The Orthodox lay claim to both the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon Saints of course, @angloid as pre-Schism Saints.
That doesn't mean we claim a monopoly on them, although to hear some of my lot talk...
So no, I certainly don't 'begrudge' Anglicans 'laying claim' to them or anyone else wanting to 'share' them for that matter. They 'belong' to all of us.
The RCs can claim them too of course and that's great but in practice I find many RCs more interested in medieval, Counter-Reformation and more recent Saints. If there was ever reconciliation between the RCs and the Orthodox we'd have to agree on which post-Schism Saints to recognise. That'd be interesting.
Hard-line RCs and some Orthodox might say that the Anglicans have no 'right' to claim continuity at all. That'd be harsh I think.
I know some Orthodox who see a shared interest in the Saints of the British Isles as a potentially unifying ecumenical factor.
I can only speak for myself but I'd have no problem about venerating Julian of Norwich or other post-Schism figures. Heck, Holy John Wesley, holy Archbishop Ramsey pray for us ...
The "continual remembrance of Christ's death" was the one grand object for which the Lord's Supper was ordained. He who goes further than this is adding to God's Word, and does so to the great peril of his soul. (Snip)
To bring back the doctrine of the "real presence" ... is to pour contempt on our Martyrs, and to upset the first principles of the Protestant Reformation. No, rather, it is to ignore the plain teaching of God's Word, and do dishonour to the priestly office of our Lord Jesus Christ! The Bible teaches expressly that the Lord's Supper was ordained to be "a remembrance of Christ's body and blood," and not a sacrificial offering".
Odd. Did this gentleman not realize that the Reformation started with the Lutherans, who most assuredly believe in the Real Presence? He talks as if the only two options are memorialism alone and full scale out-and-out "sacrifice-of-the-Mass pes.
The Lutheran influence on the CofE was fairly short lived. Whilst the 'Elizabethan Church Settlement' was partly an attempt to broker a via media between Lutheranism and Calvinism I think it's fair to say that Geneva exercised the strongest influence.
Elizabethan and Jacobean Anglicanism was largely Calvinist in tone and that only began to change during the reign of Charles I, provoking a Puritan backlash.
The Anglican communion enjoys good relations with the Lutherans, of course, particularly with the Swedish Lutherans.
Most Anglicans who think about these things would probably consider the Lutherans a close match.
By Ryle's time, I suspect many Anglicans would have thought more in terms of Rome vs Zwingli and Calvin. They'd acknowledge a debt to Luther of course and might admire Danish and German Lutheranism but wouldn't have had much contact with it.
A retired Anglican vicar I know who is now Orthodox spent a lot of time looking into Lutheran theology and admires it but tells me that not many of his colleagues took the trouble to look into it.
As far as I'm aware the Anglicans never went in for 'consubstantiation' in the Lutheran sense but there was a general sense that the eucharist was more than a 'memorial' except at the very low church or evangelical end of the Anglican spectrum.
FWIW I've a real soft spot for Anglican cathedrals and village churches, for Evensong and Compline. I'd be thrilled if the Almighty preserves a replica English rural parish church in heaven with choral evensong and the late summer sun slanting through the stained glass windows ...
I don’t think Gracious Rebel was suggesting there was anything wrong with a page for sermon notes.
I'm confused as to why it was mentioned, then.
I was just trying to paint a fuller picture of what this church was like, in response to Gamma Gamaliel imagining erroneous extra details that I had not mentioned. I was not passing judgement on the sermon notes thing at all, just thought it was unusual, and symbolic of the type of church this was.
Just as I thought.
I've never been to a church which offered something on which to write notes about the sermon, and I wonder how many people (in the case of the service mentioned) availed themselves of the facility...
I’ve encountered it somewhat often on this side of The Pond, and in a variety of traditions.
re blank spaces in church bulletins--I can say from the "inside", as it were, that one reason for offering such spaces is because the bulletin maker has an awkward amount of material to lay out, and that regularly results in extra blank pages. For example, most folding patterns are going to result in pages that come in multiples of four.
@Angloid - yes, I can see that but when you say 'true Anglican heritage' in that context aren't you really saying Catholic heritage because those things you mention were all inherited from the RCs, even if in a somewhat attenuated form?
I am not suggesting that Anglicanism doesn't have a distinctive heritage of its own. Far from it. But what you are citing are Catholic features applied to a break-away state-church setting.
I think you've hit the nub of the matter there. If what we call the Anglican tradition started from scratch in the 16th century, yes you have a point. But if course it didn't. Any more than the Baptist, Reformed or any other tradition. 90% at least, probably a lot more, of all those traditions are held in common with all Christians from Ethiopian Orthodox to Quakers. The things that divide us do so because they are matters of sincerely held belief, but they are still much less important than the fundamentals of our faith.
