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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Priestly genitalia [Ordination of Women]
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Crśsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Vade Mecum:
But housing shouldn't be taken into consideration, because it also saps massive amounts of money from stipends for heating &c, and not being owned by the clergy, doesn't actually benefit them financially unless they take lodgers. But this is tangential.
I agree it's a tangent, but in what way does "free lodging" not count as financially beneficial? Is it assumed that clergy would happily live in cardboard boxes or sleep in the pews if housing were not included in their compensation? I'm guessing that's the assumption you're making, since you also seem to be assuming that whatever lodgings they'd acquire on their own would not be heated &c.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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ExclamationMark
Shipmate
# 14715
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Vade Mecum:
[QUOTE]
Laymen can no more impart blessings than celebrate Mass, unless we are to understand them as asking for, rather than imparting, a blessing.
Lay people can do either (ie they are physically able to do it) - but whether such a thing is permissible under Anglican canons seems debateable.
In this case substitute "are not allowed to (?) for "can no more."
it's rather nice to know that there are churches in most places that really don't care about the laity/clerical divide: they just get on with it. I suppose in some eyes that makes their celebration "invalid" but it's incredibly numinous just the same.
Posts: 3845 | From: A new Jerusalem | Registered: Apr 2009
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ExclamationMark
Shipmate
# 14715
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Vade Mecum:
[QUOTE] ... and am usually very happy IRL to set out cogent arguments against OoW, but I was just wondering what the respect-demanders (not including you here) actually wanted that was possible.
As long as you appreciate (and perhaps move to understand) that "cogent" to you is abusive and discriminatory to others.
Posts: 3845 | From: A new Jerusalem | Registered: Apr 2009
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Vade Mecum
Shipmate
# 17688
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Posted
In re: blessings
No, laymen cannot impart blessings: they are not ontologically so ordered. Whether Deus necessaria supplet (God supplies the defect/that which is wanting) or not is another matter, and one on which we cannot presume to know. Whether Anglican laymen purport to bless is, I would argue, the irrelevant thing: they do not do so, and are not charged to do so, and their doing so, and being permitted to do so, is a serious fault on their priest's behalf.
To just assert that they must be, because it looks/sounds like they are, and you have a happy 'numinous' progressive theology which contradicts the teachings of the Church, is exactly the same as asserting that women priests are valid because they seem the same too: it begs the question 'really?'
In re: housing
I may have been too general: I mean that most clergy-houses are far too expensive to run on a priest's stipend, and almost impossible to use as intended (i.e. to provide hospitality and facilitate pastoral work), owing to the meagreness of the same. I don't contend that it isn't a financial asset on paper, but just that appearances can be deceiving.
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I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
Posts: 307 | From: North London | Registered: May 2013
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leo
Shipmate
# 1458
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Vade Mecum:
The CofE canons are silent when it comes to Readers giving blessings, and so we must assume that neither they nor laymen can do so.
I am not sure about the canons but my reader's license emphatically states that i may not bless (nor absolve) and there are formulae provided for, in the absence of a priest, that being 'May....'
If I 'bless' non-communicants, I do so with the blessed sacrament in my hand ass i go past.
Not 100% true that laymen cannot bless in the RCC, however. Fathers are encouraged to bless their children during family prayers.
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My Jewish-positive lectionary blog is at http://recognisingjewishrootsinthelectionary.wordpress.com/
My reviews at http://layreadersbookreviews.wordpress.com
Posts: 23198 | From: Bristol | Registered: Oct 2001
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Vade Mecum
Shipmate
# 17688
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ExclamationMark:
quote:
Originally posted by Vade Mecum:
[QUOTE] ... and am usually very happy IRL to set out cogent arguments against OoW, but I was just wondering what the respect-demanders (not including you here) actually wanted that was possible.
As long as you appreciate (and perhaps move to understand) that "cogent" to you is abusive and discriminatory to others.
I both appreciate and understand this. It is not given to me to make the truth other than it is in order that it might be palatable to modern ethical sensibilities. I wish it were.
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I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
Posts: 307 | From: North London | Registered: May 2013
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Vade Mecum:
quote:
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
Actually, once housing is taken into account CofE stipends are fairly generous. I seem to recall calculations that put the full cost of pay + benefits well north of Ł30 000.
But housing shouldn't be taken into consideration, because it also saps massive amounts of money from stipends for heating &c, and not being owned by the clergy, doesn't actually benefit them financially unless they take lodgers. But this is tangential.
But how do the stipend- and the pension, don't forget- compare to those in the RCC? More generous in the CofE, no? Once you then factor in the marginally higher social status (not universally, but sometimes) of the CofE incumbent compared to the RC PP, and fact that RC Bishops actually expect to be obeyed, you can see why some may be reluctant to move.
Posts: 6498 | From: Y Sowth | Registered: Jan 2008
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Eliab
Shipmate
# 9153
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Vade Mecum:
Whether Anglican laymen purport to bless is, I would argue, the irrelevant thing:
Then you haven't understood my point.
The issue I was addressing is a very narrow one in relation to what is an appropriate response to a woman priest by a Catholic. Specifically, the question was whether Catholics (and, by extension, others) who profess disbelief or doubt as to the validity of Anglican and female ordination would act inconsistently with that profession if they went up for a blessing as non-communicants.
