Tag Archives: Anglicanism

Revised Common Lectionary

21 Saturday May 2016

Posted by in Anglicanism, Bible, Catholic Tradition, Lutheranism

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830_connectThere’ve been a few articles sitting in my archives for a while on the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) which might be worth a read, so let’s talk about them. The RCL is, of course, mostly what we use in the ELCA, almost all of the Anglican churches, Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians, and churches from other denominations. And it is largely in sync with the Roman Catholic church, worldwide, as well. Yes, there are others, in the ELCA, there is the Narrative Lectionary, the LCMS has a Historic One Year Lectionary, and there are likely others. Still that’s pretty broad swath of Western Christianity, and one reason why Chalcedon’s Gospel lesson’s on Sunday here, work for most of us. It also has the benefit of getting us through most of the Bible in a three-year period.

Its story is interesting. The Benedictine Lutheran tells us:

As noted in my earlier article, the roots of the RCL are based on the three year lectionary developed in the Roman Catholic Church during the years following Vatican II. Following the conclusion of Vatican II, Biblical scholars came together to work on the three year lectionary, which resulted in the publication of Ordo Lectionum Missae in 1969. After over a decade of work by scholars from numerous Christian traditions, the Common Lectionary was published in 1983. Finally, after a trial period of the Common Lectionary, and revisions made by even more scholars, the Revised Common Lectionary was published in 1992. (For more information, go to this website: http://www.commontexts.org/).

So, the RCL is the fruit of the labor of multiple scholars from multiple Christian traditions over the course of several decades. It is not a perfect lectionary. But, it is a truly “catholic” (universal, not just Roman) lectionary.

And so it is one of those ecumenical efforts, across almost all of the mainline churches, to teach the same thing, at the same time, and to do it effectively. How is it effective? Because it is a worship lectionary, not a Bible study guide. Again from the Benedictine Lutheran.

Through the magic of Google, I found an article called “Explaining the lectionary for readers”, which contains a beautiful explanation of how and why the Catholic (and therefore, RCL) lectionary readings are put together.  Although it is from a Catholic website, this language strikes me as being very much Lutheran as well, with its primary focus being on the proclamation of Christ:

 “[W]e can think of the readings at the Eucharist as a series of concentric circles:
• at the centre is the gospel which is a recollection and celebration of the mystery of Jesus, the Anointed One;
• this recollection is given added dimensions by readings from the Old Testament: the Law (such as Genesis or Exodus), the prophets (such as Amos or Joel), the Psalms, and the Writings (such as the Book of Wisdom or the Books of the Maccabees);
• then there are the readings of the great early Christian teachers’ letters to churches, such as those of Paul.
The purpose of the readings is that, in the words of the General Instruction on the Lectionary, in accordance with ancient practice there should be a ‘re-establishing [of] the use of Scripture in every celebration of the liturgy’ and that this should be seen as ‘the unfolding mystery of Christ’ being ‘recalled during the course of the liturgical year’
*****
If the readings at the Eucharist are there to help unfold the mystery of Jesus Christ, then several important consequences flow from this:
• We are not reading the Scriptures simply to get a knowledge of the Bible.
• We are not reading these passages because many Christians consider reading the Bible a valuable activity in itself.
• This action is not part of a Bible Study, nor should it resemble the classroom atmosphere of a study group.
•The focus of all our reading is not an abstract understanding of the scriptural text – such as would be carried out by a biblical exegete in a theology course – but to see what each portion of text (whether from the gospel, the Old Testament, the psalm, or the epistle) reveals to us about the Paschal Mystery.
• Our reading is not book-focused; it is not text-focused; it is focused on Jesus as the Christ.
• The gospel is the primary focus on the mystery of the Christ in each celebration; the Old Testament and Psalm relate to it as background, example, context, or elaboration; the epistle is a separate attempt to focus on the mystery of the Christ through the help of early Christian teachers.
• The readings are to help us encounter the person of Jesus Christ in whose presence and name we have gathered.
‘The word of God unceasingly calls to mind and extends the plan of salvation, which achieves its fullest expression in the liturgy. The liturgical celebration becomes therefore the continuing, complete, and effective presentation of God’s word’.”