Anglicans in particular think of our Church as one continuous tradition from the Apostles. Maybe 'anglo-catholics' lay more emphasis on that, but it is basic to Anglican self-understanding. Is the tradition of Cuthbert and Bede, of the great saints of the Middle Ages – English and other – something foreign that we have borrowed, or does it belong as much to us as to Roman Catholics or anyone else?
@Angloid - yes, I can see that but when you say 'true Anglican heritage' in that context aren't you really saying Catholic heritage because those things you mention were all inherited from the RCs, even if in a somewhat attenuated form?
I am not suggesting that Anglicanism doesn't have a distinctive heritage of its own. Far from it. But what you are citing are Catholic features applied to a break-away state-church setting.
I think you've hit the nub of the matter there. If what we call the Anglican tradition started from scratch in the 16th century, yes you have a point. But if course it didn't. Any more than the Baptist, Reformed or any other tradition. 90% at least, probably a lot more, of all those traditions are held in common with all Christians from Ethiopian Orthodox to Quakers. The things that divide us do so because they are matters of sincerely held belief, but they are still much less important than the fundamentals of our faith.
Anglicans in particular think of our Church as one continuous tradition from the Apostles. Maybe 'anglo-catholics' lay more emphasis on that, but it is basic to Anglican self-understanding. Is the tradition of Cuthbert and Bede, of the great saints of the Middle Ages – English and other – something foreign that we have borrowed, or does it belong as much to us as to Roman Catholics or anyone else?
I think of us as “Catholic, just not Roman.”
If you said that in some of the Anglican churches I knew back in the 80s they'd have gone spare. We used to question whether Catholics could be Christians at all.
On the blank spaces in newsletters issue we once were responsible for putting ours together. We labelled an awkward space "Sermon Doodling Space" on one occasion.
(Yes when I used to be the bulletin editor I remember sometimes filling awkward spaces with things like witty quotes from the interweb or Dave Walker cartoons. )
@ChastMastr - the Orthodox would claim to be 'Catholic but not Roman' too.
Many Anglicans and many RCs would dispute your claim, of course. Although I think the view that @KarlLB reports, that some Anglicans don't consider Catholics to be Christians at all is increasingly rare - and was something of an outlier back in the '80s to be fair.
We were very wary of RCs back in my independent charismatic evangelical days but whilst we might have doubted the 'salvation' of individual RCs we would have gladly accepted that many were 'proper' Christians.
The only people I can remember who would deny any possibility of salvation to RCs whatsoever - unless they were 'born again' and left to join an evangelical Protestant church were hard-line Brethren folk. Even there you could find people with more moderate views though.
Some of the hyper-Calvinists would have had similar views.
I'd be reluctant to pontificate about the 'Catholicity' or otherwise of the more 'Catholic' wing of the Anglican communion. It obviously shares much in common with both Rome and Orthodoxy in terms of praxis but it's not for me to say whether this is an ersatz or actual resemblance.
What I can say, of course, is that as an Orthodox believer I find much in common, overlaps and points of agreement. But then that applies right across the board of course, as @angloid indicates.
I might lower the percentage of commonality to around 80% in some instances rather than the 90%+ that angloid cites but that might be cheese-paring.
There's certainly a 'sliding-scale' of course and Anglo-Catholics would tend to be towards the top of that scale from an Orthodox perspective. That said, we often encounter much common ground with people from the other end of the spectrum particularly those of Wesleyan heritage.
I've heard several Orthodox say that the Pentecostal emphasis on the immanence of God provides a strong point-of-contact between Western and Eastern Christianity.
As far as Episcopalians (in the US context) and wider Anglican communion go, then I think @Nick Tamen and others are right to distinguish that from the UK context where there are particular historic and constitutional issues.
Broad generalisation alert: most, but not all, US Episcopalians I've met have come from the Broad to Higher end of the Anglican spectrum.
Indeed, some have told me that they are attracting people both from the mega and 'Bible churches' on the one hand and disaffected RCs on the other.
On the blank spaces in newsletters issue we once were responsible for putting ours together. We labelled an awkward space "Sermon Doodling Space" on one occasion.
At our place, the pew leaflet sometimes contains a wordsearch puzzle for the children. I often wonder how many adults are doing it surfing the service
@Gamma Gamaliel
Oh the topic of some Protestants reservations/discomfort about the RCC, it is noticeable that Ecumenical events in our building are more sparsely attended than when they happen in other buildings. I have heard the local URC pastor lamenting that there are those in his congregation who simply will not set foot in an RC church. This is a shame as our priest has taken great pains to develop friendships with all the local clergy.
We are having our local Churches Together Covenant service at our place on Sunday. It will be interesting to see who attends.
