the only thing they have expunged from the Creeds (they've made changes to both).
Are their versions of the creeds available online somewhere?
FWIW, "holy Christian church"/"one holy Christian and apostolic church" instead of "holy catholic church"/"one holy catholic and apostolic church" was the norm among American Lutherans not that long ago (and still is the norm for some). I think I've encountered it among the Methodists, too, though I may be confusing that with "descended to the dead."
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The first thing God says to Moses is, "Take off your shoes." We are on holy ground. Hard to believe, but the truest thing I know. — Anne Lamott
Posts: 2833 | From: On heaven-crammed earth | Registered: Sep 2009
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Forthview
Shipmate
# 12376
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Posted
As far as I know, this is the version of the creed amongst German Lutherans - eine heilige,christliche Kirche - one holy Christian church. This ,presumably, goes back centuries in the Lutheran liturgical forms.
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Nick Tamen
Ship's Wayfaring Fool
# 15164
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Forthview:
As far as I know, this is the version of the creed amongst German Lutherans - eine heilige,christliche Kirche - one holy Christian church. This ,presumably, goes back centuries in the Lutheran liturgical forms.
Yes, I think it's Luther's translation/version. I think it continued among American Lutherans for a long time because of tradition combined with potential confusion among worshippers over what is meant by "catholic." It wasn't until the Lutheran Book of Worship in the late 70s that "catholic" came back for what is now the ELCA. The fairly new Lutheran Service Book of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod still uses "Christian," but with a note that the original is "catholic," meaning "universal."
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The first thing God says to Moses is, "Take off your shoes." We are on holy ground. Hard to believe, but the truest thing I know. — Anne Lamott
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Steve Langton
Shipmate
# 17601
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Posted
It's a longstanding thing that many Protestants/evangelicals are not keen on the word 'catholic' because obviously they were being opposed by the Roman Catholic Church. Some deal with it by leaving the creed as is but making sure everyone understands that 'catholic' means 'universal'. Some replace the word 'catholic' by 'universal' - which is anyway the original meaning of the Greek word, and if you've translated the rest of the creed it's surely no big deal that you translate that word to rather than retain the 'alien' word.
Some simply leave the word out altogether - in effect, treat it as redundant when you've said 'Church' anyway. This course was apparently common among Anabaptists and was - of course - treated as 'burn-at-the-stake' heresy by the Inquisition....
From an Anabaptist view the issue is not that they, the Anabaptists, change the creed - it's more that the Orthodox/Roman Catholic churches, though keeping the words, changed the meaning of the creed. Before Theodosius, 'universal' meant something like 'for all the world/open to everybody'. By 400CE, Theodosius' decision to make Christianity compulsory in the Empire gave the word 'catholic' overtones of the church being 'totalitarian', imposed upon all in a so-called 'Christian country' rather than freely accepted through individual spiritual birth through faith.
Indeed in a very real sense a 'Catholic Church' based on state compulsion is NOT the Church God intended, and not something that Christians should believe at a credal level. And from where I'm standing that also raises some rather serious questions about the claims to special authority made by both Orthodox and RCC. If you've so betrayed the nature of the Church by entanglement with the state, how can this "Not-Really-The-Original-Church" claim such authority? And for that matter, by that betrayal haven't they shown that they didn't really have the institutional authority they claimed in the first place.
My personal position on this is to prefer 'universal' but not make a big fuss if a church I'm worshipping at uses the creed with 'catholic' in it.
I'd suspect that omission of 'catholic' at JPC will be basically a Protestant anti-RCC gesture. As far as I can tell, Rev Holloway's stance on church and state issues would make JPC one of the most 'catholic' congregations I know of in the really objectionable sense of 'catholic'....
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
From an Anabaptist view the issue is not that they, the Anabaptists, change the creed - it's more that the Orthodox/Roman Catholic churches, though keeping the words, changed the meaning of the creed. Before Theodosius, 'universal' meant something like 'for all the world/open to everybody'. By 400CE, Theodosius' decision to make Christianity compulsory in the Empire gave the word 'catholic' overtones of the church being 'totalitarian', imposed upon all in a so-called 'Christian country' rather than freely accepted through individual spiritual birth through faith.
Whilst I see what you're saying, I don't think it really does have those overtones other than to those who are particularly sensitive to them or who want to see it there.
I suspect the majority of people who regularly use the phrase "I believe in the one holy catholic and apostolic church" are meaning something like "I believe in this, the real, genuine, authentic, true church - the one who God loves - whose witness and teaching has been passed down to me right back to the apostles."
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arse
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
But that's the point. If your church leader doesn't accept 'different strokes', and you want different strokes, then you leave.