The answer to that, in the Church of England, has to be 'no'. The blessing that the Catholic would receive is one that is routinely given by lay people in the CofE, in circumstances where everyone involved knows that they are not ordained. A lay Anglican giving or receiving such a blessing may (by your lights) be wrong, and we could argue about that, but there is no possible doubt about whether he or she is impliedly asserting that the person doing the blessing is ordained. No one thinks that. No one mistakes the assistant at communion with the priest, and no one who is willing to receive a blessing from the assistant thinks that this makes the assistant out to be a priest.
So if Anglicans routinely allow lay people to bless (and they clearly do) then in a CofE church, the act of receiving a blessing simply is not an enacted statement that the giver of the blessing is validly ordained. Opposition to OoW or ordination of Anglicans is not per se a bar to receiving a blessing from a female or Anglican priest.
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"Perhaps there is poetic beauty in the abstract ideas of justice or fairness, but I doubt if many lawyers are moved by it"
Richard Dawkins
Posts: 4619 | From: Hampton, Middlesex, UK | Registered: Mar 2005
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Vade Mecum:
quote:
Originally posted by ExclamationMark:
quote:
Originally posted by Vade Mecum:
[QUOTE] ... and am usually very happy IRL to set out cogent arguments against OoW, but I was just wondering what the respect-demanders (not including you here) actually wanted that was possible.
As long as you appreciate (and perhaps move to understand) that "cogent" to you is abusive and discriminatory to others.
I both appreciate and understand this. It is not given to me to make the truth other than it is in order that it might be palatable to modern ethical sensibilities. I wish it were.
You mean "I wish God weren't a sexist, but apparently he is. Shame, but I can't change his mind on this."
Surely, if God is sexist as you apparently believe, you shouldn't be "wishing it were otherwise" and agree with God's opinion on this and be sexist yourself. Why apologise for him?
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Vade Mecum
Shipmate
# 17688
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
[...] So if Anglicans routinely allow lay people to bless (and they clearly do) then in a CofE church, the act of receiving a blessing simply is not an enacted statement that the giver of the blessing is validly ordained. Opposition to OoW or ordination of Anglicans is not per se a bar to receiving a blessing from a female or Anglican priest.
I for one have never seen a layman purport to give a blessing at the Eucharist, and whilst I believe you when you say that it is common, I still don't believe that this allows us to claim that Anglican blessings at the Eucharist aren't real and are never understood that way. I understand them as blessings, and so would many of a catholic persuasion: I'd be interested to find anyone who thought both that women cannot be priests and that laymen can give blessings at Communion, or that such blessings are not intended (by the liturgy, rather than the one blessing) to be sacerdotal acts.
The wider point, however, was your idea that, with the resolutions removed, opponents of OoW should be content to receive a blessing when a woman happens to be celebrating (I hope I've that right: do correct me). Leaving aside that this would mean that they must then go elsewhere to fulfill their obligation to hear Mass (assuming a Sunday here), why would such a person attend such a service? Explicitly to show respect? I'm still struggling here with how this works out in practice. Do enlighten me.
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
quote:
Originally posted by Vade Mecum:
quote:
Originally posted by ExclamationMark:
quote:
Originally posted by Vade Mecum:
[qb] [QUOTE] ... and am usually very happy IRL to set out cogent arguments against OoW, but I was just wondering what the respect-demanders (not including you here) actually wanted that was possible.
As long as you appreciate (and perhaps move to understand) that "cogent" to you is abusive and discriminatory to others.
I both appreciate and understand this. It is not given to me to make the truth other than it is in order that it might be palatable to modern ethical sensibilities. I wish it were.
You mean "I wish God weren't a sexist, but apparently he is. Shame, but I can't change his mind on this."
Surely, if God is sexist as you apparently believe, you shouldn't be "wishing it were otherwise" and agree with God's opinion on this and be sexist yourself. Why apologise for him?
I was once a liberal: I understand the attractiveness of the equality position. I happen no longer to hold it, but that doesn't mean I don't desire the Church to be less at war with itself: to re-word, were this an issue capable of change, I would believe that it should be changed. It isn't. This is a shame insofar as it distracts us from unity and service. It is not insofar as it is (according to me &c) God's will.
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I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
Posts: 307 | From: North London | Registered: May 2013
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Vade Mecum:
...This is a shame insofar as it distracts us from unity and service. It is not insofar as it is (according to me &c) God's will.
But OoW is not going to be repealed, is it? So your choice is either to belt up and get on with service, insofar as you can, within the CofE; or, if you knows of a better 'ole, go to it.
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My beard is a testament to my masculinity and virility, and demonstrates that I am a real man. Trouble is, bits of quiche sometimes get caught in it.
Posts: 6498 | From: Y Sowth | Registered: Jan 2008
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Vade Mecum
Shipmate
# 17688
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
quote:
Originally posted by Vade Mecum:
...This is a shame insofar as it distracts us from unity and service. It is not insofar as it is (according to me &c) God's will.
But OoW is not going to be repealed, is it? So your choice is either to belt up and get on with service, insofar as you can, within the CofE; or, if you knows of a better 'ole, go to it.