On the topic of Apostolic Succession etc. I have never taken it seriously outside of faithfully handing on the Faith from one generation of leaders to the next. I certainly don't go along with those episcopal genealogies that you see in those organisations that seem to consist of a website and a bunch of people with extraordinary titles and no apparent laity. It seems to rely on the apostles and the next generation knowingly passing on a bunch of sacramental theology that was developed a millennium later. But then I find myself agnostic about so much of the detail of what I was once taught.
Well Ryle was a noted evangelical in his day and opponent of ritualism, so his view might be expected. Ive no idea how typical it was.
As a regular worshipper and occasional priestly celebrant at the church where James Bell Cox was vicar during the regime of Bishop Ryle, I have to say that Ryle is not one of our heroes! Fr Bell Cox was imprisoned for liturgical improprieties such as lighting candles, facing east at the altar, and other things which are either commonplace or outmoded these days. To be fair, Bp Ryle did not initiate the prosecution and apparently disagreed with it, but he was a virulent opponent of sacramentalism and anything which appeared to threaten the Protestant character of the C of E as he saw it.
The attitude of today's evangelicals, even the extreme ones, seems to be more 'live and let live.' Times change.
I wonder if the RCC was the strong presence it became in Liverpool when Ryle was Bishop there. It's not unknown for Anglicans to go low in Catholic/Irish areas or high in chapel areas.
Yes, there had been a RC bishop since 1850, thirty years before Ryle became the first Anglican bishop of the city. Interestingly, before his arrival the city had reputation for being at the higher end of Anglicanism.Writing on the somewhat complex political history of Liverpool A J P Taylor noted:
'Ritualism provided another complication. The reason why it flourished at this time within Liverpool’s Anglican churches is not clear. Maybe the missionary spirit which brought young clergymen to the impoverished districts of Liverpool tended to go with High Church practices. The violence of the extreme Protestant response increased with the years'
The church alluded to by @angloid is one of about a dozen churches built by the wealthy Horsefall family who although all Anglicans had very different ideas on churchmanship, so that the many churches they built spanned every conceivable variety from bare preaching boxes to the most extravagant Anglo Catholic shrines
@Gamma Gamaliel
Oh the topic of some Protestants reservations/discomfort about the RCC, it is noticeable that Ecumenical events in our building are more sparsely attended than when they happen in other buildings. I have heard the local URC pastor lamenting that there are those in his congregation who simply will not set foot in an RC church. This is a shame as our priest has taken great pains to develop friendships with all the local clergy.
We are having our local Churches Together Covenant service at our place on Sunday. It will be interesting to see who attends.
On the topic of Apostolic Succession etc. I have never taken it seriously outside of faithfully handing on the Faith from one generation of leaders to the next. I certainly don't go along with those episcopal genealogies that you see in those organisations that seem to consist of a website and a bunch of people with extraordinary titles and no apparent laity. It seems to rely on the apostles and the next generation knowingly passing on a bunch of sacramental theology that was developed a millennium later. But then I find myself agnostic about so much of the detail of what I was once taught.
@Gamma Gamaliel
Oh the topic of some Protestants reservations/discomfort about the RCC, it is noticeable that Ecumenical events in our building are more sparsely attended than when they happen in other buildings. I have heard the local URC pastor lamenting that there are those in his congregation who simply will not set foot in an RC church. This is a shame as our priest has taken great pains to develop friendships with all the local clergy.
We are having our local Churches Together Covenant service at our place on Sunday. It will be interesting to see who attends.
On the topic of Apostolic Succession etc. I have never taken it seriously outside of faithfully handing on the Faith from one generation of leaders to the next. I certainly don't go along with those episcopal genealogies that you see in those organisations that seem to consist of a website and a bunch of people with extraordinary titles and no apparent laity. It seems to rely on the apostles and the next generation knowingly passing on a bunch of sacramental theology that was developed a millennium later. But then I find myself agnostic about so much of the detail of what I was once taught.
That surprises me from the URC, to be honest. I do remember some people leaving a Baptist church I knew because the minister invited an RC priest to give some Lent talks - which I felt was a lovely thing for him to do.
I can't point the finger though, some Orthodox are so anti-ecumenical it's unbelievable.
On the issue of Apostolic Succession - yes, it's very much to do with the handing on of the faith faithfully as it were. Clearly, though, people are going to have different views as to what that entails. I think all churches with an episcopal structure have their 'Episcopi Vagantes' - those acting irregularly outside of official structures.
I've seen plenty of websites with someone in lavish vestments and a fancy title - Archibishop of Camelot and the Isle of Avalon, almost - who clearly operates from a garden shed with an archdiocese consisting of three old ladies and a dog.
The RCs and the Orthodox differ of course on how Apostolic Succession 'works' - primarily because we don't have the Papacy but there are other differences in emphasis.
None of which are concerns if you are at the 'low' end of the Anglican spectrum or part of an independent Protestant group.
