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Ship of Fools: St Margaret of Scotland, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
The Mystery Worshipper
Shipmate
Ship of Fools: St Margaret of Scotland, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Sugar cookies, banana bread, fudge and white roses – but no people!
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The sacrarium, it's called. Not calling tat by the names that God has ordained for them makes the Baby Jesus and his Blessed Mother . . . well, you know.
Our practice was to leave the vessels, along with any unconsumed bread and wine, on the Holy Table, and to remove them to the vestry after the service had ended. The unconsumed remains would then be reverently consumed by the Vicar and myself (neither of us had to drive home!), and the vessels would be left for the Verger to clean and put away.
Sorry, but it is An Abomination Before The Lord, and I'm surprised the said Lord has not yet demolished it (just the tower, not the church) with a well-aimed thunderbolt.
The tower certainly must make the Baby Jesus etc. etc.
Back to the Report, and I assume the Lay Reader acted as server - maybe the usual server was absent, and they had to step in at short notice? Hence perhaps the errors...
My impression is that rather larger vessels than the traditional wee cuppies were used, although with such a small number present, a common cup (chalice) would have sufficed. Was an individual large glass of wine offered to each communicant?
What bothered me about the reporter's assertion is the phrase "abandoning it in a plastic tub."
Our Blessed Lord is not going to suffer any more than he already has by anything we might do to his Precious Body and Blood, so long as we don't do it out of disrespect. However, through the ages the faithful seem to have been keen to "put on their best" when going to church. Receiving the Precious Blood in a plastic wee cuppie is, at worst, debatable as to being "best", but tossing the cuppie into a plastic tub doesn't seem to come close to qualifying as "best." When I think of "tub" in this context, I think of the slops bucket that one sometimes sees at wine-tasting parties. Or something that washerwomen used to utilize on laundry day.
At Our Place, at present we do drink from wee cuppies, but then we reverently place them in a beautiful hand-made wicker basket that a parishioner made and donated to the church as an act of love.
At St. Margaret's, judging from the report, it does seem that the Precious Blood was ministered in proper glasses, not in plastic wee cuppies. I don't imagine most churches would be able to afford gold plated goblets, but surely a good sturdy glass of proper size, that fits comfortably in the palm of one's hand, would not be, erm, out of reach. Shoo, I just ordered a set of juice glasses from Amazon that would fit the bill very nicely.
I don't see how receiving the Precious Blood in such a vessel, and then leaving it in a suitably respectful receptacle, or even just setting it down on a linen-covered credenza, as one might do at a cocktail party, would be considered an affront to Our Lord. And of course the sacristan would collect them all afterwards and reverently wash them in hot soapy water . . . to be disposed of down the sacrarium.
I'm bothered more by the practice in some places of the priest consecrating the wine in a chalice and then leaving it sit there without being consumed.
If you find that unpalatable, you should see some of the un-majestic edifices that get topped with crosses in Korea. Do a duckduckgo on "Methodist church Itaewon" for just one example.
(The Itaewon church seems to be just one of numerous organizations occupying that rather pedestrian business tower, but, as is often the case over here, they still saw fit to put their symbol right on top.)
On the other hand the report gives the impression that not a lot of care went into the service as a whole. I found myself thinking "why bother."
I agree with and like your post - except that in the extract above, you refer to "glass". That worries me. Glass can be pretty slippery, wet glass even more so. Church floors I'm familiar with are either tiles or wood upon which dropped glass would shatter and splinter.
No faffing about, less work for sacristan and server, and no chance of the Most Blessed Sacrament being spilled on the church floor...
I don't think memorialism is standard in the Anglican Church of Canada.
I actually don't mind that - it at least fits in with the building style. It looks like one complete building. The tower on the church being MWd looks like a barn aeration windmill tower plonked on top of a normal suburban church building. The problem for me anyway is the difference between the building and tower styles - some 60s/70s church buildings have towers that at least look like a coherent part of the whole, even if the overall style isn't something you like (personally I am actually a fan of brutalist church architecture).
The body of the building actually reminds me of Mormon churches (not temples) found in UK suburbs.
And Pomona, not to be a one-upper or anything, but when you say you like "brutalist church architecture", do you mean brutalism in the technical definition of the term, eg. Boston City Hall?
Again, not trying to be a jerk, but in my experience, about 90% of the time when people use the term "brutalist", they're using it to mean something like Modernist, or International Style, or "big glass boxes". Which is not actually the proper definition.
Not that I can really enunciate the definition either, but it's one of those "I know it when I see it" things. Something to do with lots of concrete, and the exterior reflecting features of the interior, or something. I'm not sure, but I think the church is Seoul has some features that are brutalist.
They look very similar to the glasses we use at home for day-to-day. They are indeed very easy to hold and hold securely. Not really suitable for communion though. Given the choice between communion using the little plastic cuppies or communion in one kind only, we use the plastic.
That church definitely looks brutalist to me. Had you posted that in your earlier post, I would not for a second have questioned your architectural chops!
(And I had no solid reason for questioning them anyway, besides every other discussion I've had about brutalism, where everyone seemed to be using the term incorrectly.)
And if you like the Pilgrimage Church, you might also like St. Mary's Church in Red Deer, Canada. (Though I don't think it would qualify as brutalist.)
(The Methodist Church in Seoul looks fine to me, and the one in Red Deer is simply superb! All those lovely curves, and equally lovely warm red bricks...).
Speaking of which -- the reporter did not go into a discussion of architecture any deeper than to give his opinion of how the building looked, so let's not continue in this vein.
I will, however, say that speaking of Watchtower, I understand that their publishing headquarters did at one time, and perhaps still do, occupy what was once a factory where Ex-Lax was made. I'm not going to touch that one.
The architect on that was Douglas Cardinal, an indigenous person who went on to numerous prestige assignments, including the Smithsonian's Museum Of The American Indian in D.C.
And yeah, Cardinal has always had a pretty clear aversion to flat surfaces. Some might find the repeated motif a little gimmicky, but I think most of his buildings tend to work as stand-alone structures.
@Amanda B Reckondwyth
Lead Editor, Mystery Worship