Thoughts on the Anglican Via Media Between Protestant and Catholic

Richard Beck over at Experimental Theology keeps getting amongst me. This morning in his review of Chris Haw's From Willow Creek to Sacred Heart, a case for Roman Catholicism, in which he (Beck) notes: 

The problem is this. Protestantism worships at the altar of individualism. In this Protestantism is the great handmaiden of the Enlightenment. The highest authority in Protestantism isn't God or the Bible. The highest authority is the individual conscience. If you don't like the particular teachings of a church you just walk away. Or start your own church. Thus the history of fracturing, spiting, and ramifying we've seen throughout Protestant history. There is one Catholic church. How many Protestant churches? Exactly. That's the point. And the problem. With the individual conscience as the final arbiter there is nothing that holds Protestantism together.

But Chris's argument goes even deeper. These divisions within Protestantism are often motivated by the conceit that you can get beyond or behind the tradition to the "real Jesus." But as Chris points out, there is no Jesus outside of the tradition. There is no pure Jesus, a Jesus uncontaminated by the tradition. In fact, the tradition is what gives us Jesus. Thus, to love Jesus is to love the tradition that brings you Jesus. The two are of a piece. To love Jesus is to love the church tradition that brings you Jesus.

All here. 

To the extent that we Anglicans are Protestant, we share that, especially as individual conscience is made our highest authority for matters such as sexuality, on Jesus being the only way to salvation and even financial stewardship, but especially as we continue to fragment. Even our Catholicness is a fractured, disconnected thing. 

Sigh.

Out of Silence

Rockies Light as Seen Through an iPhone:

Re-entry today, home this afternoon.

Earlier this morning, watching the dawn come up over the Rockies, reading and praying. This caught my attention from Carlos Carretto's I, Francis in A Guide to Prayer Readings for Reflection:

The Gospel taught me to place the emphasis on the mystery of the human being being more than on the duty of the human being. 343

How shall I do that in my baptism preparation?

The middle-class spirit, which is present to every age, and is known as selfishness, arrogance, pride, sensuality, idolatry, and slavery. 344

Bishop Mark: Gospel Based Discipleship

Our authority is the presence of Jesus in our midst (Mt 18.20). Bishop Mark called all groups to begin their meetings with a reading of the Gospel and the answering of three questions:

1. What stands out for you?
2. What do you hear God saying?
3. What is God calling you to do?

The readings are the eucharistic Gospel readings of the day.

When we come together in this way, the authority of Christ in our midst brings blessing and transformation. People have the opportunity to engage with Jesus in a direct, personal, unfiltered way.

David Warren on the Roman Catholic Cat Among the Anglican Pigeons

The Ottawa Citizen's David Warren has weighed in on all the commentary and opinion arising out of the Roman Catholic invitation to traditional Anglicans. He makes a point which I have not yet seen in all the debate—the possible benefits for the Catholics:

the reception of these traditional Anglicans will create very exciting possibilities for all English-speaking Catholics on the "liturgical" front: for the traditional Anglicans retain, in intensely beautiful English, a liturgy that is actually more "catholic" in spirit and form than the rather crass and now dated "contemporary translations" Rome mistakenly approved at the end of the 1960s, in the depths of the post-Vatican II meltdown. Those old Anglicans can help us recover our own more reverent liturgical traditions.

…one answer, and a good one, to the question: Can anything good come out of Anglicanism?

I'm happy to say we get to enjoy that intensely beautiful, 'catholic' liturgy every Sunday morning at 830.

All here.

Anne Rice, "Called Out of Darkness: a Spiritual Confession"

Enjoyed very much reading Anne Rice, Called Out of Darkness: a Spiritual Confession (2008). It’s a fascinating account of how she got from vampires to Jesus. This from a woman who was until 1998 and for some thirty eight years, an atheist secular humanist.

On Doctrine

In sum, I am a conservative when it comes to doctrine because this is what I see! This is what I have found in the texts. This is what makes sense to my mind. The novelist in me has found this complex web of truth and meaning in these books when, frankly, I did not expect to find anything so powerful at all. 222

On the canon of Scripture

To accept the canon means to accept all of the canon. And that means there will be no easy resolution ever, and that learning to live with this tension, in love, is what we must do.