He also notes that Professor Rolf Jacobson, one of the developers of the Narrative Lectionary, says, “We actually think that we do a better job of aligning the Biblical story with the major festivals of the Church year. In the Revised Common Lectionary, you get the adult John the Baptist in Advent saying ‘Jesus is coming’, but that’s not the Christmas story – it’s not the adult John the Baptist saying the adult Jesus is coming. So, what we have is the prophetic texts – the prophets longing with hope for the fulfillment of God’s kingdom and the coming of the Holy One, and then the Holy One is born at Christmas, and we tell, then, the Biblical story in order….”

But is that why we celebrate Advent, or is it as the linked article says?

Is Advent merely a season where we prepare for the birth of the baby Jesus at Christmas?  If so, his claim might have merit.  However, Advent is not just about recalling the story of the baby Jesus coming into the world.  If it were, I’m not sure why we would even have a separate Advent season – we would just have one six week Christmas season. Instead, Advent is also a season where we prepare for the return of Christ at the eschaton (a word which essentially means, to borrow a phrase from the rock group REM: ‘the end of the world as we know it’).  Therefore, contrary to Professor Jacobson’s opinion, the readings where “the adult John Baptist is saying the adult Jesus is coming” make sense given the historical purpose and meaning behind the season of Advent:

“The eschataological orientation that is found in some of these early sources continues to be a significant element in the proclamation of the season of Advent. Indeed, the very name Adventus, ‘coming,’ ‘approach,’ suggests not only the coming of God into the world in Jesus but the approaching return of the risen Lord in all his heavenly splendor.  Indeed, the Advent season and its hope should not be regarded purely or even primarily in terms of Christmas.  It should not even be seen as an introduction to the Incarnation but rather as the completion of the work of redemption.

Your mileage may vary, I suppose, but I was taught the latter, and still believe so.

Four Years, with Love

15 Sunday May 2016

Posted by in Blogging, Faith, St. Isaac

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Desert_Monast-SM-682400381Three years ago, today, Jessica said this.

Across this year my life has changed beyond all recognition, but what has remained constant and grown are the good things, and the bad ones have been burned away, not without some pain, but decisively. Amongst the good things is this place and your companionship. So thank you, all of you.

But since then we’ve found she was just getting warmed up. Across that time she has had a number of jobs, a divorce, an engagement, a serious illness and has moved to Scotland – oh, and kept writing here when she could. Jess and I continue dearest friends, but some days, I wake up wondering what she got up to while I slept. But through all that she remains the same fine, helpful, Christian girl, who mostly desires to be useful, that I met almost 4 years ago, and fell in love with on the road to Walsingham. And Walsingham has continued to provide breakpoints in our friendship, and indeed on Jess’ journey.

When Jess came down with that cancer I mentioned above, it fell on Chalcedon to take over this blog, which he did in an exemplary manner, not only providing continuity of operation, in a very difficult time (on several fronts) but maintaining Jessica’s mission, as well. A very good man, who has worked supremely well for us, and the blog, and his faith. I outlined the history last year, no need to repeat, it is here. I quoted post No. 2 last year to illustrate it.

Polemicists will be polemicists, but the enquirer should not log off the Internet, which has a wealth of resources of interest to those whose minds are open. Like many in the CofE my own catechesis did not exist. I never got round to an Alpha course, and sermons apart, my religious education took place via books and the Web. Sites such as those of Tom Wright, BJ Stockman and Fr. Hunwicke and Fr. Longenecker have been invaluable- and you can always avoid the com-boxes.

There’s an Anglican irenic quality there – an Anglican bishop, an Evangelical Protestant, a high Church (now convert) Anglican and a Catholic convert from Anglicanism. My debt is repaid in part by trying to take an attitude free from confessional bias in what I write. That brings some scorn (rightly from their point of view) from those in all denominations who insist dogma and doctrine matter; I don’t disagree entirely, and I understand where they are coming from. Doctrine and dogma-free Christianity is no Christianity at all. But the Church Fathers hammered all this out a long time ago, and perhaps we’d be wise to settle, as they did, on the Nicene Creed as our benchmark for orthodox belief?

Our Lord Jesus Christ (OLJC) told the Apostles that men would know His followers by their love for each other, and He counselled them to be united; knowing us as He does, He can’t have been all that surprised that we’ve fallen away from those ideals. Perhaps if we were better at them there would be less for the polemicists to reproach us with? Great crimes have been committed in the name of Christianity, that is true, as it is of any great cause entrusted to fallen mankind. It is in our fallen nature to pervert whatever good things we have from God. In our folly we use the consequences of our own sinful state to reject the opportunity to reach out for God’s love; and in our pride erect a superstructure of Pharisaism on OLJC’s words, before proceeding to live in it rather than the love of Christ.

