FiF News
For those who are interested in wider Traditionalist Anglican concerns, you can hear some of the statements made at the recent gathering of FiF in England. This is a collection of audio files on a webpage, so you need to have your speakers on. Of special interest is the statement by Bishop Jack Iker of the Dallas Of Fort Worth Texas, who has openly announced the coming secession of dioceses from the Episcopal Church; and he made a statement about relations with the Continuing Churches. The statements begin with a word from Fr. Geoffrey Kirk, who, were I the King of England, would have been Archbishop of Canterbury long ago.
We, of the Continuing Churches, should pray for these our brethren, especially since we share the Catholic convictions of FiF, and should see ourselves as natural allies in the same battle.
6 comments:
I'm praying fervently! May God direct according to His perfect will. We know it is His will that the brethren should be one.
History will show Jack Iker to be a truly great bishop of Christ's Church. He isn't my bishop (so this may sound strange) but I'm proud of him!
I was very interested to hear 'impaired communion' in the context of: we'll walk with them, we'll talk with them, we'll do our best to re-educate them, but we won't have communio in sacris with them. So THAT's what it means! I was very impressed. What I'd really like to see, however, would be for the seceding dioceses to steer themselves into an existing St Louis Continuum jurisdiction.
Might I commend the contribution of the three Australian bishops. They give a good picture of the practical meaning of the FiF-TAC concordat. I think it should also be of interest to readers of this blog to note that FiF Australia comes in for a fair bit of stick for daring to associate with the TAC. I've tried in my semi-articulate way to defend the concordat from the TAC perspective in comboxes on this site. I've also known that it comes in for criticism from the (ever shrinking) faithful Cantuarian remnant as well.
Oh, and I'm disappointed Bp Robarts didn't do his Dame Edna impersonation.
Thank you, Father for posting this.
I agree that they are natural allies even where there are significant differences. However, my system does not handle audio files well, so I shall probably miss the content. Ah well.
ed
In referring to the recent conference of FiF-UK, Fr. Hart wrote:
"We, of the Continuing Churches, should pray for these our brethren, especially since we share the Catholic convictions of FiF, and should see ourselves as natural allies in the same battle."
Certainly we should pray for these brethren, as for all others, and especially because their endeavors are ultimately fated to be self-defeating. However, we may perhaps be forgiven for being less than confident about their "Catholic convictions". As is made clear by the various presentations that are recorded on the liked website, FiF's objective is a "Third Province", i.e., to be an integral part of the Church of England, just a part parallel to the existing two Provinces of Canterbury and York.
Wuite apart from the fact that the C of E cannot afford to permit any such new structure, what this would mean is that FiF would remain in full communion with the State Church and its promotion of a revisionist epistemology, relativistic moral "theology", "ordination"
of women, and the like. In other words, there would be no change in the present situation other than to push out of sight the more rapidly decaying portions of the C of E, in much the same way that some householders choose an out-of-the-way corner of the garden to establish a garbage pile which they then surround with a little fence so it won't be too visible.
However, the rotting goes on: you may not see it every time you glance down the garden, but you can always smell it.
At least the gardener's heap of corruption may have some use as compost; the C of E's existing Provinces, on the other hand, would serve merely to poison the Sacramental integrity and moral witness of the (unjustifiably) hopeful new "FiF Province".
In other words, if the FiF folks actually had "Catholic convictions", they would not be working overtime to remain in the hopelessly compromised Church of England.
John A. Hollister+
The truth is, I am firmly optimistic that things will get worse- meaning that FiF will eventually see that there is no home in the C of E (as it is).
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