Arianism was defeated eventually, and it had greater traction in the wider Church. It probably seemed unlikely to some that it would ever be defeated. Hope springs eternal, and all that.
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I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
Posts: 307 | From: North London | Registered: May 2013
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Vade Mecum
Shipmate
# 17688
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
Get real.
As the World as been saying to the Church since the beginning.
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I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
Posts: 307 | From: North London | Registered: May 2013
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
Don't you mean The Church(TM)?
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My beard is a testament to my masculinity and virility, and demonstrates that I am a real man. Trouble is, bits of quiche sometimes get caught in it.
Posts: 6498 | From: Y Sowth | Registered: Jan 2008
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Vade Mecum
Shipmate
# 17688
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
Don't you mean The Church(TM)?
Quite.
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I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
Posts: 307 | From: North London | Registered: May 2013
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Tommy1
Shipmate
# 17916
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
quote:
Originally posted by Vade Mecum:
I both appreciate and understand this. It is not given to me to make the truth other than it is in order that it might be palatable to modern ethical sensibilities. I wish it were.
You mean "I wish God weren't a sexist, but apparently he is. Shame, but I can't change his mind on this."
No I think I know what Vade Mecum means. Did you ever see a film called 'Lair Liar' starring Jim Carrey? In the film the Carrey character is afflicted by a curse which compels him to tell the truth at all times. This causes him no end of embarrassment as of course he knows that most people will often hate to hear the truth and would rather hear comfortable falsehoods.
Posts: 256 | Registered: Dec 2013
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Organ Builder
Shipmate
# 12478
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Vade Mecum:
Arianism was defeated eventually, and it had greater traction in the wider Church. It probably seemed unlikely to some that it would ever be defeated. Hope springs eternal, and all that.
It wasn't defeated without a good bit of pressure from the State and various Emperors, though, was it? It seems to me that the extent to which the State might care to be involved in our time would be more likely to press FOR OoW.
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How desperately difficult it is to be honest with oneself. It is much easier to be honest with other people.--E.F. Benson
Posts: 3337 | From: ...somewhere in between 40 and death... | Registered: Mar 2007
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Organ Builder
Shipmate
# 12478
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Tommy1:
This causes him no end of embarrassment as of course he knows that most people will often hate to hear the truth and would rather hear comfortable falsehoods.
The problem is that too many people seem to think that if they are saying something unpleasant, it is an unpleasant truth. It is just as likely to be an unpleasant delusion.
Sometimes people aren't "persecuted" for being righteous--they are "persecuted" for being jerks.
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How desperately difficult it is to be honest with oneself. It is much easier to be honest with other people.--E.F. Benson
Posts: 3337 | From: ...somewhere in between 40 and death... | Registered: Mar 2007
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Tommy1
Shipmate
# 17916
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Organ Builder:
quote:
Originally posted by Tommy1:
This causes him no end of embarrassment as of course he knows that most people will often hate to hear the truth and would rather hear comfortable falsehoods.
The problem is that too many people seem to think that if they are saying something unpleasant, it is an unpleasant truth. It is just as likely to be an unpleasant delusion.
Sometimes people aren't "persecuted" for being righteous--they are "persecuted" for being jerks.
Well that's certainly true. There are plenty of things people hate in addition to hating the truth. That doesn't alter the fact that they do hate the truth
Posts: 256 | Registered: Dec 2013
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stonespring
Shipmate
# 15530
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Posted
Hi Vade Mecum.
I was baptized RC as a baby but raised by lapsed Catholic parents who didn't take me to Church. By my late teens I was a new-agey, panentheist, religious pluralist, universalist, reincarnationist, sexual liberationist religion-of-one who did really think of myself as Christian. Then in college I had one of my many breakdowns and decided to see what it was in the RCC that my parents wanted to leave. I did RCIA, had my first communion and Confirmation, and tried for a few years to give Church teaching as explained to me by conservative priests the benefit of the doubt. But, here I am about 7 years later back to being highly heterodox (and sexually liberal) in my views, but now I still call myself a Christian and a Roman Catholic in spite of that.
I have always been interested in Anglo-Catholicism and have also found particularly interesting the kind of Anglo-Catholicism that either believes one of two things:
a. that the Pope does not have Universal Ordinary jursidiction over the whole Church or Infallibility on his own when speaking from the chair of St. Peter. Therefore, the Anglican Church(es) have full autonomy and are just as much part of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church as those Christians in full communion with the Pope.
b. The universal Church really should all be in communion with the Pope and the Pope should lead it, but the faithful in the Anglican Communion should stay where they are, teaching and practicing the Catholic faith, until such a time as the whole hierarchy and corporate body of the Anglican Communion (or the C of E specifically) can reunite with Rome.
Do you believe either of those things? If not, and if you believe that the C of E has heresy in its canons, why are you still in it?
I ask myself similar questions about why I am in the RCC still, but coming from a completely different angle.
Posts: 1537 | Registered: Mar 2010
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Organ Builder
Shipmate
# 12478
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Tommy1:
There are plenty of things people hate in addition to hating the truth. That doesn't alter the fact that they do hate the truth
I don't know. Certainly there are truths that ARE "unpleasant"--like the fact that cancer can take your loved ones, or the fact that one's own comfort may be built on horrid labor conditions for someone else. But "People hate the truth" tends to be one of those unexamined maxims that gets thrown around and everyone just assumes it's true without really thinking about it. (A Jim Carrey movie does not count as a philosophical examination of the underpinnings of this maxim, in my opinion).