It is foolish to think we can prove or disprove the existence of God. If He exists He is Infinite, we are not; He is the Creator, we the created; if we think we have grasped the fullness of the Infinite then, by that mark, we have not grasped God. OLJC reveals what we need to know, and unless we read the Old Testament through the lessons of the New, we shall go astray. God is love. He came to redeem the world not in the expected form of a Messiah who would bring fire and sword to the heathen, but in the form of a slave, a suffering servant. OLJC redeems us through love and through suffering, not through smiting His enemies. A thought to bear in mind when blogging on religion.

The mission undertaken then, it the one pursued to this day. AATW has become a reasonably large and influential blog (although many are bigger) but on that day, she could have had no idea of what the future would hold. She was willing to share her vision with us. Blogs come and blogs go and sometimes return, but few manage to make it to four years.

And now we’ve made it to that anniversary, with the same mission, and with Jessica herself back in fine voice and full of fire. What the future will bring, we can’t know, but I think, she has rejuvenated the mission that she set for us all.

Perhaps Geoffrey said it best for us all, here.

Here, thanks to you all, I have found a home where I can have my own views challenged, my own knowledge increased, and where there is much food for spiritual nourishment. For all that, I am grateful. I have also found, as I always will, those who want to argue for the sectarian narrowness with which II was brought up, and, rescued from it myself by the Grace of God, I shall ever take my sword and strike it down; a combative Yorkshireman I was born, and I daresay I shall go to meet my Maker as one. I am glad He is all-knowing, because to know all is to understand all. At that last I can only hope that He won’t be altogether displeased with what I’ve done with the talents he gave me.

I also note that today is Pentecost, which is consonant with the mission of this blog. In the Revised Common Lectionary, the Gospel for today is Acts 2:1-21, and seems appropriate to our mission today

But Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and said unto them, Ye men of Judaea, and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you, and hearken to my words:

15 For these are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day.

16 But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel;

17 And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams:

18 And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy:

19 And I will shew wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath; blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke:

20 The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and notable day of the Lord come:

21 And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Last year, I ended with a quote from St. Isaac the Syrian, that Jess used on day one. I still think it summarizes the Chatelaine, and the mission of All along the Watchtower better than anything else I could say.

In love did God bring the world into existence; in love is God going to bring it to that wondrous transformed state, and in love will the world be swallowed up in the great mystery of the One who has performed all these things; in love will the whole course of the governance of creation be finally comprised.

That They May All be One

26 Friday Feb 2016

Posted by in Anglicanism, Church/State, Lutheranism

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LCMS-ACNA-LCC-1024x384I suspect many here have been surprised over the last few years on how many points of our faith Jessica, an Anglo-Catholic and I, a Lutheran agree on. In fact, we have been surprised as well, not least because Anglo-Catholics are rare in Nebraska, and Lutherans are just about as rare in England. Both exist, but you’ll look a while.

Historic Anglicanism and historic Lutheranism, while not the same, are pretty close cousins. And others are realizing it as well. They always have been, there has always been a rumor that Anne Boleyn was a Lutheran herself. The Lutheran Church – Missouri  Synod (LCMS), the Lutheran Church Canada (LCC), and the new Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), the conservative breakaway from the Episcopal church, have been having talks for the last few years. And the thing is, they are finding that there is not that much room between them. We are not the same, and since we are conservative, we tend not to move off of what we have always believed, everywhere. As the committee says, we are not sister churches, in full communion, but we are first cousins.

On the other end of the spectrum, our liberal counterparts, the ELCA, and the Episcopal church have been in full communion for some time. But being liberal, they tend to be more accommodating. Here are some highlights from the report:

Instead of renewing the one historic church of the west as Martin Luther had desired, the Reformation of the 16th century ended up producing several distinct church bodies severely at odds with each other. In this process many sharp words were spoken and negative judgments delivered, by Lutherans against Roman Catholics, Reformed, and Anabaptists; by Reformed against the other three groups just named; by the Church of England in her classic formularies against Roman Catholics and Anabaptists; and by Roman Catholics against all who had left their communion. Remarkably, Lutherans and the church body later called Anglican aimed few if any direct shots against each other.