This may come across as simplistic. It is not simplistic. It is life changing and endlessly difficult, and the steadfast determination to love is threatened at every moment. We walk a tightrope over a pit of grasping demons when we insist upon love. And sometimes we walk alone. 226-227

On the Point

She had discovered that the point of the faith is to love. Jesus first and then everyone, without exception.

Rich.

Mother Theresa on Smiling

A lovely bit last week in my A Guide to Prayer Readings for Reflection from Mother Theresa:

Some people came to Calcutta, and before leaving, they begged me: 'Tell us something that will help us to live our lives better.' And I said: 'Smile at each other; smile at your wife, smile at your husband, smile at your children, smile at each other—it doesn't matter who it is—and that will help you to grow up in greater love for each other.'

She reminds me of something Calgary's Roman Catholic Bishop Henry once said to a gathering of Anglicans: "If you're saved, inform your face!"

More from Mother Theresa:

And then one of them asked me: 'Are you married?' and I said: 'Yes, and I find it difficult sometimes to smile at Jesus.' And it is true, Jesus can be very demanding also, and it is at those times when he is so demanding that to give him a big smile is very beautiful. (from A Gift for God by Mother Theresa)

That reminds me of how lovely it is to see a smile on the face of someone who is worshiping the LORD in song. Smiling at Jesus.

Who Needs the Church! - Carlo Carreto

Who Needs the Church!

How baffling you are, O church, and yet
how I love you.
How you have made me suffer and yet
how much I owe you.
I should like to see you destroyed, and yet
I need your presence.
You have given me so much scandal and yet
you have made me understand sanctity.
I have seen nothing in the world
more devoted to obscurity,
more compromised, more false,
and I have touched nothing
more pure, more generous, more beautiful.
How often I have wanted to shut the doors
of my soul in your face, and how often
I have prayed to die in the safety of your arms.
No, I cannot free myself from you,
because I am you, although not completely.
Besides, where else could I go?

Good question and amen.

From Carlo Carreto, The God Who Comes, Orbis Books, via Readings for Reflection in A Guide to Prayer.

125 Years, Hans Küng, New Horizons and Striking Camp

From Roman Catholic priest and theologian, Hans Küng, The Church, via Readings for Reflection in A Guide to Prayer:

If the Church really sees itself as the people of God, it is obvious that it can never be a static and supra-historical phenomenon, which exists undisturbed by earthly space and historical time. The Church is always and everywhere a living people, gathered together from the peoples of this world and journeying through the midst of time. The Church is essentially en route, on a journey, a pilgrimage. A Church which pitches its tents without looking out constantly for new horizons, which does not continually strike camp, is being untrue to its calling.

A challenge for any parish but especially one like ours celebrating its 125th anniversary in a lovely old (by western Canadian standards) building. Our anniversary slogan is, "Founded on Faith, Focussed on the Future."

Looking Out for New Horizons

This is the window over our altar.

Below is my view of it in the chalice as I preside at the Eucharist Sunday by Sunday. I am blessed to do so in such beautiful surroundings and among such a sweet spirited parish family.

Our stained glass portrays the faith upon which we are founded in beautiful, living colour. The danger, I fear, is that if we're not careful, they, and beautiful things things like them, will block our view of any new horizons to which the Lord is calling us and we will be unable to focus on the future.

Striking Camp

St Barnabas, Medicine Hat: the camp site.

The LORD graces us with his presence here. It is a very comfortable camp site. The food, the water and the company are good. It is a camp which many people do not want to strike. And who can blame them?

More Nouwen and Thoughts on Success

Something in me (my "flesh," I suppose) pushes me to succeed. But the success to which I am so pushed is all about bigger, more and "better." I haven't been very good at that either in my life or my vocation. By worldly standards of success I don't rate very highly.

Then, from Nouwen's Reaching Out via A Guide to Prayer Readings for Reflection, I read this:

But it is important that in this world there remain a few voices crying out that if there is anything to boast of, we should boast of our weakness. Our fulfillment is in offering emptiness, our usefulness in becoming useless, our power in becoming powerless.

A word for me in my striving. And one for conservative Anglicans who aren't feeling very effective or influential but who also feel called to remain in the Anglican Church of Canada.

Nouwen is, of course, referring to this:

But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Cor 12.9-10)

If there is any success, better that it come as a result of that kind of power and strength than anything I can work up.

