What is wrong with this Church of ours, that it makes no impact, that it is silent, has nothing to say or contribute to the world around us? What is wrong is that this church has muffled the gospel, and concealed from itself that this is what it has done. This suppression has been going on for so long that we are now only very tenuously connected to the true Church, the true Church that is created and sustained by the gospel. But we have to hear and return to that one, holy catholic and apostolic Church, the Church of all places and all ages, if the ‘Church of England’ is to be what its name claims.

But we have taken out the cross. We have a gospel without truth and judgement, a message of mere empathy and affirmation, an inoffensive and irrelevant gospel, no longer able to cut through any of the contrary claims it meets.

Our church does not see how much trouble our neighbours are in and does not go to their aid. Its ‘gospel’ offers them no diagnosis, no warning, no corrective, no medicine and no surgery. Our neighbours are in the hands of forces that have no sympathy for them. It is for us to go to their aid. It is for us to challenge the thugs who hold them captive. We have to identify what it is that holds people back and ties them down. We have to point out what troubles them and who is inflicting those troubles on them. We need to find some compassion for our neighbours and for the society around us. We have to find enough compassion for them to tell them the truth, although the truth is just what they do not want to hear. For their sake we have to give them what they don't want. We have to tell them that they have been preyed on, and they have identified themselves with those who prey on them, and they have been preying on one another. They have been suffering a delusion, and they have been inflicting it on each other. They are both victims and perpetrators, and all have been complicit in a long concealment of the truth. The gospel comes with the shock and hurt of a plaster being ripped off, of the light being suddenly and blindingly switched on, of being dragged forcibly out of bed, of being thrown out of the vehicle and left on the side of road. The gospel shocks, hurts and exposes us.

The Church does this extraordinary thing. It declares that its confidence in all previous generations of Christians. This is what we mean when we declare in public each time we say the creed that the Church is ‘one’. It is indivisible through time. The ancient church and the modern church are not two churches. The earlier church has not given way to the later. The earlier church is not wrong and the modern church right. There is just one single church, present through all generations indivisibly. There is not the ancient Church of the first disciples and the contemporary Church of us – for this would leave us with the impossible task of deciding what parts of the gospel are essential and which we can abandon. Its confidence is complete. Our Lord placed his confidence in the faithfulness of his Church because he himself is behind it, and because ultimately the Church is the body of the Lord, and the ongoing work of the Lord.

So we pray that the Lord will defend us from every elite that does not want to be accountable, that does not believe it has to listen to us, which become angry at anyone who tells them what they don't want to hear. Save us from every self-appointed elite that does not want to hear that there is a crisis, and which wants to push onto others the costs and consequences of its way of life.

Defend us Lord from those who know better. Defend us from those who set themselves up over all previous generations. Take away those who set themselves between us and all previous generations of your saints. Let us hear your saints again, and let us receive from them the full measure of the discipleship that we need. Do not let us refuse what these Christians have to give us. Let us take from them what they give us, and honour them, and hope to lead the some sanctified lives. They passed on the gospel for us. They are a message from you to us. Let us be glad of the churches and the worship, the hymns and prayers that are their gift to us. Let us understand these churches as their act of generosity toward us, and as a living scripture. They are your gift to us, and are intended to show us our way.

It is the calling of the Church always to hold itself as some distance from the regime of the day. We call this ‘secularisation’. There is a secular sphere, in which a wide range of ways of life and of discussion of ways of maintaining the common good are sustained, when the Church maintains its critical distance, stays cautious, and so is able to ask the questions that that sphere needs to hear. This is the prophetic office of the church. Christians are prophets, able to say how the community and government overreach themselves and exceed their authority. The Church says. The nation and its government can listen if they want to, take whatever advice they want. It is not the job of the government to become the body telling us what to think.

The clergy of the Church of England have created over these last decades a ‘gospel’ which is utterly unattractive and unrecognisable to the people of this country. They have removed all the elements that surprise and shock. They have removed the terror and delight of the gospel. They have bowdlerised it and rendered it harmless. But Christ cannot be domesticated. He is not harmless. Only we are harmed when we decide that we know better than all previous generations of the Church.

Defend us Lord from those who shush us up, who want us to be content with a lesser gospel, who do not want to put the whole gospel in our hands, who water down the wine that God intended for us. They deflect our questions and patronise and belittle. Defend us from those from those who know better, who set themselves over us and consider themselves superior to us. Give back to them what they deal out to us. Do not let us identify with them and set ourselves up in judgement. Pardon and give them grace to seek your forgiveness.

Priesthood entirely depends on us understanding that our Lord Jesus Christ is here in front of us, when we are gathered together in worship of God. He is here by the Holy Spirit who has gathered us here before him. The Spirit brings us before him so that we are present to him, but he is only present to us by faith. We cannot grasp him, hear or see him, but nonetheless as we stand here, we stand before him.

When we gather, we send one of us to the front, to stand in the Lord’s place. He stands where Jesus stands, and we stand where the disciples stand.  We look towards the minister who stands there before us in order that, by faith, we see Jesus. As we look towards the place where the Lord stands, and by faith gaze at him, the attention of the world is drawn to him.  They follow our eyes. That is our job. That is the vocation and office of all Christians, all the time, whether singly or when gathered together explicitly as the Lord people. When one of us stands there before us, as the Lord is before us, although we cannot see him, the rest of us can direct ourselves toward him, worship him and direct the gaze of the world away from its tyrants and tormentors to its saviour. We worship him as long as we all direct ourselves towards him.

If you have a low view of Christian worship and the public office of the gathered Christian people, if you think that a service is a meeting in which the person taking the service leads by passing out information or instructions to an audience, then you will necessarily have a low view of both congregation and worship leader. This could relate to a low view of the baptism of the Christian and of the office and mission of the church of many Christians.

But in the Great Church the priest is a place-holder or the viewfinder by which we gather around Christ and so draw the gaze of the world towards him. The priest is transparent to Christ. We see priest and Christ simultaneously, two persons in one body. The priest is the place-marker, the cipher, the cursor on the screen that marks the point of action.

The presence of Christ does not push us out. If you were to stand in my place I would have to move or else you would push me aside. But it is not so with Christ, for he is here in the very space that we are, and we are able to be here together precisely because he is here. He is here by the Holy Spirit, who enables us to be co-present to one another, to inhabit the same place, to stand directly before one another and so to encounter one another, face to face.

The presence of the priest does not mean that Christ cannot be present, but that he can be present to us, here and now, in a way that does not threaten our freedom. We are not forced. We can believe him and follow him, or not. We can acknowledge his presence by faith, or not. His presence to us is not so blindingly, unavoidably obvious that we have no choice. We are free. We may acknowledge him, and we may do so by gathering around and acknowledging one another as his church and as the body of which he is head.

The persecution of Pakistani Christian villager Asia Bibi has also been making global headlines. Her death sentence passed on 8th November at Sheikhupura District Court near Lahore, Punjab, for supposedly critcising Islam?s Prophet raised the profile of the issue; the subsequent demonstrations against her and the 4th January assassination of her high-profile supporter Punjab governor Salman Taseer transformed it into a national flashpoint and a dramatic indicator of the advance of medieval Islamic fundamentalism into the mainstream heart and psyche of Pakistan society. It seems Asia is a committed believer. Reports tell of her faith in Jesus that is strengthening her through her ordeal, and I?m interested that it was her rejected offer of a cup of water to her Muslim fellow villagers that started the original incident. Offering someone a drink in the face of their hostility, like turning the other cheek, is true New Testament behaviour (Romans 12:20). The sight of hate-fuelled Imams and Muslim mobs baying for Asia?s blood on the streets of Lahore and elsewhere while she sits alone in her prison cell with her Jesus reminds me of the best-known psalm: The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not be in want? Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for You are with me. You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies? Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life. (Psalm 23: 1,4,5,6) The mobs can chant all they want; they simply demonstrate their tortured and intolerant Islamic spirit. Asia on the other hand shows quiet Christian resolution in the face of injustice and persecution.

Alan Craig Asia Bibi is My Sister

In describing the living conditions of Christians in Muslim countries in the Middle East, the bishops used understandably prudent words. With a few exceptions. One of the most unvarnished was the representative in Jordan for the patriarchate of the Iraqi Chaldeans. He said that there is "a deliberate campaign to drive out the Christians. There are Satanic plans by extremist fundamentalist groups against Christians not only in Iraq, but in all the Middle East." The Iranian Thomas Meram, archbishop of Urmya of the Chaldeans, did not hesitate to quote the psalm of David: "For you we are massacred every day." And he continued: "Every day Christians hear it said, from the loudspeakers, from the television, from the newspapers, that they are infidels, and for this reason they are treated as second-class citizens."

The Arab countries of the Gulf "have a great need for manual labor," [surely not because Arabs consider it beneath their dignity to labour? ] explained the Syro-Malabar Indian bishop Bosco Puthur, from whose region 430,000 people have departed. But what awaits these emigrants is very bitter, if measured according to religious and civil liberties. The archbishop of Addis Ababa, Berhaneyesus Demerew Souraphiel, said that the thousands of women who leave Ethiopia for the Middle East each year, to work as maids, in order to obtain entry visas "change their Christian names to Muslim names, and dress as Muslims, being indirectly forced to renounce their roots," and in any case go to meet a life of "exploitation and abuse."

A third block of proposals concerned "the need to recover the missionary aspect of the Church." A new and courageous proposal in predominantly Muslim countries, on the part of Churches that for historical reasons and motives of survival have largely closed in on themselves. Coptic Egyptian bishop Youhannes Zakaria of Luxor said that in spite of the difficulties and the dangers, "our Church must not be afraid or ashamed, it must not hesitate to obey the mandate of Lord, who asks it to continue preaching the Gospel." And the Chaldean Iranian archbishop of Tehran, Ramzi Garmou, delved even deeper into this need. After saying that "a new missionary impulse" is vital "to knock over the ethnic and nationalist barriers that threaten to asphyxiate and make sterile the Churches of the East," he recalled "the fundamental importance of monastic life for the renewal and reawakening of our Churches." And he continued: "This form of life that was born in the East, was at the origin of an extraordinary missionary expansion and an admirable witness of our churches during the first centuries. History teaches us that the bishops were chosen among the monks, that is to say men of prayer and with a deep spiritual life, having vast experience in the 'things of God.'

Sandro Magister on the special Synod on the Middle East

In its catholicity, the Orthodox Church is truly and profoundly â??ecumenical.â?? Nevertheless, this catholicity or ecumenicity is not â??universalâ?? â?? in the etymological sense of the word (from the Latin â??tending toward onenessâ??), in the literal sense of drawing all things to unilateral homogeneity. This, as we underlined yesterday to our brother Bishops during the Hierarchal Synaxis, is the crucial basis of and essential criterion for Paulâ??s passionate plea for Church unity â??in the same mind and purpose.â?? (1 Cor. 1.10) Nevertheless, at the same time, St. Paul prefers to emphasize â??conformityâ?? to the Body of Christ â?? â??until Christ is formed in youâ?? (Gal. 4.19) â?? rather than â??uniformityâ?? in accordance with certain ethical prescriptions. This is a unity that can only be realized in dialogue and collegiality, not in any universal imposition of opinion or doctrine.

Patriarch Bartholomew to the Pauline seminar

Message of the Orthodox Primates The Orthodox Church, having the understanding of the authentic interpretation of the teaching of the Apostle to the Nations, in both peaceful and difficult times of its two-thousand year historical course, can and must promote to the contemporary world the teaching not only regarding the restoration in Christ of the unity of the entire human race, but also regarding the universality of His work of redemption, through which all the divisions of the world are overcome and the common nature of all human beings is affirmed. Nevertheless, the faithful promotion of this message of redemption also presupposes overcoming the internal conflicts of the Orthodox Church through the surrendering of nationalistic, ethnic and ideological extremes of the past. For only in this way will the word of Orthodoxy have a necessary impact on the contemporary world. ...

As Primates and the Representatives of the Most Holy Orthodox Churches, fully aware of the gravity of the aforementioned problems, and laboring to confront them directly as â??servants of Christ and stewards of Godâ??s mysteriesâ?? (1 Cor. 4:1), we proclaim from this See of the First-throne among the Churches and we re-affirm: i) our unswerving position and obligation to safeguard the unity of the Orthodox Church in â??the faith once for all delivered to the saintsâ?? (Jude 3), the faith of our Fathers, in the common Divine Eucharist and in the faithful observance of the canonical system of Church governance by settling any problems that arise from time to time in relations among us with a spirit of love and peace. ii) our desire for the swift healing of every canonical anomaly that has arisen from historical circumstances and pastoral requirements, such as in the so-called Orthodox Diaspora, with a view to overcoming every possible influence that is foreign to Orthodox ecclesiology. In this respect we welcome the proposal by the Ecumenical Patriarchate to convene Panorthodox Consultations within the coming year 2009 on this subject, as well as for the continuation of preparations for the Holy and Great Council. In accordance with the standing order and practice of the Panorthodox Consultations in Rhodes, it will invite all Autocephalous Churches.

+ Bartholomew of Constantinople + Theodore of Alexandria + Ignatius of Antioch + Theophilos of Jerusalem + Alexey of Moscow ...

To undo the Council of Trent would be no mean endeavour, although to anyone with a sense of the religious history of Europe during the last four hundred and fifty years it must seem a madly ambitious one. But what really ignited the Catholic culture wars was the way it was done: by an unprecedented exercise of papal power. Hardly anything of what happened was prescribed by the Second Vatican Council, not the turning around of the altars, not the almost universal use of the vernacular, not the scaling down of the sense of transcendence and sacrifice, not the discouraging of the faithful from kneeling when receiving holy communion, not the receiving of communion in the hand rather than on the tongue. Traditionalists point out that the Council had decreed that the Latin language was to be preserved. It had all been done by Pope Paul VI, Archbishop Bugnini and a close circle of liturgical experts. It was never even passed by a synod of bishops.

John Casey Rediscovering Traditionalism

Know your saints. Today, June 22, is Saint Alban's day. Saint Alban was the first British martyr. He is in good company and there is room for more.

The Role of Parents in God’s Plan of Salvation

It is a fundamental principle of Catholic education that parents, as co-creators with God of the life of their child, are the primary educators of their children (CCC 2223). Parents have an ‘irreplaceable and inalienable’ role in education because of the uniqueness of the loving relationship between parents and children.

The family is the school of love, where each person learns to love and be loved. It is only through knowing that we are loved, and that we are lovable, that we can fully become the person God intends us to be. Love is the necessary requirement for the true fulfilment of all our fundamental needs as human beings – intellectual, physical, emotional, social, spiritual, and eschatological.

Bishop Patrick O’Donoghue of Lancaster Fit for Mission?

Here then, beloved seminarians, is the world which you will be sent forth to serve. In the mind of secular man, there is no God, or even if He does exist, it does not matter. This is clearly the condition of a grave disease. WWhat is the medicinehat are the models of healthful words that you will supply to spiritually sick people? leading to truth that you have been given to offer?

Let me at the final part of my presentation briefly outline the nature of our Orthodox Christian response to the sickness of our contemporary world. First, we must maintain our Churchâ??s position as being a witness to the Truth. The absolute Truth revealed by Christ, the incarnate God. . In our post-modern world, the word â??truthâ?? as something absolute is believed not to exist! But the reality is that if there is one God, there can be but one truth.

The truth to which we give testimony is not first of all a philosophical system. Truth is an experience of the living person of Jesus Christ, Who declared â??I am the Truthâ?? (St. John 14:6), and Who prayed that His disciples â??be consecrated in truthâ?? (St. John 17:19). Truth is tasted and seen in a life that has been transformed by the touch of the unseen hand of the Great Physician of souls and bodies, our Risen Lord. Without the blessing of this transformation that comes through genuine repentance and is perfected by the grace of God, no priest or bishop is empowered to witness to the Truth. Witnessing to the truth of Christ, establishing its absolute character, constitutes a very effective and salvific medicine or antidote to the falsehood of contemporary life and the deplorable relativization of truth in a secularized world.

Secondly, we offer the true worship of God to a thirsty humanity. and we offer it through the magnificent variety of worship services provided by our Orthodox Church, in joyful accordance with what the Lord commanded: â??God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truthâ?? (St. John 4:24). If the sickness of the world is a distancing from God, the cure is a return to Him, falling down in worship of Him. Genuine worship is the chemotherapy for the cancer of secularization and existential alienation. In our Orthodox worship, we rejoice as servants before their Lord, receiving with gratitude His divine love and all its gifts. And we are eager to share the treasures of Orthodox Christian prayer and chant with all peoples, so that all may rejoice in the radiance of the presence of the Risen Christ through the experience of the Divine Liturgy. Thirdly, we offer the true life of God in a life of love that is like the love of the heavenly Father: unlimited, unconditional, and without discrimination. Without love, without a genuine, personal, and tender concern for our neighbors, our preaching will be in vain. Actions speak louder than words, we say in America. For this reason, Saint Paul enjoins Timothy: â??Follow the model of healthy words, in the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus.â?? Philanthropy is at the heart of the Christian message. You cannot be an effective witness to the Truth; you cannot be an effective healer of the suffering soul, unless you personally radiate love from a heart that is full of love received from the Lord. â??We love because He first loved usâ?? says Saint John the Evangelist (1 John 4:19). Aside from that divine and self-sacrificial love, no true expression of love is possible.

Finally, what we offer as medicine for the world is not simply a model of words about Christ, but a model of words and life and faith that make Christ present in every place we go. In this way we offer the total Christ, the genuine Christ.

Archbishop Demetrios (Traketellis), primate of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, Address to seminarians in Moscow with thanks to Matthew Baker

The priest was gradually changed in the popular imagination from the celebrant of the Sacred Mysteries of salvation into the coordinator of the liturgical ministries of others. And this false understanding of the ministerial priesthood produced the ever-expanding role of the â??priest presider,â?? whose primary task was to make the congregation feel welcome and constantly engage them with eye contact and the embrace of his warm personality. Once these falsehoods were accepted, then the service of the priest in the liturgy became grotesquely misshapen, and instead of a humble steward of the mysteries whose only task was to draw back the veil between God and man and then hide himself in the folds, the priest became a ring-master or entertainer whose task was thought of as making the congregation feel good about itself.

Father Jay Scott Newman

You were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

We stand at a threshold - either we can continue to allow this plague (pornography) to spread with fewer and fewer checks, or we can take concrete steps to uproot it in our lives, our families, our neighborhoods and our culture.

We are a people called to share in the pure and noble vision of God and His creation. We are also a people whose future glory has been bought with the precious sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ. We must never forget the high cost of this purchase.

A free people can combat the tremendous moral, social and spiritual danger of pornography with great courage. My fervent prayer is that Catholics, other Christians, and all people of good will understand this threat, confront it, facilitate true healing, and ever more fully live out our God-given use of human sight.

Bishop Paul Loverde of Arlington Bought at a Price and other homilies and pastoral letters

By the way, can I have a bishop who writes homilies and pastoral letters, and can I have a priest who reads them out to us? Can I have a church that does does not leave its members in pastoral free-fall? Just thought I'd ask.

Now we include in the Honours List people who live a lifestyle that is totally at odds with the family and children. According to the law of the land, this is no longer the definition of a family. A family can be any kind of assortment of people, two men and a child or two women and a child or any other kind of permutation that you can devise, as in the law of the land, each or any of those permutations are equally valid.

I am sure that the conclusion that I have drawn will have shocked you. If it has, be ready for what I am now about to say. Where were you when this legislation was being enacted? I tried to do my best to challenge the Scottish Executive about our adoption agencies. I had all manner of support from all kinds of people from parts of the land. Most were from members of the Church of Scotland who saw me as their bishop! I found that description astonishing, given the traditional opposition to bishops in the national church. I knew what those people meant in their letters and phone calls. I had given them a voice, when the leadership of their own church had been silent. Where were you, the articulate members of the Catholic Church in Scotland? Of course, I was aware of the fact that wheat I was saying was to represent what you were thinking. But you have to be more vocal in showing your disapproval of what is enacted in Holyrood in your letters to your local MSP’s (members of the Scottish Parliament).

Let me return again to my main theme. That main theme is that the media, soaps and film industry have promoted values detrimental to family life. What they have done is to have coarsened attitudes and prepared society to be much more accepting of such things as promiscuity, infidelity and a wide variety of sexual lifestyles. At the same time, the values of Christianity are being pilloried as impediments to these new freedoms.