While not of one heart and soul, neither were our forefathers at daggers drawn with each other. There is in fact enormous overlap between successive editions of the Book of Common Prayer and how it took shape in church life, on the one hand, and the way in which the Book of Concord was reflected in the teaching, worship, and ethos of the Lutheran churches of Germany and Scandinavia. Accordingly, we can ascertain much compatibility between historic Anglicanism and Lutheranism in fundamental doctrine, liturgy, hymnody, and devotion.

For a considerable portion of the 18th century the ruling kings of England (who remained electors of Hanover) were practicing Lutherans and Anglicans at the same time; the Lutheran George Frederick Handel composed his church music mainly in England; and there was much formal cooperation on the mission field between some German Lutherans and the Church of England.

We should not overstate the case, however. The Lutheran chaplain of Prince George of Denmark (1653-1708) refused to commune him after he decided, on certain state occasions, to receive the sacrament alongside his wife, Queen Anne.

Rather than describe ACNA and LCMS–LCC as sister churches, we should acknowledge each other as ecclesial first cousins, closely related indeed, but not yet partaking publicly of the same Lord’s Table. Our church bodies share a common foundation in the Holy Scriptures and in their confessions. The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion draw heavily on the Augsburg Confession and other Lutheran influences. Eight of the Thirty-Nine Articles are drawn directly from the Wittenberg Articles1 of 1536, a joint Lutheran–Anglican document. […]

Outsiders had viewed Anglicanism as endlessly pliable in matters of Christian doctrine, a form of church in which incompatible “parties” simply agreed to disagree. This perception has been sharply challenged by the emergence of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON), which has more adherents than the “mainline” Anglicans that include the Church of England, The Episcopal Church of the USA, and the Anglican Church of Canada. It is apparent that the divide in Lutheranism between the LWF and the ILC is paralleled by the division between GAFCON and the Anglican “mainline” churches of the Anglican Communion […]

Affirmation of the classical creeds goes hand in hand with deep respect for the ancient Fathers and for the practices of the Church of the early centuries. But as Christian antiquity assists us in the understanding of the Scriptures, it adds nothing to their content. We note and affirm the major role played by patristic studies among the Lutheran and Anglican theologians of the 17th century.

From the report, it looks to me as if one of the larger points we dispute has to do with the Real Presence, and yet in all three churches, there are varieties of belief, but we all admire the famous quote from Queen Elizabeth I:

“Christ was the word that spake it.
He took the bread and brake it;
And what his words did make it,
That I believe and take it.”

[Keep reading. . . .The report can be downloaded at this link.]

I’ve merely given you snippets here, the document itself covers much more, including how the evolution of civil power, and the Erastianism of the west since Constantine, has led to the startling fact that the supreme power of the Church of England and the State Churches of Scandinavia is not the Word of God, as understood by either the Anglican or Lutheran confession, but the will of a government that may be of an unbelieving mindset. That is a high price that the churches in our old homelands have, and are, paying for the benefits that alliance with the state may have provided.

I think that we are seeing the same split that has happened in our churches, happen now in the Roman Catholic Church as well, perhaps that means that the respective parts of that church will also draw closer to the corresponding parts of our churches as well. But I see no hope at all of all the splits in any of our churches healing.

Perhaps since we quoted Queen Elizabeth I above, we should also quote Queen Elizabeth II from the forward of a book celebrating her 90th birthday, published by Hope Together (and others) called The Servant Queen – and the King She Serves:

As I embark on my 91st year, I invite you to join me in reflecting on the words of a poem quoted by my father, King George VI, in his Christmas Day broadcast in 1939, the year that this country went to war for the second time in a quarter of a century.

I said to the man who stood at the Gate of the Year
“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”
And he replied, “Go out into the darkness, and put your hand into the hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light, and safer than a known way.”

ELIZABETH R.

Saturday Jess: in defence of the Anglican Communion

16 Saturday Jan 2016

Posted by in Anglicanism, Politics

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20120715-004741.jpgThis has been a week when most of the news in Christianity has been by the Anglican Communion. Jess has ably (as always) defended her church, and its very unwieldy mandate as the Church of England. In a very diverse country, such as England, that’s a recipe for a continuous uproar, made worse by parts of the communion being apt, in her memorable term, “to throw their toys from the pram”.

