The Vatican also has not until recently 'approved' of the pilgrimages to Medjugorje.
Recently, however, given the fact that Medjugorje draws large crowds and that it is a place of many spiritual 'graces' ,it has approved of the fact that the pilgrimages may be accompanied by Catholic clergy who may minister to the pilgrims, without at the same time in any way pronouncing upon the authenticity or otherwise of any apparitions.
That seems pretty close to the Church's standard position on the apparitions they officially approve: "This isn't a required doctrine, but you can believe it if you want."
I've never been convinced by their claims that the CofE has always been 'Catholic' rather than Protestant.
The clever sleight-of-hand by which Anglo-Saxon Episcopalians are rescued from the label "WASP".
As I understand it, claims that the CofE and the Anglican Communion generally are Catholic rather than Protestant go back to the Oxford Movement, and predate the term WASP, let alone anybody thinking it was a label to be rescued from.
(But yes regardless of whether it is Catholic the Anglican Communion is Protestant in any sense of the term that doesn't rely on a false dilemma.)
It was more of a flippant ad absurdum: if the Anglican Communion isn't protestant, then certain groups regarded as quintessentially protestant actually are not.
I no longer consider myself part of the Roman branch of thr church universal but need to advise all you speculators that at no time have any of us been obliged to believe in the multitudinous Marian apparations ( that includes Guadalupe, Lourdes, Fatima, Medigjorde etc). Them as there are ongoing faithful Romans have been asked not to mock such reported apparitions even if we think such apparitions are so much bullshit.
I suspect that I posted a similar message yonks ago on the Old Ship; trust me,nothing ain’t changed.
There are many, sometimes in leading positions in various types of Christian Church, who doubt the truth of the traditional explanations of miracles as recorded in Sacred Scripture.
In most instances these people do not share fully their doubts with the large masses of the faithful.
Whatever the ins and outs, I think there have been instances over the centuries of popular practice gradually eroding or undermining official qualms, if we can put it that way.
Within Orthodoxy there have been instances where popular pressure to canonise particular individuals had eventually persuaded the hierarchy to do so.
I can't speak for the RCs but I wouldn't be surprised if popular piety has a similar effect there.
Generally speaking, other than among those zealots who see the RCC as the spawn of Satan, there is a view among the Orthodox that the RCs are usually quite stringent when it comes to evaluating and authenticating relics and so on.
We are more wary of the RC apparitions and beatific visions - partly from tribalism and party-spirit I suspect ('Hey, you can't do that ... she's ours!') and partly because apparent 'messages' can seem to buoy up or endorse particular RC practices or positions.
But then, we can do the same sort of thing with 'The Holy Fire' in Jerusalem and icons that drip myrrh and so on.
About 40 years ago, when I was working in Stockport, there was a brief flurry of activity around one of the Catholic churches. I'm not quite sure what the apparent miracle was, but I seem to recall it was something like the BVM's statue weeping. Or it might have been her roses renewing themselves. Something like that.
Anyway, the Catholic Diocese quickly investigated it and found it was a hoax.
I must admit, I was impressed with their speed and rigour, though the romantic in me feels that Stockport, a rather mundane locus, would have benefited from a miraculous statue.
This is Stockport in the UK?
Yes. I have been looking for references to it on the internet but cannot find it. But I distinctly remember it happening. Sometime between 1977 and 1983.
Within RC Church you need to distinguish hierarchy from populist-folk Catholicism. I am not saying one is good and one is bad, nor am I saying they are totally distinguishable but the RC Church is an amalgam of them.
When anyone says the Roman Catholic Church is stringent about appartitions what they mean is that those apparitions that the hierarchy accepts as legitimate have been through a stringent process. This is true. I have read enough about Padre Pio to know this. Padre Pio is a very good example because he sits precisely on the intersection between the populist-folk Catholicism and the Roman Catholic hierarchy.
However, folk-populist Catholicism is a very different creature. All the time there are stories of saints, miracles and apparitions in folk-populist Catholicism being publicised. These tend to attract the superstitious among us and with the decline of organised religion, the superstitious are growing in number. More importantly in order to get recognition from the Roman Catholic Hierarchy the appartion etc needs to gain some level of populist support. Therefore there are people with vested interests in all these situations and these people are likely to publicise true or false events in order to gain from the popularity in order to gain official recognition if not for financial gain or notoriety.
This leads to the situation where there is a strict procedure but also a whole host of apparitions etc vying to get in that procedure.
Not an apparition as such, but even if the flowers did stay fresh for a long time, what would that mean, or prove?
Well, absent a scientific explanation...
I assume it would prove the supernatural exists, and that it had manifested itself via a statue of the Virgin Mary. Which would in turn suggest that Mary herself is active in the world today.
Not an apparition as such, but even if the flowers did stay fresh for a long time, what would that mean, or prove?
Well, absent a scientific explanation...
I assume it would prove the supernatural exists, and that it had manifested itself via a statue of the Virgin Mary. Which would in turn suggest that Mary herself is active in the world today.
Maybe, but one might wish she was a bit more active, given the state of the world in general...
Many Christians are of the opinion that God is active in the world today.
Others believe that these people are deluded, deluding both themselves and others.
Many Christians believe that it is a good thing to pray to God. Some believe that they hear the voice of God replying to them.
Yet again others believe that this is all a delusion.
Not an apparition as such, but even if the flowers did stay fresh for a long time, what would that mean, or prove?
Well, absent a scientific explanation...
I assume it would prove the supernatural exists, and that it had manifested itself via a statue of the Virgin Mary. Which would in turn suggest that Mary herself is active in the world today.
Maybe, but one might wish she was a bit more active, given the state of the world in general...
Keeping flowers fresh? Is that all ?
Well, at Lourdes she helps the incurably ill get better, and that's not getting into the many people who must be praying to her for better health without doing pilgrimages, and presumably believe themselves to be getting better.
Of course, you can then ask why she doesn't cure EVERYONE'S sicknesses, but that's the existing puzzler about divine miracles in general.
Stripping away all the mariolatry and miraculous from Lourdes you are left with a place where the focus is on caring for the sick and where thousands of young people get the chance to act as carers for those in a worse situation than themselves. Our school used to send 15/16 year olds to be helpers. They found it transformative.
Stripping away all the mariolatry and miraculous from Lourdes you are left with a place where the focus is on caring for the sick and where thousands of young people get the chance to act as carers for those in a worse situation than themselves. Our school used to send 15/16 year olds to be helpers. They found it transformative.
and that is what I like when I see it at Lourdes - the young people who help the sick and who become aware of the importance of service to others. those who help to push the sick in their carriages, those who provide a cheery word and help keep up the moral so that the pilgrimage is a positive experience for all.
There are lots of times when I have heard them having quite unspiritual conversations.
I remember in particular a group of Catalan youngsters flat out on the steps of one of the basilicas while a Mass was being celebrated for the sick inside.
Of course one does not have to go to Lourdes to see things like that - service to others less fortunate is something which we see everywhere and in all religions and none.