WHAT WE NEED TO DO There is a need to establish principles around which a Christian culture can be regenerated. The bedrock of this fight-back has to be around these three areas, freedom of conscience, the importance of family and the stability of family life. I believe, with all that is in me, that this is the moral battle ground for the future. It is a battle ground on which we can win, for it is Christianity and Christianity alone which has a message of salvation. But a vital aspect to consider is that in establishing principles behind any campaign, they must be resistant to being corrupted by secularism.

This can occur only all too easily if we accept terms which we may be able to interpret favourably but others can interpret otherwise. We must aboid debating whether we are ‘homophobic’ or not. Instead we should argue that we support the wellbeing of all human persons, whether they are male or female.

Bishop Joseph Devine (Motherwell, Scotland) Saying No to Secularism - Gonzaga Lecture, Glasgow

Andy,

You ask about the SST (the Society for the Study of Theology annual conference) last week.

The conference was good, the company was great, and I found a fellow Spaemann fan. My paper was feeble, but everyone was very polite. England’s greatest living theologian was just great – master of self-control and understatement. He talked about Augustine and refused to be pushed into any of moral clichés that the assembly loves.

Durham itself was more wonderful even than I had imagined. Durham Cathedral is planted on a hill, good defensive position, with a river below. There is no clutter in the cathedral: the light blazes through the East rose window over the altar at mattins and through the West window at evensong. On the south are the cloisters, Chapterhouse and library, on the north a large green. The building nearest the cathedral is the music school on one side (the lex orandi – cantati) and the department of divinity (lex credendi) on the other, then further down the green, and in neighboring streets, all the other departments of the university, each science and discipline, and all human wonder flowing from the worship that goes on in the cathedral, and the town is beyond them. The whole arrangement is an image of the relationship of Church to society.

Chris Jones showed a group of us round one afternoon. He took us to Bede at one end of the cathedral and behind the altar to Cuthbert at the other. As we approached Cuthbert’s tomb he told us to stop nattering, and when we reached it, there was a momentary silence and that posture of reverence that told us that we were standing before God's incorruptible saint. We alighted as briefly as flies on Cuthbert’s eternity .

The cathedral was a Benedictine abbey. Our guide couldn’t tell us whether the cathedral and bishop came before the monks (that company dedicated to singing the praise of God) and their abbey. If I was bishop, I would put the monks back in the cloisters and in that Quire, and have them singing around the clock. (I would have monks just between the ages of twenty-one and thirty, and then again those over sixty. At thirty, I would insist that they marry. They would not be released from vows: it would simply become a different vow, to the chaste life with one woman.)

Now I tell you this because in London we have a cathedral and an abbey, two separate institutions. Westminster Abbey is down on the river, and about a mile and a half, on slightly higher ground, in the city of London, is St Paul’s Cathedral. This is just the right distance for processing. So I would have my monks processing, singing the psalms of ascent, from abbey in the morning to the cathedral, where they would sing the office during the day, and back down to the abbey after evensong. Behind them would be the young and the old from every church in London (on yearly rota perhaps). Your baptists would be there, HTB and Jesus House. They know how to sing the praises of God. They would do so past parliament, the length of Whitehall, past the entertainment industry of the West End, past the lawyers, universities and media of the Strand and Fleet Street, and past the finance houses of Ludgate hill. If they sang over the course of this most un-Sacred Way, from Abbey to Cathedral, twice daily, our clergy might stop telling us that this or that can't be done and tell us that it can indeed be done, and that this Christian life can indeed be lived, and in public too.

This is what I learned from Durham. Can you organise this for me? I know a couple of bishops who are looking for a lead and who would be very glad to hear from you.

On 9 April the Church of England calendar of saints remembers Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Archbishop Rowan Williams gave a sermon on Pastor Bonhoeffer at the Berliner Mattäuskirche in 2006

to become a human being and a Christian, to use Bonhoeffer's words in the same letter, is not to separate ourselves and work to become holy in a space that is defined and protected by religious convention; nor is it to seek for perfection by ordinary social or political activism. It is to be present with Christ in the world. It is to be there in God's name and God's presence in both confusion and order alike, standing with Christ, standing in that place in the world where God has chosen to be.

and a short account of what we can learn from Bonhoeffer's ecumenical work.

Bonhoeffer's legacy to the European ideal is not some theory of supranational administration and cultural homogeneity. It is rather the application to national and international affairs of the Christian principle of mutual accountability. A healthy international network is one in which we take responsibility for each other, and recognise the crisis, the suffering or the collapse of one national or local community as an issue for all.

God give us grace to follow him.

The subject is bishops as theologians and theologians as bishops. The Christian world is much indebted to N.T. (Tom) Wright, the Anglican bishop of Durham.

Most of (Bishop Tom's) book (Surprised by Hope) is devoted to making the case for a greater accent in Christian piety and liturgy on the final resurrection of the dead and the coming of the Kingdom of God. Or, as Wright likes to put it, we need to recover the biblical focus on â??life after life after death.â?? I believe Wright is right about that. As he is also on target when he insists that the resurrection â??is not the story of a happy ending but of a new beginning.â?? But his argument is grievously marred by his heaping of scorn on centuries of Christian piety revolving around the hope of â??going to heaven,â?? and his repeated and unseemly suggestion that he is the first to have understood the New Testament correctly, or at least the first since a few thinkers in the patristic era got part of the gospel right.

Unseemly, too, is the pervasive edge of anti-Catholicism, although I suppose that is to be expected from those who must justify their separation from the centering authority of the ancient Church. In refuting Catholic ecclesiology, Wright invokes the authority of what he calls the â??magisterial workâ?? (Ascension and Ecclesia) of Canadian theologian Douglas Farrow in the 1990s, apparently unaware that Farrow has long since become a Catholic. Both unseemly and risible is Wrightâ??s claim that Pope Benedict is coming around to his own view of the traditional doctrine of purgatory, which Wright mockingly repudiates. Paraphrasing a text by Cardinal Ratzinger, Wright claims that it is â??a quite radical climb-down from Aquinas, Dante, Newman, and all that went in between.â?? Bishop Wright would do well to consult Ratzinger-Benedictâ??s encyclical Spe Salvi and what it says about purgatory. As the pope recently said in a meeting with Italian clergy: â??God creates justice. We must keep this in mind. For this reason, it also seemed important to me to write about purgatory in the encyclical, which for me is such an obvious truth, so evident and also so necessary and comforting, that it cannot be omitted.â?? It appears that Bishop Wrightâ??s tutelage of the pope still has a way to go.

Richard John Neuhaus The Possibilities and Perils in Being a Really Smart Bishop

But, dear Father Neuhaus, you agree that we do have a couple of very smart bishops in the Church of England? The media-savvy one (Wright) is occasionally sloppy in his popular work, and on occasion we wish the intellectually careful one (Williams) was a little more circumspect with the media. Now what do you make of the greatest of our Anglican theologians, the Rt Revd Oliver O'Donovan? Do you think we should drag him onto an episcopal throne?

Cardinal Paul Josef Cordes, president of the Pontifical Council "Cor Unum", is to meet with bishops of England and Wales. At the invitation of the Episcopal Conference of England and Wales (CBEW), the cardinal will dialogue with the bishops in the light of the Holy Father's first Encyclical "Deus caritas est" on

how to promote the Catholic identity of the Church's charitable organisations in a rapidly changing environment, characterised by challenges to the Church's traditional outreach in this field.

While the Church in England and Wales has reached out to those in need in an efficacious way historical and cultural changes warrant a reflection upon the role of the bishop as the primordial locus for charitable activity.

Ah, the masters of understatement are back.

On 8 April at Birmingham 's Maryvale Institute, the president of "Cor Unum" will deliver a public lecture on the Church's charitable activities.

What is Maryvale?

The Mission of Maryvale Institute is to be a leader in the provision of lifelong learning for all in Catholic Evangelisation, Catechesis, Theology, Philosophy and Religious Education in order to serve Christ's mandate and his Church's mission of Evangelisation in contemporary society. This provision is through a distinctive combination of the methodology of distance learning and critical engagement with the Word of God in Scripture and Tradition guided by the Church's Magisterium. The work is carried out within an environment of Christian Faith, of academic and administrative quality, of open dialogue and the mutual valuing of the work, gifts and the personal and professional development of every member of the Institute.

One little flickering candle then - in Birmingham.

And in London? Is there a single place on the muddy banks of this river where we may gain a little lifelong learning in Catholic Evangelisation, Catechesis, or guided by the Church's Magisterium serve Christ's mandate and his Church's mission of Evangelisation in contemporary society?

Cultural changes warrant a reflection upon the role of the bishop as the primordial locus for charitable activity.

I think we might do reflection on these cultural changes and on the bishop as the primordial locus for charitable activity on this blog. And I am going to tell my bishop that he is the primordial locus for charitable activity. I know he has at least as good an idea of what this means as I do. No bishop can be afraid, because he is bound to love the people to whom he is sent.

The Church in this land is now in a totally new situation. After years of enjoying a comparatively privileged position, we are now clearly facing attack, ridicule and even persecution. We are in a counter-culture situation and our position is increasingly similar to the Early Church.

Viewed from the position of the world, the Church is not a single body giving a clear message, but rather a large number of disparate congregations who each have their own interpretation and presentation of the Gospel message and who appear to be in competition with each other. There is a very real danger of the churches ceasing to engage with our culture. At the two extremes, we either withdraw and disconnect from it, or run the risk of being consumed by it. God calls us to invade and transform our culture, not to collaborate with it, capitulate to it, retreat from it.

This engagement is inevitably confrontational. There is clearly much doubt about the central truths of the Gospel in the churches. There is also evidence of some Christians substituting an ethical or a programme of social action for the Gospel.

Maranatha – Crisis and Glory (PDF)

I know a bishop not far from here who talks about 'the coming storm' and a 'tidal wave'. He means secularism, but he doesn't spell out what he means by that, and I am not sure that he knows how to. Sometimes he seems to regret this and to want to do something about it, sometimes not. Our caution and elipticism is becoming a problem. We have to stop worrying about sounding unsophisticated and apocalyptic. We have to bring the people of Maranatha into Church and ask them to teach us how not to be sophisticated or ironic, and we have to learn how to spell this 'new situation' out.

Costly discipleship involves using our heads, consistently, and over the long term. No probs there. But that also means getting to know my own tradtion and speaking consistently from it, without attempting to preserve any ironic distance. It also means learning the old practices and practising them, in public. I am going to start reading my bible (big, black, leather) on the Central Line. I am going to kneel in church, dunk my fingers in the holy water when I enter a Catholic church. I am going to learn to cross myself (every nerve screams No!). I am going to learn a half dozen psalms off by heart. I am going to familiarise myself with the readings for each next Sunday. When you see me, test me.

The Goal of a Catholic School is the Promotion of the Fully Human Person

I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly (John 10:10)

The Church’s recent teaching on the purpose of Catholic education states clearly that its goal is the promotion of the human person. What does thismean for the schools and colleges of our diocese? I think it means the following:

The fundamental needs of the human person are the focus of Catholic education – intellectual, physical, emotional, social, and spiritual, and eschatological (Our eternal destiny).

These fundamental needs can only be truly fulfilled through a rich and living encounter with the deepest truths about God and the human person.

This is why Christ and His Gospel must be the foundation of the educational project of each school and college, because He is the ‘the perfect Man in whom all human values find their fullest perfection’ (Congregation for Catholic Education, The Religious Dimension of Education in a Catholic School).

Therefore, the Catholic school or college is called to keep the Gospel whole and alive amongst pupils, families, and staff.

Bishop Patrick O'Donoghue of Lancaster Fit for Mission?

Michael Spenser is concerned that the Chinese church is vulnerable to the 'Prosperity Gospel'

The Prosperity Gospelâ?¦.

A) is the presumption that God wants us to be rich.

B) is the assumption that the blessings of the Gospel are a guarantee of material and financial blessings now. (The mediation of Jesus makes all blessing possible, but it does not guarantee wealth or health, etc.)

C) is a denial and replacement of the true meaning of â??give us this day our daily bread.â??

D) is the replacement of the true Gospel of Jesus Christ as taught in the New Testament with a method that causes God to bestow material and financial blessings on anyone who uses the method.

Why does the Prosperity Gospel appeal to American Christians?

a) American Christians are focused on money as a symbol of the â??good life.â?? b) American Christians tend to focus on God as a problem solver above any other role. c) American Christians have a strong preference for legalism and transactionalism.

Cultural factors cause some groups of the historically poor and economically disenfranchised to be very open the the Prosperity message.

Michael Spenser Monitor China

Cardinal Walter Kasper has been talking about the October 2007 Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue Between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, held in Ravenna, and explaining what's left in the process of achieving full unity.

The breakthrough, he said, was that "the Orthodox agreed to speak about the universal level - because before there were some who denied that there could even be institutional structures on the universal level. The second point is that we agreed that at the universal level there is a primate. It was clear that there is only one candidate for this post, that is the Bishop of Rome, because according to the old order - ‘taxis' in Greek - of the Church of the first millennium the see of Rome is the first among them. "Whereas the Orthodox must clarify more deeply the question of ‘primacy, 'protos,' on the universal level, we Catholics have to reflect more clearly on the problem of synodality and conciliarity, especially on the universal level," he said.

‘So we do not want to impose the system which today is in the Latin Church on the Orthodox Churches. In the case of the restoration of full communion, a new form of the exercise of the primacy needs to be found for the Orthodox Churches.’

Zenit

The head of the Anglican church in Europe, Dr Geoffrey Rowell, was locked out of six churches in Turkey by their congregations after his controversial decision to ordain a local convert to the priesthood.

In an unprecedented step and amid fears that the ordination would endanger the lives of congregants in the mainly Muslim country, furious Christians denied the bishop access to any of his own churches to conduct the ceremony at the weekend. He was forced to carry out the ordination in a small Calvinist chapel in Istanbul.

It was the first time in the 430-year history of the Church of England in Turkey that a sitting bishop has faced such protests. A heady mix of nationalism, anti-western sentiment and Islamic extremism has resulted in Turkey's tiny Christian community being increasingly targeted.

Bishop locked out of churches over Turkish priest

Today is the feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul and also the feast of Saint Gregory Nazianzus

At his birth we duly kept Festival, both I, the leader of the Feast, and you, and all that is in the world and above the world. With the Star we ran, and with the Magi we worshipped, and with the Shepherds we were illuminated, and with the Angels we glorified Him, and with Simeon we took Him up in our arms, and with Anna the aged and chaste we made our responsive confession. And thanks be to Him who came to His own in the guise of a stranger, because He glorified the stranger. Now, we come to another action of Christ, and another mystery. I cannot restrain my pleasure; I am rapt into God.

Almost like John I proclaim good tidings; for though I be not a Forerunner, yet am I from the desert. Christ is illumined, let us shine forth with Him. Christ is baptized, let us descend with Him that we may also ascend with Him. Jesus is baptized; but who is He, and by whom is He baptized, and at what time? He is the All-pure; and He is baptized by John; and the time is the beginning of His miracles. What are we to learn and to be taught by this? To purify ourselves first; to be lowly minded; and to preach only in maturity both of spiritual and bodily stature.

Oration on the Holy Lights (XIV)

The saints are there to do us good. Let's get to know them. Many thanks to Wikipedia contributors to the saints pages, list of saints, chronological list and links to calendars.

Now I'd like a single ecumenical saint-a-day calendar please.

This is the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity 2008

The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is an expression of the ecumenical movement – a worldwide movement among Christians to heal the divisions within the Church; to promote dialogues among churches and Christian communities; and to encourage Christians everywhere to better understand and reflect the implications of "one Lord, one faith, one baptism." Each year from January 18 – 25, Christians are encouraged to pray together as a sign of the unity that is already theirs in Christ and that that unity will become complete.

Here are some very considerable resources, giving the background to the week, and a form of worship for each day of the week, from the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, jointly produced with the World Council of Churches Faith and Order

6.9.2 The Church needs children present in its worship, as patterns of discipleship, as reminders that we come into the presence of God not through our own deserving, but because we are creatures of God’s creation. But children also need to be present in worship because it is the locus of Christian formation. Worship is fundamental if children are to grow in the knowledge and love of God.

Christian formation is lifelong, and it begins in infancy; children who are excluded from worship suffer significant deprivation. Of course, we can make up for experiences missed in childhood, but it is hard work. We know that in many areas of experience, learning in childhood is much easier than later in life: this applies in worship no less than in learning a language. The language, gesture and attitudes which facilitate both our worship and our growth in faith are acquired most easily in childhood, and what is learnt then forms the foundation on which all subsequent learning is to be built. It is constantly necessary to challenge the prevailing misapprehension that children do not ‘understand’ what is happening in worship, and that education for worship is a top-down didactic exercise.

Transforming Worship: Report of the Liturgical Commission

In the not so distant past, I attended a Mass. It was a typical parish Mass. There was a choir in the back, there were Eucharistic ministers, there were lay lectors, there were altar servers. There was laity galore.

But the impression I took away with me - after an hour and a half - was the person of the priest. His voice echoed in my ears, his presence dominated my memory of that time. He introduced the Mass, he explained things, there was an RCIA rite, so he explained that, he preached a 25 minute homily, and at the end of Mass, after the lector ran through 6 announcements, he stood and added two rather lengthy announcements of his own.

I’m not kidding when I say that my reaction, at one point was, If you want to turn around, face the crucifix and whisper for a while, THAT WOULD BE FINE WITH ME. PLEASE. FEEL FREE.

It’s possible for a priest to allow his own personality to be subsumed into the liturgical rites as they are presently constructed. I’ve seen it done, often. But the opposite temptation is intensely evident in the present structure, and it seems to me to be a temptation that is not necessarily succumbed to out of ego - there is just a space and an expectation there that the priest’s personality is an essential element of the liturgy - if you read articles on this from the 70’s, it’s very clearly stated. Personally, the pressure involved in that seems unimaginable and exhausting to me.

Amy Welbourn A brief note on clericalism

+?ARTHOLOMEW

By the grace of God Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome And Ecumenical Patriarch

To the Plenitude of the Church Grace, mercy and peace From the savior Christ born in Bethlehem

Christ is born, glorify Him; Christ comes from heaven, meet Him.

Beloved brothers and children in the Lord,

It is with great joy that our Church calls us to glorify God for His loving and personal presence on earth of Christ in divino-human hypostasis, being one of the three persons of the Holy Trinity.

We must, therefore, examine very carefully the true and life-giving significance of the incarnation of the Son and Word of God. For, first, it reveals to humanity that God is personal and is made manifest to us as personal, just as He has also created us as persons; second, it reveals to us that God embraces us with His love. These two events, the personhood and love of God, express fundamental truths of our faith, which of course we have heard about many times. Nevertheless, their impact upon our lives is not as great as it should be, inasmuch as many of us do neither experience Christ’s brotherhood and His boundless love for us in a personal way, nor do we in turn return our love to Christ in order that, by sharing in His love, we may also share by grace in His other properties.

If others – who have not known Christ and, as a result, drown in their search for an impersonal being that they perceive as divine – are somewhat justified, we Orthodox Christians are not at all justified in pursuing such ways that lead to an impasse. For, instead of seeking God as person and approaching Him in the one who approach us, namely Jesus Christ, these deceived people desperately strive to become divine through their own powers, like Adam thought he could achieve by obeying the evil spirit. However, the true and personal God, who is known only through Jesus Christ – the one born in a manger out of love for us – promised us adoption and return to the bosom of the Father, as well as deification by grace through Christ. It is only through Christ that one may fulfill the universal human desire to transcend the corruption and isolation of an existence without love and the cultivation of communion among divine and human persons in love, which leads to eternity and incorruption.

Christians shape the liturgy, but the liturgy shapes Christians.

The classical model of formation, paideia, understood formation to be the drawing out of the person. Placed alongside the Christian experience of vocation, it can be seen in terms of our becoming, in community with others and in communion with God, the person that God is calling us to be. In baptism we are made a child of God; in giving ourselves to praise we discover something of the liberty of the children of God, and through Christ’s self-gift at communion, we again ‘become what we receive’ (Augustine of Hippo). This is why worship is the most intense, though not the exclusive locus of Christian formation, and for this reason liturgical formation and education should be given the highest priority within a ‘learning church’. The desired outcome of a programme of liturgical formation is a closer engagement of worshippers in the liturgy of the Church, and its corollary is the realization of the expectation that liturgy will transform us.