I could be cheeky though and suggest that all churches have 'bishops' (small b) even if they don't call them that ...
I'd have thought that the "northern" Christians such as Cuthbert would prefer to trace their ancestry back to the Celtic, rather than the Roman, tradition. But of course we've had hundreds of years of synthesis since then!
Even the Celtic tradition is Roman in origin, even if filtered through Ireland and Scotland.
Wrt not viewing Catholics as Christian, I suspect that in the UK often such stances come from older sectarian roots even if expressed in different ways. Also I was encountering it from Evangelical Anglicans well into the 00s in East Sussex, but that's East Sussex which is well outside of the norm for the Church of England.
I'm confused. What is the norm for the C of E these days?
I dunno - a worship leader dressed in a T-shirt, shorts and stole, Vaughan Williams and Stainer sung to electric guitar and drumkit accompaniment, a screen with the words which can hardly be read through the clouds of incense .... ?
I'd have thought that the "northern" Christians such as Cuthbert would prefer to trace their ancestry back to the Celtic, rather than the Roman, tradition. But of course we've had hundreds of years of synthesis since then!
Even the Celtic tradition is Roman in origin, even if filtered through Ireland and Scotland.
Yes and no. Gaelic Christianity was obviously under Roman jurisdiction, being part of the western church, but its development owes something to ascetic traditions in the east as well, particularly the Desert Fathers.
I'd have thought that the "northern" Christians such as Cuthbert would prefer to trace their ancestry back to the Celtic, rather than the Roman, tradition. But of course we've had hundreds of years of synthesis since then!
Even the Celtic tradition is Roman in origin, even if filtered through Ireland and Scotland.
Yes and no. Gaelic Christianity was obviously under Roman jurisdiction, being part of the western church, but its development owes something to ascetic traditions in the east as well, particularly the Desert Fathers.
But so does the Roman church. I meant that St Patrick et al came to Ireland via Rome.
I'm confused. What is the norm for the C of E these days?
I meant in terms of regarding Catholics as fellow Christians.
I'm not being dismissive of you, but until this thread I wouldn't have thought the question was worth asking, as a negative answer belongs in the dim past of the age of torture and persecutions. I must live a very sheltered life!
I'm confused. What is the norm for the C of E these days?
I dunno - a worship leader dressed in a T-shirt, shorts and stole, Vaughan Williams and Stainer sung to electric guitar and drumkit accompaniment, a screen with the words which can hardly be read through the clouds of incense .... ?
I'd have thought that the "northern" Christians such as Cuthbert would prefer to trace their ancestry back to the Celtic, rather than the Roman, tradition. But of course we've had hundreds of years of synthesis since then!
Even the Celtic tradition is Roman in origin, even if filtered through Ireland and Scotland.
Yes and no. Gaelic Christianity was obviously under Roman jurisdiction, being part of the western church, but its development owes something to ascetic traditions in the east as well, particularly the Desert Fathers.
But so does the Roman church. I meant that St Patrick et al came to Ireland via Rome.
Well, actually St Patrick went to Ireland as a captive, either from what is now south-west Scotland or from South Wales. He later returned to spread the Gospel there.
He was definitely in the 'Roman' tradition though and wrote rather rough Latin.
Many of my fellow Orthodox make a big deal of the Eastern Mediterranean influence on early Christianity in these islands. That was definitely a thing. There were missionaries from Egypt elsewhere in Ireland when St Patrick was active. Yes, I was sceptical at first too, but I looked into it and yes, there do seem to have been some there.
You are right, though @Pomona in your assessment of the influence of the Desert Fathers. They influenced Christian monasticism throughout the Roman Empire, both West and East.
I think you have St Augustine of Canterbury in mind. He was sent from Rome on a mission to the Anglo-Saxons. He famously encountered the 'Welsh' or 'British' bishops - traditionally at Aust on the Severn - and according to Bede offended them by refusing to stand up when they entered.
Nobody knows exactly when Christianity first arrived in Britain, although the Orthodox (and the RCs?) have legends about that. It certainly arrived from Western Europe during the Roman occupation and there are records of three British bishops attending a council in southern Gaul in the early 4th century.
The 'bishops' - or most likely 'abbots' - that St Augustine encountered in the late 6th century were members of the Romano-British church which had continued after the end of Roman rule. Nobody knows which liturgy they used but most historians consider they used something similar to the Gallic rite. They used Latin.
They did develop some distinctive features, such as different style of monastic tonsure and the use of the Eastern rather than Roman calendar. The structure was based around abbots and monasteries rather than metropolitan bishops as Scotland and Ireland didn't have an urban culture and urban life had declined in southern Britain after the end of Roman rule and the collapse of the monetary economy.
They'd effectively been cut off from Western Europe by the Anglo-Saxon settlements, but still had some contact with the Eastern Mediterranean by sea. Amphorae and other pottery fragments from the Eastern Mediterranean have been found at coastal sites around the western coasts of Britain.