If God exists and if his mother is indeed the instigator of what goes on at Lourdes then there are many things which she must be proud of.
I've heard other people say that about Lourdes. It's hard to 'evaluate' these things, of course.
If we were to look at the bald figures, then apparently far more people have died or been injured in accidents on the way to Lourdes than the official tally for those deemed to have been miraculously healed.
One could also be fairly Puritanical or Pharisaical about it all and suggest that far more 'good' could be done if the money people spent travelling there were put to other uses.
But then, that could be said about almost any kind of religious activity from Muslims going to Mecca to charismatics flying to Toronto for the 'Blessing' in the mid-90s to a local church spending money on vestments or a new sound system.
As you say, GG, one could suggest that far more 'good' could be done if people put to other uses the money which they spend on going to Lourdes. One could also say that people could do a lot more good if they didn't spend money on holidays or TVs or almost anything.
It might even be advanced with reference to any spending used to finance churches and pastors. Even without spending money travelling to Lourdes, without a belief in God any church building is simply a waste of money.
As far as the 'miraculous'is concerned,one can say first of all that many who have gone to their local church will also in the course of time have died.
Yes, there has always been a certain hope of a miracle amongst those sick going to Lourdes and who is to say that those who suffer should not hope for some relief of their suffering but that is not the main reason for Lourdes .Surely it is to come ,with others, to a place of prayer in the hope that one's faith will be strengthened and that one will be better fitted to deal with whatever problems we may have.
If we are to believe the seer of Lourdes one of the most important of the short messages given was that the people should come in procession with their priests. In wider Christian terms that is the aim of all Christian public worship namely that people should come together and together as a community make their way towards the Lord.
Thinking about the death of Princess Diana as spectacle, I find myself wondering if the sobbing, hysteria and public displays of grief, the Prime Minister calling her the 'Queen of Hearts' as a popular icon, those endless heaps of dead flowers piled up at palace gates, small boys forced to walk behind their dead mother's coffin to appease public sentiment etc could be described as populist-folk Christianity with a neo-Arthurian spin. But then there was sheepishness and a reminder that middle-class Brits don't do outbursts of emotion over tabloid royalty and it had all been slightly out of character.
Many Latin American, African or Asian liberation theologians don't use terms like 'folk Catholicism' because it has demeaning or denigratory overtones, implying that this kind of atavistic miracle-seeking irrationality doesn't happen in the West, it is reserved for uneducated poverty-stricken women and children in the developing world who don't know any better.
FWIW @Forthview, I've spent some time on a WhatsApp platform this week trying to convince mewling and puking Orthodox yoot' and zealous converts that it really doesn't help to label Roman Catholics as 'Papists' or to accuse all Protestants of being 'Nestorian.'
Oooh! Why are we 'Nestorian'?
Don't ask ... 😉
Partly because Protestants can have a 'problem' with Mary and in particular the term 'Mother of God' - although 'Theotokos' is more accurately rendered 'God-bearer.'
Nestorius was squeamish about that.
Also, because they feel some Protestants are confused around issues to do with the human and divine nature of Christ as defined at the Council of Chalcedon.
I've heard some Orthodox joke that there are four persons in the Godhead in some Protestant circles - the Father, a divine Son, a human Son and the Holy Spirit.
For my own part I think there can be a certain sloppiness in some Protestant presentations - particularly at the popular level - but I wouldn't go round accusing my Protestant brothers and sisters of being 'Nestorian.'
Most of them wouldn't know what it meant. I didn't. When someone pointed it out to me, I said, 'Well, that alright then because now I know what it is, I know I'm not that ...' 😉
But it can be confusing and I'm sure there have been times both in my Protestant days and subsequently where I've been bamboozled by some theological point or other.
The other reason quite frankly, is that some Orthodox - particularly converts - are so 'up themselves' to use a very direct theological term, that they delight in going on social media to slag everyone else off in order to demonstrate their own credentials.
It's called 'convertitis'.
So they'll think it's a badge of Orthodoxy to criticise all other Christian confessions or diagnose wierd, wonderful and obscure heresies in other people rather than doing what they are supposed to be doing. Such as loving their neighbour as themselves.
I think “convertitis” shows up in all kinds of denominations, from what I’ve seen. Probably other religions, and definitely in politics.
"There's no zealot like a convert".
Indeed.
Although some of the 'anti-convert' types among the 'cradle Orthodox' come pretty close. 'What do these converts know? They haven't been Orthodox for 2,000 years unlike me. They are all bringing nasty evil Western baggage with them. They are the spawn of Satan. They are all part of a CIA/Zionist plot to undermine the True Faith ...'
So, sadly, we get the worst of both worlds such as callow - largely American - yoof who come across Orthodoxy online and see it as some kind of revolt against the modern world and an 'anti-woke' crusade.
Or we have loud and lairy You Tubers who think it's still 1453 or who think the Pope is the Antichrist.
Then you get people who keep their heads down and get on with things and leave the loonies to it.
Welcome to Trad Anglo Catholicism (minus the tweed) just swap a few details on who is falling out with whom, and why.
Though I will die in a ditch in defence of Saepius Officio.
This is part of why I always try to clarify, if needed, that I’m Anglo-Catholic in terms of sacramental theology, not the “correct” number of candles on the altar.
I've never been convinced by their claims that the CofE has always been 'Catholic' rather than Protestant.
Ah, yes. The clever sleight-of-hand by which Anglo-Saxon Episcopalians are rescued from the label "WASP".
Well, I genuinely believe that no sleight of hand is involved—I believe that the Anglican churches (including the Episcopal in the US) are genuinely Catholic, with Apostolic Succession, Jesus’ real presence in the Eucharist, and such—if I didn’t, I’d go somewhere else. “Reformed Catholic” is how I understand it, though I understand both Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy to have the above qualities as well. (This doesn’t mean other churches can’t have Christ’s real presence—just that I understand it to be certain in the Catholic Churches.)
I had to wrestle with these things, as an adult, before being confirmed. There’s no need to put those of us who believe this down as being intellectually dishonest.
The argument seems to me to rely on defining Protestant as Latin Christian but not Catholic, whereas the usual definition is Latin Christian but not Roman Catholic.
Thinking about the death of Princess Diana as spectacle, I find myself wondering if the sobbing, hysteria and public displays of grief, the Prime Minister calling her the 'Queen of Hearts' as a popular icon, those endless heaps of dead flowers piled up at palace gates, small boys forced to walk behind their dead mother's coffin to appease public sentiment etc could be described as populist-folk Christianity with a neo-Arthurian spin. But then there was sheepishness and a reminder that middle-class Brits don't do outbursts of emotion over tabloid royalty and it had all been slightly out of character.
Many Latin American, African or Asian liberation theologians don't use terms like 'folk Catholicism' because it has demeaning or denigratory overtones, implying that this kind of atavistic miracle-seeking irrationality doesn't happen in the West, it is reserved for uneducated poverty-stricken women and children in the developing world who don't know any better.
Sure. I hope nothing I've said gives the impression that I think that middle-class westerners are 'above' all this.