Transforming Worship: Report of the Liturgical Commission

These three ecclesiologies are, in order of their historical appearance, riteâ??based ecclesiologies (Catholic), confessional ecclesiologies (Protestant), and ethnically based ecclesiologies (Orthodox).

These three ecclesiologies, are essentially of the same nature: that is, they are established according to aggressive, almost militant, principles. Moreover, they have dominated Church life since their appearance and also determined the statutory texts that regulate the existence and functioning of all Churches since that day.

We are now in a position to reâ??examine the causes that brought about these ecclesiological deviations. While very different in their origin and outlook, they resemble one another, and also continue to coexist, though without creating any communion or unity between them. A key common denominator is what I shall call â??coâ??territoralityâ??, i.e.: separate Churches sharing the same territory. This is an extremely serious problem found throughout the second millennium â?? the same millennium that has faced numerous insoluble issues of an exclusively ecclesiological nature. By contrast, the first millennium, which had to deal with Christological issues, resolved most of them. In other words, when Christological problems appeared during the first millennium, the Church was able to engage with them and resolve them in a conciliar manner, but we have not been able to do the same with the ecclesiological problems that have arisen in the second millennium.

These three divergent ecclesiologies, which developed from the thirteenth to the twentieth century, have essentially led the Church into a postâ??ecclesiological age, in which we now live. We seek superficial solutions, whether through Councils like Vatican II, which proposed an increase in ecumenism, or through increasing efforts to federalise the Protestant Churches, or even by the fruitless attempt to summon a panâ??Orthodox Council, which has been in preparation, to no avail, for almost half a century. It is certain that the true solution will neither be ritualist, nor ecumenist, nor confessional, nor federal â?? and it will certainly not be ethnic and multiâ??jurisdictional. It can only be ecclesiological and canonical, and this is perhaps why it seems to be so distant (if not utopian) in todayâ??s age of of Christian modernism that remains woefully nonâ??ecclesiological and multiâ??jurisdictional.

Archimandrite Grogorios Our 'Post-Ecclesiological' Age

To the priests and deacons of the Diocese who share with fraternal compassion my concern for the poor;to the religious men and women, whose service to the poor has strengthened Christâ??s presence in Oklahoma for more than its hundred years; to the lay faithful who strive with unwavering dedication to live the Gospel that gives us life through faith in Godâ??s promise, hope in the gift of His Holy Spirit, and love for his people;and finally, with affection and esteem, to all men and women of good will who seek to do the good and follow Godâ??s will for them, to you.

I send my greetings and bless you in the name of the Lord.

By the grace of God and the favor of the Apostolic See, I am the Catholic Bishop of Tulsa.

As a bishop, I speak with the voice of one who has been consecrated to proclaim the truth of the Gospel here in Eastern Oklahoma, and I do so with the authority and in the name of Jesus Christ, King of the Universe.

I do not deem it necessary to enter into a detailing of all that this entails, but I do wish to make it clear that I am writing this pastoral letter in the exercise of my pastoral mission for you, the People of God who have been confided to my care, for you are that community which I must teach, sanctify and govern with the authority and responsibility that I exercise in communion with the whole college of Bishops and under the guidance of His Holiness, Benedict XVI, Vicar of Christ and Pastor of the Universal Church.

Of the office I have received to preach and to teach, the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council gathered from every country, nation, people and revealing in their unity Godâ??s plan to restore to us the unity we lost through the sin of Adam, wrote:

Among the principal duties of bishops, the preaching of the gospel occupies an eminent place. For bishops are preachers of the faith who lead new disciples to Christ. They are authentic teachers, that is, teachers endowed with the authority of Christ, who preach to the people committed to them the faith they must believe and put into practice. By the light of the Holy Spirit they make that faith clear, bringing forth from the treasury of revelation new things and old (cf. Mt. 13:52) making faith bear fruit and vigilantly warding off any errors which threaten their flock. (cf. 2 Tim. 4:1-4) (Lumen Gentium, §25)

Thus it is, I wish to make known that when I preach the truth of the Gospel - independent of whether or not what I say corresponds with the laws of men and of civil societies - my words are guarded by that same Spirit Who anointed the Lord Jesus in the synagogue of Nazareth and filled Him with the power to â??preach good news to the poor â?¦ to set at liberty those who are oppressed and to proclaim a year of favor from the Lord.â?? (Luke 4:18-19)

Consecrated a bishop in service to the Lord Jesus Christ, I am as well a disciple and missionary of His Gospel. Hence my governance of our community of faith is always in service to Christâ??s Kingdom, that it might be constantly built up and strengthened here in Oklahoma.

Of my responsibility to exercise prudent governance as the Bishop of Tulsa, the Fathers of the Council wrote:

Bishops govern the particular churches entrusted to them as the vicars and ambassadors of Christ. This they do by their counsel, exhortations and example, as indeed, by their authority and sacred power. This power they use only for the edification of their flock in truth and holinessâ?¦ This power, which they personally exercise in Christâ??s name, is proper, ordinary and immediate â?¦ (Lumen Gentium, §27)

In this way, I wish to make it clear that I do not speak as an elected official, whose service to the public proceeds from the will of those who elected him or her to office. Nor do I speak as a civil servant, appointed to the task and accountable to those by whom he or she has been appointed. Rather, I speak as the Catholic Bishop of this Diocese and I speak with the authority of Jesus Christ, Who in His life here on earth always showed his predilection for the poor and the oppressed.

Encouraged, then, by the certainty that you will listen to me as you would listen to Christ Himself (Luke 10:16), I want to express myself in this letter with the wisdom and the prudence of a man of God, called by the Lord â??to serve and not be servedâ?? (Mark 10:45) and â??to give his life for his sheepâ?? (cf. John 10:15) and I want to present to you who love the Lord, the certainty that in the suffering faces of the poor, we see the suffering face of Christ.

The Suffering Face of Christ

This idea is not my own, nor is it new. The conviction that Christ is present in the poor and reveals in their suffering His wondrous Passion can be traced in an unbroken line of charity from the Apostles down to our own day, and to my brother bishops who met last May with Pope Benedict XVI at the Marian Shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida in Brazil to reflect upon the various ways in which the Church must respond to this revelation.

In this letter, I wish to make my own the statements they expressed concerning the fundamental stance which the Church must take in the world, a stance of hope in Christâ??s victory over sin and death. This hope which we have in Christ expresses itself in solidarity with the poor and as advocacy for those who suffer injustice.

It is to Christâ??s Suffering Face, seen in the faces of Oklahomaâ??s immigrant population, that I would draw the gaze of all those who - in whatever manner - find themselves responsible for the passing, the enforcement, or in support of Oklahomaâ??s House Bill 1804. The basic intention of this law is to deny those who have entered our country illegally the right to work in Oklahoma and the right to find shelter for their families in our communities. Thus they are forced to flee our state. I believe that the right to earn oneâ??s living and the right to shelter oneâ??s family securely are basic human rights, the fundamental building blocks of a just society, and to deny these rights is immoral and unjust. I also believe that since the intention of HB 1804 is immoral, when it is implemented, the effects will be an intolerable increase in the suffering endured by the families of illegal immigrants, plus the spiritual suffering of those who must enforce it.

Bishop Slattery of Tulsa Pastoral Letter

There are no liturgical materials available in the parish. The vessels are glass or pottery, everything else having been tossed out. So there is no monstrance, no patens, and the tabernacle is buried somewhere where it can’t be seen. The available vestments are unworthy.

Then there is the belief infrastructure of the parish. People are out of the habit of confession, daily Mass, and spiritual reading. For the most part, people cannot defend the faith and are largely clueless about what the liturgy is intended beyond the need to gather Christians together for fellowship.

It is easy for priests to despair under these conditions. It is hard to know where to begin. You can just replace people because there is no one to take their place. You can’t just say that from now on, we will sing chant because no one knows what to sing or how. There is also the very important reality that it is unwise to enact a liturgical reconstruction insofar as people have no idea what is taking place or why.

There is where singing the Mass comes in. This is an improvement that celebrant can make on his own. He doesn’t have to ask the liturgy committee. He doesn’t need accompaniment. It requires no line in the budget. In fact, it will not upset anyone; in fact, it is a way that Father demonstrate that he truly cares about the liturgy, which has a way of flattering everyone.

It is a simple matter: what he once spoke, he now sings.

It has a dramatic impact. People listen to the words more intensely. It contributes a nobility to the liturgy. It is necessarily chant, and thereby acculturates people to the sound and feel of authentic liturgical music. It creates an expectation that that contemporary Christian music cannot satisfy and thereby lays the groundwork for developments later on.

Jeffrey Tucker Making a Liturgical Desert Bloom

1. The direction of the service should be removed entirely from the hands of the worship leaders, and solidly and unequivocally returned to, and made the whole responsibility of, the pastoral authority of the church. If a worship leader is retained, he must understand that he is wholly subordinate to that authority, having no standing whatever as such to determine the form or content of the service. (I would also add that giving this person pastoral status and title does not fix the problem. If that is done, one must say explicitly that the responsibility is that of the teaching authority of the church, normally vested in the Senior Pastor.)

2. The attraction of inquirers to the principal service of worshipâ??which, after all, should culminate in a communion in which they cannot yet participateâ??is to be subordinated to the theological and doxological integrity of the service itself.

3. Words to all music sung in the service must be studied and approved by pastoral authority as theologically sound, and unapologetically rejected when not, no matter how beautiful the music to which they are set, or how beloved by the congregation.

4. The service of worship is not to be conducted as if it were a show in which some of the worshippers are performing for others, but rather all present should be worshipping God in every aspect of the proceedings. Musicians should be placed and used so as to give glory to God rather than themselves, and should present themselves accordingly both in dress and demeanor. Prayers should not, for example, be used as an opportunity to move about or change settings.

5. It must be understood and attended to by the pastoral authority that the service does not take place in a vacuum where it is free to innovate as it will, but participates in the worship of the whole church in heaven and earth, to which it is called not only to add its own unique voice, but to conform that voice to a pattern that lies outside itself. This conformance should be a matter of constant study and meditation on the part of the pastor and elders of the church. To leave it to the tastes of the congregation or to a professional worship leader is a dereliction of pastoral duty.

6. It must be understood and accepted that what results from this, while it should be of firm integrity and deep beauty, may not be a â??popularâ?? product for that very reason. No proportion is to be expected between faithfulness in these matters and congregational size.

S.M. Hutchens One Foundational Observation, and Six Rules

What is Hutchenâ??s one foundational observation? That the Church devote itself to the apostlesâ?? teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread, and the prayers (Acts 2:42). There's lots more on worship at Touchstone

Over at Mere Comments, S.M. Hutchens has responded to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's Questions on the Doctrine of the Church which recently reaffirmed the teaching of Dominus Iesus (2000).

In Hutchens' summary, in his Notes on Questions on the Doctrine of the Church, this

directed Catholic bishops not to use the term â??sister churchesâ?? in referring to Protestant denominations. This document, in continuity with Lumen Gentium, the Second Vatican Councilâ??s dogmatic constitution of the Church, made it clear that according to Catholic doctrine these churches lack a valid episcopate, hence the integral substance of the Eucharistic mystery, and are therefore not churches in the true sense of the term. Rather, they are â??ecclesial communitiesâ?? ambiguously related to the Church of Rome.

Touchstone (of which Hutchens is an editor) took the position that it had

no desire for Rome to surrender the integrity of its beliefs on the terms required by mainline ecumenism, for we cannot imagine it could, in that frame of mind, stand against the â??progressiveâ?? Catholics who are trying with all their might to baptize their church in the same wallow of confusion, heresy, and immorality into which their Protestant counterparts have already introduced their own.

Hutchen's piece attracted some impressive comments. Here is one from DGUS

Mr. Hutchens's post is quite correct in asserting (1) that real ecumenism--indeed, any meaningful religious dialogue whatsoever--must proceed from candor and clarity, even where that may be painful, and (2) that, by authentic RC lights, this recent statement (like "Dominus Iesus" and "Lumen Gentium" before it) is probably as generous and open as real RC doctrine will permit. As an evangelical non-Catholic, I thank the RCC for its clarity, and take no offense.

However, Mr. Hutchens's following comment is also correct in emphasizing the result that seems "intolerable": Even the extremely liberal RC parish (open to same-sex unions, tolerant of abortion, universalistic, indifferent to Christological error, etc.) is deemed a "proper church" and its dissident priest is deemed authentically Christian because they are believed to possess apostolic succession and a valid Eucharist, while the non-Catholic minister and congregation that affirm the Nicene Creed without reservation, acknowledge the authority of the Scriptures, confess the Lord Jesus as fully God and fully Man, crucified, risen, and coming again, and preach a Gospel of salvation by faith in Jesus Christ--these are mere honorary "Christians" in a non-church "ecclesial community."

So my first question in the ensuing dialogue is this: Does the RC Christian acknowledge any dissonance in this disparity? Is he comfortable that mere apostolic pedigree seems to count for so much, and that believing and preaching the apostolic message seems to count for so little?

From Stuart Koehl

Talk of Orthodox "defectiveness" begs the question of whether communion with Rome is a prerequisite for the fullness of the Church, particularly in light of the "ecclesiology of communion" adopted by the Catholic Church in Vatican II. It is the Eucharist that imparts the fullness (katholikon) of the Church, not communion with any one particular bishop. One might just as well say that Rome is defective because it is not in formal communion with Constantinople, Moscow, Antioch or Alexandria. Among the true Churches, whatever "defects" exist are mutual and derive from the unnatural separation that perdures as the result not of real differencs in faith but simply the sinfulness of men.

Society and the people of our time are thirsting and seeking. They have values and principles, traditions and customs that were formed in the light of the Gospel and under the wise guidance of the Fathers of the Church and of other ecclesiastical personalities, but are unable to recognize Christ's presence and the power of his soteriological message. They refuse to admit the fundamental importance of Europe's Christian roots: it is the hour of the Church and the new evangelization, the hour of the mission ad intra!

Yet, without the collaboration of the European Churches and our common Christian witness, it is certain that very little will have a positive outcome and that the many isolated efforts of the various Churches and Christian denominations will unfortunately be doomed to failure.

Instead of exercising a positive influence on the convinced European Christian, our globalized epoch seems to reject the historical ecumenicity of the Christian message and to marginalize its dynamic and effectiveness. Secularization, eudaemonism, the deification of technology and atheistic science confuse our neighbour and lead him inevitably to existential desperation. His anguished cry is heard: "Lord, to whom shall we go?" (Jn 6:68).

What, then, is our responsibility as spiritual fathers? What is our approach to spiritual care for our young people? Shall we succeed at last in protecting the sacred institution of the family? The sacredness of the human person, now defenceless in the face of medical research, abortion, euthanasia? And the oneness of God's creation which surrounds us and risks being destroyed irreparably by us?

The Orthodox path passes through spirituality, ascesis, fasting, the study of the texts of the Church Fathers who were inspired by God, the sense of the sacred and first and foremost the Divine Eucharist: these are our spiritual weapons and we wish to fight side by side with the Sister Church of Rome to transform European society, which is anthropocentric, into a Christocentric society with respect for our brethren of other religions, for immigrants, the poor, refugees and the weak of this earth.

CHRYSOSTOMOS II ARCHBISHOP OF NEA JUSTINIANA AND ALL CYPRUS TO HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI

7.3.2 The singing of the psalms and of the authorized and commended canticles provided in the Book of Common Prayer and in Common Worship has declined rapidly and in many parish churches is unknown, a hymn or song being preferred as a more accessible alternative. There is a considerable challenge to assist congregations to re-engage with these core texts which have been a central part of Christian worship since earliest times and particularly distinctive to worship within the reformed tradition and to Anglican worship since the sixteenth century.

GS 1651 Transforming Worship: Report of the Liturgical Commission

Leander Harding. Unbeatable.

I am going to take it as established that the historic episcopacy is a continuation of the apostolic ministry which has evolved in the church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and that therefore an episcopacy which has integrity and authenticity will be self-consciously seeking an ever greater conformity with the ministry of the first Apostles. One way of speaking about godliness in the episcopacy would to enumerate all the virtues that would go into a truly consecrated character. So we would speak of prayerfulness, learning, humility, the spirit of service, zeal for souls and so on. But how might a bishop find a way into these virtues? How can the motivation to grow in real godliness be sustained? I think by dwelling on the originating encounter with the crucified and risen Lord which propels the Apostles into their ministry. Essential to the ministry of the first Apostles is that they are witnesses to the resurrection and it is in the resurrection encounters that we should expect to find the distinctive shape and power of the apostolic ministry

Godly Bishops

The great book about all of this is Michael Ramsey’s The Gospel and the Catholic Church. Ramsey’s argument fits perhaps best into the category of plene esse (fullness of being). Churches without bishops are certainly valid members of the body of Christ, but there is something about the fullness of the apostolic witness and unity that is lacking and toward which the churches should press with full vigor for the sake of a fuller and more adequate witness to the crucified and risen Lord. Ramsey’s book convinced the Reformed pastor and missionary in India, Lesslie Newbigin, of the significance of the catholic order of the church for the sake of Gospel mission, and made it possible for Newbigin to embrace a call to be one of the first bishops of the Church of South India. Ramsey’s book remains a classic and breaks open stale arguments by arguing for the evangelical and missionary significance of the catholic order of the church. It is a travesty that the book is out of print.

The Esse of Episcopacy

Hallo Wipf & Stock?

Amongst the papers prepared for the Church of England General Synod in July (220&) is the very considerable GS 1651 Transforming Worship: Report of the Liturgical Commission (large Word doc), made available online by Thinking Anglicans.

The Liturgical Commission reviews the vast range of initiatives and says something cautiously encouraging about almost everything. But is this what we want the Liturgical Commission to do? Don’t we want it to give us some direction, and so to be prescriptive?

It description of the situation as our worship book ‘Common Worship’ is met by the profusion of ‘emergent’, ‘liquid church’ and ‘fresh expressions’ is a marvel of understatement.

6.2.4 In a climate of considerable liturgical diversity, what is ‘common’ (in Common Worship) needs continually to be nurtured, embraced and celebrated. This need arises from loyalty to the Anglican style of worship, respect for those structures and texts which have been formed with the consent of the whole Church, and a shared sense of identity and fellowship in our common calling to serve the nation

6.5.3 It is also important to note that the relatively informal liturgies associated with Fresh Expressions, or categorized as ‘alternative worship’, require of those who are to lead them a higher degree of liturgical and theological preparation than more ‘traditional’ liturgies that follow a set pattern. This is true in both senses of the word ‘preparation’: they require a better grasp of liturgical issues, and they demand more homework.

Among Catholic bishops, and among religious leaders in all communities, nobody has been more outspoken in this debate than Roger Cardinal Mahony of Los Angeles. Last year he received widespread media attention when he declared that he would engage in civil disobedience rather than comply with a law requiring him to report illegal immigrants, and he directed priests and other church workers to follow his lead. Many expressed admiration for his bold, even prophetic, stance, while others charged him with grandstanding, pointing out that nobody was suggesting that IDs should be checked at Mass or food kitchens.

More recently, Cardinal Mahony offered a comprehensive account of the Churchâ??s position on comprehensive immigration reform at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. He very specifically and repeatedly asserted that he was setting forth â??the underpinnings of the position of the Catholic Church on immigration reform legislation.â?? His lecture is sprinkled with expressions such as â??the church leadership argues that . . .â??; â??the Church maintains that . . .â??; and â??the Churchâ??s position is . . .â?? We are clearly given to understand that he is not merely expressing his own views or speaking in his capacity as the archbishop of Los Angeles but is speaking for the Catholic Church.

Richard John Neuhaus Who speaks for the Church?

Jesus, our Great High Priest, lovingly offered his own life on the cross as a holy sacrifice to the Father for our sins. As the spotless â??Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the worldâ?? (John 1:29), Jesus established the everlasting covenantâ??â??the new covenant in my bloodâ?? (Luke 22:20)â??with the Father. In the Eucharist, this one sacrifice of Christ is again made fully present.

By taking part in the liturgy of the Eucharist, we join ourselves to this one holy sacrifice of Christ. The celebration of the Eucharist culminates in the reception of Holy Communion. We are nourished in the Eucharistic banquet by the living bread, and we partake of the cup of our salvation. The Risen Lord Jesus comes to dwell personally within us, and so we share in his life and friendship. He gives himself completely and entirely to us, and we are called to give ourselves completely and entirely to him. We are also lifted up into his heavenly Kingdom, and, in union with him, we are embraced by the Father in the love of the Holy Spirit as his redeemed sons and daughters. Receiving Jesus in Holy Communion, therefore, fortifies us against sin, which damages our relationship with God; heals us of our weaknesses; and empowers us to live holy lives of sacrificial love for one another.