Nouwen on Success

From Nouwen's, The Wounded Healer via Readings for Reflection in A Guide to Prayer:

…promises, not concrete successes, are the basis of Christian leadership. Many ministers, priests and Christian laymen have become disillusioned, bitter and even hostile when years of hard work bear no fruit, when little change is accomplished. Building a vocation on the expectations of concrete results, however conceived, is like building a house on sand instead of on solid rock, and even takes away the ability to accept successes as free gifts. 

Another hard thing for the likes of me, serving in a declining denomination with the annual meeting looming, to embrace.

And along with this today, 1 Corinthians 1.26-31, on not many of us called being wise or powerful but rather foolish and weak by worldly standards. Nouwen makes it sound like concrete results and success are the exception rather than the rule. When they do happen, there is an implicit challenge to discern very carefully whether it is a free gift or something we've wrought by our own strength.

More Uncomfortable Nouwen: Creating a Free and Fearless Place for the Unexpected Visitor

Further to my last post on the move from "easy support system to risky surrender" in prayer. More Nouwen, from The Wounded Healer this time via A Guide to Prayer.

Hospitality is the virtue which allows us to break through the narrowness of our own fears and to open our houses to the stranger…Hospitality makes anxious disciples into powerful witnesses, makes suspicious owners into generous givers, and makes closed-minded sectarians into interested recipients of new ideas and insights.

…

What does hospitality as a healing power require? It requires first of all that the host feel at home in his own house, and secondly that he create a free and fearless place for the unexpected visitor.

Anxious Disciples

Risky surrender, indeed. I've got the first part down. I do feel very much at home in my own house, but my introverted self wants to use my home as a hiding place. I find it very difficult to open it up to strangers.

Congregations in their anxious discipleship and suspicious ownership can have a hard time opening their church buildings to be free and fearless places for the unexpected visitor.

An Invitation from Jesus

I think Jesus was speaking about how to create that "free and fearless place" in today's passage when he said:

Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Mt 11.28-30 ESV)

If his yoke isn't easy for me, I must have made it that way. If is burden is feels heavy, I must have made it, too, that way by, among other things, my anxious discipleship and suspicious ownership.

Lord, have mercy.

A Nouwen Bit on Prayer: Easy Support System to Risky Surrender

I came across a bit of Nouwen wisdom (originally from his book, Reaching Out) in my A Guide to Prayer Readings for Reflection this morning. He points out that "the movement from illusion to prayer is hard to make." It requires moving "from an easy support system to a risky surrender."

My Easy Support System

The Anglican daily office, in its many forms, can become for me an easy support system. I enjoy it. I enjoy the coffee I drink while I'm doing it, the familiar words, sitting in a cosy pool of light in the early morning darkness at this time of year, the orderly lectionary based Bible reading. Part one I pray on my own and part two with Jude. It is a comfortable routine, not to be abandoned, but not to be retreated into completely, either.

My Risky Surrender

How shall I move to risky surrender? Three things.

First, methinks fasting is the next step for me. Sigh.

Second, rather than trying to fit my prayer into my work life, I need to be better at fitting my work into my prayer life. I must be better at carving out and protecting prayer days; whole days on my own to pray through the parish list, to contemplate His Word, to sit in silence before the LORD, to soak, to let Him get at me. I tend to put them on the calendar, but then let tasks, demands and appointments intrude.

Third, something Jude has suggested several times; we need to pray before every decision. The risky surrender in that is giving God the chance to say, "No, you don't need that BluRay machine, that trip, whatever." I think Jude is right.

Not spectacular, but a beginning I hope.

Prayer For a Guy Trying Too Hard to Make Things Happen

This was one of this week's Readings for Reflection in A Guide to Prayer

Lord, I know not what I ought to ask of thee; thou only knowest what I need…I simply present myself before thee, I open my heart to thee. Behold my needs which I know not myself. Smite, or heal; depress me, or raise me up; I adore all thy purposes without knowing them; I am silent; I offer myself in sacrifice; I yield myself to thee; I would have no other desire than to accomplish thy Will. Teach me to pray. Pray thyself in me. Amen. (Francois Fénelon)

I adore all your purposes without knowing them. Now there's a spiritual discipline.

Not a bad prayer for a guy who has to stay. Sigh.

O, yes.

And, O no! some days.