Some of my working class great aunts were 'folk Anglican' and I don't see use of that term as any more disparaging as 'folk Catholic' or 'folk Orthodox.'
Thinking about the death of Princess Diana as spectacle, I find myself wondering if the sobbing, hysteria and public displays of grief, the Prime Minister calling her the 'Queen of Hearts' as a popular icon, those endless heaps of dead flowers piled up at palace gates, small boys forced to walk behind their dead mother's coffin to appease public sentiment etc could be described as populist-folk Christianity with a neo-Arthurian spin. But then there was sheepishness and a reminder that middle-class Brits don't do outbursts of emotion over tabloid royalty and it had all been slightly out of character.
Many Latin American, African or Asian liberation theologians don't use terms like 'folk Catholicism' because it has demeaning or denigratory overtones, implying that this kind of atavistic miracle-seeking irrationality doesn't happen in the West, it is reserved for uneducated poverty-stricken women and children in the developing world who don't know any better.
Sure. I hope nothing I've said gives the impression that I think that middle-class westerners are 'above' all this.
Some of my working class great aunts were 'folk Anglican' and I don't see use of that term as any more disparaging as 'folk Catholic' or 'folk Orthodox.'
It's an umbrella term, @Gamma Gamaliel, and often used as shorthand for syncretic cultural practices in the global Catholic church. I've used the term myself, with qualifications. The problem I was pointing out has to do with how it can be used about immigrant communities or churches in the developing world and covey all sorts of implied assumptions and associations that are prejudicial. Mariology has a very ancient and complex history that involves far more than apparitions or miracles.
What has always interested me about the Lourdes phenomenon, for example, is that its modern popularity derives in great part from a fictionalised account given by Franz Werfel in 1941 in The Song of Bernadette, later a popular film. What Werfel did quite deliberately was to airbrush out many of the more puzzling or syncretic aspects of the life of Bernadette Soubirous: that she was born into an 'heiress' family of seers who had lived in the Pyrenees for centuries and were renowned for visionary and prophetic insights. This was why her claims to have seen a 'lady' were taken seriously by locals. The first vision of her 'lady' bore little resemblance to the Madonna of conventional Catholic statuary (not unlike the apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico). Much of the vitality of early Christianity in Europe came from the integration and adaptation of pagan beliefs, dates and shrines into Christian understandings.
I believe that the Anglican churches (including the Episcopal in the US) are genuinely Catholic, with Apostolic Succession, Jesus’ real presence in the Eucharist, and such—if I didn’t, I’d go somewhere else. “Reformed Catholic” is how I understand it, . . . .
FWIW, “Reformed Catholic” is a term sometimes used among those in the Reformed tradition to denote a similar perspective, not unlike how “Anglo-Catholic” might be used by Anglicans or “Evangelical Catholic” by Lutherans. (I recall one Reformed writer who maintained that while “Reformed” is an adjective, the noun it modifies should properly be understood to be “Catholic,” not “Christian/Christianity.”) It’s a term I’ve often used of myself. From what I’ve seen, it’s use in Anglicanism mainly predates the Oxford Movement, so is rooted in a time when the Church of England identified more as Reformed, as reflected in the XXXIX Articles.
Of course, for “Reformed Catholics,” as used by/for those in the Reformed tradition, apostolic succession, at least as often understood, isn’t part of the picture. Belief in the true presence, on the other hand, definitely is.
To be clear, I’m not at all telling you not to think of yourself or your understanding as “Reformed Catholic.” Just noting it can have another meaning/shades of meaning.
... What has always interested me about the Lourdes phenomenon, for example, is that its modern popularity derives in great part from a fictionalised account given by Franz Werfel in 1941 in The Song of Bernadette, later a popular film. What Werfel did quite deliberately was to airbrush out many of the more puzzling or syncretic aspects of the life of Bernadette Soubirous: that she was born into an 'heiress' family of seers who had lived in the Pyrenees for centuries and were renowned for visionary and prophetic insights. This was why her claims to have seen a 'lady' were taken seriously by locals. The first vision of her 'lady' bore little resemblance to the Madonna of conventional Catholic statuary (not unlike the apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico). Much of the vitality of early Christianity in Europe came from the integration and adaptation of pagan beliefs, dates and shrines into Christian understandings.
I've not heard that before @MaryLouise. That may not be surprising. I'm cradle CofE, don't know much about Lourdes or Bernadette Soubirous, and haven't really been that interested. It always looks like a sort of piety that I don't really respond to.
Do you know any more about this alternative history of the subject? Or can you point me towards anywhere I might be able to find out a bit about it.
Incidentally, on one of the other arguments on this thread, as a cradle CofE person, I've always regarded the claim that the CofE isn't Protestant as historically twaddle. It is more Catholic than the Church of Scotland and has retained Apostolic Succession, but nobody before the mid-nineteenth century would have seen the CofE as anything other than Protestant. It was firmly proud of that identity. Nor would anyone have argued otherwise.
... What has always interested me about the Lourdes phenomenon, for example, is that its modern popularity derives in great part from a fictionalised account given by Franz Werfel in 1941 in The Song of Bernadette, later a popular film. What Werfel did quite deliberately was to airbrush out many of the more puzzling or syncretic aspects of the life of Bernadette Soubirous: that she was born into an 'heiress' family of seers who had lived in the Pyrenees for centuries and were renowned for visionary and prophetic insights. This was why her claims to have seen a 'lady' were taken seriously by locals. The first vision of her 'lady' bore little resemblance to the Madonna of conventional Catholic statuary (not unlike the apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico). Much of the vitality of early Christianity in Europe came from the integration and adaptation of pagan beliefs, dates and shrines into Christian understandings.
I've not heard that before @MaryLouise. That may not be surprising. I'm cradle CofE, don't know much about Lourdes or Bernadette Soubirous, and haven't really been that interested. It always looks like a sort of piety that I don't really respond to.
Do you know any more about this alternative history of the subject? Or can you point me towards anywhere I might be able to find out a bit about it.
@Enoch, my sources as I recall were in French, various academic feminist studies to do with 19th-century women herbalists and midwives, but I may have a reference somewhere from Max Dashu who has written about European 'folk religions' in rural France and Italy. I'll have a look around and get back to you.
For those who may want to look more closely at Lourdes (one of the most documented Marian apparitions followed by claimed miraculous healings), I'd recommend the eyewitness account written by Nobel-winning physician Alex Carrel, who arrived at Lourdes as a sceptic and was unable to account for the undoubted healings in patients he examined. His bewilderment and shock comes through, and he would later convert to Catholicism because he was so compelled by the evidence of complete recoveries in patients with lifelong, severe and incurable conditions. There aren't that many cures: since 1873 only 70 cases have been accepted as verifiable miracles by the Lourdes Medical Bureau.
At the risk of offending our Anglo-Catholic Shipmates, as much as I admire many aspects of their worship, whenever I've attended any of their services or heard them speak about these matters I've always come away thinking, 'Close, but no cigar ...'