The reception of Holy Communion is an act of the Church as the Body of Christ. While we each personally receive Holy Communion, it is not a private devotion. Rather, the reception of Holy Communion is an integral part of our worship as a community of faith. Likewise, the term â??communionâ?? accentuates the fact that, in receiving Holy Communion, we are united to Jesus and thus to one another. As we become one body with Christ in receiving Holy Communion, so we are also united with one another. â??Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loafâ?? (1 Cor 10:17).

Union with Christ is also union with all those to whom he gives himself. I cannot possess Christ just for myself; I can belong to him only in union with all those who have become, or who will become, his own. Communion draws me out of myself towards him, and thus also towards unity with all Christians. We become â??one body,â?? completely joined in a single existence. Love of God and love of neighbor are now truly united: God incarnate draws us all to himself. Receiving Jesus in Holy Communion is then the foremost source and expression of our communion with the Blessed Trinity and with one another. Holy Communion is truly a foretaste of heavenâ??where together all of the Fatherâ??s children will become fully one with his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, in the love of the Spirit.

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Happy Are Those Who Are Called to His Supper: On Preparing to Receive Christ Worthily in the Eucharist

What is the case for collegiality? According to Quinn, this was not a revolutionary idea invented at Vatican II, but something prefigured at Vatican I, and later endorsed by Pope Pius IX in 1875 when the German bishops insisted they were not mere functionaries of the pope. â??The pope is bishop of Rome,â?? they maintained, â??not bishop of any other city or diocese, not bishop of Cologne or of Breslau.â?? Pio Nono explicitly agreed with that.

At Vatican II, the fathers of the council expanded and elaborated on the notion, and found solid theological backing for collegiality â??in the will of Christ, in the sacrament of Holy Orders and in the nature of the church as communion.â??

On paper, John Paul II agrees. In Ut Unum Sint, he lays down seven ways the pope can and should exercise his primacy (which Quinn endorses) and then adds, â??All this, however, must always be done in communion. When the Catholic church affirms that the office of the bishop of Rome corresponds to the will of Christ, she does not separate this office from the mission entrusted to the whole body of bishops, who are also â??vicars and ambassadors of Christ.â?? The bishop of Rome is a member of the â??College,â?? and the bishops are his brothers in the ministry.â??

In practice, says Quinn, the pope (and/or his curia) go right on with their autocratic ways, and thus continue to alienate Orthodox and Protestant Christians. He quotes Paolo Ricca, a Waldensian scholar in Rome: â??John Paul II must be convinced that the papacy as it is today has no real ecumenical chance. To have one, it must change.â??

How change? Quinn suggests the pope should:

* Get off the monarchy train. For a thousand years, the pope didnâ??t act like a king, but â??a servant of the servants of God.â?? Then a monk named Hildebrand came along at the beginning of this millennium and, as Pope Gregory VII, turned the church from a communion of autonomous churches into â??a juridical monarchyâ?? that had no precedent.

* Let bishops be bishops. By ancient tradition, bishops are the watchers of the faith. (The word bishop comes from the Greek episkopein, to watch over.) According to Vatican II, they are â??Vicars of Christâ?? every bit as much as the pope. But thereâ??s a currently powerful bloc in the church, writes Quinn, that thinks â??the pope can at any moment and for whatever reason intervene in the affairs of any diocese or even of any parish. This is the mentality that identifies primacy with sovereignty and regards the desire for a truer collegiality in the church as a plot to take power from the pope and â??turn the church into a democracy.â?? â??

* Encourage local churches to select, even elect, their own bishops, as they did in the beginning. Quinn here leans on the scholarship of the late Dominican Cardinal Yves Congar, whose work took the fathers of Vatican II back to the early primitive church for ideas that would help them bring the church up to date in the 20th century. According to Congar, â??the election of priests and bishops goes back to the time of the apostles.â??

Robert Kaiser A blueprint for papal reform â?? a review of John R. Quinn The Reform of the Papacy: The Costly call to Christian Unity and see Timothy Radcliffe's Reply to Neal Ascherson Democracy in the Church?

Driving the development of the ascetical tradition was a religious culture of hope and love - hope that one can genuinely train his or her spiritually destructive passions, and the expectation that the meek and merciful would achieve a love of Jesus Christ. It was the ascetical discipline that in no small measure protected the early Church from the onslaughts of pagan sexuality, and indeed, contributed mightily to the development of Christian culture. Because the purpose of religion has changed, this ancient understanding of the ascetical tradition has faded in the Catholic Church. . . . .

In its purpose, theory, and practice, the therapeutic mentality stands in stark opposition to religious devotion and personal repentance for sin. Allegiance to the therapeutic mentality has dislodged ascetical habits and manners...

These ideas persist because of a deeply held assumption about the role of science in probing the foundational truths about living things. Since Descartes, science has claimed the privileged status as the arbiter of all objective truth. Philosophy, traditionally understood in the writings, for example, of Plato, and especially the natural philosophy of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, can no longer lay claim to the truth (it is supposed) since this ancient and dated discipline does not have the specialized knowledge of the sciences, which give them their unique and privileged status. Rather than begin with the study of the intellect, the life of virtue, and that of the spiritual life in religion, in the empirical sciences, and many in the therapeutic disciplines, rest comfortably with the idea that man’s conscious behaviors about the good, and about the significance of sex, can only be understood by investigating the bodily appetites - most importantly sexual desire - and social forces. Many believe that only the scientist is uniquely qualified for this task and both the cleric’s and the commoner’s judgment on such matters must defer to this expertise. In sum, little quarter is given to religion or philosophy for guiding sexual behavior or teaching the student of its nature. This is especially true for therapeutic psychology, the branch of behavioral science that treats persons with emotional concerns.

On the contrary, Plato observed, for example, that in the act of healing, the body of man cannot be cured without a knowledge of the soul - the psyche. This principle implies a hierarchical understanding. That is, the lower part, the body (and here we include the emotions) cannot be completely understood without understanding of the higher part, the soul, because the body is by nature meant to serve and be governed by the soul. Hence, when the physician treats the patient, he must consider the soul as well as the body.

As a result of the decline of asceticism, the currents of pagan sexuality have seriously harmed the Church. Without a return to asceticism and the ancient purpose of religion which gave birth to it, the Church remains unprepared to withstand the inevitable waves of sexual corruption. The recent crisis demonstrates that the mental health professions imbued with the therapeutic mentality provided no safe harbor. They have no theory of Christian asceticism for use with laymen, the formation of seminarians, or in the rehabilitation of deviant priests. Virtually nothing can be found in therapeutic science on the subjects of asceticism, chastity or virginity, and prayer is addressed only superficially. Without this understanding, therapeutic psychology cannot proceed from a rational basis to assist in the psychological treatment of the fallen Christian in the return to authentic devotion, the priest in his return to ascetical practice, and the seminarian in the formation of an ascetical chastity.

It is time that we move beyond the idea that the psychology of the Christian be left in the hands of specialists who have no interest or understanding of religious devotion, chastity, prayer, and ascetical discipline. We take the first small steps in outlining a psychological theory of Christian asceticism and draw upon experimental science in both psychology and biology to illustrate the points that we set forth from St. Thomas Aquinas. However, we must define the nature and the scope of the problem as it currently exists, how the sexual apology grew out of therapeutic science and infiltrated the Church, the obstacles in the path of reform, and finally, how ascetical tradition can be framed to address the problems we face today.

CWN Church scandal reflects ascetical breakdown with an excerpt from a chapter of The Linacre Institute After Asceticism: Sex, Prayer and Deviant Priests

The catholicity of the Church expresses the fullness, integrity, and totality of its life in Christ through the Holy Spirit in all times and places. This mystery is expressed in each community of baptized believers in which the apostolic faith is confessed and lived, the gospel is proclaimed, and the sacraments are celebrated. Each church is the Church catholic and not simply a part of it. Each church is the Church catholic, but not the whole of it. Each church fulfils its catholicity when it is in communion with the other churches. We affirm that the catholicity of the Church is expressed most visibly in sharing holy communion and in a mutually recognised and reconciled ministry.

The relationship among churches is dynamically interactive. Each church is called to mutual giving and receiving gifts and to mutual accountability. Each church must become aware of all that is provisional in its life and have the courage to acknowledge this to other churches. Even today, when eucharistic sharing is not always possible, divided churches express mutual accountability and aspects of catholicity when they pray for one another, share resources, assist one another in times of need, make decisions together, work together for justice, reconciliation, and peace, hold one another accountable to the discipleship inherent in baptism, and maintain dialogue in the face of differences, refusing to say â??I have no need of youâ?? (1 Cor.12:21). Apart from one another we are impoverished.

World Council of Churches Called to be the One Church

In recent years, there has been a strong emphasis in Orthodox Ecclesiology on the eucharistic understanding of the Church. Truly, the Eucharist Liturgy is the climax of the Church's life, the event in which the people of God are celebrating the incarnation, the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, sharing His glorified body and blood, tasting the Kingdom to come. The ecclesial koinonia is indeed constituted by the participation of the baptized in the eucharistic communion, the sacramental actualization of the economy of salvation, a living reality which belongs both to history and to eschatology. While this emphasis is deeply rooted in the biblical and patristic tradition and is of extreme importance today, it might easily lead to the conclusion that Orthodox limit the interpretation of the Church to an exclusive worshipping community, to protecting and to preserving the Good News for its members. Therefore a need was felt to affirm that the Liturgy is not a self-centred service and action, but is a service for the building of the one Body of Christ within the economy of salvation which is for all people of all ages. The liturgical assembly is the Father's House, where the invitation to the banquet of the heavenly bread is constantly voiced and addressed not only to the members of the Church, but also to the non-Christians and strangers.

This liturgical concentration, "the liturgy within the Liturgy", is essential for the Church, but it has to be understood in all its dimensions. There is a double movement in the Liturgy: on the one hand, the assembling of the people of God to perform the memorial of the death and resurrection of our Lord "until He comes again". It also manifests and realizes the process by which "the cosmos is becoming ecclesia". Therefore the preparation for Liturgy takes place not only at the personal spiritual level, but also at the level of human historical and natural realities. In preparing for Liturgy, the Christian starts a spiritual journey which affects everything in his life: family, properties, authority, position, and social relations. It re-orientates the direction of his entire human existence towards its sanctification by the Holy Spirit.

On the other hand, renewed by the Holy Communion and the Holy Spirit, the members of the Church are sent to be authentic testimony to Jesus Christ in the world. The mission of the Church rests upon the radiating and transforming power of the Liturgy. It is a stimulus in sending out the people of God to the world to confess the Gospel and to be involved in man's liberation.

Liturgically, this continual double movement of thanksgiving is expressed in the ministry of the deacon. On the one hand he brings and offers to the altar the gifts of the people; on the other, he shares and distributes the Holy Sacraments which nourish the life of Christians. Everything is linked with the central action of the Church, which is the Eucharist, and everybody has a diaconal function in reconciling the separated realities.

Ion Bria The Liturgy after the Liturgy and also in (88 page) book form.

The Faith and Order Commission following the New Delhi assembly turned its attention to a new study of the patristic period. A study group was formed in 1962 and decided to give particular attention to the text of Basil of Caesarea on the Holy Spirit. In presenting its report to the Faith and Order Commission at Bristol in 1967, the group says in its introduction:

"All churches share the common foundation of the Fathers. But they are not accorded the same authority by all the churches, and patristics study is carried on by various methods and with unequal intensity. Therefore it is of great importance for the further development of the ecumenical movement that we come to a common understanding of the Fathers. The problem appeared early in the ecumenical movement. Its urgency has become especially clear, however, since the family of Orthodox churches began to participate fully in the World Council of Churches. … In view of the special significance of the problem for the relationships between Orthodox and Western member churches, the group was to be composed of an equal number of participants from East and West."

The report, apart from a special interpretation of the essay on the Holy Spirit by Basil of Caesarea, deals with the significance of patristic study for the ecumenical discussion and reflects on the significance and the message of patristic texts for today. Unfortunately, this creative ecumenical approach to a common study of the patristic period has not been continued further in the work of the Faith and Order Commission.

A parallel study on "The Importance of the Conciliar Process in the Ancient Church for the Ecumenical Movement"... introduced the notion of "conciliarity" into ecumenical discussion and explored in particular the importance of conciliarity for the unity of the church.

The report explains: "If we are rightly to understand the importance of synods and councils for the life of the church, it is wise to begin with the general notion of 'conciliarity'. By conciliarity we mean the fact that the church in all times needs assemblies to represent it and has in fact felt this need. These assemblies may differ greatly from one another; however, conciliarity, the necessity that they take place, is a constant structure of the church, a dimension which belongs to its nature. As the church itself is 'an assembly' and appears as assembly both in worship and many other expressions of its life, so it needs both at the local and on all other possible levels representative assemblies in order to answer the questions which it faces."

The report underlines the close relationship between the conciliar process and the unity of the church by pointing to the fact that all councils were rooted in the eucharistic life of the church and were intended to strengthen the life of the church as the eucharistic assembly. Recognizing the fact that contemporary church assemblies composed of representatives of churches which do not live in eucharistic fellowship cannot be properly designated as a council, the commission was nevertheless convinced that they can "contribute towards creating the conditions which will enable all churches to participate in a truly ecumenical council"

. . .

There can be no doubt, however, about the decisive influence of Orthodox thinking in all three texts, particularly in terms of the emphasis on the role of the Holy Spirit both in baptism and the eucharist (epiklesis) and the emphasis on the ecclesiological and eschatological dimension of both baptism and the eucharist.

Konrad Raiser The Importance of the Orthodox Contribution to the World Council of Churches (WCC)

The Church lives from the Eucharist. (John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Ecclesia de Eucharistia, §1 â??the Church lives from the Eucharistâ??) The Holy Fatherâ??s announcement that the Synod of Bishops to be held in October 2005 will reflect on the Eucharist follows from his recent Encyclical Letter Ecclesia de Eucharistia. Already the Society has organised an international colloquium on this Encyclical, held at Heythrop College in early February 2004, with participants from many European institutions and from North America. This in turn builds upon the fidelity to the Eucharist which the Society has always sought to promote, beginning with the Conference in Cambridge in 2002 Ite Missa Est: Transubstantiation and Living Eucharist.

As part of our mission to promote the intellectual apostolate, and of supportive cooperation with the Hierarchy, we propose a three- year research project on the Holy Eucharist, the fruits of which will be made available to the Bishops of England and Wales as a gift, and as a sign of the vitality of theological life in these countries.

We propose a two-stepped research project, arising out of our initial colloquium. The first step will be an examination of the Eucharist with special reference to England and Wales, the fruits of which will be compiled into a research report and presented to the Bishops of English and Welsh dioceses who will attend the Synod. The second step will be the development of that report in response to the Apostolic Exhortation which the Holy Father will publish after the Synod, with final versions of the various contributions, and made available for publication, we would hope, by a reputable theological press. In addition it is hoped that the extension of the colloquium until 2007 will result in a variety of further studies on various aspects of the Eucharist and the Sacred Liturgy of the Church: theological, philosophical, historical, æsthetic, musicological, pastoral, and ecumenical.

The colloquium will take as its point of departure the statement of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of the Second Vatican Council Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium, §10 â??at one and the same, the Liturgy is the pinnacle towards which the activity of the Church is directed, and the source from which all its strength emanatesâ??.

It will seek to examine by study in whatever appropriate areas, how and to what extent this is true with particular reference to the situation in England and Wales. It will also attend to how the desire of the Council has been carried out, that this truth be effected Sacrosanctum Concilium, §1 â??better to accommodate the requirements of our timesâ?? under the various disciplinary headings above.

The project will keep in view the reflections of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger on the sacred liturgy, that thought be given and a means be found, â??to overcome the boundless superiority of the [philosophical] subject and to recognise once more that a relationship with the Logos, who is from the beginning, saves the subject, that is the person, and at the same time puts us into a true relation of communality which is ultimately grounded in the Trinitarian lifeâ?? (The Spirit of the Liturgy).

Society of St. Catherine of Siena Ecclesia de Eucharistia Vivit Research Project to be Undertaken in the Years 2004â??2007

68. We are agreed that no local church is self-sufficient. Various structures and practices are needed to maintain and manifest the communion of the local churches and sustain them in fidelity to the Gospel. These include local, provincial, world-wide and ecumenical synods and councils. Anglicans and Roman Catholics agree that from New Testament times (cf. Acts 15.6-29), the Church has sought through collegial and conciliar gatherings to be obedient to Christ in fidelity to its vocation.

69. Anglicans and Roman Catholics agree that councils can be recognised as authoritative when they express the common faith and mind of the Church, consonant with Scripture and the apostolic Tradition. Those councils up to modern times which the Catholic Church describes as â??ecumenicalâ?? are understood as having a binding character, and are for Roman Catholics an authoritative expression of the living tradition. Anglicans historically have only recognised the binding authority of the first four ecumenical councils. While they affirm some of the content of successive councils, they believe that only those decisions which can be demonstrated from Scripture are binding on the faithful.

70. The communion of the Church requires a ministry of primacy at every level of the Churchâ??s life as a visible link and focus of its communion. From early times an ordering developed among the bishops, whereby the bishops of prominent sees exercised a distinctive ministry of unity, as the first among the bishops of their regions. They acted not in isolation from but in collegial association with other bishops. Primacy and collegiality are complementary dimensions of episcope, exercised within the life of the whole Church. (Anglicans recognise the ministry of the Archbishop of Canterbury in precisely this way.)

71. The office of a universal primate is a special and particular case of that care for universal communion proper to the episcopal office itself. â??The only see which makes any claim to universal primacy and which has exercised and still exercises such episcope is the see of Rome, the city where Peter and Paul diedâ??. The Roman Catholic Church teaches that the ministry of the Bishop of Rome as universal primate is in accordance with Christâ??s will for the Church and an essential element for maintaining it in unity and truth. Anglicans rejected the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome as universal primate in the sixteenth century. Today, however, some Anglicans are beginning to see the potential value of a ministry of universal primacy, which would be exercised by the Bishop of Rome, as a sign and focus of unity within a re-united Church.

Growing Together in Unity and Mission An Agreed Statement by the International Anglicanâ??Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission

The 1996 Oxford Liturgy Conference was 'a watershed for English Catholicism', apparently. Here is its Declaration on the Liturgy (I have added some italics):

1. Reflecting on the history of liturgical renewal and reform since the Second Vatican Council, the Liturgy Forum agreed that there have been many positive results. Among these might be mentioned the introduction of the vernacular, the opening up of the treasury of the Sacred Scriptures, increased participation in the liturgy and the enrichment of the process of Christian initiation. However, the Forum concluded that the preconciliar liturgical movement as well as the manifest intentions of Sacrosanctum Concilium have in large part been frustrated by powerful contrary forces, which could be described as bureaucratic, philistine and secularist.

2. The effect has been to deprive the Catholic people of much of their liturgical heritage. Certainly, many ancient traditions of sacred music, art and architecture have been all but destroyed. Sacrosanctum Concilium gave pride of place to Gregorian chant (n. 116), yet in many places this "sung theology" of the Roman liturgy has disappeared without trace. Our liturgical heritage is not a superficial embellishment of worship but should properly be regarded as intrinsic to it, as it is also to the process of transmitting the Catholic faith in education and evangelization. Liturgy cannot be separated from culture; it is the living font of a Christian civilization and hence has profound ecumenical significance.

3. The impoverishment of our liturgy after the Council is a fact not yet sufficiently admitted or understood, to which the necessary response must be a revival of the liturgical movement and the initiation of a new cycle of reflection and reform. The liturgical movement which we represent is concerned with the enrichment, correction and resacralization of Catholic liturgical practice. It is concerned with a renewal of liturgical eschatology, cosmology and aesthetics, and with a recovery of the sense of the sacred - mindful that the law of worship is the law of belief. This renewal will be aided by a closer and deeper acquaintance with the liturgical, theological and iconographic traditions of the Christian East.

4. The revived liturgical movement calls for the promotion of the Liturgy of the Hours, celebrated in song as an action of the Church in cathedrals, parishes, monasteries and families, and of Eucharistic Adoration, already spreading in many parishes. In this way, the Divine Word and the Presence of Christ's reality in the Mass may resonate throughout the day, making human culture into a dwelling place for God. At the heart of the Church in the world we must be able to find that loving contemplation, that adoring silence, which is the essential complement to the spoken word of Revelation, and the key to active participation in the holy mysteries of faith (Orientale Lumen, n. 1 ).