Suffering and Christmastide

From Charles de Foucauld Meditations of a Hermit, part of one of the Readings for Reflection for this week in my A Guide to Prayer:

May these days of Christmas festival bring you, in your suffering, I do not say consolation, but the blessing that God intends for you. The Child Jesus will perhaps not give you any sweetness,—he reserves that for the weak ones,—but his hands will none the less be spread to bless you in these days of Christmastide, and whether you feel it or no, he will pour abundant grace into your soul. (p 34)

Amen. And as the carol goes:

Yet in the dark streets shineth the everlasting light. 

A reminder of the reality of Christmas for many. Our Longest Night service this Sunday at 6pm acknowledges that reality and provides a place for people to express it in worship. 

Small Groups Benedict: Thoughts on Listening, Prayer and Stability

Thanks to the vision of two women in our parish, we now have several small groups operating at St Barnabas using Benedict's Way: an Ancient Monk's Insights for a Balanced Life (Chicago: Loyola Press, 2000), by Lonni Collins Pratt and Father Daniel Homan, OSB.

Years ago I heard Canon Doug Skoyles speak on Anglicanism. Benedictine, he said, is our primary flavour. The Prayer book is nothing but a Benedictine book. Anglicanism is Benedictinism for parishes. Our pastoral norm as Anglicans is the Benedictine idea that human beings are more important than law—people come first. This, unfortunately, he said, is often mistaken for wishy-washyness. I am surprised and delighted with how right the Benedictine thing seems to be for us.

For a time my Cursillo Group Reunion is using Benedict's Way as a focus as we share and hold each other accountable for our piety, study and action.

So far we've covered Listening, Prayer, Work and Stability. Chastitiy is next. Some bits from the book that dinged for me:

Listening to God is "inclining the ear of the heart." What a lovely phrase. Listening requires effort, the book tells us:

Haul yourself before God no matter what.

I like how the book makes prayer accessable. "Start small" it says, but start. Commit to a few minutes morning and evening. Add some simple things and grow.

It takes twenty-one days to form a habit.

...and from the Rule of St Benedict:

Prayer should therefore be short and pure, unless perhaps it is prolonged under the inspiration of divine grace. In community, however, prayer should always be brief.

On Stability, Lonni Collins Pratt writes:

Sacred redundancy morning upon morning. Our culture doesn't put much value on the familiar. Those who hold to routines, who go to the same job year after year and stay married to the same person for a lifetime - well, they aren't the stuff that movies are made about.

Stability calls us to remain in difficult situations but not in destructive ones.

You could call it holy stubbornness.

Good stuff.

Father Ron Rolheiser on Sabbath

First class, as usual...

Biblically, this is the pattern: We're meant to work for six days, then have a one-day sabbatical; work for seven years and have a one year sabbatical; work for seven times seven years (forty-nine years) and have a Jubilee year; and finally work for a lifetime and have an eternity of sabbatical. The idea is that our pressured, hurried, working days should be regularly punctured by times of rest, celebration, enjoyment, non- work, non-pressure, and that ultimately all work will cease and we will have nothing to do except to luxuriate in life itself.And what's supposed to happen on a sabbath? What constitutes sabbath time?

From Two Giants: Nouwen and Lewis

This is today's meditation from Henri Nouwen:

Jesus Is Persecuted

Jesus, the favorite Child of God, is persecuted. He who is poor, gentle, mourning; he who hungers and thirsts for uprightness; is merciful, pure of heart and a peacemaker is not welcome in this world. The Blessed One of God is a threat to the established order and a source of constant irritation to those who consider themselves the rulers of this world. Without his accusing anyone he is considered an accuser, without his condemning anyone he makes people feel guilty and ashamed, without his judging anyone those who see him feel judged. In their eyes, he cannot be tolerated and needs to be destroyed, because letting him be seems like a confession of guilt.

When we want to become like Jesus, we cannot expect always to be liked and admired. We have to be prepared to be rejected.

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And some vintage St Clive for today from The Business of Heaven: Daily Readings, (Fount, 1984), ed. Walter Hooper, quoting The Great Divorce, chapter 8:

Two Kinds of People in the End

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done', and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.' All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.

There is very definitely an edge to this Christianity business. There are choices to made moment by moment, there is mercy, there is judgement, there is Hell, there is Heaven and, above all, there is Jesus.