Jul 11 2008
Blogging is light this wekend because I’m at a diocesan conference. A great quote today from one guest speaker, Bishop Geralyn Wolf of Rhode Island:
Jesus did not say “I’m OK, you’re OK”, he said “I’m okay, but you need some work.”
Jul 11 2008
The “flying bishop” of Ebbsfleet, Andrew Burnham, has decided to write an article for the Catholic Herald suggesting that many Anglo-Catholics may and perhaps should leave for Rome, after the vote in favour of women as bishops, and the vote against creating a perpetual enclave of those who won’t accept them.
I would describe myself as a Catholic within the Anglican tradition, and I don’t for a minute share the assumption that to be catholic is to fit this pattern.
I would like to note, however, that Andrew Burnham has said openly, at a meeting I’ve been at, that he normally uses the (Roman Catholic) breviary for his daily prayer, and that many (most?) of the churches for which he is charged with “alternative” (read “no women”) oversight use the Roman Mass.
In what sense, we might genuinely ask, are they Anglican at all, if they don’t think the official Anglican forms of prayer are good enough for them? Well, like Bishop Burnham, many of them have wives (a slight snag in Roman terms), and not a few of those that don’t have boyfriends (another snag, at least in theory).
The current definition of a “traditionalist Anglo-Catholic” it seems to me, is someone who can joyfully and exuberantly disobey their bishop in the name of the Pope, but has absolutely no desire to start obeying the Pope instead of their bishop. Their dilemma is that they regularly pray the Eucharistic prayer of a Church that believes they are unable (because not real priests) to pray that prayer, while they refuse to pray the common Eucharistic prayer of the Church that has ordained them precisely so that they may gather people to pray it.
That way madness lies.