I’m always sympathetic because I was brought up in the American form of the Evangelical State Church of Prussia that hot mess that Kaiser Frederick William III of Prussia made when he force brigaded the Lutheran and Reformed churches together after the Napoleonic Wars. It too had the uneasy mission of both serving God, and being all thing to all (Protestant) people. It actually fared much the same with the same forces tearing it apart, until the second world war pretty much killed it. Remember much of Prussia is now Poland. In Germany it is now part of the  Union of Evangelical Churches, and in America part of the steeply declining United Church of Christ, an even worse product of the go-go sixties.

But the CofE soldiers on, and the baton is increasingly passing to the much more orthodox African-led GAFCON, which includes the breakaway Anglican Church in North America, which is small but growing.

But this is about Jess’ continued and continuing defense of her church, which puts her amongst probably the majority of her sensible and tolerant co-religionists. She started early as this post from 2012 shows

Anglicanism

English: Flag of the Anglican Communion

English: Flag of the Anglican Communion (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Church of England seems to attract few defenders. Some from the Catholic wing have crossed the Tiber to the Ordinariate; others on the liberal wing seem indistinguishable from secular liberals; and there is always the Archbishop of Canterbury to criticise when all other news fails. Sometimes it seems as though ‘the centre cannot hold’; and yet it does.

The Church of England is a compromise. It is not the hard-line Protestantism of Edward VI, neither is it the return to Catholicism of Mary I. To those who like firm lines of definition, this looks like a fault; to those of us who wish for a degree of comprehensiveness, it is a virtue. It reminds me of the definition  of Christ’s two natures agreed at Chalcedon. The ancestors of the Copts found it too Nestorian, whilst the Nestorians found it made insufficient concessions to their position. Any such comparison should not be pressed too hard; but the point is that any widely accepted set of formulae will have within them things which those who want sharp definitions won’t like – and that in dealing with the Infinite Mystery of the Economy of our salvation, we should beware of thinking that granularity is necessarily to be had.

Newman may have abandoned his idea of the C of E as the via media, but that does not mean he was wrong to have formulated it. Much as I admire the Roman Catholic Church, there is something in it unduly attached to legalisms and definitions, or at least that is my impression.  From experience, at least at secondhand, its approach to divorced people taking communion seems to fall into that category.  Annulments are a long and complex process, and whilst clearly designed to help deal with the tension between what Our Lord said and pastoral needs, they seem at once cumbersome and lacking in appreciation of the needs of the repentant sinner; the C of E’s  approach recognises the latter and lacks the former.

Of course to those convinced that the Catholic Church is the Church founded by Christ, these things are, rightly, secondary, but to those of us still of the view that the C of E is the branch of Catholicism practised in these islands, they give cause for hesitation.

My Orthodox acquaintances push their argument about legalism far too far in my view, almost to the point of it becoming their version of anti-Catholicism. There is much wisdom to be gained from studying the Orthodox tradition, as there is from really knowing the Catholic one. For me, one of the virtues of where I am is that I do not have to choose between them, or reject men like Wesley, who I also regard with veneration. A typical muddled Anglican? Perhaps, but a position shared by many. That does not make it right to those for whom it seems like persistence in error; but it allows me to persist in my journey, and the Anglican Church which formed me, offers me a way of love which seeks to comprehend all who will take it.

A Lutheran’s View on the Anglican Meeting

12 Tuesday Jan 2016

Posted by in Abortion, Consequences, Faith

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Shore ChapelI found Jessica’s post on the Anglican conference to be very fair, and to make the salient points.

I also thought Francis encapsulated my views exceptionally well when she said this:

One should always apologise if one’s behaviour towards others is uncharitable. But this is different from, pointing out, in truth as well as love, that we all sin (including in the sexual sphere) and that this sin separates us from God. What is problematic today is that you can’t state this in public without being called “homophobic”. One might coin the word “Christophobic” to describe people who can’t bear the toughness of the Christian faith and hate those who try to live it. We are all called to sexual restraint outside marriage between a man and a woman. This can be very hard – but part of being a Christian is “carrying one’s cross”. Today, the “Cross” is a scandal to our hedonistic society that refuses to allow any restraint on any kind of sexual behaviour. Sadly this has infected the Anglican Church in the West – but not in Africa where the bulk of Anglicans live.

Very true, and very well stated.

But as I read through the comments, something else struck me. Our churches have come very close to condoning all of the sexual sins, homosexuality, yes; but also adultery, fornication, and occasionally lately paedophilia as well. And always abortion. But there is more than sex concerned here.