5. We call for a greater pluralism of Catholic rites and uses, so that all these elements of our tradition may flourish and be more widely known during the period of reflection and ressourcement that lies ahead. If the liturgical movement is to prosper, it must seek to rise above differences of opinion and taste to that unity which is the Holy Spirit's gift to the Body of Christ. Those who love the Catholic tradition in its fullness should strive to work together in charity, bearing each other's burdens in the light of the Holy Spirit, and persevering in prayer with Mary the Mother of Jesus.

6. We hope that any future liturgical reform would not be imposed on the faithful but would proceed, with the utmost caution and sensitivity to the sensus fidelium, from a thorough understanding of the organic nature of the liturgical traditions of the Church (Cf. Sacrosanctum Concilium, n. 23). Our work should be sustained by prayer, education and study. This cannot be undertaken in haste, or in anything other than a serene spirit. No matter what difficulties lie ahead, the glory of the Paschal Mystery - Christ's love, his cosmic sacrifice and his childlike trust in the Father - shines through every Catholic liturgy for those who have eyes to see, and in this undeserved grace we await the return of spring.

Oxford Liturgy Conference Declaration on the Liturgy 1996

For some discussion of the context and developments since, see Stratford Caldecott Liturgy and Trinity: Towards an Anthropology of the Liturgy in the 'Mystagogy' section of Second Spring and the (UK) Society of St Catherine of Siena

65. The Gospel is only fully understood in the Church. Godâ??s revelation has been entrusted to a community, which means that the whole people of God has the responsibility for discerning and communicating Godâ??s Word. Within the â??symphonyâ?? of the whole people of God, everyone has a part to play - those with the ministry of oversight, the theologians and all the people of God.

66. Bishops have a vital role in the process of discernment, bearing a special responsibility for promoting truth and discerning error and for preserving and promoting communion; but this is never exercised apart from the whole body of the faithful. The interaction of bishop and people in this exercise of discernment and teaching is a safeguard of Christian life and fidelity. Discernment involves both heeding and sifting in order to assist the people of God in understanding, articulating and applying their faith. The bishopâ??s authority necessarily includes responsibility for making and implementing the decisions that are required for the sake of koinonia.

67. At ordination, bishops receive not only responsibility for their local church but also a share in collegial responsibility for the wider community. â??Bishops meet together collegially, not as individuals but as those who have authority within and for the synodal life of the local churches ... When bishops take counsel together they seek both to discern and to articulate the sensus fidelium as it is present in the local church and in the wider communion of churches.â?? â??The duty of maintaining the Church in truth is one of the essential functions of the episcopal college â?¦ The exercise of this teaching authority requires that what it teaches be faithful to Holy Scripture and consistent with apostolic Tradition.â?? â??The challenge and responsibility for those with authority within the Church is so to exercise their ministry that they promote the unity of the whole Church in faith and life in a way that enriches rather than diminishes the legitimate diversity of local churches.â??

Growing Together in Unity and Mission An Agreed Statement by the International Anglicanâ??Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission

Recent months have seen renewed interest by the British Government in developing a long-term policy for Universities, especially in England and Wales. The proposed changes to the structures of the universities, although recognising the need for diversity of provision and for a striving for excellence in academic achievement at all levels, nevertheless do not open the question of the role of the universities in the shaping of national life, in the formation and understanding of what it is to be human, and in the preservation and study of what is most precious in our history. If there is a strong emphasis on what it means to strive to extend the frontiers and boundaries of knowledge, nowhere to be found is the asking of the questions â?? what is knowledge, what is wisdom, what is truth, and how are we to live in truth?

In 1997 the Bishops of England and Wales reminded us that â??the basic understanding of education [is] human development . . . at the heart of it is a human being within whom as far as human willfulness allows, the creator will perfect the image of his divine Sonâ??

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The Bishops have already noted that the radical dissolution of a sense of the human person as standing at the centre of the practices of formation in pedagogy is co-extensive with the â??development of postmodernist thoughtâ??. The intellectual tendencies named by this term all in different but related ways represent, as the Bishops acknowledge, a dissolution of an understanding of the truth, and by this very fact, indicate (albeit negatively) the fundamental relation between an understanding of truth and the enquiry into the human person. In bringing to light the very shape of the human person not only in his or her capacity for economic and technical success but also to live a moral life, concerned with and for what it means to dwell with and seek the good of others, the question of the origin and final end of this person who emerges as the holder of human wisdom is posed. Here it is that theology engages with all the turmoil and questioning of human life and enquiry, and here even more that theology is shown to have a place â?? a central one at that â?? in the home of the sciences, the university itself.

The Society of St. Catherine of Siena - The Vocation and Formation of Theologians and the Teaching Office of the Bishop in the British Context

Ecclesiology is thus related to the issue of the priority of substance, or ousia, in relation to personhood, or hypostasis. If the one God were prior to the Trinity and identical with the one divine substance, then substance and oneness would precede personhood and multiplicity, in the Church as well as in God. The consequences for ecclesiology would be very serious. Not only would the local churches be subordinated to the structure of a universal Church, but equally each human person would be subject to that structure. Universal laws would be imposed upon particular personal beings, and the Church would be a totalitarian authority over the person. But such is not the case. Just as one nature of God exists, not in the abstract, but only in the three persons, so the universal Church exists only as a communion of local churches. In this respect there is a convergence between Orthodox and Anglican understandings of the Church. Orthodox and Anglicans agree in rejecting a single centralized authority in the Church. This is not for local and cultural, but for profoundly theological reasons.

The Church of Triune God - The Cyprus Agreed Statement of the International Commission for Anglican–Orthodox Theological Dialogue (Co-Chair Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) of Pergamon) Section I, 25.

Much of the current understanding of pedagogy, in Britain especially, is driven by an appeal to method: the pursuit of specified goals in learning a subject will generate specified, quantifiable results and an outcome. Education, inasmuch as it is conceived as a process, will have outcomes which will both act as a measure against which differing students of differing ability can be measured and will thereby sift themselves into social roles and place. At the same time an understanding that what is to be learned is something which must be attended to, rather than grasped, in an attitude of humility and reserve, is being eroded. Modern teaching is too often underpinned by a view that everything is a ‘resource’ which can be endlessly remodelled or manipulated to satisfy immediate needs. Instead of learning as a process of assimilating something greater, and to which the one who learns must be conformed, students are increasingly being taught to see everything as series of ‘problems’ to which mere cleverness and expediency can always find ‘solutions’.

The emphasis on method in learning, and the gradual wearing-away of a model of teaching that has at its heart the apprenticeship of the student to the teacher – discipleship in learning – is yet again evidence of the disappearance of the place of the human in what it is to learn, to study, and to teach. In the face of this Christians have long known that at the heart of discovering who we are to be in God is the practice of discipleship and the witness of the disciples the Lord gathered around him. We encounter the person of Jesus the Christ through the teaching of those disciples who became Apostles, both followers and, as followers, ones who received the commission to go out and proclaim the good news to the whole world. This going out always has at its heart a personal encounter, of those at whose hands we ourselves have received the faith, and through whom we encounter the person of Jesus Christ.

The Church knows therefore, that pedagogy cannot ever be a method, but rather has to have at its heart personal encounter. The one who teaches must himself know what it is to have studied and to have been taught. In pedagogy like this, the specificity of ‘outcomes’ and ‘benchmarks’ might be present, but is only adjunct to the real task: the leading of the student into a path on which the teacher himself has journeyed...In consequence, a genuinely humanising pedagogy can emerge which questions every attempt to instrumentalise learning to outcomes and methods. Such a pedagogy becomes a genuine met' odos, the following of an open path.

The Society of St. Catherine of Siena The Vocation and Formation of Theologians and the Teaching Office of the Bishop in the British Context

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I have been looking for this sort of document for fully two years. I am simply baffled as to why it and others like it are, for all intents and purposes, hidden. I suggest that it is the job of every congregation to pray and petition their bishop to read them this document from the pulpit once a year and that its pithier phrases be turned into bullet points, learned off by heart, taught to confirmation candidates and chanted through the streets of English cities every Corpus Christi. Every Anglican should find a Roman Catholic and say 'teach me this discipleship.'

Of course this 'Vocation and Formation of Theologians...', along with 'On the Holy Eucharist' and the other marvellous documents on display on the Catherine of Siena site, have their weaker moments. But inasmuch as we do not know even of the existence of these church documents, let alone start to wrestle with them, we are all the losers. Aren't we failing the people of the UK, or wherever, by failing to pass on to them the deposit of faith we have been given on their behalf? Ditto for the Anglican documents of the Inter Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission published on the Anglican Communion website.

The Christian is a member of an assembly that participates in the future assembly of all things. Under the instruction and supervision of that assembly the Christian begins to grow into their place and role, and to learn that this assembly has more in store for him or her. However the individual Christian may delay taking up their identity, this assembly refuses to let him or her become less, or become an object, they do not allow that everything has been said about them. To know them we have to open ourselves to the point at which we can let them surprise us.

The completion and catholicity depends on our Amen, which is the public event of the acknowledgment, which we give in freedom. As we give this Amen, we grow, our ability to grant the freedom of others, and with it our own freedom, grows.

The basis of knowledge is communion, and bound by love, in which we participate in one another in friendship, brotherhood and many other forms. It is as we respond to people, and they to us, that we know people. To come to know them more fully we have to respond them, and wait for them, and receive their response gladly, and learn to give them whatever will direct them towards their fulfilment. We have to give them Christ and all his hospitality and its truth, and not thank them for anything but Christ and all his truth. There is no knowledge without love. This love is that fellowship which is the whole loaf of Christ and his people. Thus catholicity, of which the eucharist is the event, is the origin of the universality of knowledge. It is this catholicity and comprehensiveness to which all the sciences of the university aspire. The university is universal to the extent that it participates in the catholicity that derives from the eucharist and observes the anticipatory character and so observes the proper limits of our knowledge.

Other Catholicity posts

The Theology of the Body lectures continue on Friday evenings St. Patrickâ??s Soho Square, London. The lectures are going through the theological teaching on marriage given by Pope John Paul II in his general audiences (GA)

II. Blessed are the Pure of Heart Jan 12 Rod Isaacs: â??The Heart â?? A Battlefield between Love & Lust.â?? (GA July 23rd 1980) Jan 26 Matthew Nichols: â??Establishing the Ethical Sense.â?? (GA Oct 1st 1980) Feb 2 Fr. Mark Withoos: â??The Human Body, Subject of Works of Artâ?? (General Audience April 15th 1981)

III. The Theology of Marriage & Celibacy Feb 23 Robert Colquhoun â??To be Imitators of God & to Walk in Loveâ?? (GA Aug 4th 1982) Mar 2 Fr. Mark Withoos: â??Virginity or Celibacy for the sake of the Kingdomâ?? (G A. March 10th 1982) March 23 Jane Deegan: â??Love is Victorious in the Struggle between Good and Evilâ?? (GA June 27th 1984)

IV. Reflections on Humanae Vitae April 27 Edmund Adamus: â?? The Churchâ??s Position on the Transmission of Lifeâ?? (GA August 22nd 1984) May 11 Dan & Anne Hill: â??A Discipline that Ennobles Human Love.â?? (GA Aug 28th 1984) May 25 Alison Gray â??The dignity and vocation of woman and her role in the Churchâ?? June 8 Love and Responsibility â?? Theology of the Body

Pope John Paul II Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body

Meanwhile, from the basement of that very same St Patrick's in Soho, London, Nicole Syed provides advice on Natural Fertility Management. Nicole says this:

Through the content of the course and a lot of my own reading of John Paul IIâ??s Theology of the Body, I found the holistic way of life that I had been looking for, integrating every aspect of our lives, physical, emotional, sexual and spiritual. I realised that promoting this message was what I wanted to do to help transform the lives of those around me. It became increasingly clear to me from a health perspective, that the contraceptive industry had manipulated the way people think about fertility, treating it as an illness that needs to be suppressed and controlled at all costs. Because of my nursing background I could see how the pill and most other artificial contraceptives were physically destructive to the body, but as I studied more of the theology, I could also see how contraception was spiritually and relationally damaging to couples on a totally different level â?? one that was subtle and often undetected.

Many young couples who are interested in NFP, tell me itâ??s really difficult to find out about it now, because most priests are too embarrassed or afraid to mention it, and it seems it is rarely talked about on marriage preparation courses any more. Itâ??s just assumed that if people are interested they will find out about it themselves, but often they donâ??t know where to look, so they just end up using artificial means because thatâ??s all they know about and no one has explained to them what the Church teaches and why. The contraceptive industry is a massive money making industry and its propoganda has really formed the way our whole society thinks about this issue, so if we are going to challenge this, the Church really needs to get its act together.

And see the Couple to Couple League or Couple to Couple League (UK). Don't say I don't provide you with a service.

This theological doxological mode of knowing enables all other forms of knowing, amongst them natural science. It provides the framework which prevents science from imposing an unlimited power over its object. This framework guarantees that we are distinct from what we know, that the world and other creatures are distinct from us. It is the assurance that neither the world nor any object in it are divine, and that they are not constructed by us, and thus we are not divine. The acknowledgment that we are not God is the real foundation that we may have real knowledge of anything, and thus it underwrites and enables science.

For the human without God however, the highest form of mastery is that of the scientist who can place before them the object of their enquiry before them. Whether this object is a thing or a person, the form of scientific knowing, makes an inert object of it. This object of enquiry is not expected to introduce itself, to speak back or to play any part in the process by which it becomes known. The scientist can control it so that it cannot become anything that it is not already. To such science the object is inert so that it will never be able to surprise or threaten the knower. Such knowledge will require the regular re-assertion of the mastery of the knower, and this act of subjugation will impoverish the knower as well as the known.

But this is not an adequate form of knowing. Knowledge, or science, without love, is just an act of control and mastery. Knowledge without love means that we never have the confidence or self-mastery to be not only a master, controller and manipulator, but also a friend and even a servant.

We cannot know other people in a full sense without love. We have want to be in relationship with them, and be recognised by them. We must look for their response, and respond to it gladly when we receive it. The highest form of recognition is mutual recognition in friendship, fellowship and love. Any other form of knowledge, may effect to keep its object just an object and no more. If it refuses to allow it its proper context and purpose, it may prevent that object from reaching its telos and becoming fully a creature.

All things become themselves as they participate in Christ. Christ draws them into this participation. What starts solely his act, and always remains his act, also becomes their act. From his life and his relatedness to all other persons and things, their life and relatedness to all others grow. They participate in his communion with the Father and in the freedom of God that this involves. In Christ knowledge and being are inseparable – God's word and act are one.

Christ’s knowledge is the giving, taking and returning again of the proper final identity of all creatures – as creatures of God. The participation of his people in the life of God means that they participate in Christ’s act of creation and reception of creation. They receive all creation, each creature, person and thing, from Christ, by giving their public acknowledgement of the origin and destiny of that creature. In giving this acknowledgement, and so in some measure returning this creature back to God, they have a relationship with this creature, but neither they nor the other creature is solely defined by it. This relationship does not become necessary to either of them, so they remain free in it and they survive when it changes.

So far I have said that, in the church, we already participate in that future complete assembly, which is the whole body of Christ. In this future body we will be relationship with all, and they will all participate in us. We will belong, not any smaller or lesser group, but to the whole, the universal or catholic entity of Christ. We are not complete, and not ourselves without them, and they are not complete without us. We will not be raised from the dead without them: they are essential to our final identity: in the resurrection body, the universal, catholic, body, when Christ is all in all, all will be in all. This means that we may now know Christ only with all whom the Father has given him. Christ prepares now them for us, and us for them.

All these people have received from Christ a piece of the future creation, and in this future creation they have also received a little bit of us. They have a piece of our own true selves that we do not yet have. They have to teach this new aspect of our proper identity to us, and we have to receive it from them. They have to give this piece to us, and we have to receive it from them, and must wait until they do. We receive ourselves only from them. This means that we must want to receive this from them: it requires that we are open and willing to receive them, and so to receive Christ, and our own identity, freely. Love makes us free to receive them. Only when we take it from them (and have learned how to do this) are we really and freely ourselves.

Christ meets us. But that meeting involve us in a search in which we look everywhere for him, even in that company that we consider ungodly. We find him where he, in his freedom, meets us. He meets us in the form of that very set of persons against whom we had most recently and most fervently been defending ourselves. Christ is there – only – for us, in the person we were trying to avoid. Christ is there at that moment turning this rival into our friend. We cannot turn away from them without turning away from the piece of ourselves that they, and only they, have to give us. We cannot turn away from them without turning away both our Lord, and our own future. We have to go the Christians we don't like, whose doctrine and churchmanship are repellant to us, in order to meet Christ.

This means that ‘ecumenism’ is an event of repentance, reconciliation and forgiveness. The eucharist is the ecumenical event. Though an unlovely word, ‘ecumenical’ simply means communion. This communion comes through being reconciled with those who oppose us. Of course this reconciliation cannot come at the expense of truth, so ‘there must differences among you’ and forthright exchanges of view. But we must be reconciled with those who oppose us, and that most often means from those at opposite ends of the church, the ‘evangelicals’ or the ‘catholics’ or whoever’s churchmanship you regard as least acceptable.

We meet Christ in the event in which our opponent becomes our brother. We have to put into words what we hold against him, and we have to forgive him and ask him for his forgiveness. Every time we meet, we must look forward to and pray for this reconciliation and unity.

See other 'Catholicity' posts

With the grace of God, Your Holiness, we have been blessed to enter the joy of the Kingdom, to "see the true light and receive the heavenly Spirit." Every celebration of the Divine Liturgy is a powerful and inspiring con-celebration of heaven and of history. Every Divine Liturgy is both an anamnesis of the past and an anticipation of the Kingdom. We are convinced that during this Divine Liturgy, we have once again been transferred spiritually in three directions: toward the kingdom of heaven where the angels celebrate; toward the celebration of the liturgy through the centuries; and toward the heavenly kingdom to come.

This overwhelming continuity with heaven as well as with history means that the Orthodox liturgy is the mystical experience and profound conviction that "Christ was, is, and ever shall be in our midst!" For in Christ, there is a deep connection between past, present, and future. In this way, the liturgy is more than merely the recollection of Christ's words and acts. It is the realization of the very presence of Christ Himself, who has promised to be wherever two or three are gathered in His name....

Thus our worship coincides with the same joyous worship in heaven and throughout history. Indeed, as St. John Chrysostom himself affirms: "Those in heaven and those on earth form a single festival, a shared thanksgiving, one choir" (PG 56.97). Heaven and earth offer one prayer, one feast, and one doxology. The Divine Liturgy is at once the heavenly kingdom and our home, "a new heaven and a new earth" (Rev. 21.1), the ground and center where all things find their true meaning. The Liturgy teaches us to broaden our horizon and vision, to speak the language of love and communion, but also to learn that we must be with one another in spite of our differences and even divisions. In its spacious embrace, it includes the whole world, the communion of saints, and all of God's creation. The entire universe becomes "a cosmic liturgy", to recall the teaching of St. Maximus the Confessor. This kind of Liturgy can never grow old or outdated.

The only appropriate response to this showering of divine benefits and compassionate mercy is gratitude (eucharistia). Indeed, thanksgiving and glory are the only fitting response of human beings to their Creator. For to Him belong all glory, honor, and worship: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; now and always, and to the ages of ages. Amen.

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew Homily during the Divine Liturgy The Feast Day of St. Andrew at the Patriarchal Cathedral of St. George

This fraternal encounter which brings us together, Pope Benedict XVI of Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, is Godâ??s work, and in a certain sense his gift. We give thanks to the Author of all that is good, who allows us once again, in prayer and in dialogue, to express the joy we feel as brothers and to renew our commitment to move towards full communion. This commitment comes from the Lordâ??s will and from our responsibility as Pastors in the Church of Christ. May our meeting be a sign and an encouragement to us to share the same sentiments and the same attitudes of fraternity, cooperation and communion in charity and truth. The Holy Spirit will help us to prepare the great day of the re-establishment of full unity, whenever and however God wills it. Then we shall truly be able to rejoice and be glad.