There is a BIG difference between "People hate the truth" and "People hate my opinion".
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How desperately difficult it is to be honest with oneself. It is much easier to be honest with other people.--E.F. Benson
Posts: 3337 | From: ...somewhere in between 40 and death... | Registered: Mar 2007
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
Eliab, I hate to do this, because I'm with you on OOW, but:
quote:
A lay Anglican giving or receiving such a blessing may (by your lights) be wrong, and we could argue about that, but there is no possible doubt about whether he or she is impliedly asserting that the person doing the blessing is ordained. No one thinks that. No one mistakes the assistant at communion with the priest, and no one who is willing to receive a blessing from the assistant thinks that this makes the assistant out to be a priest.
So if Anglicans routinely allow lay people to bless (and they clearly do) then in a CofE church, the act of receiving a blessing simply is not an enacted statement that the giver of the blessing is validly ordained. Opposition to OoW or ordination of Anglicans is not per se a bar to receiving a blessing from a female or Anglican priest.
In my experience, Anglicans don't permit lay people to bless. In fact, I'm familiar with services where the priest is the only ordained server of communion, and having consecrated the bread and wine and invited the congregation to the altar rail to receive, there will be an announcement that if someone wants a blessing please can they come to the side of the altar where he is distributing, rather than the side where the reader and other lay people are on duty.
The priest will distribute the bread and blessings for half the rail and a lay server will distribute the wine.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
Lay people bless non-communicants all the time in the CofE. The person distributing communion can be a priest, a reader, a server, or anyone else authorised by the bishop. They say "The body of Christ..." to people taking communion, and pray something like "The Lord Jesus Christ bless you" to others.
Yes. And also, at least in our more Protestant-minded evangelical congregations lay people bless each other, or the whole congregation, at other times as well.
But then orduinary people bless each other all the time. Maybe not so much in our very secular and undemonstrative culture, but its quite normal all over the world. Not a specifically churchy thing at all.
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Vade Mecum:
The CofE canons are silent when it comes to Readers giving blessings, and so we must assume that neither they nor laymen can do so.
I am not sure about the canons but my reader's license emphatically states that i may not bless (nor absolve) a
Absolve, yes. The CofE restricts that to priests. But there is nothing in the liturgies or the canons that restricts blessing to priests. Any more than there is anything that restricts reading the Gospels to them. These are local traditions that vary between churches. Many, I'd suspect most, Anglican churches will have never heard of them.
To be hionest we have the opposite probklem - sometimes I've tried to encourage priests, especially (but not only) newly ordained curates, to use the emphatic forms of blessing and absolution. They seem to come out of training very nervous of them and to prefer the "May..." forms. So I've tried to tell them that they are acting on behalf of the wehkle Church and they really are able to say that God forgives your sins.
quote:
Originally posted by Vade Mecum:
I for one have never seen a layman purport to give a blessing at the Eucharist...
Never? Really? Never at all? You probably need to get out more. It really isn't rare in the Church of England. The only way to avoid it would, I think, be to restrict your churchgoing to churches of one rather narrow party.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Eliab
Shipmate
# 9153
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Vade Mecum:
I still don't believe that this allows us to claim that Anglican blessings at the Eucharist aren't real and are never understood that way. I understand them as blessings, and so would many of a catholic persuasion:
I'm not sure what you mean by 'not real'. I suspect that you are making a distinction between a prayer for a blessing which does nothing in itself but which God might answer as He might answer any prayer, and a blessing which carries an inherent, ontological grace such that we can be assured that God has done something.
If so, I don't think that is a distinction that most Anglicans make. I don't think most people who are asked by their priests to distribute communion and are instructed on what to say to communicants and non-communicants even think to ask whether the blessing is 'real' in that sense. It seems a natural question to you, because you are coming from a Catholic-minded strand of the Church where such things are important. I don't think most Anglicans think in that way.
quote:
I'd be interested to find anyone who thought both that women cannot be priests and that laymen can give blessings at Communion, or that such blessings are not intended (by the liturgy, rather than the one blessing) to be sacerdotal acts.
If you want to look for one, I'd suggest starting with the 'headship' evangelicals. Especially those of a charismatic persuasion. They would seem to me to be the best prospect for theologies that have no problem with lay people blessing one another in a 'real', ontological, and visibly manifested way, and if you find one who also believes in male headship, that person might also doubt the validity of women's ordination. Though they will likely understand 'ordination' and 'validity' in very different senses to the way you mean them.
There are lots of reasons to be in favour of, and opposed to, women priests. You seem to be overlaying the whole issue with a set of Anglo-Catholic assumptions that most people in the CofE do not hold to. I'm not knocking A-C theology just because it's a minority position here – clearly it is perfectly legitimate for an Anglican to be an Anglo-Catholic. It is a very important element of our shared tradition, but it is not the whole of it. It isn't Anglicanism. There is no obligation on the rest of us to cast the debate in A-C terms.
quote:
The wider point, however, was your idea that, with the resolutions removed, opponents of OoW should be content to receive a blessing when a woman happens to be celebrating (I hope I've that right: do correct me). Leaving aside that this would mean that they must then go elsewhere to fulfill their obligation to hear Mass (assuming a Sunday here), why would such a person attend such a service? Explicitly to show respect? I'm still struggling here with how this works out in practice. Do enlighten me.