This, to me, is what Protestantism (and especially Nonconformist Protestantism) is about. We're not bound by the leader's or the hierarchy's methods, or by the tyranny of the group, for our salvation. We're free to go where we believe the spirit to be leading us. In fact, we could be compelled to go, because staying might, in our understanding, damage our souls.
There's no future for a Christianity where one single denomination provides all the liberty and diversity and/or strictness and clarity that every Christian will ever want. That's never going to happen, and it's not the sort of Christian 'unity' that I'd ever pray for.
I do not believe in giving people things that are harmful. Telling people what to believe and spiritually blackmailing them into doing so is harmful. No churches should be doing that, regardless of the demand. Of course, they will, and can, and people will lap it up, but that doesn't mean anyone should be offering it. There's demand for cigarettes, and people are at liberty to buy them and smoke, but that doesn't mean that tobacco companies are off the hook for their moral responsibility for killing people.
There's no reciprocity in your model. You're comfortable with the strict churches, but they're not comfortable with you - or me. They want you to be told what to believe. They think we and our leaders are evil compromisers and faux-Christians, doomed to Hell. Just read some of Gorpo's contributions.
Forgive me if I'm not inclined to be particularly generous towards them.
[ 22. May 2017, 11:16: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
I don't see it as a matter of generosity. More a matter of just leaving things alone if you don't like them.
Worrying about how other Christians serve and worship God is not really a part of my religious DNA, I think. It strikes me as paternalistic, patronising. I might think the other man is utterly wrong, but who cares? The feeling is mutual, so let's just part company, hopefully in love, or at least with some dignity.
However, I can understand individual Anglicans worrying about what's happening in their own denomination. That seems to be what Anglicans do. But I can't see a solution for Anglicanism if it insists on trying to incorporate everyone, regardless of theology. Christians disagree vehemently about certain things. That won't change.
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Steve Langton
Shipmate
# 17601
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Posted
by mr cheesy
quote:
Whilst I see what you're saying, I don't think it really does have those overtones other than to those who are particularly sensitive to them or who want to see it there. I suspect the majority of people who regularly use the phrase "I believe in the one holy catholic and apostolic church" are meaning something like "I believe in this, the real, genuine, authentic, true church - the one who God loves - whose witness and teaching has been passed down to me right back to the apostles."
And I see what you're saying there and have similar suspicions about the everyday usage by most people.
But in my experience there are quite a lot of people, particularly among the 'unchurched' of today, who are a bit thrown by the word 'catholic' because of the association with the RCC, which is often referred to simply as "the Catholic Church". It's a bit similar to the way mentioning the name 'Jehovah' can have people thinking you're the JWs....
And while it would be nice to have "the real, genuine, authentic, true church - the one who God loves - whose witness and teaching has been passed down to me right back to the apostles", you seem to have missed the point I made up there that actually the Orthodox and RCC are a bit removed from that precisely because of their involvement in the state church era business and some of whose key teaching, including that on their own special authority, really doesn't go "right back to the apostles". And that if you think about it, their claims to special authority are more than a bit compromised by their involvement in that 'totalitarian' past. As in they've got some brass neck, after all the atrocities that led to, to still be claiming such special authority for their institutions.
As far as this thread was concerned I just wanted to explain some of the reasons why the word 'catholic' in the creed can be problematic; and to point up the irony that JPC finds it problematic when actually they are decidedly 'catholic' in the most objectionable sense.
And I guess to point up the fact that JPC appears to have very definite views in the 'church and state' area which you really need to be aware of to usefully discuss what's going on up there.
Posts: 2245 | From: Stockport UK | Registered: Mar 2013
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
And while it would be nice to have "the real, genuine, authentic, true church - the one who God loves - whose witness and teaching has been passed down to me right back to the apostles", you seem to have missed the point I made up there that actually the Orthodox and RCC are a bit removed from that precisely because of their involvement in the state church era business and some of whose key teaching, including that on their own special authority, really doesn't go "right back to the apostles". And that if you think about it, their claims to special authority are more than a bit compromised by their involvement in that 'totalitarian' past. As in they've got some brass neck, after all the atrocities that led to, to still be claiming such special authority for their institutions.
Sorry, I don't accept that previous bad performance is anything to do with whether they are the status as the church.
Indeed, I don't accept that you have any skill or insight whatsoever to identify the things above you say are obvious.
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arse
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
But in my experience there are quite a lot of people, particularly among the 'unchurched' of today, who are a bit thrown by the word 'catholic' because of the association with the RCC, which is often referred to simply as "the Catholic Church".
If the c-word frightens your horses, replacing it with a near-synonym such as "universal" seems reasonable (although your unchurched are unlikely to grok "apostolic" either - what do you do with that?) Replacing it with the word "Christian" would seem to be to be a sectarian marker for the kind of person who would see "Catholic" and "Christian" as mutually exclusive.