1. We have recalled with thankfulness the meetings of our venerable predecessors, blessed by the Lord, who showed the world the urgent need for unity and traced sure paths for attaining it, through dialogue, prayer and the daily life of the Church. Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras I went as pilgrims to Jerusalem, to the very place where Jesus Christ died and rose again for the salvation of the world, and they also met again, here in the Phanar and in Rome. They left us a common declaration which retains all its value; it emphasizes that true dialogue in charity must sustain and inspire all relations between individuals and between Churches, that it â??must be rooted in a total fidelity to the one Lord Jesus Christ and in mutual respect for their own traditionsâ?? (Tomos Agapis, 195). Nor have we forgotten the reciprocal visits of His Holiness Pope John Paul II and His Holiness Dimitrios I. It was during the visit of Pope John Paul II, his first ecumenical visit, that the creation of the Mixed Commission for theological dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church was announced. This has brought together our Churches in the declared aim of re-establishing full communion.

As far as relations between the Church of Rome and the Church of Constantinople are concerned, we cannot fail to recall the solemn ecclesial act effacing the memory of the ancient anathemas which for centuries had a negative effect on our Churches. We have not yet drawn from this act all the positive consequences which can flow from it in our progress towards full unity, to which the mixed Commission is called to make an important contribution. We exhort our faithful to take an active part in this process, through prayer and through significant gestures.

Common Declaration by Pope Benedict XVI & Patriarch Bartholomew I

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What these two Christians, Benedict and Bartholomew, are doing is what every Christian must do in order to receive Christ â?? go to the Christians you disagree with, make your differences clear to one another, confess and forgive what has to be confessed and forgiven, and together look forward to your reconciliation and unity. Let's do it.

The real Christ for the Orthodox Church is the Christ of the gospels and Acts; the Christ of the writings attributed to the apostles John and Paul, and Peter and James and Jude. There is no other Christ for the Orthodox Church. A Christ produced by scholars, mystics, poets or politicians - or even by creative theologians, charismatic elders or crusading activists within or without the Church - is never the real and whole Christ of Orthodox doctrine, liturgy, spirituality and sanctity. He is surely not the Christ of Orthodox mission.

To know the real Christ requires a diligent and critical study of the Bible. Before anything else, Christians are disciples, i.e. students (mathetai). They are students of Christ before they are his "members" as members of his Church. They are his disciples before they are his apostles and missionaries (i.e., "those who are sent"). And they are certainly his disciples before they are bishops, presbyters, elders, and theologians of his Church.

Jesus appears in the gospel narrative first as rabbi, master and teacher (didaskolos, magister). He instructs his students in the right understanding of the old testament writings. Risen from the dead he opens the minds of his disciples to understand the scriptures and explains to them how "the law, the psalms and the prophets" speak about him (cf. Lk 24).

Critical study of scriptures is a reading and hearing of the biblical words without prejudging or predetermining their meaning. Through such study the student (who may in some circumstances be unable to read) wants to know what the writings actually say and mean, first for those who originally wrote and heard them, and then for people today, beginning with oneself. Such study uses all available means to illumine and explain (but not to constitute or determine) the biblical texts as written and received in the Church. It employs, for example, the knowledge of languages, literature, history, religion, geography and archeology. It welcomes the guidance of those skilled in such fields. But though this study is done within the Church community with the help of others, it must be done for oneself. Each individual believer must personally engage God's Word in the Bible. Without such engagement, especially today in North America, and especially by the Church's leaders, there is no genuine Orthodox mission.

Bible and Liturgy The hearing and reading of the Bible essential to Orthodox missionary work occurs in the context of the Church's self-actualization in corporate worship, i.e. the liturgy. The Church assembled in Christ's name before the Face of God in the Holy Spirit for instruction, petition, praise, remembrance and thanksgiving is the hermeneutical condition and context for interpreting God's Word recorded in the scriptures. As such, it is the point from which the Church's apostolic mission originates and the point toward which its activity is directed.

Not only is the Bible read, heard, contemplated and explained at Church services, but the services themselves are thoroughly biblical in content, form and spirit. Biblically informed believers have an immediate awareness and experience of the Bible's message in Orthodox liturgical worship. Or rather, more accurately, the God and Christ witnessed in the Bible become immediately accessible to believers in liturgical contemplation and communion in the Church.

Protopresbyter Thomas Hopko The Mission of the Orthodox Church in North America with thanks to Matthew Baker

Indifference to form was essential to the Evangelical movement. It stemmed from a conviction that mediation of any kind, whether Catholic or Protestant, posed a barrier to direct communion between God and the individual Christian. Ecclesial forms, the logic went, could be faked; they could result in nominal Christianity or dead orthodoxy.

Evangelicalism, accordingly, sought authentic or genuine faith, unencumbered by rites, dogma, and clergy. As such, born-again Protestantism is a new and highly modern form of Christianity, one that regards dependence on churchly mediation, whether through catechesis or creedal subscription, sacraments or ministerial blessings, pastors or priests, or councils of bishops or presbyteries, as in tension with rather than constituting a personal relationship with Christ.

If real antagonism exists between Evangelicalism and ecclesial Christianity, then why do born-again Protestants who desire historically grounded expression of the faith remain Evangelical? Why not simply join one of the other communions that guard ancient Christianity?

One suspects that the reason has something to do with the advantages of being rootless. Without an Evangelical identity, a born-again Protestant would have to choose one of those other traditions, join it, and reject the others. With an Evangelical identity, he can take the best from all Christian expressions without having to come under the discipline and restraint of a particular church’s ministry, authority, and tradition.

If this is so, then the Evangelical future called for in this statement is more modern than ancient, because it is more voluntary than received, more liberated than restrained, more tolerant than exclusive. Without becoming part of a historic Christian communion, Evangelicalism’s ancient future will yield merely the trappings of antiquity minus its churchly substance.

D. G. Hart 'Born Again Free' – Responses to Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future

After World War II, conservative Protestants fled oppressively liberal mainline denominations and formed parachurch mission boards, seminaries, and publishing houses, as a matter of survival and faithfulness. As they did so, however, they downplayed their ecclesial differences to the point that establishment Evangelicalism forgot there really was anything important about baptism, the Lordâ??s Supper, or, sadly, the Church itselfâ?¦.

Now, after a half-century, we see Evangelical parachurch institutions and ministries almost indistinguishable in their broadness from the mainline institutions for which they were created as a conservative alternative. The Call hits exactly on some of the reasons for this: a hyper-confident Evangelical movement that thought it could win the world to Christ apart from his Body. Inasmuch as the Call directs us to reconsider the Kingdom communities of our churches, as opposed to databases of donors, we should listenâ?¦.

At the end of the day, the â??Ancient/Futureâ?? Evangelicalism is a natural extension of American Evangelicalismâ??s besetting sins of faddishness and consumerism. Thatâ??s the reason it is fanned (as so many Evangelical winds of doctrine are) by publishing houses. This project comes to us just as Evangelicalism is in the throes of an infatuation with the so-called emerging church, which is also fueled by publishing houses (the sellers of youth ministry curricula) and which is also enamored simultaneously with postmodern cynicism, egalitarianism, doctrinal flexibility, and ancient-seeming worship...

The emerging worshipers and the ancient futurists want to borrow some of the trappings of a time when Christianity was countercultural (dark rooms and candles simulating catacombs, for instance) while embracing primary aspects of contemporary cultural libertarianism (including feminism and pluralism)â?¦.

If the Ancient/Future Evangelicals wish to counter this culture, they will be forced to do so in more than the generalities theyâ??ve outlined. To take on consumerism, do you dare take on the dual-income family structure of contemporary Americanism? To take on the â??culture of death,â?? do you dare speak bluntly about welcoming the gift of children, about the personhood of the embryo, about the way in vitro fertilization turns a child into a means?

To speak against â??civil religion,â?? do you dare call for public prayers in the name of Jesus? To speak against â??political correctness,â?? do you dare say that only in Jesus Christ is salvation found, thus fueling the evangelism of the world religions, including the Jewish people?

Russell D. Moore â??Listen Closelyâ?? â?? Responses to Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future

The first dimension is that the celebratio is prayer and a conversation with God: God with us and us with God. Thus, the first requirement for a good celebration is that the priest truly enter this conversation. In proclaiming the Word, he feels himself in conversation with God. He is a listener to the Word and a preacher of the Word, in the sense that he makes himself an instrument of the Lord and seeks to understand this Word of God which he must then transmit to the people. He is in a conversation with God because the texts of Holy Mass are not theatrical scripts or anything like them, but prayers, thanks to which, together with the assembly, I speak to God.

It is important, therefore, to enter into this conversation. St Benedict in his "Rule" tells the monks, speaking of the recitation of the Psalms, "Mens concordet voci". The vox, words, precede our mind. This is not usually the case: one has to think first, then one's thought becomes words. But here, the words come first. The sacred Liturgy gives us the words; we must enter into these words, find a harmony with this reality that precedes us.

In addition, we must also learn to understand the structure of the Liturgy and why it is laid out as it is. The Liturgy developed in the course of two millenniums and even after the Reformation was not something worked out by simply a few liturgists. It has always remained a continuation of this on-going growth of worship and proclamation.

Thus, to be well in tune, it is very important to understand this structure that developed over time and to enter with our minds into the vox of the Church. To the extent that we have interiorized this structure, comprehended this structure, assimilated the words of the Liturgy, we can enter into this inner consonance and thus not only speak to God as individuals, but enter into the "we" of the Church, which is praying. And we thus transform our "I" in this way, by entering into the "we" of the Church, enriching and enlarging this "I", praying with the Church, with the words of the Church, truly being in conversation with God.

This is the first condition: we ourselves must interiorize the structure, the words of the Liturgy, the Word of God. Thus, our celebration truly becomes a celebration "with" the Church: our hearts are enlarged and we are not doing just anything but are "with" the Church, in conversation with God. It seems to me that people truly feel that we converse with God, with them, and that in this common prayer we attract others, in communion with the children of God we attract others...

Benedict XVI To the priests of Albano diocese

This is proper to the Pastor, that he should be a man of prayer, that he should come before the Lord praying for others, even replacing others who perhaps do not know how to pray, do not want to pray or do not make the time to pray. Thus, it is obvious that this dialogue with God is pastoral work!

I would say further that the Church gives us, imposes upon us - but always like a good Mother - the obligation to make free time for God with the two practices that constitute a part of our duties: the celebration of Holy Mass and the recitation of the Breviary. However, rather than reciting it, this means putting it into practice by listening to the word which the Lord offers us in the Liturgy of the Hours.

It is essential to interiorize this word, to be attentive to what the Lord is saying to me with this word, to listen, then, to the comments of the Fathers of the Church or also of the Council in the Second Reading of the Office of Readings, and to pray with this great invocation, the Psalms, by which we are inserted into the prayer of all the ages. The people of the Old Covenant pray with us, and we pray with them. We pray with the Lord, who is the true subject of the Psalms. We pray with the Church of all times. I would say that this time dedicated to the Liturgy of the Hours is precious time. The Church offers to us this freedom, this free space of life with God, which is also life for others.

Thus, it seems important to me to see that these two realities - Holy Mass truly celebrated in conversation with God and the Liturgy of the Hours - are areas of freedom, of inner life, an enrichment which the Church bestows upon us. In them, as I said, we do not only find the Church of all the ages but also the Lord himself, who speaks to us and awaits our answer. We thus learn to pray by immersing ourselves in the prayer of all times, and we also encounter the people. Let us think of the Psalms, of the words of the Prophets, of the words of the Lord and of the Apostles, and of the teaching of the Fathers.

Benedict XVI To the priests of Albano diocese

So the most important thing of all is the desire to be one, and to prove that desire, not only by praying â?? because we pray for unity at every single liturgy â?? but prayer without activity, without work, is just blasphemous. To be praying all these things and not to be working, not be ready to make any possible sacrifice you could make that doesnâ??t violate the essence of the faith. In other words, the Orthodox have to desire unity and be ready to sacrifice everything that they can without violating their convictions about the gospel in order to be one, particularly with Roman Catholics.

I believe that the Orthodox, if we were serious about unity, would need not only to desire it, sacrifice for it, forgive everything, admit our own sins, distinguish between what is essential and what is not, but also would have to be ready to practice â??economiumâ?? on certain issues. This would mean, in my opinion, that we would have to be ready not just to admit that there can be different ways of singing, and different styles of liturgy, and different uses of psalmsâ?¦there are some issues, especially between Orthodox and Catholics, that Orthodox would have to be ready to tolerate for a while (even though they think the issues are bad) for the sake of unity.

What do I have in mind? Things like the â??filioqueâ?? clause in the Creed [the clause in the Nicene Creed that says that the Holy Spirit proceeds, not only from the Father, but also, â??filioqueâ?? â?? from the Son]... If Rome would say it was not there originally, that the way it was explained was not right, we now can agree on certain aspects â?? I think the Orthodox would have to say, â??OK, let them keep itâ?? rather than insist that every last church in Portugal drop the â??filioqueâ?? before we can have unity.

In other words, the Orthodox may have to go along with something for a while, as long as itâ??s clear how we understand it.

Father Thomas Hopko What would the Orthodox have to do to have unity?

The Church is whole when all parts of the church are in communion with all others. For this reason each church must insist on the centrality of ecumenism and be disciplined by it. Notionally, all the leaders of the church meet together in councils in which the whole church is present. This council or assembly is a function of the mercy of God to his Church and by which the Church is renewed and sustained.

Ecumenism is not an extra, but an evangelical imperative. ‘The divided Churches are called to receive from one another or indeed to receive one another.’ This does not mean simply agreement on doctrine, but mutual ecclesial recognition, ‘the reception of one Church by another Church’ – in the eucharist. ‘The Church, although one, exists as churches (in the plural), and these churches exist as One Church in and through constantly receiving one another as sister Churches.’ (Zizioulas ‘The Theological Problem of Reception’)

Conciliarity is the practice of communion, that is, of sending apostles to, and receiving apostles from, all other parts of the church. Receiving Christ from these apostles and being obedient to Christ in them, is simply what Christian love is. The Church is love. The whole church’s sending, receiving, meeting, learning and teaching, disciplining and obeying, is the event of love. It is the life Christ lives to the Father. Indeed all society is an event of love, and a participation in the society of God, and no amount of corruption changes the truth of the origin of human sociality. Any particular society becomes, and remains, a society as it is formed in and disciplined by Christ, who is in one society with the Father.

But there is no worldwide council of the church. There is the weekly, or daily, celebration the eucharist, which both looks forward to the assembly of Christ with his whole people, and already is this assembly in miniature. And there are the many interim ecumenical meetings and forums of the church. All of them are partial, but if they are gatherings of the church, they give their witness by pointing forwards to the perfect eucharist of the whole church. In the eucharist we receive the whole Church, Christ and his whole people. We shall return to this theme in the next post.

When people ask me, for example, why the Orthodox jurisdictions in America are not united, the answer is very clear: because our leaders donâ??t want it. If they wanted it, we would have had it yesterday. There is nothing stopping themâ?¦ you may have to suffer a lot. You may have to give up some things: power, pre-eminence, prominence, property, possessions, prestige, positions, privilege and pleasure. Weâ??re not ready to give up those things because of pride, passion and prejudice. Forget it. Thereâ??s not going to be any unity. Thatâ??s what divides people generally, and it is certainly what divides churches. Now here I would allow myself one little â??not my businessâ?? remark: I have a hunch those same things are operating in the Eastern Catholic Churches, tooâ?¦

We will never be one unless we desire it with all our hearts, and are ready to put away everything that we can to have itâ?¦. Everything that doesnâ??t belong to the essence of the faith. Language doesnâ??t belong to the essence of the faith. Calendars donâ??t belong to the essence of the faith. Certain liturgical customs donâ??t belong to the essence of the faith. Even the Byzantine Rite Liturgy for us does not belong to the essence of the faith.

There was a whole thousand years when the Church had multiple rites of praise to God. In fact, the irony is, the time when there were the most multiple rituals for the sacraments and the services was the time there was the greatest unity in doctrine and spiritual life, evangelism, etc. In any case, the ritual is not of the essence of the faith. Language isnâ??t, calendars are notâ?¦ all those things are not part of the essence of the faith. But unless we have the desire for unity, which then would lead us to feel that we have an absolute obligation from God to distinguish between what is really essential and what is not, we are never going to be united.

Father Thomas Hopko What would the Orthodox have to do to have unity?

The bishop represents the whole history of the Church, all its apostles and doctors, to his congregation. He is the catholicity of the Church, in one person. In him the worldwide church makes itself present to each local congregation. A bishop is a member of the assembly of the whole church, drawn from every corner of the world. If the bishop is present, the whole Church is present in each particular congregation, so that the whole geographic and historic catholicity of the Church is present in that particular part of the world. This Church on earth is the form in which Christ together with all his people is presently visible to the world.

Bishops are apostles. The point about apostles is that there is a plurality of them. Twelve indicates completeness, so there is one apostle for every part of the world (The same is true of the seventy apostles, for there are notionally seventy nations in the world). When one apostle falls, his place is filled by another. Apostolic succession does not run individual to individual, so the power of consecration does not run bishop to bishop in unbroken quasi-physical transmission, no single gap in all those centuries. It is ‘possessed’ by the assembly and council of apostles and bishops as a whole, represented in the council of the whole church as this participates in the whole Christ. Thus the worldwide council of the church is a foretaste of the ultimate assembly of all creatures in worship of God.

The bishop teaches his people the doctrine of the whole Church, and when the Church refuses any part of these gifts and disciplines, and sets out to found its faith on something less than the full deposit of faith, the bishop will exercise the discipline that will bring it back to obedience, and he will endure the suffering that this will involve.

By popular demand, and at the insistence of Matthew Baker, it is time for more from the wonderful Fr Thomas Hopko. What goes for the Orthodox goes for the rest of us. I have taken some liberties with Fr Hopko's paragraphs.

* * * *

If you are in Eucharistic communion, you are one church. That’s what makes the Church one. It’s the unity in the body broken, the blood shed of Jesus before the face of God. That’s where the Church is actualized on earth in the celebration of the mysteries: baptism, chrism, Eucharist. That’s what makes us one. That is where the unity of our doctrine is shown, our unity of worship, our unity of morals, our ethics, the unity of spiritual life.

We claim to belong to the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church of Christ, the church that teaches the gospel truly, fully, that prays properly, that acts and teaches the right way to behave according to Christ, according to God Almighty, according to the Holy Scriptures, the canons, the saints, the fathers, etc.

So what is really required… all above everything, is a real desire for unity…to want to be one, to suffer over the division, to weep over it, to carry it around like a sword in your soul that we who claim Christ and praise God in Christ (especially in this world which is getting less and less Christian as the clock ticks) are divided...

Father Thomas Hopko What would the Orthodox have to do to have unity?

The whole Christian community is under a discipline imposed upon it by an external authority. It is formed and disciplined, as it is redeemed, by Christ who comes to it from outside. But Christ is no absentee landlord who exercises only a distant or theoretical authority. The authority of Christ is exercised by Christ, made present to us in his whole people the Church, and carried out by the office-holders of the Church. The lordship of Christ presently makes itself felt as these specific overseers.

No community of Christians is under its own authority, and so no individual community can ordain its own leaders. This must be done for it by the rest of the church, by all other congregations, as it were. Such overseers are sent by the whole Church to each local church, which must receive this overseer and his discipline willingly, as a gift received from the whole Church. Because these overseers must be trained in the full deposit of faith, we need a trained and ordained clergy. Christ makes himself present to us in the form of these disciplinarians, who are responsible for connecting us to all the people of Christ, mediating to us the whole Church, and passing on to us all the characteristics of the servanthood of Christ. Obedience to the God who is really God is freedom, and obedience to his word and then, to those he made his apostles, is the form Christ takes for us now.

Our overseers are the love and discipline of Christ for us as they pass on what they have received from Christ and enable us to receive it in full and thankfully. We have to help these overseers to be good transmitters of the faith, and we do this by encouraging them to instruct us, and by taking our complaints to them and to God when they fail to do so. So discussion of the office of the bishop is no defence of clerical interests, but an essential part of the living witness of the contemporary Church.

Next we must relate the bishop to the assembly and to the plurality-and-unity of the whole Christ.

The Christian people is a vast assembly made up of all the members of Christ, both those who for us are in the past and the future. All the members of that assembly, the whole Christ, intend that we join them. Our full identity is there with them. They intend to make us present there with them, and the pass on to us the means by which we may fully take on our identity and take up our place in that assembly.