If you're serious about that last request to be enlightened, you'll learn more by fulfilling your Sunday obligation* for the next two months at your nearest con-evo parish than by anything I'm likely to write.
I say that because that whole paragraph only makes sense with a whole raft of assumptions specific to the Catholic tradition in the CofE and right now you are debating people both inside and outside that sub-culture. You are assuming that the reason people go to Church is to hear Mass. That's one reason. They also go to Church to meet friends, sing songs, get out of the house, listen to scriptural exposition, get their kids into church schools, play in a praise band, receive the Holy Spirit, manifest spiritual gifts, or pray to God. Receiving the sacrament is absolutely central to some Anglicans and of no importance at all to others. That you question why someone would even attend a church service led by a priest whose sacramental authority they doubt shows a narrowness of focus which I don't think is helpful. For a start the question of 'How can I respond with integrity and appropriately to this woman's ordained ministry?” only arises once you are through the church door. If you have your safe male-led enclave that meets your immediate spiritual requirements, you don't ever have to answer the question.
For what it's worth, I'd rather allow you your safe male-led enclaves than lose you, but I think you're missing out on other channels of God's grace that you have no idea exist. And that's sad. Not as sad as pissing on the ministries of those women whom God is calling to the priesthood, but still sad.
(*Does the CofE teach that the faithful are required to attend specifically a communion service every Sunday? I'm not categorically denying that it might, but in 41 years of being an Anglican, no one has ever taught that to me. On the assumption that I'm ignorant and the Church does impose that requirement, then surely it must be a requirement to attend what the Church considers to be a valid eucharist? So the obligation would be fulfilled at a service led by a woman priest, because in the eyes of the Church, that's the Mass. Your personal scruples against receiving at such a service are another matter – for all I know to the contrary, you may do well to abstain. But as far as the Church is concerned, the Mass was said, you were there, and that counts.)
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"Perhaps there is poetic beauty in the abstract ideas of justice or fairness, but I doubt if many lawyers are moved by it"
Richard Dawkins
Posts: 4619 | From: Hampton, Middlesex, UK | Registered: Mar 2005
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Eliab
Shipmate
# 9153
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
In my experience, Anglicans don't permit lay people to bless. In fact, I'm familiar with services where the priest is the only ordained server of communion, and having consecrated the bread and wine and invited the congregation to the altar rail to receive, there will be an announcement that if someone wants a blessing please can they come to the side of the altar where he is distributing, rather than the side where the reader and other lay people are on duty.
The priest will distribute the bread and blessings for half the rail and a lay server will distribute the wine.
My church has lay communion assistants every week. The usual set up is that the priest has one dish of wafers and works one side of the altar rail, a reader has another and does the other side, and each is accompanies by a lay person with the wine. The assistants are authorised by the bishop for the purpose (my church routinely puts all the servers on the list of those we ask the bishop to authorise, but there are a number of others who don't have any other formal role in the service on that list). In the absence of a reader or visiting priest, one of the assistants will distribute the bread. There is no difference in the words used at the distribution, whatever the status of the distributor, and the person with the bread will also bless non-communicants who approach the rail.
From what I know of other churches in my area, and from visits to churches outside the area both 'higher' and 'lower' than mine in churchmanship, this arrangement is utterly unremarkable. I've never heard anyone make any comment about it. I would never even have heard of the 'lay people can't bless' viewpoint if I didn't read Ship of Fools. I think if I mentioned it to people in my church (certainly including my wife) their first thought would be that I was pulling their leg with an obviously nonsensical, made-up 'tradition'.
Your church obviously does things differently to mine. No big deal.
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"Perhaps there is poetic beauty in the abstract ideas of justice or fairness, but I doubt if many lawyers are moved by it"
Richard Dawkins
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Gee D
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# 13815
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Posted
That is very similar to our practice - the Body by the presiding priest or the deacon (usually also a priest where there are 2 distributing the Body) and 2 or 4 assistants, appointed by the Abp, who distribute the blood to alternate communicants. Any blessing is pronounced by the priest/deacon.
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Not every Anglican in Sydney is Sydney Anglican
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Vade Mecum
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# 17688
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by stonespring:
Hi Vade Mecum.
[...]
I have always been interested in Anglo-Catholicism and have also found particularly interesting the kind of Anglo-Catholicism that either believes one of two things:
a. that the Pope does not have Universal Ordinary jursidiction over the whole Church or Infallibility on his own when speaking from the chair of St. Peter. Therefore, the Anglican Church(es) have full autonomy and are just as much part of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church as those Christians in full communion with the Pope.
b. The universal Church really should all be in communion with the Pope and the Pope should lead it, but the faithful in the Anglican Communion should stay where they are, teaching and practicing the Catholic faith, until such a time as the whole hierarchy and corporate body of the Anglican Communion (or the C of E specifically) can reunite with Rome.
Do you believe either of those things? If not, and if you believe that the C of E has heresy in its canons, why are you still in it?