To all intents and purposes there was very little difference between so-called 'Celtic Christianity' and what would have been found in other parts of Christian Europe at that time. Bede favoured the 'Roman' position on the dating of Easter and so on and hence he portrays the indigenous British Church as lacking in some ways and subject to divine judgement. They hadn't evangelised the pagan Anglo-Saxons and so God wrought judgement upon them. Bede's a great read but he has an agenda.
There's a lot of nonsense talked about 'Celtic Christianity' as if it were some kind of purer and more mystical, eco-hippy form than what was coming from the Roman end of things. Sure, Rome tended to regulate and formalise things to the nth degree but other than the style of tonsure and perhaps some more extreme asceticism, you'd have been hard pressed to tell the difference between a British/Irish monk and their continental equivalents.
I'm confused. What is the norm for the C of E these days?
I dunno - a worship leader dressed in a T-shirt, shorts and stole, Vaughan Williams and Stainer sung to electric guitar and drumkit accompaniment, a screen with the words which can hardly be read through the clouds of incense .... ?
I jest, of course!
That sounds kind of attractive..
Only if the stole is of the correct liturgical colour...
The first British martyr was St Alban, a Roman soldier. The Western Church was pretty diverse in practise up to Trent in the 26th century. Britain wasnt alone on that. There are remnants still in Milan and Toledo dioceses where they preserve medieval liturgies.
I'm confused. What is the norm for the C of E these days?
I dunno - a worship leader dressed in a T-shirt, shorts and stole, Vaughan Williams and Stainer sung to electric guitar and drumkit accompaniment, a screen with the words which can hardly be read through the clouds of incense .... ?
I jest, of course!
That sounds kind of attractive..
Only if the stole is of the correct liturgical colour...
So there's going to be another Council of Trent in 600 years time ...
You heard it here first.
Sure, and in the East the Liturgy wasn't standardised until around 1100. The Liturgy of St John Chrysostom seems to have been drawn from a number of sources.
I've not attended a 'Western Orthodox' Liturgy but from what I can gather they draw on various ancient Western sources.
I'm told the Sarum Rite gives a pretty good idea of what 8th century liturgy looked like.
I'm sure there were variations right across the Christian world.
I think the 'Celtic vs Roman' differences have expanded in the telling. As far as we can tell the main issues at the Synod of Whitby were the dating of Easter and monastic tonsures. It's not as if they were arguing about the Trinity or modes of baptism or the Creed or ...
Thing is, the polemics persist. I've seen the Battle of Hastings portrayed as lovely Orthodox Anglo-Saxons fighting wicked, evil Roman Catholic Normans sent with Papal blessing to overthrow the True Faith in these islands ...
Yes, I do see the Normans as the bad guys and the Papacy of that time too, come to that, but I do think it's a very simplistic take.
I'm confused. What is the norm for the C of E these days?
I dunno - a worship leader dressed in a T-shirt, shorts and stole, Vaughan Williams and Stainer sung to electric guitar and drumkit accompaniment, a screen with the words which can hardly be read through the clouds of incense .... ?
I jest, of course!
That sounds kind of attractive..
Only if the stole is of the correct liturgical colour...
I'd have thought that the "northern" Christians such as Cuthbert would prefer to trace their ancestry back to the Celtic, rather than the Roman, tradition. But of course we've had hundreds of years of synthesis since then!
Even the Celtic tradition is Roman in origin, even if filtered through Ireland and Scotland.
Yes and no. Gaelic Christianity was obviously under Roman jurisdiction, being part of the western church, but its development owes something to ascetic traditions in the east as well, particularly the Desert Fathers.
But so does the Roman church. I meant that St Patrick et al came to Ireland via Rome.
Well, actually St Patrick went to Ireland as a captive, either from what is now south-west Scotland or from South Wales. He later returned to spread the Gospel there.
He was definitely in the 'Roman' tradition though and wrote rather rough Latin.
Many of my fellow Orthodox make a big deal of the Eastern Mediterranean influence on early Christianity in these islands. That was definitely a thing. There were missionaries from Egypt elsewhere in Ireland when St Patrick was active. Yes, I was sceptical at first too, but I looked into it and yes, there do seem to have been some there.
You are right, though @Pomona in your assessment of the influence of the Desert Fathers. They influenced Christian monasticism throughout the Roman Empire, both West and East.
I think you have St Augustine of Canterbury in mind. He was sent from Rome on a mission to the Anglo-Saxons. He famously encountered the 'Welsh' or 'British' bishops - traditionally at Aust on the Severn - and according to Bede offended them by refusing to stand up when they entered.
