Anglican Wanderings offers regular pictures of the glories of Anglo Catholic worship. I can’t help feeling nostalgia for my Anglican days, and the tragic feeling in seeing these pictures that we’re looking at the final dinner in the Grand Ballroom of the Titanic.
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An earthy extension of the heavenly host of angels….
Yeah, I can see how it’d be hard for them to leave and join the average Catholic parish…
If there are any self-described Anglo Catholics reading this blog, I would love to hear a brief overview of why you are Anglo Catholic and not something else. I know very little about that group and I am curious to know more.
There’s always Anglican Use… ^_~ Seriously, is that anything you guys in Greenville have considered? My husband and I came home to Rome from the Episcopal Church. I love my Catholic faith, but I miss Rite I from the Book of Common Prayer.
Father, I simply can’t help it. I am trying to be charitable, fair, and certainly ecumenical. But I’ve read history, and lately, The Stripping of the Altars and Voices of Morebath by historian Duffey. I have respect for all Protestant denominations to some extent, some more than others, I admit. Those who are “cultural Christians”, perhaps Presbyterian or whatever, seem less authentic to me than devout Pentecostals, Baptists, who have some measure of zeal to their faith. But Anglo-Catholics? Inherent in ALL Protestantism is anti-Catholicism, historically, though denominations have over time achieved their own Christian identity. Not so the oxymoron Anglo-Catholics. I once saw a horror movie in which a man killed his wife and then dressed up as her–her clothes, her hair, make-up, etc. Anglo-Catholics are like that. There is a kind of insanity in that.
Estiel,I think that your comment betrays a lack of historical understanding for what happened to the English since the sixteenth century. The separation of the Church of England from the Catholic Church was a top-down event, arranged and pushed through by the monarchs and nobility, with the cooperation of some of the bishops (themselves noblemen). Many of the actions taken under Edward VI and Elizabeth I were, strictly speaking, unconstitutional and illegal, but it mattered not…the communion with Apostolic See was broken.Some of the people retained their Catholic faith in full, and would have nothing to do with those ministers who acquiesed with the break, and these are the recusants. Still others largely retained their Catholic faith, and, while attending services in the state church, clung as much as possible to the old ways and faith. Finally, others were convinced Protestants, and in varying degrees from High Catholic to Puritan strove to refashion the Church and its services.With time, the Protestant parties gained in strength; especially after the Spanish Armada in 1588 and the Gunpowder Plot, many English “joined” the Protestant parties as much out of patriotism as religious conviction. But the Catholic sentiment never died out within the Church of England, and with the Oxford Movement in the early 19th century, and the subsequent Ritualist movement, much of the Catholic ritual and teaching that had disappeared or been greatly diminished was restored to wide areas of the Anglican world. There was in many a genuine desire to regain what was seen as the proper patrimony of English Christianity, and of course, many of these new reformers also were keen on restoration of unity with the Catholic Church. While there has been no reunification of large groups yet, there have been the smaller reunions of individuals and groups, and of course, the Anglican Use parishes here in the U.S.
Steve, I thank you for your explanation, but I know all that. (Thank you for not being offended by my remarks, also.) But it does nothing to alter my comment. I am amazed at how ignorant of history–their *own* history–so many “Anglo-Catholics” seem to be. They have, it seems, invented their own definition of the Church as three different “communions”: eastern, western, and Anglo. Such invention is self-excusing pure Protestantism, without even a trace of repentance–indeed, with prideful assertions of false authority. Utterly unchanged in their view. No. Some logic, please. You cannot leave the Church and call yourself a member of the Church; whether your leaving was “top-down” or not, it was leaving. It was your choice. You can ask St Edmund Campion among countless other martyrs about this distinction if it’s not clear. You can only be a member if you come back–with mea culpa–and leave the false god of “patriotism” you chose. You cannot come back saying, well, I want to be Catholic but I want to remain Anglican. No.
I guess the question that keeps running through my mind is what is keeping any Anglican from leaping to the Church? How high do the waves have to break over the ramparts of this sinking ship before you abandon her? Turn and look at the madman with his hand on the tiller if you need further inducement.Then I wonder as a Catholic where I would jump to if I found myself in similar circumstances (which I do not think will happen, just conjecturing). Orthodox Church perhaps?
Éstiel seems to implicitly redefine Catholic as Roman Catholic. Sorry, but if you Papists want to claim a monopoly on the term Catholic, you can’t expect us non-Romans to grant your attempt at rhetorical imperialism.I was raised Methodist, but then I was Anglo-Catholic for a dozen years. Last year I became Orthodox. I did not become – nor even consider becoming – Roman Catholic because I think that church is in error on too many important theological points.Many Anglo-Catholics reasoned that if we were true to the best traditions of Anglicanism we would inevitably come to look like an Orthodox church – an autocephalous national church with a liturgically centered life rooted in a tradition defined by the fathers and the Ecumenical Councils. As long as this vision seemed plausible, there was no need to leave Anglicanism. As it becomes implausible, Rome is not an option for many of us because it is even further from this ideal than Anglicanism.In a world full of superficial Christianities, Anglo-Catholicism offered the real thing (depicted so beautifully in the photos posted on this blog). If I thought it had a viable future I would still be there. And I continue to resent what the Revisionists and the Evangelicals are doing to Anglicanism, slowly squeezing out traditional Anglo-Catholics.
Roland,The word catholic with a lower-case c means universal, though it is hardly ever used that way because it has come to signify the Catholic Church almost exclusively. An upper-case C signifies the Catholic Church, impying the western Church. The same distinction applies to the words orthodox and Orthodox.Anglican is simply English; the Church of England, called Episcopalian in the U.S., presumably because Americans don’t want to be called English.