I ask myself similar questions about why I am in the RCC still, but coming from a completely different angle.
Generally, I would say that I would be quite happy for the successor of Peter to exercise immediate ordinary episcopal jurisdiction over the whole Church, and for the see of Rome to be the first see of Christendom. I am far less happy for said bishop to exercise the greater monarchical powers he presently does.
I believe the Anglican Church to have retained valid orders despite the Deformation, and thus to be a legitimate, though errant, branch of the Church Universal. I remain in it because it is the communion to which I belong, and which has not yet fallen utterly away from what it is called to be. I also believe unity is achieved not by redefining who constitutes the Body of Christ, as Rome does, but by communions seeking reunion as bodies.
I suppose that's a bit of both a) and b), really.
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I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
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Vade Mecum
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Eliab: There's so much in your post that I'm bound to miss some of it.
But: I know that I look at things through a catholic lens. I'm aware that not everyone does. But I do think that it's true. I think people should hold catholic views, and I don't have much time for the usual relativist Anglican position which tries to reconcile irreconcilable things by not looking at them closely enough (not that I'm accusing you of holding that).
No, the CofE doesn't teach the Sunday obligation, but I think it should: the obligation has the auctoritas of great antiquity and should not be cast aside. And your point about what the church says is Mass being valid is fine, if tortured, but a non-Mass is a non-Mass is a non-Mass, objectively, and the constraint to hear Mass is not just some church imposition, but a reflection of what the life of faith should look like.
I take great offence from your insinuation that because the Mass is at the centre of my praxis, I am somehow spiritually dead to other channels of grace: one meets friends, sings songs and prays to God in the context of the great sacrifice, and it is fitting that it should be so, for the Holy Sacrifice is the great meeting place of heaven and earth, the making of the Church.
Obviously to people who think the Eucharist should be a memorial supper, all that is irrelevant. I happen to think (with the Church) that they are horribly wrong.
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I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
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Posted
Threads like this make me realise that despite my flirtation with formal liturgy, I never really was an Anglo-Catholic.
Mass obligation'd be tricky at our gaff since we only have a service twice a month. Not that the spikier types would probably recognise our Eucharist as valid anyway.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
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Vade Mecum
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# 17688
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Threads like this make me realise that despite my flirtation with formal liturgy, I never really was an Anglo-Catholic.
Mass obligation'd be tricky at our gaff since we only have a service twice a month. Not that the spikier types would probably recognise our Eucharist as valid anyway.
You don't have to attend the same church to fulfill the obligation, KLB.
And no, I don't imagine Anglo-catholicism was really your sort of thing...
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I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
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Hmm - I'm not sure it'd make much sense to have an obligation on the individual without also obligating churches to provide a Eucharistic service every Sunday. This would rather change the face of Anglicanism in the UK at any rate. And if the Eucharistic service isn't the main service of the Sunday, it gives the individual the option of (a) missing the main service, (b) going twice, or (c) ignoring the obligation.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
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Vade Mecum
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# 17688
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Hmm - I'm not sure it'd make much sense to have an obligation on the individual without also obligating churches to provide a Eucharistic service every Sunday. This would rather change the face of Anglicanism in the UK at any rate. And if the Eucharistic service isn't the main service of the Sunday, it gives the individual the option of (a) missing the main service, (b) going twice, or (c) ignoring the obligation.
Parish churches are obliged to celebrate the Eucharist on Sundays. This probably doesn't apply to FE ventures, but I don't think that dispenses the individual from hearing Mass: option b) above is the 'best' option, and a) is preferable to c).
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I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
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aig
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Posted
B 14 Of Holy Communion in parish churches 1. The Holy Communion shall be celebrated in every parish church at least on all Sundays and principal Feast Days, and on Ash Wednesday and Maundy Thursday. It shall be celebrated distinctly, reverently, and in an audible voice.
Canons 7th edition on Church of England website: canon B 14 -above is very clear and is ignored by swathes of the church.
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That's not how we do it here.......
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
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Heh. We're not a parish church, so that's presumably our letout.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
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Callan
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Posted
There is an obligation for services to provide a Communion service every Sunday. In a lot of places this happens at 8am and is attended by a dozen or so people whilst something like between 50 - 100 people turn up to the service of the word at 10.30 (or whenever). I believe that the canonical obligation on practicing members of the Church of England is to receive the Sacrament at Christmas, Easter and Ascensiontide although this is not rigourously policed.
As an Anglo-Catholic I believe very strongly in frequent reception of the Sacrament and that a Mass ought to be the main Sunday service of the parish. As a member of the reality based community I acknowledge that Anglo-Catholicism is not the default setting within the Church of England.
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How easy it would be to live in England, if only one did not love her. - G.K. Chesterton
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aig
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Karl:Liberal Backslider
Your get out is your Bishop under Canon B14 A4:
4. The bishop of a diocese may direct what services shall be held or shall not be required to be held in any church in the diocese which is not a parish church or in any building, or part of a building, in the diocese licensed for public worship under section 29 of the Pastoral Measure 1983 but not designated as a parish centre of worship.
A paragraph to cheer your heart on a chill, dank, January day.
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That's not how we do it here.......
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Organ Builder
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Vade Mecum:
...the Deformation.
