All and all a quite fitting eulogy.

I’m glad I didn’t get MacCulloch’s biography of Cranmer.

I’ve heard that was actually pretty good. Never got around to it though.

“My second reason to be cheerful is the ordination of women in the Anglican priesthood.”

If not the beginning of the end, then an accelerant to the beginning of the end.

Sow WO, reap Woe.

I’m afraid that there are much worse +++ABCs to come. We may live to say “When Rowan was around these radicals wouldn’t have gotten away with this so easily.”

“North America does its drag queen hysterics number.” What a great line!

What I notice about Anglican churches of various flavors in the U.S. is that the large majority of people are there because they actually believe the Christian story. The same is true of many other American Christian groups. The pressure which caused people to attend for social reasons has eased, and actual believers now predominate. The CofE’s problem is that it is reaching this point in terms of regular attendance, but the hierarchy is still behaving as if the church were part of the social glue of the nation. Rowan has been acting very much like a government minister and very little like a Christian bishop. He’s held the CofE together, so far, but the results in the Anglican communion of churches at large have been toxic.

Even the American Catholic church has changed in this regard. Previous waves of immigrants brought mass attendance with them as a part of their ethnic identities. The idea of “the church” as a monolithic institution to be defended had tragic aspects when bishops decided to defend the church instead of the believers in the sex abuse scandals (and we see the same thing in Ireland, sadly). Now, in America, the pressure to attend mass as a social convention has eased. In the U.S., older liberal bishops are gradually being replaced with men who are willing to teach and defend the Faith rather than just the Church.

Somebody needs to hit MacCulloch with a rhythm stick.

I should note that when I say “Anglican churches” in the U.S., I am excluding ECUSA churches. ECUSA is a fading social institution where belief in essential Christianity is optional-to-odd. Like the CofE, ECUSA now stands for liberal social work in which judgment on individual behavior is absent.

Now, in America, the pressure to attend mass as a social convention has eased.

Generally accurate, but the current Mexican immigration has brought a lot of that with them. I know a Religious Ed. director who’s tearing her hear out over the hundred of kids who’s families are interested in baptismal parties, quincenera parties, confirmation parties, and wedding parties and attend Mass pretty much to get access to our pretty church for nice pictures. We have gang members at Mass, Santeria practiced on the Church grounds (in the Sanctuary at least once), and a level of knowledge of the Faith that’s abysmal.

American Catholics got wretched catechesis; Mexican Catholics got next to none.

In my quest for slavish accuracy, I failed to make my intended point: in general, Katherine’s statement is both true (with the quibble noted above) and important.

I grew up in the baby boomer era when large numbers of people went to church largely for social reasons. One can argue this ultimately destroyed the mainstream protestant churches and seriously damaged American Catholicism, which was already losing it’s immigrant identity and beginning to meld into the American image. In many respects, we are better off today as Christians, because of – not despite – the cultural negativity.

True, the MSM has gotten really tiresome, but they are a dinosaur on the way out, anyway.

FW Ken – While the large numbers of people going to church has decreased somewhat where I am, quite a few still look upon it a social opportunity over worship and Christian education. There’s more interest in a bus trip to somewhere than Bible study.

Well, well. It now appears that our friend “Sinner” is not the only one to think that the Covenant will end in the demotion of ECUSA to second-tier status. The gist of The Living Church’s last paragraph is that the Primates’ statement following its recent meeting is the formal request to defer action which the Covenant calls for, and that Canon Glasspool’s consecration will have consequences on ECUSA’s Communion status. I’m not optimistic, but we’ll see.

Santería is typically Caribbean, not Mexican.

Oy gevalt Ken! Where is your parish? And more to the point, where is your priest?

Daniel – you are correct; the word I heard was “bruhettia” (sp?) not Santeria, although we get both. And I was simplifying somewhat; of course we have varieties of hispanic folk, although the bulk of the immigrants are from Mexico.

Janjan – the parish is in Fort Worth, in what passes for the “inner city”. Our priest is in the middle of it all, helping pick up the chickenn parts in the front yard, although at least once he was the one being cursed (that was the ashes around his chair in the sanctuary) and so got someone else to do the exorcism.

Obligatory swipe at the Papishes? Check!

In other words, console yourself, Archbish: however bad we (or rather you lot) are, at least we’re not (shudder!) Papists!

Seriously, has anyone seen the “Vicar of Dibley”? No disrespect to Dawn French, but the character could just as well be Buddhist, Zorastrinian, or flat-out atheist, and it wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference to the “hijinks amongst small village goings-on” malarkey.

That’s not a very high mark to aim for; ‘let’s all be nice!’ is perfectly valid and unobjectionable, but as the goal of a Church claiming historic roots in the Apostolic Succession?

Christopher, MacCulloch’s biography of Cranmer is not just “pretty good,” it is superb, which makes that twaddle from him you quote above all the more disappointing.

It also serves as warning the toxicity permeating Anglicanism will eventually corrupt any and all who still remain. Get out while you can.

“Christopher, MacCulloch’s biography of Cranmer is not just “pretty good,” it is superb…”

We’re watching his “History of the Church” from BBC4 now. It is very well done, and he is an excellent commentator.