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Augustine the Aleut
Shipmate
# 1472
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
And while it would be nice to have "the real, genuine, authentic, true church - the one who God loves - whose witness and teaching has been passed down to me right back to the apostles", you seem to have missed the point I made up there that actually the Orthodox and RCC are a bit removed from that precisely because of their involvement in the state church era business and some of whose key teaching, including that on their own special authority, really doesn't go "right back to the apostles". And that if you think about it, their claims to special authority are more than a bit compromised by their involvement in that 'totalitarian' past. As in they've got some brass neck, after all the atrocities that led to, to still be claiming such special authority for their institutions.
Sorry, I don't accept that previous bad performance is anything to do with whether they are the status as the church.
*snip*
I fear that it's verging on a dead horse in spirit to mention that the same brass neck would also apply to a series of reformation churches in northern and western Europe, as well as to the CoE, in terms of their state-church links and participation in state-sponsored persecution. I could understand a focus on current performance, but perhaps this is for another thread.
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Steve Langton
Shipmate
# 17601
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Posted
by Augustine the Aleut
quote:
(initially quoting mr cheesy) quote:
Sorry, I don't accept that previous bad performance is anything to do with whether they are the status as the church.
I fear that it's verging on a dead horse in spirit to mention that the same brass neck would also apply to a series of reformation churches in northern and western Europe, as well as to the CoE, in terms of their state-church links and participation in state-sponsored persecution. I could understand a focus on current performance, but perhaps this is for another thread.
I think 'past performance' is relevant when there hasn't been repentance of the root cause of the bad performance and in effect "They're still at it!" despite the said past performance. The Orthodox and RCC are still basically making the same claim to special 'interpretative competence' for their institutions as institutions - as, in effect 'THE CHURCH' long after that past performance should have discredited their claims.
And note that one of the points I made is that part of that past performance actually involved a serious redefinition of the church itself and its membership - which to my mind does call a lot of things into question till they very clearly repent.
I agree that there are state/church issue problems for many of the Reformed/Protestant groups - particularly the Anglicans perhaps. The big difference in principle there is that Reformation based churches don't - or at least shouldn't - claim any special definitive authority. Protestant churches are supposed to operate on a 'caveat' that you'll usually find in the intro to their confessions, that they consider themselves subject to the Scripture and will change if convinced they've understood Scripture wrongly. As opposed to an Orthodox Shipmate who keeps insisting to me that the Bible isn't sufficient, even though it might have kept his church from those past errors.
Yes, there are currently some Reformed/Protestant churches working here and now, not just in the past, with some version or other of 'state church' or, as at JPC, an idea that Christianity should be privileged in the state.
I agree that overall that's a matter for another thread; but it still remains a fact that this issue of the church in the state is important to the Rev Holloway at JPC, and important to understanding some of that church's behaviour.
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
I agree that overall that's a matter for another thread; but it still remains a fact that this issue of the church in the state is important to the Rev Holloway at JPC, and important to understanding some of that church's behaviour.
Before you give yourself a hernia, you might like to think about what you've already written about JPC and your understanding of their position on the church-state.
If your understanding is accurate, then all the guff you've written about it with relation to the creed is irrelevant, because Holloway et al believe in the very concepts you seem to be indicating are reasons for removing phrases.
It clearly cannot be the case that he doesn't care about apostolic succession, otherwise there would have been no point in having his curate-bishop "properly" ordained by bishops, he could simply have done it himself. If he believes that catholic refers to the church-state then why would he remove it from the words of the creed, if in fact he believes in it?
On a more fundamental level, if he believes that there is such a thing as the "church universal", then what is there to repent of?
It seems to me that you're so set with your idea that what you believe = genuine Christianity that you're now believing that other Christian beliefs should apologise and repent to you because they don't believe what you do. That's clearly nonsense.
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arse
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Augustine the Aleut
Shipmate
# 1472
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Posted
Steven Langton writes:
quote:
I agree that overall that's a matter for another thread; but it still remains a fact that this issue of the church in the state is important to the Rev Holloway at JPC, and important to understanding some of that church's behaviour.
What I fear I cannot understand, at all at all at all, and perhaps I would need to exchange directly with Fr Holloway to do so, is why he remains in the CoE if he feels that the church/state nexus is a problem for him. He holds his licence of the same authority which cheerfully turned heretics and recusants over to the state for torture and execution. That they no longer do so is a good thing, but is the same authority under which he preaches, celebrates, receives direct deposit payments and will presumably some day provide his pension. It becomes less and less likely that he will be convicted of consistency in his position!!
There are Reformation churches which, as you point out, hold scriptura sola views in their statements-- however, when matched against participation in executions for heresy, I fear that their street creds swirl in clockwise direction in exactly the same way as would those of the RCC and some of the Orthodox for their participation in such. Niceties of their claims were likely lost on the poor wretches tied to stakes as the flames crawled toward them.