This future and final assembly makes itself present to the present world in two modes. It passes on the manyness and diversity of the whole Christ to each eucharistic congregation present in each location in the world. And it makes present to the world the unity of the whole Christ in the one indivisible Church in which each of these congregations participate. The Church participates in the unity and plurality of the whole Christ. It witnesses to the manyness and oneness of Christ, and it passes on to the world the manyness and unity it receives from Christ. The Church supplies the world simultaneously with both unity and plurality, identity and difference. The world receives its own unity and diversity, and with them its very existence, from the whole assembly of Christ. This act of witness shows that, in itself, apart from Christ, the world is not yet either one or many. Without the present assembly of the Church, present in every part of the world, both the unity and diversity of the world are in doubt.

The assembly of Christ’s people makes itself present in the eucharistic community in each locality. In its petitions it makes each locality present to God, and so that locality receives its existence. Each congregation that confesses Christ-with-his-whole-people, receives the discipline and shaping of the whole Church. The eucharistic community that receives the shaping of the whole Christ makes the whole future cosmic community present there in that locality. To participate in the whole it must seek Christ in every corner of his worldwide Church and beg each part of the body to give it that gift of Christ that it has not yet received. Thus each particular part of the world, represented and made present in the assembly called before God, seeks and receives the discipline of Christ learned and exercised worldwide and through all generations. Next we have to link this universality to the authority and discipline of Christ, that the Lord exercises through his entire Church.

So far I have said that in the eucharist we receive our place in the one loaf of Christ glorified together with his people. In the eucharist all are called and gathered together in Christ, and through him we will be connected to, and so become alive to, all other people. When we are at last connected to one another, we will no longer be isolated entities, are our life be be supplied to us without limit.

It is not only that we are being fitted together in a vast living company of people, but that this company is being fitted to the cosmos. Humanity and nature are in process of reconciliation and integration. The church and the cosmos, like two halves of a single piece of engineering, are being brought together to form one vast entity. We are learning how to get into time with the cosmos, and the cosmos is being brought into synch with us. When humanity and nature are fitted together, and move in step, they will make a single beautiful working whole, called ‘creation’. But in giving the loaf to you, he is making it complete. It is not complete without you, but as you take hold of it and it is so joined to you, it is made complete. You are the completion of the cosmos. So the eucharistic loaf is a world-loaf – all creation united with Christ. We will be complete, and live with, rather than against, the order of creation. When Christ is all in all, we will all be in all.

This bread, which we now understand is the loaf, shows the world the present and the future of the church, which is linked to the future of the cosmos. The loaf we see held up in the eucharist is the cosmos. It is shown to us so we can acknowledge that it is not yet complete, but still fragmented. It is waiting for us, and for many others. (The verb ‘shows’ is scarcely adequate to the case, but I’ll come back to it when I talk about participation and our Amen).

The Lord wants us to acknowledge that it is not yet whole loaf, and that we are all waiting for the rest of God's creation to come in and join this loaf. This incomplete loaf represents his commission, ‘Go into all the world’: the mass is commission and mission. We have to go out and get these many others and bring them back with us and present them to God here at this point. That loaf is one half of a tally stick: the point is to come up with the other half. So this bread is work. This work of bringing these many in is what is going on in the lifting them up (anaphora) or offering them. This means that we present them to the Lord for his inspection. This work is Christ’s work. It is not our work apart from Christ. It is an invitation to participate in Christ, and so also in his work, to take it for ourselves, and to enjoy with him this labour of his along with its outcome.

Only within this assembly, that recognises and gives the proper name to all things as creatures of God, does this by participating (publicly for the benefit of world) in Christ’s office of lifting up (anaphora) the world to God. Only the assembly-member (represented by the bishop) in the assembly can carry out this priestly office. Thus only the bishop is the priest, and only when all those around him, all the people of God, accompany him in this act, so it is their act because his, his because theirs, their joint act because the act of Christ. In the next post I will talk about the significance of the bishop.

Jesus does not come to the individual believer alone, but to his whole community. And he is not merely present to us, but brings us into this community and incorporates us in this body. It is Jesus Christ who comes to me, anointed (_christ_ed) with his whole people. As members of that people, we are part of that christ-ing.

We exist, you and I, purely because Christ holds us in his regard. He never loses concentration, and his regard is our whole life-supply. Though we may be hidden from all other people, dead to them, yet we are sustained in life by Christ. He will bring us to them, and them to us, so that as we are increasingly united to one another we become alive with the complete life of our Lord. We will live, and flourish, and enable one another to flourish without limit and gloriously, as his regard brings us into connection with one another. In his regard we will participate in one another, and live to and from one another.

Now Christ calls us to receive from him all whom he calls together in his eucharist. Like Jacob sending his flocks ahead to Esau, Christ sends us all these people ahead of him to us. To receive him we have to receive them, all of them, refusing none. They are all of them part of the loaf he intends for us. As we take them from him, as his members, they become part of us and we become part of them. We will receive our name and identity from them, and cannot attempt to be ourselves without them. We may not define ourselves by any more exclusive definition or smaller group. The identity that we will receive from this vast company will make us universal beings, for Christâ??s is the true and universal eucharist.

In the eucharist we pray and ask God for the whole of future body of Christ. We look forward to all those who are to come, and who will make that body complete, and we wait, and mourn, for those who are not yet present. Their absence means that we are not yet present as we want to be. The whole Christ, and our own very being, is waiting for them.

For us now the eucharist is exclusive, partial and anticipatory, for this kingdom has not yet come. Our way into this communion is through the exclusive path of the cross of Christ, in which the many exclusive groups and false universals (â??catholicitiesâ??) are stripped off us.

My caricature continues:

Catholic and Protestant deliberations on the eucharist tend to focus on the encounter of two individuals, Jesus Christ and the believer. In this encounter Christ makes himself present in the form of the wafer consecrated before us. In the eucharist Jesus comes to me in an event of transformation in which ordinary bread is made extraordinary. But it is not the bread which is being transformed here, but the Christian. The Christian is being made holy, transformed from one degree of Christlikeness to another, from partial to whole and perfect.

The loaf does not represent Christ individualised and therefore without us. The loaf represents Christ – and us with him. That loaf is him and us together. It represents us in part as we are (broken) and in part as we shall be (whole). Thus the loaf represents all humanity recapitulated in Christ, who together make the one. It is the Christ-and-his-people loaf, the Christ-in-his-kingdom loaf.

The resurrection does not just mean that one day my little body will be made to stand upright again. It is that I will be raised to you, and you will be raised to me, so that the relationship we once had will be restored, and the relationship that we never had will now begin. I will be alive because you will supply me with this life: you will be my source of life and I will be your source of life. This will be so because we will both be connected to Christ, who is the source for all of us, and he will give and receive us back from one another again, authenticating our reception of one another.

I have been running away from people my whole life long. But in the event of the resurrection I am turned around so that I run slap into those very people I have been fleeing. Our collision and sudden encounter is what the resurrection is, for me and for them. In this encounter we are brought into relationship with all others, and so transformed.

We are being brought into relationship with those who are (presently) living and with those who are (to us) dead. They are dead to us and to each other, but they are not dead to Christ. Even separated by death from all other persons, they are alive, because Christ does not end the relationship he has with them; as long as Christ does not let them go, they are sustained and cannot finally die. Christ does not believe in death; he does not give it an inch, and he will not allow its individualizing and isolating to prevail over us.

It is not that I am being transformed as a merely individual entity. Rather I am being turned outwards so that I can no longer be thought of as someone cut off and isolated from others. I am being adapted to fit each other living person. We are all of us being fitted to one another. Resurrection means that I am brought into living relationship with, and so made alive to, every other person, and they to me. The (future) body of Christ will be made of every living person. We are being broken out of our present partial and sectarian community and brought into a much bigger one, indeed into the universal community. Our small local sectarian loaf is being re-dissolved and baked into a much bigger loaf – one that is made of all.

Chris keeps nudging me towards saying something reckless about catholicity and ‘full communion with Rome’. His gambit is ‘Catholicism with a small "c" is incoherent without Catholicism with a big "C.".' I have resisted for months, for surely a real friend would not ask me to do anything so foolish. But now for your entertainment (ready with that outrage?) I am going to take a couple of posts to caricature and contrast two different ways of thinking about the church. Here goes:

The Western church begins its ecclesiology with consideration of the priest, the people and either the eucharistic host (or bible, depending on which is your side of the Reformation divide). It sees the eucharistic bread as one single wafer, broken for each individual communicant (or, the bible immediately open and comprehensible to the individual believer). Its ecclesiology begins with the church hierarchy, with the individual priest at the local level, and the pope at the worldwide level. The priest consecrates the bread and the people are formed by its reception. The pope holds the church together, making all these people and congregations one church. The logic here is that, though the authority of the priest is given by the pope and validated by him, priest and pope are individuals, but the pope is more so, his greater universal individuality sourcing and validating the individuality of each church in each locality (Yes, it is caricature, but I am trying not to take too long a run-up to what I want to say - this is only a blog).

On this logic the people are the church because the priest, or the pope, ministers to them. His ministry makes them who they are: he is not only the source of their unity but of their existence as church. The Western church makes this basic assumption of the singleness of the priest, and of the pope, and assumes that the manyness of the Christian people derive from it. Unity occurs at the expense of diversity.

The Protestant Reformers insisted that the people are made the people of God by baptism, the direct action of God, not by the ministry of the hierarchy. The laity do not depend on the hierarchy for their existence as the people of God. But despite its proper stress on the people of God, there was some part of the gospel that the Reformers did not adequately recover. They did not manage to show that the people of God are not only the recipients of the gospel, but also the form of the gospel. The manyness of the people of God is caused by the gospel because the gospel is Christ united with his people. He is never without them and they are never without him. They are never known without him, and he is never known without them. The gospel is the manyness of Christ’s people.

In the Western half of the church we have this basic and very deep assumption of a oneness or unity that occurs at the expense of diversity. Although the diversity is expressed, Western theology does not make clear that the diversity is not subordinate to the unity. It does not tell us clearly enough that plurality and unity are equally fundamental. To put it at its very bluntest, the Western church fails to tell us that the people, and included with them the leadership of the church (and not the leadership of the church without the people) who make the unity of the church. This is to say that Christ-united-with-his-people, never one without the other, who are the church. Instead we are left with the impression that the pope makes the church but the church does not make the pope, and the Reformers did not succeed in getting rid of this assumption from the deepest level of the logic of ecclesiology. This is implicit assumption, an aspect of the logic of the Western church – for no part of the Western church teaches this explicitly. But this logic holds good not only for the pope but it is also the logic of the position of every minister and pastor before every congregation. As such it is denial of the gospel embedded in the form and structure of the church.

So next I have to show that the Eastern Orthodox are the guardians of some part of the gospel, and of the logic, of the gospel, embodied in the public form of the church, that we Westerners have yet to learn. I will call this ‘catholicity’.

Father Thomas Hopko has produced a very significant statement of what is outstanding between the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches. I have plucked four paragraphs from a nine-page document.

The pope would also make it clear that Christ's crucifixion was not a payment of the debt of punishment that humans allegedly owe to God for their sins. He would rather teach that Christ's self-offering to his Father was the saving, atoning and redeeming payment of the perfect love, trust, obedience, gratitude and glory that humans owe to God, which is all that God desires of them for their salvation.

WOW

â??The pope would also assure all Christians that the bishop of Rome will never do or teach anything on his own authority, "from himself and not from the consensus of the church (ex sese et non ex consensu ecclesiae)." He would promise to serve in his presidency solely as the spokesperson for all the bishops in apostolic succession who govern communities of believers who have chosen them to serve, and whose validity and legitimacy as bishops depend solely on their fidelity to the Gospel in communion with their predecessors in the episcopal office, and with each other.â??

RIGHT

â??The bishop of Rome would be chosen by the church of Rome. His election, because of his church's unique position among the churches, and his position in the world, may have to be affirmed in some way by the patriarchs and the primates of autocephalous (i.e. self-governing) archbishoprics and metropolias throughout the world. But like the election of all Christian bishops, the pope's selection and installation would be the canonical action of the community that he oversees. A "college of cardinals" appointed by the pope and having nominal ministries in Rome would no longer exist.â??

TOUGH, BUT RIGHT

â??The pope would not select and appoint bishops in any churches. He would, however, affirm them in their ministries, and may even do so in some formal manner, as every bishop is called to affirm his brothers with whom he holds the one episcopate in solidumâ?¦â??

RIGHT AGAIN, THOUGH STILL TOUGH

This new and more modest Rome might change everything for the Protestant mainline denominations. If so many historic Protestant objections to Rome are removed perhaps we would see an ecumenical avalanche. Perhaps the Protestant churches would be unable to stay away from the ongoing ecumenical council that would be the new (or restored) form of the worldwide church. Or, perhaps, without a Catholic Church centralized on a strong Rome we will see anarchy â?? but that would be a faithless fear.

Enormous goodwill, energy and time would be necessary to refashion the papacy so that the Pope of Rome might be Christianity's world leader as the bishop whose church "presides in love" among all the churches of orthodox faith and catholic tradition. And, as recent popes have insisted, radical repentance would be also be required, beginning with the Roman church itself whose calling, as first among Christian churches, is to show the way to all others.

The Orthodox churches would surely have to undergo many humbling changes in attitude, structure and behavior to be in sacramental communion with the Roman church and to recognize its presidency among the churches in the person of its pope. The Orthodox would certainly have to overcome their own inner struggles over ecclesiastical power and privilege. They would have to candidly admit their sinful contributions to Christian division and disunity, and to repent of them sincerely. They would also have to forego all desires or demands for other churches to repent publicly of their past errors and sins, being willing to allow God to consign everything of the past to oblivion for the sake of bringing about the reconciliation and reunion of Christians at the present time.

In a word, the Orthodox would have to sacrifice everything, excepting only the faith itself, for the sake of building a common future together with Christians who are willing and able to do so with them. Like Roman Catholics and Protestants, they would have to be willing to die with Christ to themselves and their personal, cultural and ecclesiastical interests for the sake of being in full unity with all who desire to be saved by the crucified Lord in the one holy church "which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all" (Eph 1.23), that is "the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth." (1Tim 3.15)

Fr. Thomas Hopko Roman Presidency and Christian Unity in our Time With thanks, as ever, to Pontifications

It is an odd thing not to ordain women, but it is precisely this sort of odd decision that is intrinsic to the Christian form of life. But it is not unfair. It is not unfair because the whole Church is given by an act of love, and makes possible love, which is to say, subordinating ourselves and deferring to others. Since the whole community of God is premised on an act of love, we cannot say that any particular station in it is unfair - it is all for free in the first place. The whole Church is made up of beggars who are surprised and relieved to find themselves in it at all. No one has to be in the Church, and if you really want to get on in the world, dont hang around in the Church, get out there in the world.

It is no more unfair on women that they are not ordained than it is unfair that, in the UK at least, women make up the majority in many congregations. If the Christians all wore a ribbon in their hair or stood on one leg, that would be just another of those odd things, like meeting on Sunday morning or eating fish on Fridays, that marks Christians out and makes them identifiable to the rest of the world. The Christian faith and life is full of things that seem odd at first. It takes long Christian life to discover the reason behind some of them, but that reason usually becomes plain when the Christian community really comes under pressure.

What is the reason for this odd ruling about who is ordained? The church has understood that Christ is our husband and we are his bride, and that this is played out publicly in every church service. Each gathering is a microcosm of the relationship of Christ and his Church, the groom at the head the bride before him. We are that bride. He is the male in this analogy, we the female. If you put a female at the front of the congregation that analogy and microcosm is lost, and with it a large part of the Christian teaching that the Lord is groom to our bride - which you can find summarized in Ephesians 5.

A great part of the Christian gospel is communicated tacitly by the arrangement in which the Christian people stand when they are in church together. In every church service the very form in which each congregation assembles is a big corporate analogy, a microcosm. The arrangement of the congregation of one standing before the many is the public playing out of a microcosm of the relationship of God to his creation, and to his people.

Jesus Christ is the husband of this crowd, the provider and protector of this people. The congregation plays the provided for and the protected - his bride. This analogy works if you have a male at the front and regard the rest of the congregation as his bride. Putting a male at the front says that this particular person, Jesus Christ, who became one of the two sexes for us, is our provider and protector. We are those he protects and provides for. This microcosm played out by the whole congregation is an act of anticipation (prolepsis). It is not yet the reality, but it is the beginning and in-breaking of the reality. If you put a female at the head of the congregation this long-running analogy disappears. Of course all this depends on the news that Christ is our husband is actually being preached and taught, and that the congregation is converted and baptised into this event, that Jesus Christ is the husband of the Church.

But it is not simply an equation of husband with male (for lots of males never become husbands), but of husband with an act of unlooked for love. Being a husband is an act of love, even of compassion. It is entirely God's act of compassion, and all our acts of being husbands, parents, neighbours... are extensions of God's act of love. It is an extension of being a generous neighbour to anyone who is without a neighbour, and who needs you to be generous to them. Your ability to be that neighbour is given to you, just so you have something to give to others, by God. God is their neighbour, and he makes you participate in this office, so you become their neighbour, and in this act, become God-like to them and for them. In the same way somebody, one person, in the congregation, is required to play out publicly the role of Christ as groom so the whole congregation can more easily understand itself as God' s bride. It is neither unfair nor fair, but it is God's love, unlooked for, but given anyway.

Well, I am not utterly convinced by all this myself, but at least I have had a go at putting it in writing.

Collegiality was not understood simply in terms of an ultimately non-binding collegial frame of mind; collegiality is rather a reality ontologically grounded in the sacrament of episcopal consecration, the shared participation in the one episcopal office… This collegiality is of course not limited to the horizontal and synchronic relationship with contemporary episcopal colleagues; since the Church is one and the same in all centuries, the present-day church must also maintain diachronic consensus with the episcopate of the centuries before us, and above all with the testimony of the apostles. This is the more profound significance of the apostolic succession in episcopal office.

The episcopal office is thus an office of unity in a two-fold sense. Bishops are the sign and the instrument of unity within the individual local church, just as they are between both the contemporary local churches and those of all times within the universal Church.

Should we not therefore also be in a position to say together: the decision for the ordination of women to the episcopal office can only be made with an overwhelming consensus, and must not in any way involve a conflict between the majority and the minority. It would be desirable that this decision would be made with the consensus of the ancient churches of the East and West. If on the contrary the consecration of a bishop becomes the cause of a schism or blocks the way to full unity, then what occurs is something intrinsically contradictory. It should then not take place, or should be postponed until a broader consensus can be reached.

‘ Grex unus, qui unianima consensione pascitur’, that is the aim of ecumenical dialogue; it can only succeed if the unianima consensio of every single one of the separated churches is preserved and is then constituted step by step between those separated ecclesial bodies. May this, in spite of all the difficulties and resistance, be granted to us one day by the grace of God.

Cardinal Walter Kasper An address given to the Church of England Bishops’ Meeting (5 June 2006)

If we Westerners are the ‘strong’, and the South are the ‘weak’, we ought to ‘bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves.’ That we bear with them is the only possible sign that we are indeed the mature and the strong.

Even if we sophisticated modern Protestant Westerners are more mature in the faith than all the poor backwards Christians of the Third World, with their patriarchal views of gender and sexuality, they are the gift of God to us (and we to them). God has generously bound them to us. We are, as it were, married – the ‘sophisticated’ to the ‘backward’, the liberal to the fundamentalist.

We cannot decide to make changes in our corner of the Church, because our corner does not belong to us only, but to the whole Church. Unilateral decisions show not only indifference, but antagonism to them. Our salvation consists in our being joined to them in Christ, so separation from them tugs against our salvation.

Do those who want to ‘go forward’ into new, ostensibly more inclusive, forms of church life, really don't mind if they leave others, traditionalists, Africans and Asians, behind? They want to go a little more quickly, but do they want to leave others behind? But in the wilderness if we do not go at the pace of the very slowest, we will be abandoning the slowest and weakest, so the body will break up and never arrive. The whole point of our time in the wilderness is not to arrive anywhere in particular, but to learn to serve and hold on to one another, the strong serving the weak and waiting for them. Fast finishers don't get earlier admission, for admission to the land promised to us is only for the whole Church, the strong bound to the weak.

Of course if these other churches are wrong about who may be ordained, we have to tell them so, and if there are churches who belive we are wrong about this, we have to listen to them and examine ourselves. We have to talk to them, and either be corrected by them and return to them, or to correct them and beg them to come back to us. We have to serve them in this way, or be served by them. Our readiness to do is the proper demonstration of our maturity. Any division in the Church makes it hard to pray, but our present acts that widened our separation from the rest of the Church, mean that we must pray and lament.