I'm sure this is considered very clever in certain Anglo-Papal circles, but it's no more helpful (or correct) than referring to Anglo-Catholics as "Ritualists", as though there were nothing more to Anglo-Catholicism than a love of ceremony and dressing up.
Whether they care to admit it or not, the RCC is also a post-Reformation church, and the process helped them clean out a lot of the very un-Christian abuses of the medieval Church power structure.
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How desperately difficult it is to be honest with oneself. It is much easier to be honest with other people.--E.F. Benson
Posts: 3337 | From: ...somewhere in between 40 and death... | Registered: Mar 2007
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Vade Mecum
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# 17688
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Organ Builder:
quote:
Originally posted by Vade Mecum:
...the Deformation.
I'm sure this is considered very clever in certain Anglo-Papal circles, [...]
Not clever, merely accurate: 'Reform' has wholly positive connotations, and the legacy of the 16thC 'Reformers' is one of destruction, deformation and loss: they quite literally changed the shape (de-formed) of the Church and its liturgy so as to be unrecognisable.
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I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gildas:
There is an obligation for services to provide a Communion service every Sunday. In a lot of places this happens at 8am...
If we had an 8am I doubt if anyone woudl be there. Most of the congregtion are late for the 10:30!
Our vicar's get-out clause - or rather our previous vicar's get-out clause as we are between incumbents - was that Holy Communion was celebrated somewhere every Sunday. But as there are three church buildings and typically five services, you might not always know where!
Strictly speaking I think we are breaking the rules as we are two parishes, even though one "team ministry".
Of course anyone desperate for an Anglican celebration of Communion in our neighbourhood could always go to a neighbouring parish such as St Stephen's (which you would pass on the obious walking route from one of our church buildings to the other), St Peter''s (300 metres from our parish church as the crow flies), or St Paul's (about 700 metres from one of our other churches), or either St James or St Mary's (less than ten minutes on the bus in opposite directions from each other, less than a mile on foot cutting off the corner). Typically for our area four of those five are very markedly Anglo-Catholic (less typically only two of them are clearly liberal) so our regulars probably wouldn;t weant to go there (or vice-versa) but they are there if you want them.
Probably no-one except a few ecclesiantical nerds knows or cares where the parish boundaries are anyway. People either go to the nearby church that suits their taste best, or else simply to the nearest church. There are about ten Anglican churches within an easy walk, dozens of other Protestant churches, and two or three Catholic, and loads more if you take to the road by bus or car. So the rules are in a real sense redundant. Whatever it is your church is not doing, someone else will be doing it, and probably just round the corner.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
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Posted
TBF, Ken, that's a tad London-centric. Anything our parish church isn't doing you'd have to go at least a mile to find, because that's the next nearest church of any flavour. Easy enough if you have a car, not necessarily otherwise.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Vade Mecum:
... the legacy of the 16thC 'Reformers' is one of destruction, deformation and loss: they quite literally changed the shape (de-formed) of the Church and its liturgy so as to be unrecognisable.
If you want to insult somewhere between five hundred million and a billion of your fellow Christians why not try doing it in Hell where we can answer using language appropriate to such an outrageous piece of nonsense?
But while we're here, maybe if some the Popes had been a little less eager to use burning at the stake as their answer to any and all dissent, while living it up in tjhe Vatican or Avignon on the pillaged gifts of the faithful, the Spirit of God would not have found it neccessary to bless his people with his word though the Reformers.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
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Organ Builder
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# 12478
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Vade Mecum:
Not clever, merely accurate: 'Reform' has wholly positive connotations, and the legacy of the 16thC 'Reformers' is one of destruction, deformation and loss: they quite literally changed the shape (de-formed) of the Church and its liturgy so as to be unrecognisable.
After reading this I decided to do a bit of checking on the web, given that I can't say I've kept up on the Roman Catholic view of the Reformation in the last 20 years or so. I discovered by checking a number of websites that Catholic historians and websites don't seem to have a problem with calling the period "Reformation" as long as "Reformation" is understood as including what we used to call the "Counter-Reformation". So I owe any Catholics who may have read my previous post an apology for the snide manner in which I made my comment about the RCC being a post-Reformation church.
I stand by my previous post. If the RCC can make peace with the term "Reformation", I don't think it's too much to expect Anglo-Catholics and Anglo-Papalists to do so--particularly when posting on a discussion board where a variety of viewpoints are represented.
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How desperately difficult it is to be honest with oneself. It is much easier to be honest with other people.--E.F. Benson
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Albertus
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# 13356
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
... the rules are in a real sense redundant. Whatever it is your church is not doing, someone else will be doing it, and probably just round the corner.
Oh no they're not. They're there to make sure that Communion is celebrated somewhere. In practice one can live with the rules being broken occasionally,even if one disapproves strongly of it (as I do). But the rules have to be there to make sure that the practices which they enjoin are, on the whole, followed.
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stonespring
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# 15530
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
quote:
Originally posted by Vade Mecum:
... the legacy of the 16thC 'Reformers' is one of destruction, deformation and loss: they quite literally changed the shape (de-formed) of the Church and its liturgy so as to be unrecognisable.
If you want to insult somewhere between five hundred million and a billion of your fellow Christians why not try doing it in Hell where we can answer using language appropriate to such an outrageous piece of nonsense?