At the risk of being binary, I can't understand why they aren't either Roman or Orthodox. Although I s'pose I wouldn't have said that before I crossed the Bosphorus.
I attended a lovely and very well choreographed Anglo-Catholic service in South Wales where the incumbent prayed for the Ecumenical Patriarch as well as the Archbishop of Canterbury (but not the Pope) and where the service itself seemed to be a kind of Orthodox/RC hybrid with barely any recognisable 'Anglican' content at all.
I'd say the same for some low church Anglican services that are almost Baptist or 'new church' in tone and content.
There's nothing wrong with being eclectic but I think most of us over w certain age would recognise something that looks authentically Anglican when we see it, as broad as Anglicanism undoubtedly is.
We can tell when a llama becomes a camel.
Anyhow, back to Lourdes. No, I hadn't heard that about Bernadette.
But yes, of course things like pagan springs and sacred groves and what not became incorporated into European Christianity. I don’t have an issue with that, although it certainly begs some questions about why European forms of 'syncretism' should be acceptable whilst African, Latin-American or Asian examples should be seen as questionable.
... What has always interested me about the Lourdes phenomenon, for example, is that its modern popularity derives in great part from a fictionalised account given by Franz Werfel in 1941 in The Song of Bernadette, later a popular film. What Werfel did quite deliberately was to airbrush out many of the more puzzling or syncretic aspects of the life of Bernadette Soubirous: that she was born into an 'heiress' family of seers who had lived in the Pyrenees for centuries and were renowned for visionary and prophetic insights. This was why her claims to have seen a 'lady' were taken seriously by locals. The first vision of her 'lady' bore little resemblance to the Madonna of conventional Catholic statuary (not unlike the apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico). Much of the vitality of early Christianity in Europe came from the integration and adaptation of pagan beliefs, dates and shrines into Christian understandings.
I've not heard that before @MaryLouise. That may not be surprising. I'm cradle CofE, don't know much about Lourdes or Bernadette Soubirous, and haven't really been that interested. It always looks like a sort of piety that I don't really respond to.
Do you know any more about this alternative history of the subject? Or can you point me towards anywhere I might be able to find out a bit about it.
@Enoch, my sources as I recall were in French, various academic feminist studies to do with 19th-century women herbalists and midwives, but I may have a reference somewhere from Max Dashu who has written about European 'folk religions' in rural France and Italy. I'll have a look around and get back to you.
For those who may want to look more closely at Lourdes (one of the most documented Marian apparitions followed by claimed miraculous healings), I'd recommend the eyewitness account written by Nobel-winning physician Alex Carrel, who arrived at Lourdes as a sceptic and was unable to account for the undoubted healings in patients he examined. His bewilderment and shock comes through, and he would later convert to Catholicism because he was so compelled by the evidence of complete recoveries in patients with lifelong, severe and incurable conditions. There aren't that many cures: since 1873 only 70 cases have been accepted as verifiable miracles by the Lourdes Medical Bureau.
Interesting. Thanks @MaryLouise - I hadn't appreciated that there were so few verifiable miracles at Lourdes.
Again, the cynic asks *Why them, and no others?* A rhetorical question to which there is, I know full well, no answer.
And the cynic might ask also 'Why did Jesus 'cure' only a few people ?' Could he not have 'cured' everyone and sent the Romans packing at the same time, that is if he was who and what many Christians claim that he was and is. ?
Again the fact that only approx 70 miracles have been declared by the Lourdes Medical bureau to have no other explanation but some form of divine intervention,it does not mean that there are not many others who have returned from Lourdes strengthened in their faith and more ready to face with greater equanimity the challenges of life.
In the story of Bernadette's family I have only heard of her grandmother ,Claire Casterot,whose family owned a small mill. Her husband died young .With two daughters to support she invited Francois Soubirous to come and work for her, hoping that he would marry the elder daughter. As luck would have it he married the younger daughter but didn't really make a success of the mill. Marie-Bernarde (called after her aunt) was fostered out more than once to the same person in Bartres returning to Lourdes,at that time a town of 4000 inhabitants, in order to make her first communion.
A few years after the apparitions she left Lourdes to join the Sisters of Charity in Nevers.
When asked once why she lived this hidden life in the convent hospital she is reported to have said.
'The Virgin Mary used me as a broom. Once you have swept the room with the broom you put it back in the cupboard'.
Well, Jesus (in his earthly life) was presumably restrained to a great extent by his humanity, whereas Mary, now in Heaven, is surely free of all such restraints.
As is Jesus himself, too, I suppose.
(I am conscious of perhaps causing offence by my doubts, for which I apologise).
I believe that the Anglican churches (including the Episcopal in the US) are genuinely Catholic, with Apostolic Succession, Jesus’ real presence in the Eucharist, and such—if I didn’t, I’d go somewhere else. “Reformed Catholic” is how I understand it, . . . .
FWIW, “Reformed Catholic” is a term sometimes used among those in the Reformed tradition to denote a similar perspective, not unlike how “Anglo-Catholic” might be used by Anglicans or “Evangelical Catholic” by Lutherans. (I recall one Reformed writer who maintained that while “Reformed” is an adjective, the noun it modifies should properly be understood to be “Catholic,” not “Christian/Christianity.”) It’s a term I’ve often used of myself. From what I’ve seen, it’s use in Anglicanism mainly predates the Oxford Movement, so is rooted in a time when the Church of England identified more as Reformed, as reflected in the XXXIX Articles.
Of course, for “Reformed Catholics,” as used by/for those in the Reformed tradition, apostolic succession, at least as often understood, isn’t part of the picture. Belief in the true presence, on the other hand, definitely is.
To be clear, I’m not at all telling you not to think of yourself or your understanding as “Reformed Catholic.” Just noting it can have another meaning/shades of meaning.
Ah, if there is another usage of it that may make it confusing, I will stick with "Anglo-Catholic," to be safe.
Well, Jesus (in his earthly life) was presumably restrained to a great extent by his humanity, whereas Mary, now in Heaven, is surely free of all such restraints.
As is Jesus himself, too, I suppose.
(I am conscious of perhaps causing offence by my doubts, for which I apologise).
Jesus is in His resurrected body, though I don't think it restrains Him per se.
At the risk of offending our Anglo-Catholic Shipmates, as much as I admire many aspects of their worship, whenever I've attended any of their services or heard them speak about these matters I've always come away thinking, 'Close, but no cigar ...'
At the risk of being binary, I can't understand why they aren't either Roman or Orthodox. Although I s'pose I wouldn't have said that before I crossed the Bosphorus.
I attended a lovely and very well choreographed Anglo-Catholic service in South Wales where the incumbent prayed for the Ecumenical Patriarch as well as the Archbishop of Canterbury (but not the Pope) and where the service itself seemed to be a kind of Orthodox/RC hybrid with barely any recognisable 'Anglican' content at all.
I'd say the same for some low church Anglican services that are almost Baptist or 'new church' in tone and content.
There's nothing wrong with being eclectic but I think most of us over w certain age would recognise something that looks authentically Anglican when we see it, as broad as Anglicanism undoubtedly is.