Nobody knows exactly when Christianity first arrived in Britain, although the Orthodox (and the RCs?) have legends about that. It certainly arrived from Western Europe during the Roman occupation and there are records of three British bishops attending a council in southern Gaul in the early 4th century.
The 'bishops' - or most likely 'abbots' - that St Augustine encountered in the late 6th century were members of the Romano-British church which had continued after the end of Roman rule. Nobody knows which liturgy they used but most historians consider they used something similar to the Gallic rite. They used Latin.
They did develop some distinctive features, such as different style of monastic tonsure and the use of the Eastern rather than Roman calendar. The structure was based around abbots and monasteries rather than metropolitan bishops as Scotland and Ireland didn't have an urban culture and urban life had declined in southern Britain after the end of Roman rule and the collapse of the monetary economy.
They'd effectively been cut off from Western Europe by the Anglo-Saxon settlements, but still had some contact with the Eastern Mediterranean by sea. Amphorae and other pottery fragments from the Eastern Mediterranean have been found at coastal sites around the western coasts of Britain.
To all intents and purposes there was very little difference between so-called 'Celtic Christianity' and what would have been found in other parts of Christian Europe at that time. Bede favoured the 'Roman' position on the dating of Easter and so on and hence he portrays the indigenous British Church as lacking in some ways and subject to divine judgement. They hadn't evangelised the pagan Anglo-Saxons and so God wrought judgement upon them. Bede's a great read but he has an agenda.
There's a lot of nonsense talked about 'Celtic Christianity' as if it were some kind of purer and more mystical, eco-hippy form than what was coming from the Roman end of things. Sure, Rome tended to regulate and formalise things to the nth degree but other than the style of tonsure and perhaps some more extreme asceticism, you'd have been hard pressed to tell the difference between a British/Irish monk and their continental equivalents.
I've read that the custom of private confession and penance was originally a peculiar of Gaelic monasticism that spread and later became normative in the western church. I don't know how well-supported that is.
Comments
That doesn't mean we claim a monopoly on them, although to hear some of my lot talk...
So no, I certainly don't 'begrudge' Anglicans 'laying claim' to them or anyone else wanting to 'share' them for that matter. They 'belong' to all of us.
The RCs can claim them too of course and that's great but in practice I find many RCs more interested in medieval, Counter-Reformation and more recent Saints. If there was ever reconciliation between the RCs and the Orthodox we'd have to agree on which post-Schism Saints to recognise. That'd be interesting.
Hard-line RCs and some Orthodox might say that the Anglicans have no 'right' to claim continuity at all. That'd be harsh I think.
I know some Orthodox who see a shared interest in the Saints of the British Isles as a potentially unifying ecumenical factor.
I can only speak for myself but I'd have no problem about venerating Julian of Norwich or other post-Schism figures. Heck, Holy John Wesley, holy Archbishop Ramsey pray for us ...
The Lutheran influence on the CofE was fairly short lived. Whilst the 'Elizabethan Church Settlement' was partly an attempt to broker a via media between Lutheranism and Calvinism I think it's fair to say that Geneva exercised the strongest influence.
Elizabethan and Jacobean Anglicanism was largely Calvinist in tone and that only began to change during the reign of Charles I, provoking a Puritan backlash.
The Anglican communion enjoys good relations with the Lutherans, of course, particularly with the Swedish Lutherans.
Most Anglicans who think about these things would probably consider the Lutherans a close match.
By Ryle's time, I suspect many Anglicans would have thought more in terms of Rome vs Zwingli and Calvin. They'd acknowledge a debt to Luther of course and might admire Danish and German Lutheranism but wouldn't have had much contact with it.
A retired Anglican vicar I know who is now Orthodox spent a lot of time looking into Lutheran theology and admires it but tells me that not many of his colleagues took the trouble to look into it.
As far as I'm aware the Anglicans never went in for 'consubstantiation' in the Lutheran sense but there was a general sense that the eucharist was more than a 'memorial' except at the very low church or evangelical end of the Anglican spectrum.
FWIW I've a real soft spot for Anglican cathedrals and village churches, for Evensong and Compline. I'd be thrilled if the Almighty preserves a replica English rural parish church in heaven with choral evensong and the late summer sun slanting through the stained glass windows ...
I think of us as “Catholic, just not Roman.”
If you said that in some of the Anglican churches I knew back in the 80s they'd have gone spare. We used to question whether Catholics could be Christians at all.
On the blank spaces in newsletters issue we once were responsible for putting ours together. We labelled an awkward space "Sermon Doodling Space" on one occasion.
Many Anglicans and many RCs would dispute your claim, of course. Although I think the view that @KarlLB reports, that some Anglicans don't consider Catholics to be Christians at all is increasingly rare - and was something of an outlier back in the '80s to be fair.
We were very wary of RCs back in my independent charismatic evangelical days but whilst we might have doubted the 'salvation' of individual RCs we would have gladly accepted that many were 'proper' Christians.