Toral,
“I’m afraid that there are much worse +++ABCs to come”
What bothers me is his duplicitous nature. He appears to be even handed but really is helping to buy time for and advance innovation. It reminds me of the show on TV many years ago “I led two lives”.I would like to know up front what our ABC is about.

MacCulloch is a good historian but he is not a theologian. Indeed, I think he claims to be no longer Christian. His agenda may be guessed from his comments.

Christopher, MacCulloch’s biography of Cranmer is not just “pretty good,” it is superb, which makes that twaddle from him you quote above all the more disappointing.

BB, according to wikipedia he is gay. All must be sacrificed for The Cause, even common sense. It’s disappointing, but not surprising.

Actually, the idea of making the whole Anglican/Episcopo thing into a hilarious sitcom isn’t such a bad idea, especially if you toss in Peter Akinola as sort of a Fred Sanford character. A title such as “Everybody Loves Rowan” ought to work. A great episode was the one where Rowan’s Italian friend, Bennie, arrived unexpectedly just when Rowan’s goofy Yankee cousins, VeeGene and KatieJS, were on their way for dinner. A real farce erupts when Rowan tries to keep them all in separate rooms while Peter Akinola, called “Stymie” in the series, thinks he’s having “the big one” when he realizes the trouble Rowan could be in. Ex-papist, Fr. Cutie, has a cameo role as the “hunk” gardener who catches the roving eye of KatieJS. A real laugh a minute. And with VeeGene appearing in drag in some episodes, great scenes a la “The Birdcage” will be real knee-slappers. As to swipes at them Papists – as a former papal idolator, and as an Orthodox worshipper of holy pictures for 25 years, I can vouch for both the efficacy of burying a statue of St. Joseph upside down on March 19 to help the potato patch AND the value of weeping icons in selling real estate. So there!

MacCulloch’s father was a Scotsman, a Presbyterian, who studied Divinity as an undergraduate at Edinburgh University, but finally was ordained in the Church of England and served as a country parson in rural Suffolk for decades. MacC himself, a Cambridge undergraduate, went on to get a doctorate in History there under the supervision of the late Sir Geoffrey Elton, and turned that doctoral work into a fine book on Tudor Suffolk. Further scholarly books on the English Reformation, Cranmer, and Edward VI and the “turn” towards Protetantism followed, as well as more general books on the Reformation and (now) the History of Christianity.

After obtaining his doctorate he taught for rather more than a decade at Wesley College, Bristol, the English Methodist theological college (seminary) before moving on to Oxford about a decade ago. At the same time as teaching Church History, he studied Theology, so as to qualify for ordination in the Church of England. In 1985 he was ordained to the diaconate by the then Bishop of Bristol, the late Barry Rogerson, a liberal (he rushed in March 1994 to be the first English bishop to “ordain” women to “the priesthood” when it became legal to do so) and a strong clerical supporter of the Labour Party during the Thatcher years — who was fully aware when he did so that MacC was a “partnered homosexual.” He expected to be priested in 1986, but before that could take place MacC appeared on “Credo,” BBC-TV’s religious affairs programme, as one of a number of (Anglican and Free Church Protestant) clergy living with partners of their own sex. Rogerson subsequently refused to ordain him to the priesthood because of the “publicity” that MacC’s appearance on the programme had caused, and over the next few years MacC’s attachment to the Church of England diminished while the consistency of his own radically liberal religious views increased (he began as a rather liberal-ish Evangelical with an interest in ritual and music), to the point that more recently he has taken to characterizing himsefl as an outsider to Christianity “wistfully” looking inside.

FW Ken, I know that “brujo” is the Spanish for “witch”, so Wikipedia helpfully informs me that the word you heard is probably “Brujería” which “is the Spanish word for witchcraft. Brujeria also refers to a mystical sect of male witches in the southermost part of Argentina. Both men and women can be witches, brujos and brujas respectively. Brujos is the plural term that can mean either a group of male witches or both male and female witches.”

Since “(B)rujería is diverse, from a similar mix of indigenous and Spanish culture, to the European styles found in Argentina and Uruguay. In these latter countries, brujería often takes on Christian, specifically Catholic, influences… The brujos from Spain are either Christian or pagan-witches. The first group use folk magic and combine it with Catholic ritual and beliefs.”, that probably explains why this group performed rituals in the church grounds.

But yeah, it’s a mixum-gatherum, trying to separate out candomblé from santeria from curanderismo from voudoun/vudú/voodoo from neo-paganism

I think I’m throwing up in my mouth. God help us all.

Fuinseoig – sometimes you’re scary, you know. Brilliant, of course… but scary.

Re: McCulloch —

The first step is to realize that you have a problem. “Stiff upper lip” is about smiling while dealing with a problem, not smiling instead of dealing.

FW Ken, put a possible tendency towards obessive-compulsiveness (no! you all cry) with a magpie’s attitude to gathering trivia (oooh! shiny! useless, but pretty shiny!) together with weird tastes in literature (er… horror counts as literature, right?) and access to the internet –

- then back away slowly, nodding and smiling while you look for the exit

I don’t know how I know this stuff, honest; why I should know the Spanish for “witch” when I’ve never learned a word of Spanish in my life – well, that’s just one more reason to be glad there’s a whole ocean in between us, right?

Happy St. Stephen’s Day to everyone!