But while we're here, maybe if some the Popes had been a little less eager to use burning at the stake as their answer to any and all dissent, while living it up in tjhe Vatican or Avignon on the pillaged gifts of the faithful, the Spirit of God would not have found it neccessary to bless his people with his word though the Reformers.
Sadly, as an RC I can confess to having seen the word "Deformation" used to refer to the Reformation on a few conservative Catholic blogs. But they don't speak for the hiearchy any more than I do.
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Eliab
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# 9153
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Vade Mecum:
I take great offence from your insinuation that because the Mass is at the centre of my praxis, I am somehow spiritually dead to other channels of grace:
And so you should if that's what I'd said.
But I didn't. I said you were missing out, which, clearly, you are. I look at a communion service led by a woman and see an opportunity to encounter God. You see a sacrilege. I naively imagine that you could benefit from being there even if your scruples prevent you from receiving the sacrament. You ask, I don't doubt with sincerity, why you would want to attend at all. There is no question but that I am seeing some good which you are missing.
How could you even begin to argue that this is not so? If you accept that I get something out of such a service that you don't, you concede the point. If you contend that there is no genuine good to be got, then you demonstrate it.
That's not meant to be a spiritual diagnosis. I know that I can be a intemperate gobshite, but I don't usually go around pronouncing people spiritually dead for disagreeing with me. I am sorry that my comment was capable of being understood that way - it was not intended to be - and I apologise for giving offence.
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"Perhaps there is poetic beauty in the abstract ideas of justice or fairness, but I doubt if many lawyers are moved by it"
Richard Dawkins
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Penny S
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# 14768
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Posted
from Vade Mecum quote:
I happen to think (with the Church) that they are horribly wrong.
Why does this need the word "horribly" in describing the memorial service interpretation of "do this in memory of me"? And I assume you exclude from "The Church" any denomination you don't agree with.
I went on a visit to the monastic area of Meteora in Greece. According to our guide, there is a problem in getting enough monks to fully occupy the monasteries nowadays. Fortunately, some of them can be maintained by communities of nuns. However, some monks do not regard this as fortunate, as in their eyes, once a place has been dedicated for worship by men, it is "sacrilege" for women to do the same thing in it. (I assume that their Masses are led by men, even so).
Why do you, like those monks, feel so impelled to use such strong and destructive words in describing what other people, who regard themselves as your fellow Christians, do in worship?
[ 10. January 2014, 18:05: Message edited by: Penny S ]
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by stonespring:
... I can confess to having seen the word "Deformation" used to refer to the Reformation on a few conservative Catholic blogs. But they don't speak for the hiearchy any more than I do.
Pope Benedict, still with us not yet of blessed memory, was probably the most Protestant-friendly (or maybe the least-Protestant-unfriendly) Pope ever. I cannot remember where I saw it, but I do remember seeing things he wrote that were very positive about Martin Luther. And, jumping forward about four hundred years, he seems to have been a buit of a fan of Karl Barth, who was as Reformed as a reformed thing in a reformed pew in a reformed cathedral.
Seriously, I think if Luther had been alive in the late twentieth century (and somehow managed to have the opinions, attituides, education, and prejudices he had in the early sixteenth, which is of course impossible) he'd not have found it neccessary to split with Rome (though I doubt he'd have been an uncontroversial or consistently obedient Catholic priest - but then he wasn't even one of those as a Protestant - he seems to have been almost unable to resist a good flame war). And if Ratzinger had been alive in the sixteenth century, I think he'd have been a Protestant.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
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Callan
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# 525
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Posted
I can just about see why a conservative Roman Catholic might use the word "deformation" but it makes no sense for an Anglican to use it. If the Reformation were wholly iniquitous then one ought not to be a member of a Reformed church. End of. File under lack of intellectual and existential seriousness.
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How easy it would be to live in England, if only one did not love her. - G.K. Chesterton
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Honest Ron Bacardi
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
quote:
Originally posted by stonespring:
... I can confess to having seen the word "Deformation" used to refer to the Reformation on a few conservative Catholic blogs. But they don't speak for the hiearchy any more than I do.
Pope Benedict, still with us not yet of blessed memory, was probably the most Protestant-friendly (or maybe the least-Protestant-unfriendly) Pope ever. I cannot remember where I saw it, but I do remember seeing things he wrote that were very positive about Martin Luther. And, jumping forward about four hundred years, he seems to have been a buit of a fan of Karl Barth, who was as Reformed as a reformed thing in a reformed pew in a reformed cathedral.
Seriously, I think if Luther had been alive in the late twentieth century (and somehow managed to have the opinions, attituides, education, and prejudices he had in the early sixteenth, which is of course impossible) he'd not have found it neccessary to split with Rome (though I doubt he'd have been an uncontroversial or consistently obedient Catholic priest - but then he wasn't even one of those as a Protestant - he seems to have been almost unable to resist a good flame war). And if Ratzinger had been alive in the sixteenth century, I think he'd have been a Protestant.
I agree with most of this (nothing much risked here anyway). Excepting just the very last sentence. I think he would have been like Erasmus - wanting the change but rejecting the resultant overshoot (in his opinion of course). Which is pretty much his position over Vatican II.
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Anglo-Cthulhic
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