We can tell when a llama becomes a camel.
Anyhow, back to Lourdes. No, I hadn't heard that about Bernadette.
But yes, of course things like pagan springs and sacred groves and what not became incorporated into European Christianity. I don’t have an issue with that, although it certainly begs some questions about why European forms of 'syncretism' should be acceptable whilst African, Latin-American or Asian examples should be seen as questionable.
There's still no need to accuse us of being intellectually dishonest by saying, "The clever sleight-of-hand by which Anglo-Saxon Episcopalians are rescued from the label "WASP"."
You are not causing offence to me by your doubts. There is nothing to apologise for.
But how do you know that Mary is in Heaven ?
Regardless of the Assumption, why wouldn't she be? :O
Well, quite - supposing Heaven to be real...
Given the context of whether or not Mary is sending apparitions, with the understanding that she's the mother of God Incarnate Himself, then I think her being in Heaven would be kind of a more primary notion than whether or not she's sending apparitions/messages/etc.
Yes,indeed but all of these 'assumptions' are acts of faith,
All questions may be asked, otherwise one can be accused of blind faith.
Of course questions can be asked--and of course many people have come to believe Christianity is true through reason, though the action of faith still must be done by the will.
Yes,indeed but all of these 'assumptions' are acts of faith,
All questions may be asked, otherwise one can be accused of blind faith.
I mean, I could say, "well, yes, supposing solipsism to be false" or "supposing we aren't living in a wholly mechanistic universe in which free will and freedom of intellect are mere illusions, and thus the entire 'discussion' is moot" about pretty much any topic. But if the premise of the thread is that there is (1) a reality about which we're discussing, (2) minds to rationally debate it, and (3) in a case like this, the basic tenets of Christianity which presuppose (a) Heaven, (b) Mary, etc. ... why try to argue "if Heaven exists in the first place" in this particular thread?
There's still no need to accuse us of being intellectually dishonest by saying, "The clever sleight-of-hand by which Anglo-Saxon Episcopalians are rescued from the label "WASP"."
I apologize. I didn't mean that to come off the way it apparently did. Yes, "sleight of hand" might sound like I'm implying malicious deception on people's part, which I was not.
My point was that, regardless of whatever theological basis the idea may have, "Anglicans are Catholic, not protestant", is very far removed from the commonly understood idea of who Anglicans are. If, for example, someone were to ask me who the first Catholic president was, and I were to answer George Washington, it would be a rather misleading statement. (And no, I'm not saying anybody actually WOULD answer that way, which kind of makes my point.)
At the risk of offending our Anglo-Catholic Shipmates, as much as I admire many aspects of their worship, whenever I've attended any of their services or heard them speak about these matters I've always come away thinking, 'Close, but no cigar ...'
At the risk of being binary, I can't understand why they aren't either Roman or Orthodox. Although I s'pose I wouldn't have said that before I crossed the Bosphorus.
I attended a lovely and very well choreographed Anglo-Catholic service in South Wales where the incumbent prayed for the Ecumenical Patriarch as well as the Archbishop of Canterbury (but not the Pope) and where the service itself seemed to be a kind of Orthodox/RC hybrid with barely any recognisable 'Anglican' content at all.
I'd say the same for some low church Anglican services that are almost Baptist or 'new church' in tone and content.
There's nothing wrong with being eclectic but I think most of us over w certain age would recognise something that looks authentically Anglican when we see it, as broad as Anglicanism undoubtedly is.
We can tell when a llama becomes a camel.
Anyhow, back to Lourdes. No, I hadn't heard that about Bernadette.
But yes, of course things like pagan springs and sacred groves and what not became incorporated into European Christianity. I don’t have an issue with that, although it certainly begs some questions about why European forms of 'syncretism' should be acceptable whilst African, Latin-American or Asian examples should be seen as questionable.
There's still no need to accuse us of being intellectually dishonest by saying, "The clever sleight-of-hand by which Anglo-Saxon Episcopalians are rescued from the label "WASP"."
Stetson has apologised for that remark.
I wouldn't accuse Anglo-Catholics of being 'intellectually dishonest' but I'm not convinced their arguments stack up.
There used to be a CofE saying, 'A third of the Church is True, a third of the Church is false, a third of the Church is confused.'
Those who said that, and it was largely an evangelical Anglican saying, clearly put themselves in the 'correct' third.
Presumably, the Anglo-Catholics were in the 'confused' portion and the nasty liberals in the 'false' part.
Hey ho, see how these Christians love one another ...
On the Lourdes thing. No, I'm not dismissing it as a waste of time and money but it does stretch my credulity. But then, so does much else.
There's still no need to accuse us of being intellectually dishonest by saying, "The clever sleight-of-hand by which Anglo-Saxon Episcopalians are rescued from the label "WASP"."
I apologize. I didn't mean that to come off the way it apparently did. Yes, "sleight of hand" might sound like I'm implying malicious deception on people's part, which I was not.
My point was that, regardless of whatever theological basis the idea may have, "Anglicans are Catholic, not protestant", is very far removed from the commonly understood idea of who Anglicans are. If, for example, someone were to ask me who the first Catholic president was, and I were to answer George Washington, it would be a rather misleading statement. (And no, I'm not saying anybody actually WOULD answer that way, which kind of makes my point.)
Thank you. I think that saying that Anglicans are Catholic *and* Protestant works. Anglicans (including Episcopalians) are indeed not in communion with the Bishop of Rome, but (as I understand such matters) have genuine Apostolic Succession and the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. (In the US, we also have a lot of "more intensely Protestant" Protestants, for lack of a better term, for whom the very notions of anything mystical about any of the Sacraments, or the existence of Apostolic Succession at all in the way it is understood here, are heresy or even blasphemy. Attacks on Rome which consist of things which Episcopalians hold as official doctrine just as much, etc. Of course, I was born and raised in Florida, with Chick tracts everywhere in the 1980s, so some of this may be regional... and we're in a weird situation now in which attacks on Rome are less frequent now, but only because (I believe) the plaguey "culture war" has displaced doctrinal disagreements in favor of political disagreements.)
At the risk of offending our Anglo-Catholic Shipmates, as much as I admire many aspects of their worship, whenever I've attended any of their services or heard them speak about these matters I've always come away thinking, 'Close, but no cigar ...'
At the risk of being binary, I can't understand why they aren't either Roman or Orthodox. Although I s'pose I wouldn't have said that before I crossed the Bosphorus.
I attended a lovely and very well choreographed Anglo-Catholic service in South Wales where the incumbent prayed for the Ecumenical Patriarch as well as the Archbishop of Canterbury (but not the Pope) and where the service itself seemed to be a kind of Orthodox/RC hybrid with barely any recognisable 'Anglican' content at all.
I'd say the same for some low church Anglican services that are almost Baptist or 'new church' in tone and content.
There's nothing wrong with being eclectic but I think most of us over w certain age would recognise something that looks authentically Anglican when we see it, as broad as Anglicanism undoubtedly is.
We can tell when a llama becomes a camel.