This having been said, the Lutheran churches have on several occasions, clearly repented of their participation in this, and J2P2 at the Millennium and, during visits to Germany, made notable statements of repentance and for forgiveness for RCC actions during the Reformation and post-Reformation periods. (apologies for not previously capitalizing Reformation)
Posts: 6236 | From: Ottawa, Canada | Registered: Oct 2001
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Steve Langton
Shipmate
# 17601
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Posted
by mr cheesy
quote:
If he believes that catholic refers to the church-state then why would he remove it from the words of the creed, if in fact he believes in it?
My apologies if I wasn't quite clear enough above. I too consider JPC/Rev Holloway to be rather inconsistent and trying to explain it coherently isn't easy.
My point was that the at any rate most likely reason why Jesmond would omit 'catholic' from the creed is because as very emphatic evangelical Protestants they do not want it to appear that they believe in the "Roman Catholic" style of church, nor do they agree with that part of their own church which is "Anglo-Catholic" (and in my area can sometimes be mocked by the post Vatican II RCs for appearing more like the Victorian RCC than the RCs themselves do).
And I went on to point out clearly the irony that Jesmond itself holds to the state-church idea in a way that actually makes them more 'catholic' in the really objectionable sense than most other congregations I know. There is a similar irony in Ulster Protestantism where they profess to be 'anti-catholic' while clinging more than most in the UK to the idea of Christianity in general, and Protestantism in particular, being privileged in the state.
I am, I think, being consistent here; the inconsistency is up there in the North-East....
I don't know exactly what Rev Holloway thinks about the 'apostolic succession'. I suspect that in the RC/Orthodox meaning he doesn't believe in it. But if he is trying to legitimise an 'alternative Anglicanism' which may for a time have to split from the English Church itself, continuity through another line of bishops might seem valuable.
Apart from holding to the idea of Christian privilege in the state, another idea I know he is influenced by is stated in a book about 20 years ago by a guy called George R Eves, titled Two Religions, One Church which sees the Church of England as a divided institution, part biblically Christian, part so liberal as to be virtually pagan. I think he is hoping to change that and restore the CofE as a biblical church - but if not, to leave in a very clear way that, if you like, publicly exposes the CofE's current 'heresy'. It's not an easy line for him to tread and I'm not surprised you're confused....
All would be easier and clearer if he were not committed to the 'Christian privilege in the State' line. He and his congregation could then just leave the CofE and go straightforwardly non-conformist - but as a person still (confusedly I agree) trying to uphold the Queen's Coronation Oath to uphold the biblical gospel, he's made himself a difficult job.
Posts: 2245 | From: Stockport UK | Registered: Mar 2013
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Steve Langton
Shipmate
# 17601
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Posted
by Augustine the Aleut
quote:
why he remains in the CoE if he feels that the church/state nexus is a problem for him
The 'church/state' nexus itself isn't a problem to Rev Holloway (I'm not sure he would be happy to be referred to as 'Fr Holloway'!!). He actually believes there should be such a nexus. His problem is that the CofE in its current form isn't doing that nexus properly because it's no longer a truly biblical church. He's not wanting to secede from the state church because it's a state church; he wants to restore it to being (as he would see it) a more Christian state church with more Christian beliefs in areas like homosexuality. If he must leave, I think he needs it to be clear in the process that the CofE is no longer truly Christian. And that puts him in a position of some tension. I'm not sure he can fully explain it himself....
Also by Augustine the Aleut
quote:
There are Reformation churches which, as you point out, hold scriptura sola views in their statements-- however, when matched against participation in executions for heresy, I fear that their street creds swirl in clockwise direction in exactly the same way as would those of the RCC and some of the Orthodox for their participation in such. Niceties of their claims were likely lost on the poor wretches tied to stakes as the flames crawled toward them.
The Reformation was a messy period - as lots of Shipmates will be happy to tell you, even some of the Anabaptists got things badly wrong at a place called Munster.
The trouble was that while correcting a lot of the errors/bad traditions that had developed in the RCC, the Protestants mostly did it with the help of their own state governments - like Lizzie I in England - and a lot of Reformers didn't get round to reforming Church/State relations and so carried on with practices like holy wars for the faith and burning or otherwise executing heretics. Only in the long term could they relax on this and adopt more 'plural society' views.
But it was a lot easier for the Reformers to put that right than for the Orthodox and RCC which weren't on a Sola Scriptura basis and so had a lot of institutional credibility riding on continuing to insist that their previous stance had been right. The current state of play is pretty much as I described it - they've found ways to apologise for a lot of the past, but still aren't quite willing to concede that they got Scripture wrong and are therefore not quite the guaranteed special authority they still claim.
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