All of these sins (and most are either, or lately were, crimes, as well) have one thing in common. Like strongarm robbery, they are crimes of the strong against the weak. To Francis’ point on the differences between Christianity, one needs to look no further than last New Years Eve in Germany, for the difference between Christianity and Islam, and how our secular governments cower before Islam. And that is something we are increasingly seeing as the tide of Christianity rolls back in the west. The protection for the weakest amongst us is leaving with it.

That shouldn’t surprise anybody, really. The protection of the individual (and the organic family) is a key feature of Christianity, based on Judaism. All other systems have elevated the ‘collective’ over the individual. Only in Christian Western Europe and places it has reached in the world, like North America, has the individual been exalted over the group. Remember, in Christianity, many may believe but we are judged, and saved, individually.

This is the centerpiece of our faith, He came down from heaven to save us, each of us, an individual sinner, not the nation, or the tribe, or the congregation, but me. The protection of the weak against the strong, and we can tie that back into our secular history just as easily. What else is King Arthur, the Once and Future King, but the end of the rule of ‘Might is Right’. And that is the entire thrust of Anglo-American legal history as well. The protection of the individual citizen against the all powerful, and uncaring state, whether King, Parliament, President, or Congress, the objective law is the weak individual’s bulwark against the state. All the way from King Alfred the Great, through Magna Charta, and the Cousin’s Wars to the 15th Amendment to the US Constitution, and beyond.

And that is what I see in where many of our churches are going, and undoing, not only of the Faith, as it has always been taught, everywhere, but and undoing of the very rights that we believe God himself gave to us, in favor of bullies and slavemasters.

Pharisees

18 Tuesday Feb 2014

Posted by in Anglicanism, Faith

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The Pharisees Question Jesus

The Pharisees Question Jesus (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’m going to have to be careful here and not paint with too broad a brush but, I do want to address the subject from a couple of angles.

First, AATW works because, under the Chatelaine’s tutelage, we have learned to defend our various beliefs strongly, and yet to do so without making personal attacks, except for a couple of commenters. I suspect we, all, often bite our tongues. What we have found of course is that we have far more in common than divides us. I personally despise personal attacks (although I occasionally slip into them as well) as the last resort of the man that has no facts.

In mentioning her own position to try to make a point about law and mercy, it was probably inevitable that Jess would get some comments which emphasised the former; it is one of the eternal  tensions in our faith. Jesus had some hard words for those who thought that man was made for the law; he had some hard words for those who thought he had abolished the law, too.  Lutherans of my vintage tend not to ask ‘what would Jesus do?’ as easily as a younger generation, but I may not be alone here in thinking that some of the reactions to Jess’ situation over-harsh, legalistic, and even of the Pharisees.

As I have told Jess, “Get thee to a nunnery” may have been appropriate once, a thousand years ago, in an age of arranged marriages, and life expectancies on the 40s or less. It is simply wrong now. One thing is the practicality, while Jess’ Anglican (and my Lutheran) churches do have monastic institutions, they are rare. The other thing is, she was sinned against, she is the victim.

Do we not temper the wind to the shorn lamb? How does the current Roman Catholic practice help her? It seems to me long on sanction and short on common sense. One option is she denies she was ever in something called a ‘valid’ marriage, although as it was an Anglican marriage and the RCC does not recognise Anglican orders, by what twist of legalism does the RCC suddenly insist it has the right to judge Jess’ marriage?

And now Catholic doctrine would take the victim and confine her for a life sentence, either cloistered, or living without a partner. There are several problems with this:

  1. It is unjust, she has done nothing to merit punishment, except to refuse to lie to God and man. It is very simply blaming the victim. We all know better than that.
  2. It unjustly reduces her life choices, being called to monastic service is a very high calling, if you have that call, otherwise it is likely to be seen as a punishment, for what? Trusting someone.
  3. Along the same lines, our economies are such that it is difficult to live very well on one income, and you would condemn her to that, without cause.
  4. And for that matter, although not a factor in this case, if there were children, you would condemn them to grow up in a one parent family, which has many times been proven to be far less efficacious for raising children.

While I agree that many of our church processes are far too liberal, and should be reformed, they should not punish the innocent, that was not what Christ taught us, indeed he taught us to forgive the guilty.

While I have great respect for the Catholic Church, the legalistic method they take in cases like this is simply wrong, and is completely unjustifiable in my mind.

As Romans 13:10 tells us:

Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.

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