Anyhow, back to Lourdes. No, I hadn't heard that about Bernadette.
But yes, of course things like pagan springs and sacred groves and what not became incorporated into European Christianity. I don’t have an issue with that, although it certainly begs some questions about why European forms of 'syncretism' should be acceptable whilst African, Latin-American or Asian examples should be seen as questionable.
There's still no need to accuse us of being intellectually dishonest by saying, "The clever sleight-of-hand by which Anglo-Saxon Episcopalians are rescued from the label "WASP"."
Stetson has apologised for that remark.
I wouldn't accuse Anglo-Catholics of being 'intellectually dishonest' but I'm not convinced their arguments stack up.
There used to be a CofE saying, 'A third of the Church is True, a third of the Church is false, a third of the Church is confused.'
Those who said that, and it was largely an evangelical Anglican saying, clearly put themselves in the 'correct' third.
Presumably, the Anglo-Catholics were in the 'confused' portion and the nasty liberals in the 'false' part.
Hey ho, see how these Christians love one another ...
On the Lourdes thing. No, I'm not dismissing it as a waste of time and money but it does stretch my credulity. But then, so does much else.
It will all come out in the wash.
Depends how far back we’re going. Up to the 1970s I’d be astonished if they didn’t mean
It’s only relatively recently (last 3-4 decades) IME that the two wings have made uneasy common cause against the centre rather than lobbing bricks at each other.
At the risk of offending our Anglo-Catholic Shipmates, as much as I admire many aspects of their worship, whenever I've attended any of their services or heard them speak about these matters I've always come away thinking, 'Close, but no cigar ...'
At the risk of being binary, I can't understand why they aren't either Roman or Orthodox. Although I s'pose I wouldn't have said that before I crossed the Bosphorus.
I attended a lovely and very well choreographed Anglo-Catholic service in South Wales where the incumbent prayed for the Ecumenical Patriarch as well as the Archbishop of Canterbury (but not the Pope) and where the service itself seemed to be a kind of Orthodox/RC hybrid with barely any recognisable 'Anglican' content at all.
I'd say the same for some low church Anglican services that are almost Baptist or 'new church' in tone and content.
There's nothing wrong with being eclectic but I think most of us over w certain age would recognise something that looks authentically Anglican when we see it, as broad as Anglicanism undoubtedly is.
We can tell when a llama becomes a camel.
Anyhow, back to Lourdes. No, I hadn't heard that about Bernadette.
But yes, of course things like pagan springs and sacred groves and what not became incorporated into European Christianity. I don’t have an issue with that, although it certainly begs some questions about why European forms of 'syncretism' should be acceptable whilst African, Latin-American or Asian examples should be seen as questionable.
There's still no need to accuse us of being intellectually dishonest by saying, "The clever sleight-of-hand by which Anglo-Saxon Episcopalians are rescued from the label "WASP"."
Stetson has apologised for that remark.
I wouldn't accuse Anglo-Catholics of being 'intellectually dishonest' but I'm not convinced their arguments stack up.
There used to be a CofE saying, 'A third of the Church is True, a third of the Church is false, a third of the Church is confused.'
Those who said that, and it was largely an evangelical Anglican saying, clearly put themselves in the 'correct' third.
Presumably, the Anglo-Catholics were in the 'confused' portion and the nasty liberals in the 'false' part.
Hey ho, see how these Christians love one another ...
On the Lourdes thing. No, I'm not dismissing it as a waste of time and money but it does stretch my credulity. But then, so does much else.
It will all come out in the wash.
My apologies--I'd somehow gotten it into my head that you were the one who said the WASP thing (and thus the "intellectual dishonesty" thing was not a response to you at all--again, my apologies for the confusion), but @stetson and I have made up, and all is well.
Re "I'm not convinced their arguments stack up"--well, that's fine; Rome doesn't agree either. But we can still pray for one another, and we do have a lot of doctrinal overlap of course.
I've never heard 'A third of the Church is True, a third of the Church is false, a third of the Church is confused' before now.
I think the US Episcopal Church is more consciously Catholic than the C of E appears to be. (Of course over here, "Evangelical" is mutually exclusive with "Episcopalian"--it means a different kind of church altogether, whether denominational or "non-denominational.") I wonder how much of this has to do with there being no established state church, and thus no default "parish church" in any given area just being there.
There's this, but it's a different denomination, and not in the Anglican Communion:
I think the US Episcopal Church is more consciously Catholic than the C of E appears to be. (Of course over here, "Evangelical" is mutually exclusive with "Episcopalian"--it means a different kind of church altogether, whether denominational or "non-denominational.")
Of course, the Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (my emphasis) are in full communion with each other.
I think the US Episcopal Church is more consciously Catholic than the C of E appears to be. (Of course over here, "Evangelical" is mutually exclusive with "Episcopalian"--it means a different kind of church altogether, whether denominational or "non-denominational.")
Of course, the Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (my emphasis) are in full communion with each other.
Yes, at least technically. I'm not quite sure how some aspects of this work, given different doctrines about the priesthood and sacraments (as I understand it), but that would likely be another thread. I feel like we've wandered very far afield from apparitions and I've contributed a lot to that wandering... :embarrassed:
Comments
That seems pretty close to the Church's standard position on the apparitions they officially approve: "This isn't a required doctrine, but you can believe it if you want."
It was more of a flippant ad absurdum: if the Anglican Communion isn't protestant, then certain groups regarded as quintessentially protestant actually are not.
I no longer consider myself part of the Roman branch of thr church universal but need to advise all you speculators that at no time have any of us been obliged to believe in the multitudinous Marian apparations ( that includes Guadalupe, Lourdes, Fatima, Medigjorde etc). Them as there are ongoing faithful Romans have been asked not to mock such reported apparitions even if we think such apparitions are so much bullshit.
I suspect that I posted a similar message yonks ago on the Old Ship; trust me,nothing ain’t changed.
In most instances these people do not share fully their doubts with the large masses of the faithful.
Within Orthodoxy there have been instances where popular pressure to canonise particular individuals had eventually persuaded the hierarchy to do so.
I can't speak for the RCs but I wouldn't be surprised if popular piety has a similar effect there.
Generally speaking, other than among those zealots who see the RCC as the spawn of Satan, there is a view among the Orthodox that the RCs are usually quite stringent when it comes to evaluating and authenticating relics and so on.
We are more wary of the RC apparitions and beatific visions - partly from tribalism and party-spirit I suspect ('Hey, you can't do that ... she's ours!') and partly because apparent 'messages' can seem to buoy up or endorse particular RC practices or positions.
But then, we can do the same sort of thing with 'The Holy Fire' in Jerusalem and icons that drip myrrh and so on.
Yes. I have been looking for references to it on the internet but cannot find it. But I distinctly remember it happening. Sometime between 1977 and 1983.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gW9x06_q-E
Not an apparition as such, but even if the flowers did stay fresh for a long time, what would that mean, or prove?