The only people I can remember who would deny any possibility of salvation to RCs whatsoever - unless they were 'born again' and left to join an evangelical Protestant church were hard-line Brethren folk. Even there you could find people with more moderate views though.
Some of the hyper-Calvinists would have had similar views.
I'd be reluctant to pontificate about the 'Catholicity' or otherwise of the more 'Catholic' wing of the Anglican communion. It obviously shares much in common with both Rome and Orthodoxy in terms of praxis but it's not for me to say whether this is an ersatz or actual resemblance.
What I can say, of course, is that as an Orthodox believer I find much in common, overlaps and points of agreement. But then that applies right across the board of course, as @angloid indicates.
I might lower the percentage of commonality to around 80% in some instances rather than the 90%+ that angloid cites but that might be cheese-paring.
There's certainly a 'sliding-scale' of course and Anglo-Catholics would tend to be towards the top of that scale from an Orthodox perspective. That said, we often encounter much common ground with people from the other end of the spectrum particularly those of Wesleyan heritage.
I've heard several Orthodox say that the Pentecostal emphasis on the immanence of God provides a strong point-of-contact between Western and Eastern Christianity.
As far as Episcopalians (in the US context) and wider Anglican communion go, then I think @Nick Tamen and others are right to distinguish that from the UK context where there are particular historic and constitutional issues.
Broad generalisation alert: most, but not all, US Episcopalians I've met have come from the Broad to Higher end of the Anglican spectrum.
Indeed, some have told me that they are attracting people both from the mega and 'Bible churches' on the one hand and disaffected RCs on the other.
To that extent are they a 'via media'?
At our place, the pew leaflet sometimes contains a wordsearch puzzle for the children. I often wonder how many adults are doing it surfing the service
Oh the topic of some Protestants reservations/discomfort about the RCC, it is noticeable that Ecumenical events in our building are more sparsely attended than when they happen in other buildings. I have heard the local URC pastor lamenting that there are those in his congregation who simply will not set foot in an RC church. This is a shame as our priest has taken great pains to develop friendships with all the local clergy.
We are having our local Churches Together Covenant service at our place on Sunday. It will be interesting to see who attends.
On the topic of Apostolic Succession etc. I have never taken it seriously outside of faithfully handing on the Faith from one generation of leaders to the next. I certainly don't go along with those episcopal genealogies that you see in those organisations that seem to consist of a website and a bunch of people with extraordinary titles and no apparent laity. It seems to rely on the apostles and the next generation knowingly passing on a bunch of sacramental theology that was developed a millennium later. But then I find myself agnostic about so much of the detail of what I was once taught.
Yes, there had been a RC bishop since 1850, thirty years before Ryle became the first Anglican bishop of the city. Interestingly, before his arrival the city had reputation for being at the higher end of Anglicanism.Writing on the somewhat complex political history of Liverpool A J P Taylor noted:
'Ritualism provided another complication. The reason why it flourished at this time within Liverpool’s Anglican churches is not clear. Maybe the missionary spirit which brought young clergymen to the impoverished districts of Liverpool tended to go with High Church practices. The violence of the extreme Protestant response increased with the years'
The church alluded to by @angloid is one of about a dozen churches built by the wealthy Horsefall family who although all Anglicans had very different ideas on churchmanship, so that the many churches they built spanned every conceivable variety from bare preaching boxes to the most extravagant Anglo Catholic shrines
Episcopi vaga
That surprises me from the URC, to be honest. I do remember some people leaving a Baptist church I knew because the minister invited an RC priest to give some Lent talks - which I felt was a lovely thing for him to do.
I can't point the finger though, some Orthodox are so anti-ecumenical it's unbelievable.
On the issue of Apostolic Succession - yes, it's very much to do with the handing on of the faith faithfully as it were. Clearly, though, people are going to have different views as to what that entails. I think all churches with an episcopal structure have their 'Episcopi Vagantes' - those acting irregularly outside of official structures.
I've seen plenty of websites with someone in lavish vestments and a fancy title - Archibishop of Camelot and the Isle of Avalon, almost - who clearly operates from a garden shed with an archdiocese consisting of three old ladies and a dog.
The RCs and the Orthodox differ of course on how Apostolic Succession 'works' - primarily because we don't have the Papacy but there are other differences in emphasis.
None of which are concerns if you are at the 'low' end of the Anglican spectrum or part of an independent Protestant group.
I could be cheeky though and suggest that all churches have 'bishops' (small b) even if they don't call them that ...
Even the Celtic tradition is Roman in origin, even if filtered through Ireland and Scotland.
Confused. As you admit to being, and so do I.
I dunno - a worship leader dressed in a T-shirt, shorts and stole, Vaughan Williams and Stainer sung to electric guitar and drumkit accompaniment, a screen with the words which can hardly be read through the clouds of incense .... ?