Catholicity, sometimes also called ecumenism, is not an extra. It is the centre of the gospel. It is an evangelical imperative. Without reconciliation with the rest of the Church, there is no salvation for us. If the Church of England, and its Synod, does not feel the absolute priority of ecumenical reconciliation with all other churches, this is not merely negligence, it is culpable, it is sin. But we may not forget that we are sinners forgiven, and so in humility we must consider these others better than ourselves. We are the bloody-minded, schismatic, divisive ones, now brought by baptism into the Body of Christ and so calmed and reconciled. Our reconciliation, and our reception of our reconciliation, is our being reconciled to all others. But if we are still holding out against other Christian churches, through ignorance or indolence or because we don't care, we are pushing that the reconciliation and forgiveness away. We are pushing our Lord away, and with him our salvation

Catholicity means we do not make our own rules. Our Anglican readiness to make new rules about who may be ordained a bishop shows that we have lost touch with the church in any part of the world. Our lack of concern for the rest of the world is a lack of love. Is it really all the same to us if we do kiss goodbye to the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Church? For Rome, Cardinal Walter Kasper is saying that Anglicans and Episcopalians have put the movement we were making towards the unity of the Church into reverse because the started making new rules for Church order. We think we can make new rules, just for ourselves. But we may not make unilateral decisions for our corner of the worldwide church. The Episcopal Church of the USA (ECUSA) is only the Church when it is connected, not just to the United States, but to all the rest of the Church catholic - worldwide, historic and eschatological. In England, the Church of England is only the Church when it is connected to the rest of the Church not in England, and the Anglican church is only the Church by being connected to the non-Anglican Church. Our salvation is our being tied together, our connection, to these others, so that with them we make the whole universal body of Christ. If we loosen our connections to the rest of the Church, it is not just that we float away from the rest of body, but that the whole body starts to break up, and ceases to be that universal community of witness to God. By leaving we threaten the life even of those we leave, never mind what this does to our own life.

At the Sunday eucharist at St Mary’s, our discipleship sometimes appears in the intercessions. These tend to be led by a small number of lay members of the congregation who learned their faith in Sunday school in the West Indies forty years ago. Their intercessions are the Word of God and the gift of God to us still. They know how to pray, and their prayers teach how to pray, and in the course of these prayers we learn a little about our Master, and as a result we learn something about who we are. Because the organist has taught the congregation to come in on time, each ‘Lord, hear us’ receives a proper crisp ‘Lord, Graciously hear us’. You can’t drift too far off in intercessions because your response is continually required. Every part of the service is antiphonal, so the whole congregation is at work, and all this repetition brings slow comprehension, very slow in my case.

St Mary’s follows Common Worship and the Revised Common Lectionary. This means that the Word of God we hear week by week provides some of the narrative logic of the gospel. This week’s readings follow on in some respect from last week’s. The great advantage of this is that we are not dependent on choices made by our own clergy. Of course we get their platitudes from the pulpit. Typically sermons begin with a rambling anecdote, come back to one aspect of one of the New Testament readings (ignoring the other NT reading, the Old Testament and psalm – see, four pieces of Scripture altogether), and then wobble towards some trite apercu about the way ‘we’ are today. But I really don't mind sitting through the sermon, with its embarrassed English inconsequential and often contradictory moralizing. I willing sit through twenty minutes of nonsense in order to have the forty-five minutes of liturgy, with the huge amount of the Word of God that Common Worship contains, with all its sentences, licks and riffs – so I can hear it, say it and sing it in full congregation.

Sermons that follow a theme or expound a book of the bible are fine in an evening worship-and-teaching service. If I was vicar I would move Sunday evensong back to Saturday evening. Then we could say that Saturday evensong was the prelude to the through-the-night prayer meeting or liturgy that culminates with full church sung eucharist on Sunday morning. In non-feast (‘ordinary’) times of year I would have the whole preaching-teaching-worship service followed by pizzas, dance, more guitars-and-drums modern worship racket until the young people wore themselves out.

After five years with this basically very middle-class congregation, I know that it is Christ who serves himself up in the sermon and in the cup. He serves us in the strange form of these embarrassing performances. It is not that Christ hides himself in the gabbled and uncomprehending reading of Scripture and embarrassed serving of the cup, but that he makes himself plain in there in these cringe-inducing performances. He makes himself present and available here for us all, not only in the obvious disciples, whom even I can identify, like those who lead intercessions well. He makes present in the – to me – hidden way represented by those who despise an evangelical faith, though they are our leaders, and who prefer to dive down every culture-de-sac of middle-class imported spirituality and activism. Not only are these the ones I have to break bread with, but they are the cup I have to drink in order to drink with him, and share in him.

The Word of God and the Eucharist are not two things, but one. Five years at St Mary's now, and this is as far as my thinking has got. For the eucharist to be the eucharist, Scripture has to be heard and explained. Where the Scripture is not read and opened the cup of eucharist is empty, and this wine brings us no Christ. Scripture has to be opened, and that means read and expounded. First it must be read, well, slowly and loud, not gabbled or murmured, by someone who understands what they are reading. And then it must be explained. The lessons – all three of them – must be so explained, week after week so that we begin to realise who we are and what it means for us to be Christ’s people, and to be Christ's people here, in our case in Hackney, London. If the Scripture is opened in the course of the service, then as the years go by people will be converted and become disciples, and the whole business of our sancification will begin. If Scripture is not heard and opened, this bread and cup will be precisely as eucharistic as our coffee and biscuits. Scripture is not opened by preaching alone, nor by the eucharist alone, but both together, understood as one.

It seems to me that the Christ served up in the cup is the Christ served up in the sermon. The one Lord is served up in what to us are two forms, preaching and sacrament, but of course just the one indivisible Christ. So the preaching is sacramental and eucharistic, and the eucharist is edifying because it reaches our heads as much as our heart, it feeds, teaches and unifies each of us, head and body.

The Word of God means not just the Scripture read but the Scripture preached on – explained – in the sermon. Actually we could widen that to include the congregational responses, which are also sentences from Scripture, and even further to include the hymns, for they are also our responses to the Scripture-and-bread received. In fact I think that in St Mary’s, insofar as Scripture is opened, it is by the hymns and intercessions, rather than by anything that comes from the pulpit. Well, I’ll try to make the case – you see what you think. In St Mary’s the teaching happens principally through the antiphonally sung psalm that follows the Old Testament and then through the choice of hymns. Clearly our selection of hymns follows some well-thought out schema associated with Common Worship. I approve of it. It seems to me that the great teacher in my church is the organist. By his playing he teaches that congregation to sing and so in some measure to worship. He plays with a crispness and a dedication to supporting and driving the singing of the congregation that I have never seen anywhere else. The congregation sing so confidently that some of the theological sense of what we are singing is surely absorbed.

The hymns we sing, particularly in the season of Easter, contain lines of lurid (Protestant) penal substitution and macabre (Catholic) accounts of Christ's wounds bleeding for us. Whoever picks the hymns either cannot tell the difference or is isn’t concerned by it, and that is fine by me. But I don't think I have ever heard the judgment and the anger of God tackled in sermons, let alone any talk of Christ's blood. The atonement is considered too difficult or divisive to preach on, even in the run up to Easter. Though our hymns are full of it, penal substitution and almost any account of the atonement are avoided by our clergy, and when you can get the conversation onto the topic the subject is quickly changed. They avoid the atonement in sermons, except occasionally when say Genesis 22, Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, comes up, and then the idea of sacrifice to God is ruled out, hard to say on what grounds - taste, maybe? Still, the atonement is there in the Scripture read, in the sentences, responses and above all in the hymns, so we are always receiving a good part of the evangelical narrative in the Sunday morning eucharist. Much of it is said or sung by the congregation, and this is crucial it seems to me. But the sermon never explains the lessons we have heard, or the responses we have made to those lessons and so never points out to us the unity of the whole, given by the evangelical narrative. None of this unity of Scripture-and-response is explained, so my question is - how eucharistic is this?

Jesus Christ is the universal man, the summit and definition of what human being is. He is the properly catholic being. Life with him means communion with all mankind. He is now forming us into catholic beings, people who are defined, by participation in him, by fellowship with every other human being. The Christian life – the apprenticeship we serve – opens us out from our present incurved state to bring us into relationship with every other living thing. This means that the Christian life and faith is intrinsically about catholicity, thus ecumenism, the reconciliation of every household and community with every other, is what the gospel is. In the apprenticeship of this Christian life we learn to reach out to the whole of the rest of the Church, indeed to the future completition of the Church, when Christ shall be all in all.

You are only a catholic as you strain towards reconciliation with all other churches, and treat them not only as wayward and sometimes willfully disobedient, who you must mourn and pray for, and mention in your intercessions that precede every eucharist. But you must also treat them as those who have some part of the gospel, and some ‘portion’ of Christ and so as those you must learn from and submit to. Being catholic certainly means being under the authority and Magisterium of the Roman Church, treating its teaching with respect and being formed by it. But you must also be under the authority of every other part of the church (no matter how abusive that authority sometimes is), and everywhere look for Christ and ask to be renewed and reformed by him.

I am not a Roman Catholic, but an Anglican, a Reformed Anglican (‘catholic evangelical’ for convenience). The term ‘reformed’ can only refer to the catholic church and so to the determination together that the Church must repent and be disciplined, reformed and renewed by Christ its head. But I think it is right always to wonder whether I should be more 'Roman', whether I should convert to 'Roman Catholic'. Of course this is not a comfortable place to be. Of course this means many contradictions. You may change my mind on this. Of course.

We believe that the Windsor Report offers in its Sections A & B an authentic description of the life of the Anglican Communion, and the principles by which its life is governed and sustained. We accept the description offered in Sections A & B of the Windsor Report as the way in which we would like to see the life of the Anglican Communion developed, as we respond in faithful discipleship to Christ.

The Anglican Communion has never before articulated so clearly and fully its self-understanding. Given the rapid growth of the Anglican Communion in recent decades (especially in the Global South), the wider globalisation of our culture, and Anglicanism's characteristic features of diversity and autonomy it was only a matter of time before such articulation of Anglican ecclesiology became necessary. It is tragic it required some to 'tear the fabric of our Communion at its deepest level' (as the Primates said in October 2003) for this to happen. Nevertheless, it is now clearer than ever before just who we are as Anglicans within the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church. That is a major fruit of the suffering of recent years with benefit not only in inter-Anglican discussions but wider ecumenical ones.

Andrew Goddard Walking Together: The Future Shape of the Anglican Communion

You can read the Windsor report online (left-hand panel) or download in PDF.

To the extent that the church of England bishops only go to church of England parishes and churches, they have forgotten what the office of bishop is. To the extent that Methodist bishops (in the States) only go the Methodist congregations they have not understood that office of bishop is intrinsically ecumenical, because it is intrinsically the very office of Christ, who calls all men to obedience. He commands them, and they must hear and obey. The ecumenism is not an option but the evangelical command of God, the assertion, for our sake, of his lordship. And what we have said for bishops is so for all Superintendents and Moderators, who if they know themselves to be under the discipline of the whole Church are all bishops by another name.

So it is the job of the bishop to knock humbly on the door of every church in his diocese, not only those churches which ostensibly recognise bishops because their structure is Anglican or Episcopalian, but most particularly those who do not recognise bishops and assure us that they are independent of all that hierarchy. He must go to every charismatic assembly and little house church and wait until they get over themselves and let him in, and with him, the rest of the catholic Church. Until that time he must wait out in the rain. He is the icon of Christ, the sign of unity of the whole church that is presently waiting out on the street for each of us in our assembly to let them in. He is the icon of the Church because the suffering of Christ is visisble in him - for those who can see it. It is us who are making our Lord wait for us out there.

My own vicar (rector, actually) does not like to lead. He does not see his ministry in terms of leadership, but in terms of enabling. But being an enabler or facilitator does not mean not leading: leading is exactly what facilitating is. Is it really such a great paradox, that some ministry (that is some Christian servanthood) takes the form of leadership? He serves us by giving us a lead, he is set over us because he is our servant.

Of course, in some way he is leading us just by saying that he is not leading us. He corrects when we come to him with what he sees as wrongly prescriptive requests. He is leading, but denying it. This distorts the relationship between us, taking away removing the language by which we can appeal to one another for aid and support and leadership. We have to intercede with our clergy and beg them to take our needs seriously. We really do need to hear from Christ, and they really are the ones appointed for this purpose. They promised to do this for us in their ordination vows, and repeated it when they were licensed.

Let us remind them in our prayers that they do not now need any extra permission to do this. But let us tell them often that we give them this permission, and encourage them to lead and teach and train us in the whole discipleship package of Christ.

Who is it that they are looking over their shoulder at? Who is it who has more appeal to them than us? Who is it carries more authority with them? It is of course the liberal elite outside the Church, who deride the Christian faith, that our clergy are listening to and want affirmation from. So then let us raise our voices to make them louder and gladder, and more desperate and importunate, than all these other voices.

When we celebrate the eucharist we must start sending some eucharistic bread round to every other church in the area. We should send our bishop to knock on the door of every congregation in the borough, ask to be admitted and allowed to bring them some bread, wine (not consecrated, but blessed) and a little encouragement from us. Yes, that’s right, he must go to every denomination, which means other denominations, those which do not recognise his authority. If they admit him they admit us, and so start to recognise the catholicity of the church – which means that we cannot be Church without them, and they cannot be Church without us, and that we represent a proper discipline on each other. Of course he must walk, all right, take the bus, and of course he must wear his robes and take his crozier, and stand outside each Church and knock. He must offer himself to those who did not ask for him. He must beg to be received and heard by them, and to be encouraged and taught by them, and he must bring back to us what he has learned from them. He has to beg their forgiveness for our separation and aloofness, and in our name he has to forgive them for separating themselves from us. He has to teach and correct them, warn them of the results of their separation, and he has to receive their teaching and correction, and together with them look forward to the day when we can celebrate together at last. Every eucharist looks forward to this and every exchange of the peace anticipates this. Obvious, isn’t it?

Over at Confessing Reader, Peter Brown’s article on the future of Anglicanism, in the United States in particular, starts by thinking through the institutional possibilities but quickly gets down to the theological motives and principles. Here are three of the points he makes:

1 The bond of communion is a sacramental witness to the love of God on earth.

2. The catholic community is a necessary context for authentic exegesis of Scripture

3. To survive as a unified body, Anglicanism will need to develop an authoritative tradition of Scriptural interpretation. In order to provide an effective restraint, this authoritative tradition will need an institutional voice. In short, we will need something very like the Catholic magisterium; indeed, since we have retained episcopal governance, our episcopate is the natural location for such an interpretative function.

These three points are blooming obvious, so it is only a very short time I am sure before we start to hear these points being made by bishops in the United Kingdom. After all it is exactly these three points that make a bishop a bishop.

Last week’s Church of England Synod discussed the issue of how to look after those who will not accept a woman as their bishop. It didn't deal with the issue of woman bishops, but merely this lesser issue of how to look after those who, after the decision to ordain woman as bishops has been made, hold out against their (woman) bishop. The Synod was beginning to consider whether they should be offered another bishop to report to, under a measure allowing for ‘transferred episcopal oversight’? (Should they? What do you think?)

According to my source (my vicar is a member of Synod), the Synod doesn't know how to talk through the issue of women bishops directly, but the majority assumes that they are inevitable.

This is not the problem at all, however. The problem is that we do not know what a bishop is, and this is because we are so confused about authority. Being under authority is good for us, and it is a fundamental part of the good news of Jesus Christ. A bishop is quite simply our trainer and our disciplinarian, given to us by our Lord, to train, discipline, form and disciple us. He and his discipline is good news, central to the gospel and to our salvation. We are not left alone, but in Christ we are now to be shaped, moulded and loved, by the Church, the whole Church, the whole historical tradition and worldwide catholicity that is the body of Christ. This Church has authority over us for our sake, to bring us up and make Christians of us. But the Body of Christ is not a merely theoretical or amorphous authority that we choose to receive as we want, that we may choose the acceptable and discard the unacceptable parts of. It is a specific sets of authorities, and indeed one specific authority, one person, this bishop. The bishop was chosen, by Church, for you. You were chosen, by Christ, for the Church, for the world. The logic is exactly the same. We have to put up with you, and receive you gladly as the gift of Christ to us. So individually we don’t choose our bishop, our teacher, but they are imposed on us, by the Church. Of course we are under many authorities in the Church, but this one particular person, the bishop is all these authorities conveniently packaged in one person, whom you can ring and go and see. (In your church, the bishop is called the Moderator, or the Superintendant, or something similar).

The snag is that our (Church of England) bishops forget how to be under discipline. They forget how to take discipline themselves, and so they forget how to give discipline. They don't know how to lead or disciple us. No one ever tells them that they are the discipline of Christ for us – and we seldom pray for them. A Church without real leaders and disciplinarians is as confused and unhappy as children without parental discipline. They don't know where the boundaries are, and so are always pushing a bit further to se if they can find them. Each episode of childish misbehaviour is a question to their parents. Do you love me? Show me, grasp me more firmly. So with bishops, if our bishops don't push back, and reprimand us, it may be because they love us too little. Let us pray for them, and whenever you see your bishop, remind him of who he is and what he has to say to Church.

Protestant identity is defined by opposition to Rome. Protestants may disagree vehemently on various doctrinal and ecclesiological issues, but they are firmly united in their rejection of the Pope and other Catholic distinctives. The Protestant Churches will never ever ever, not in a million zillion years, give up their freedom from papal authority; they will never give up their private judgment. That’s why Protestants are Protestant and like being Protestant. This is why they enthusiastically embrace denominationalism and branch theories of the Church. To be Protestant is to enjoy the freedom to choose one’s own church or even create a better one. Bottomline: All Protestants agree that the Catholic Church must abandon her claim to be the true Church: she must become a denomination just like everyone else. The Protestant commitment to denominationalism will never change, because to change on this point is to cease to be Protestant. I do not know if Catholic ecumenists really understand the Protestant mind and spirit at this point. It doesn’t matter how many ecumenical agreements are reached. Such agreements only express the views of the ecumenism experts; they do not impact the essential structure of Protestant identity.

Read the rest of Al Kimel's post at Catholicism and the Ecumenical Adventure over at Pontifications.

The church is one, holy, catholic and apostolic. In fact I just want to think through these four marks of the church with you. There are others, of course – evangelical and charismatic are two I want to talk about too some time. But meanwhile, these four, because they are from the creed (see, nothing is too obvious to be said) and because we say the creed. That is once a week, the congregation of which I am a member (I’ll tell you about it later) say these words – out loud. If we say them we own them, so we cannot just shrug when asked what we mean by them.

I hope to talk about these four marks of the Church – one, holy, catholic, apostolic. Really I am amazed to find myself saying this sort of thing, me, the evangelical Christian. To use this proud title, evangelical, demands that you confess, that is say out loud, this creed, with these four words, one, holy, catholic, apostolic, every week. Shall I make this plainer? You cannot be evangelical without saying this creed, and saying these four words, which are four vital promises and instructions to us. A service that does not include three lessons from Scripture, one of which is from the Old Testament, and this creed (and much else that we shall come to), is not an evangelical service. The Christians in that service, that is not shaped and governed by these four marks of the church, are not receiving the sustenance by which they can grow: they are being sold short.

But in St Mary’s I don't remember ever hearing these four words – one, holy, catholic, apostolic) expounded. Really, I wonder why we have a sermon.

I want to use this blog to say some things that should be obvious. Why? Because they don’t appear to be known by the very people to whom they should be best obvious. Every Sunday morning I listen to a clergy person who either has learned these really obvious things, or has decided that they have found something more important to say, something from some other source. What should be most obvious is  that we have to hear from him or her what the Scripture readings that we have just heard, say. The job of the minister, teacher, clergy, whoever, is to say again what the Scripture readings say, to open the Scripture to us. It is not sufficient to refer to a line or two of one of the New Testament readings in passing. Opening the Scripture means talking us through all three readings please. Their job description, to which they gave their promise at their ordination, is to serve the Word of God, and to serve us by serving that whole Word up to us. They simply have to repeat what we have heard, using other words so that we hear it again, and clearer, in all its strangeness and directness. So, this blog is just a response to the sermon I heard and the service I took part in part in on Sunday. For this reason it is full of things that are really obvious to most of you. It is my questions about what was and wasn’t said in that sermon, and my questions about what we heard and said and sung in that service and it is my ‘thank you’ and my ‘Amen’.