When anyone says the Roman Catholic Church is stringent about appartitions what they mean is that those apparitions that the hierarchy accepts as legitimate have been through a stringent process. This is true. I have read enough about Padre Pio to know this. Padre Pio is a very good example because he sits precisely on the intersection between the populist-folk Catholicism and the Roman Catholic hierarchy.
However, folk-populist Catholicism is a very different creature. All the time there are stories of saints, miracles and apparitions in folk-populist Catholicism being publicised. These tend to attract the superstitious among us and with the decline of organised religion, the superstitious are growing in number. More importantly in order to get recognition from the Roman Catholic Hierarchy the appartion etc needs to gain some level of populist support. Therefore there are people with vested interests in all these situations and these people are likely to publicise true or false events in order to gain from the popularity in order to gain official recognition if not for financial gain or notoriety.
This leads to the situation where there is a strict procedure but also a whole host of apparitions etc vying to get in that procedure.
Well, absent a scientific explanation...
I assume it would prove the supernatural exists, and that it had manifested itself via a statue of the Virgin Mary. Which would in turn suggest that Mary herself is active in the world today.
Maybe, but one might wish she was a bit more active, given the state of the world in general...
Keeping flowers fresh? Is that all ?
Others believe that these people are deluded, deluding both themselves and others.
Many Christians believe that it is a good thing to pray to God. Some believe that they hear the voice of God replying to them.
Yet again others believe that this is all a delusion.
And it is the same with all religions
Well, at Lourdes she helps the incurably ill get better, and that's not getting into the many people who must be praying to her for better health without doing pilgrimages, and presumably believe themselves to be getting better.
Of course, you can then ask why she doesn't cure EVERYONE'S sicknesses, but that's the existing puzzler about divine miracles in general.
The puzzle about divine intervention (if any) does, of course, remain, as you rightly say.
That is indeed a Good Thing.
There are lots of times when I have heard them having quite unspiritual conversations.
I remember in particular a group of Catalan youngsters flat out on the steps of one of the basilicas while a Mass was being celebrated for the sick inside.
Of course one does not have to go to Lourdes to see things like that - service to others less fortunate is something which we see everywhere and in all religions and none.
If God exists and if his mother is indeed the instigator of what goes on at Lourdes then there are many things which she must be proud of.
If we were to look at the bald figures, then apparently far more people have died or been injured in accidents on the way to Lourdes than the official tally for those deemed to have been miraculously healed.
One could also be fairly Puritanical or Pharisaical about it all and suggest that far more 'good' could be done if the money people spent travelling there were put to other uses.
But then, that could be said about almost any kind of religious activity from Muslims going to Mecca to charismatics flying to Toronto for the 'Blessing' in the mid-90s to a local church spending money on vestments or a new sound system.
It might even be advanced with reference to any spending used to finance churches and pastors. Even without spending money travelling to Lourdes, without a belief in God any church building is simply a waste of money.
As far as the 'miraculous'is concerned,one can say first of all that many who have gone to their local church will also in the course of time have died.
Yes, there has always been a certain hope of a miracle amongst those sick going to Lourdes and who is to say that those who suffer should not hope for some relief of their suffering but that is not the main reason for Lourdes .Surely it is to come ,with others, to a place of prayer in the hope that one's faith will be strengthened and that one will be better fitted to deal with whatever problems we may have.
If we are to believe the seer of Lourdes one of the most important of the short messages given was that the people should come in procession with their priests. In wider Christian terms that is the aim of all Christian public worship namely that people should come together and together as a community make their way towards the Lord.
Many Latin American, African or Asian liberation theologians don't use terms like 'folk Catholicism' because it has demeaning or denigratory overtones, implying that this kind of atavistic miracle-seeking irrationality doesn't happen in the West, it is reserved for uneducated poverty-stricken women and children in the developing world who don't know any better.
This is part of why I always try to clarify, if needed, that I’m Anglo-Catholic in terms of sacramental theology, not the “correct” number of candles on the altar.
Well, I genuinely believe that no sleight of hand is involved—I believe that the Anglican churches (including the Episcopal in the US) are genuinely Catholic, with Apostolic Succession, Jesus’ real presence in the Eucharist, and such—if I didn’t, I’d go somewhere else. “Reformed Catholic” is how I understand it, though I understand both Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy to have the above qualities as well. (This doesn’t mean other churches can’t have Christ’s real presence—just that I understand it to be certain in the Catholic Churches.)
I had to wrestle with these things, as an adult, before being confirmed. There’s no need to put those of us who believe this down as being intellectually dishonest.
Sure. I hope nothing I've said gives the impression that I think that middle-class westerners are 'above' all this.
Some of my working class great aunts were 'folk Anglican' and I don't see use of that term as any more disparaging as 'folk Catholic' or 'folk Orthodox.'
It's an umbrella term, @Gamma Gamaliel, and often used as shorthand for syncretic cultural practices in the global Catholic church. I've used the term myself, with qualifications. The problem I was pointing out has to do with how it can be used about immigrant communities or churches in the developing world and covey all sorts of implied assumptions and associations that are prejudicial. Mariology has a very ancient and complex history that involves far more than apparitions or miracles.
What has always interested me about the Lourdes phenomenon, for example, is that its modern popularity derives in great part from a fictionalised account given by Franz Werfel in 1941 in The Song of Bernadette, later a popular film. What Werfel did quite deliberately was to airbrush out many of the more puzzling or syncretic aspects of the life of Bernadette Soubirous: that she was born into an 'heiress' family of seers who had lived in the Pyrenees for centuries and were renowned for visionary and prophetic insights. This was why her claims to have seen a 'lady' were taken seriously by locals. The first vision of her 'lady' bore little resemblance to the Madonna of conventional Catholic statuary (not unlike the apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico). Much of the vitality of early Christianity in Europe came from the integration and adaptation of pagan beliefs, dates and shrines into Christian understandings.
Of course, for “Reformed Catholics,” as used by/for those in the Reformed tradition, apostolic succession, at least as often understood, isn’t part of the picture. Belief in the true presence, on the other hand, definitely is.
To be clear, I’m not at all telling you not to think of yourself or your understanding as “Reformed Catholic.” Just noting it can have another meaning/shades of meaning.
Do you know any more about this alternative history of the subject? Or can you point me towards anywhere I might be able to find out a bit about it.
Incidentally, on one of the other arguments on this thread, as a cradle CofE person, I've always regarded the claim that the CofE isn't Protestant as historically twaddle. It is more Catholic than the Church of Scotland and has retained Apostolic Succession, but nobody before the mid-nineteenth century would have seen the CofE as anything other than Protestant. It was firmly proud of that identity. Nor would anyone have argued otherwise.
@Enoch, my sources as I recall were in French, various academic feminist studies to do with 19th-century women herbalists and midwives, but I may have a reference somewhere from Max Dashu who has written about European 'folk religions' in rural France and Italy. I'll have a look around and get back to you.