I jest, of course!
Yes and no. Gaelic Christianity was obviously under Roman jurisdiction, being part of the western church, but its development owes something to ascetic traditions in the east as well, particularly the Desert Fathers.
But so does the Roman church. I meant that St Patrick et al came to Ireland via Rome.
I meant in terms of regarding Catholics as fellow Christians.
I'm not being dismissive of you, but until this thread I wouldn't have thought the question was worth asking, as a negative answer belongs in the dim past of the age of torture and persecutions. I must live a very sheltered life!
That sounds kind of attractive..
Well, actually St Patrick went to Ireland as a captive, either from what is now south-west Scotland or from South Wales. He later returned to spread the Gospel there.
He was definitely in the 'Roman' tradition though and wrote rather rough Latin.
Many of my fellow Orthodox make a big deal of the Eastern Mediterranean influence on early Christianity in these islands. That was definitely a thing. There were missionaries from Egypt elsewhere in Ireland when St Patrick was active. Yes, I was sceptical at first too, but I looked into it and yes, there do seem to have been some there.
You are right, though @Pomona in your assessment of the influence of the Desert Fathers. They influenced Christian monasticism throughout the Roman Empire, both West and East.
I think you have St Augustine of Canterbury in mind. He was sent from Rome on a mission to the Anglo-Saxons. He famously encountered the 'Welsh' or 'British' bishops - traditionally at Aust on the Severn - and according to Bede offended them by refusing to stand up when they entered.
Nobody knows exactly when Christianity first arrived in Britain, although the Orthodox (and the RCs?) have legends about that. It certainly arrived from Western Europe during the Roman occupation and there are records of three British bishops attending a council in southern Gaul in the early 4th century.
The 'bishops' - or most likely 'abbots' - that St Augustine encountered in the late 6th century were members of the Romano-British church which had continued after the end of Roman rule. Nobody knows which liturgy they used but most historians consider they used something similar to the Gallic rite. They used Latin.
They did develop some distinctive features, such as different style of monastic tonsure and the use of the Eastern rather than Roman calendar. The structure was based around abbots and monasteries rather than metropolitan bishops as Scotland and Ireland didn't have an urban culture and urban life had declined in southern Britain after the end of Roman rule and the collapse of the monetary economy.
They'd effectively been cut off from Western Europe by the Anglo-Saxon settlements, but still had some contact with the Eastern Mediterranean by sea. Amphorae and other pottery fragments from the Eastern Mediterranean have been found at coastal sites around the western coasts of Britain.
To all intents and purposes there was very little difference between so-called 'Celtic Christianity' and what would have been found in other parts of Christian Europe at that time. Bede favoured the 'Roman' position on the dating of Easter and so on and hence he portrays the indigenous British Church as lacking in some ways and subject to divine judgement. They hadn't evangelised the pagan Anglo-Saxons and so God wrought judgement upon them. Bede's a great read but he has an agenda.
There's a lot of nonsense talked about 'Celtic Christianity' as if it were some kind of purer and more mystical, eco-hippy form than what was coming from the Roman end of things. Sure, Rome tended to regulate and formalise things to the nth degree but other than the style of tonsure and perhaps some more extreme asceticism, you'd have been hard pressed to tell the difference between a British/Irish monk and their continental equivalents.
Only if the stole is of the correct liturgical colour...
https://tinyurl.com/2cfb45k3
You heard it here first.
Sure, and in the East the Liturgy wasn't standardised until around 1100. The Liturgy of St John Chrysostom seems to have been drawn from a number of sources.
I've not attended a 'Western Orthodox' Liturgy but from what I can gather they draw on various ancient Western sources.
I'm told the Sarum Rite gives a pretty good idea of what 8th century liturgy looked like.
I'm sure there were variations right across the Christian world.
I think the 'Celtic vs Roman' differences have expanded in the telling. As far as we can tell the main issues at the Synod of Whitby were the dating of Easter and monastic tonsures. It's not as if they were arguing about the Trinity or modes of baptism or the Creed or ...
Thing is, the polemics persist. I've seen the Battle of Hastings portrayed as lovely Orthodox Anglo-Saxons fighting wicked, evil Roman Catholic Normans sent with Papal blessing to overthrow the True Faith in these islands ...
Yes, I do see the Normans as the bad guys and the Papacy of that time too, come to that, but I do think it's a very simplistic take.
Very nice!
I see that it includes Yellow (for Feasts of Confessors) and Blue (for Feasts of Our Lady)...
I've read that the custom of private confession and penance was originally a peculiar of Gaelic monasticism that spread and later became normative in the western church. I don't know how well-supported that is.
Penance less so.
Caissa wonders if this might give Canticle for Leibowitz a run for its money. Great sci fi potential.