For those who may want to look more closely at Lourdes (one of the most documented Marian apparitions followed by claimed miraculous healings), I'd recommend the eyewitness account written by Nobel-winning physician Alex Carrel, who arrived at Lourdes as a sceptic and was unable to account for the undoubted healings in patients he examined. His bewilderment and shock comes through, and he would later convert to Catholicism because he was so compelled by the evidence of complete recoveries in patients with lifelong, severe and incurable conditions. There aren't that many cures: since 1873 only 70 cases have been accepted as verifiable miracles by the Lourdes Medical Bureau.
At the risk of offending our Anglo-Catholic Shipmates, as much as I admire many aspects of their worship, whenever I've attended any of their services or heard them speak about these matters I've always come away thinking, 'Close, but no cigar ...'
At the risk of being binary, I can't understand why they aren't either Roman or Orthodox. Although I s'pose I wouldn't have said that before I crossed the Bosphorus.
I attended a lovely and very well choreographed Anglo-Catholic service in South Wales where the incumbent prayed for the Ecumenical Patriarch as well as the Archbishop of Canterbury (but not the Pope) and where the service itself seemed to be a kind of Orthodox/RC hybrid with barely any recognisable 'Anglican' content at all.
I'd say the same for some low church Anglican services that are almost Baptist or 'new church' in tone and content.
There's nothing wrong with being eclectic but I think most of us over w certain age would recognise something that looks authentically Anglican when we see it, as broad as Anglicanism undoubtedly is.
We can tell when a llama becomes a camel.
Anyhow, back to Lourdes. No, I hadn't heard that about Bernadette.
But yes, of course things like pagan springs and sacred groves and what not became incorporated into European Christianity. I don’t have an issue with that, although it certainly begs some questions about why European forms of 'syncretism' should be acceptable whilst African, Latin-American or Asian examples should be seen as questionable.
Interesting. Thanks @MaryLouise - I hadn't appreciated that there were so few verifiable miracles at Lourdes.
Again, the cynic asks *Why them, and no others?* A rhetorical question to which there is, I know full well, no answer.
Again the fact that only approx 70 miracles have been declared by the Lourdes Medical bureau to have no other explanation but some form of divine intervention,it does not mean that there are not many others who have returned from Lourdes strengthened in their faith and more ready to face with greater equanimity the challenges of life.
In the story of Bernadette's family I have only heard of her grandmother ,Claire Casterot,whose family owned a small mill. Her husband died young .With two daughters to support she invited Francois Soubirous to come and work for her, hoping that he would marry the elder daughter. As luck would have it he married the younger daughter but didn't really make a success of the mill. Marie-Bernarde (called after her aunt) was fostered out more than once to the same person in Bartres returning to Lourdes,at that time a town of 4000 inhabitants, in order to make her first communion.
A few years after the apparitions she left Lourdes to join the Sisters of Charity in Nevers.
When asked once why she lived this hidden life in the convent hospital she is reported to have said.
'The Virgin Mary used me as a broom. Once you have swept the room with the broom you put it back in the cupboard'.
As is Jesus himself, too, I suppose.
(I am conscious of perhaps causing offence by my doubts, for which I apologise).
But how do you know that Mary is in Heaven ?
I don't know, but the Roman Catholic Church says that she is, doesn't it?
(Thinking of The Assumption).
Ah, if there is another usage of it that may make it confusing, I will stick with "Anglo-Catholic," to be safe.
Jesus is in His resurrected body, though I don't think it restrains Him per se.
Regardless of the Assumption, why wouldn't she be? :O
There's still no need to accuse us of being intellectually dishonest by saying, "The clever sleight-of-hand by which Anglo-Saxon Episcopalians are rescued from the label "WASP"."
Well, quite - supposing Heaven to be real...
Given the context of whether or not Mary is sending apparitions, with the understanding that she's the mother of God Incarnate Himself, then I think her being in Heaven would be kind of a more primary notion than whether or not she's sending apparitions/messages/etc.
All questions may be asked, otherwise one can be accused of blind faith.
Of course questions can be asked--and of course many people have come to believe Christianity is true through reason, though the action of faith still must be done by the will.
I mean, I could say, "well, yes, supposing solipsism to be false" or "supposing we aren't living in a wholly mechanistic universe in which free will and freedom of intellect are mere illusions, and thus the entire 'discussion' is moot" about pretty much any topic. But if the premise of the thread is that there is (1) a reality about which we're discussing, (2) minds to rationally debate it, and (3) in a case like this, the basic tenets of Christianity which presuppose (a) Heaven, (b) Mary, etc. ... why try to argue "if Heaven exists in the first place" in this particular thread?
I apologize. I didn't mean that to come off the way it apparently did. Yes, "sleight of hand" might sound like I'm implying malicious deception on people's part, which I was not.
My point was that, regardless of whatever theological basis the idea may have, "Anglicans are Catholic, not protestant", is very far removed from the commonly understood idea of who Anglicans are. If, for example, someone were to ask me who the first Catholic president was, and I were to answer George Washington, it would be a rather misleading statement. (And no, I'm not saying anybody actually WOULD answer that way, which kind of makes my point.)
Stetson has apologised for that remark.
I wouldn't accuse Anglo-Catholics of being 'intellectually dishonest' but I'm not convinced their arguments stack up.
There used to be a CofE saying, 'A third of the Church is True, a third of the Church is false, a third of the Church is confused.'
Those who said that, and it was largely an evangelical Anglican saying, clearly put themselves in the 'correct' third.
Presumably, the Anglo-Catholics were in the 'confused' portion and the nasty liberals in the 'false' part.
Hey ho, see how these Christians love one another ...
On the Lourdes thing. No, I'm not dismissing it as a waste of time and money but it does stretch my credulity. But then, so does much else.
It will all come out in the wash.
Thank you.
Depends how far back we’re going. Up to the 1970s I’d be astonished if they didn’t mean
Evangelicals - true
Liberals - confused
Anglo Catholics - false
It’s only relatively recently (last 3-4 decades) IME that the two wings have made uneasy common cause against the centre rather than lobbing bricks at each other.
My apologies--I'd somehow gotten it into my head that you were the one who said the WASP thing (and thus the "intellectual dishonesty" thing was not a response to you at all--again, my apologies for the confusion), but @stetson and I have made up, and all is well.
Re "I'm not convinced their arguments stack up"--well, that's fine; Rome doesn't agree either. But we can still pray for one another, and we do have a lot of doctrinal overlap of course.
I've never heard 'A third of the Church is True, a third of the Church is false, a third of the Church is confused' before now.
I think the US Episcopal Church is more consciously Catholic than the C of E appears to be. (Of course over here, "Evangelical" is mutually exclusive with "Episcopalian"--it means a different kind of church altogether, whether denominational or "non-denominational.") I wonder how much of this has to do with there being no established state church, and thus no default "parish church" in any given area just being there.
There's this, but it's a different denomination, and not in the Anglican Communion:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communion_of_Evangelical_Episcopal_Churches
Yes, at least technically. I'm not quite sure how some aspects of this work, given different doctrines about the priesthood and sacraments (as I understand it), but that would likely be another thread. I feel like we've wandered very far afield from apparitions and I've contributed a lot to that wandering... :embarrassed: