Teeth and Teaching

It occurred to me in replying to a recent email from co-host Ed Pacht that I had never got round to announcing that I did not get the job in Warsaw. That was a great disappointment, but we must roll with punches.

As a result of that, and of other considerations of a more personal nature, I have pretty much decided to stay on in Nicosia for the duration of my career.

One of the reasons for that is that AFP is providing me with new opportunities for short-term travel. More of that below, but let me tell you first of some travel that is going to come out of my pocket.

A week from Sunday, I will fly to Varna, a resort on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria. I'm not going for sun, sand and sea. I checked the weather forecast for today -- it was raining, and a low of 8 degrees centigrade was expected!

No, I'm going to get my teeth fixed. As tends to happen with people my age, things start falling apart. A bridge needs replacing, as do several crowns, along with heaven knows what other work. The cost of dental care in Cyprus is exorbitant, and I have found a Swiss-owned clinic in Varna, called Dentaprime, that will do the work for less than half the price '' flight and accommodation included.

Street scene in Varna

Hot on the heels of my "dental" holiday I will be heading to Pristina, Kosovo. That´s where AFP comes in. The agency recently launched the AFP Foundation, dedicated to journalism training in the Third World. I will be part of a team spending a month in Pristina working with the future staff of the nascent Kosovo Media Institute.

I will only be there the first two weeks, but that should give me all the taste of wintry weather I´m likely to want for the year, as there is a real prospect of snow there.

During the one weekend I hope to have to myself, I plan to visit the Visoki Decani Serbian Orthodox monastery in western Kosovo.





As it turns out, the prior of the monastery is the brother of a Serbian friend of mine here in Nicosia, and I hope to do a feature on him and his community while having a brief retreat. Sadly, as the result of the ethnic conflict in Kosovo, the monastery has become isolated, and is protected by Italian troops from the UN peacekeeping force. From what I understand, the only safe way in and out, at least for the monks, is in one of those armoured cars.

















But what a joy it must be to be able to worship in a church as beautiful as they have.

ACC Synod - News Bulletin

The following just in from our much appreciated correspondent, Canon John Hollister:

Wednesday, October 10.

Yesterday, the College of Bishops of the Original Province of the ACC (which acts ex officio for the entire jurisdiction until three separate and equal Provinces have been established) received into that Church and Province the Diocese of Aweil, Sudan.

This Diocese includes five counties in the southern Sudan, one Bishop Ordinary (formerly of the Lambeth Communion), eighty-five clergy, 150 parishes, and approximately 15,000 people.

This accession increases the Original Province's clergy by half, nearly doubles its number of parishes, and quadruples its membership.

The Synod has received reports of other new work in Africa, including in Kenya and Rwanda. Thus with a new Diocese in the North of that continent, an existing Diocese in the South (in the Republic of South Africa) and work beginning in the middle, there is a real prospect within the near future of a Province of Africa.

And, today, the unseasonable heat wave of the past two weeks broke and Cleveland returned to its typical October weather, at 59 degrees, overcast skies, and intermittent drizzles.

God is good.

The following has nothing to do with the current events that have people talking and commenting here, and elsewhere, of late. But, whenever we focus much attention on our own CC movement, it might be good to remember the fallen world around us, and our mission to it.


“Dead Kids on the Block” first appeared in the December, 2003 issue of Touchstone.

Dead Kids on the Block

Robert Hart on the Wages of Vice

If you have never heard of Balmer Merlin, you have never been a resident of Baltimore, Maryland. It is not that the natives are in too much of a hurry to pronounce the t—that would be natural enough to New Yorkers—or to treat an or with the appropriate sound. What makes them say Balmer is simply that they are laid back: They see no reason to put consonant strain upon the tongue.

This trait is evident in that the purpose of a marble stoop is less for climbing to a front door than for settin’. Settin’ is very much like sitting, but not if one sits up straight, or arches forward to muse like the Thinker. For settin’ means sort-of-sitting, and doing so wholly without attitude. Baltimore has many other charms and grand local traditions. Among these are things innocent, and things (to use an old word) fond, in the most uninnocent way.

A Fond Thing

From the tenth floor of a building near the Inner Harbor, the office of an attorney for whom I do special work to supplement the not-quite-enough income of a Continuing Anglican priest, I see all the way to the hill where once stood Memorial Stadium. The stadium, the place where the Orioles won a couple of final World Series games, is gone. Gone too is the plaque that stood in the parking lot beyond the left field bleachers where, in 1966, landed the longest home run in city history, hit by one of my boyhood heroes, Frank Robinson.

What needed tearing down was not Memorial Stadium but one of the fond things in city tradition, a thing so fond to Balmer hearts that it has been given its own place in the town’s unique canon of what many seem to regard as sacred tradition. In walking distance of the attorney’s office is the corner of Baltimore and President Streets, that block of Baltimore Street known in many quarters of the world not simply as a city block, but as the Block. It is even celebrated by men in Paris, which about says it all.

Once, when I was in this attorney’s office, he asked me if I could make inquiries in an establishment on the Block about a girl who strips there. His firm specializes in helping uninsured hospital patients obtain eligibility for the Medical Assistance program (known in some states as Medicaid). I declined to be seen entering such an establishment, reminding him that I am a clergyman. “Oh, of course,” he said. Besides, employers on the Block do not keep the kind of records we need for the Social Service caseworkers.

The case was given to me anyway; I am very used to working with such clients to obtain Medical Assistance for them. The girls are young, rather pathetic, addicted to heroin, and thanks to their urgency to get a fix with any available needle, infected with HIV. I have gotten to know many of these young women, once they give consent. Indeed, from their medical records I have known them quite intimately.

Tested, HIV-positive, date of test. Current CD4 count somewhere below 200, maybe as low as 15 or 8. AIDS is diagnosed very simply: Anyone with HIV whose CD4 count drops below the magic number of 200 has AIDS. It is the end stage development of HIV, meaning that the person so diagnosed is drawing close to death. Some of these girls have lived to be as old as 26 or 27. If there are no old dancers on the Block, it is not because they retire early.

I remember a few years back listening to a talk radio program. A jolly lady, in her own words a “senior citizen,” was speaking with chuckles about the time she gave her husband a special birthday present. She took him to the Block and paid for him to cut off a young woman’s clothes with scissors. The host, whom I know to be a very intelligent and principled conservative, said, “And I bet everybody had a good time.”

“Oh yes,” chuckled the elderly woman. Hey, a bit of fun. It is one of those things that makes Balmer a grand ole’ place.

A Fond Tradition

I asked one of the girls with AIDS, “Do you have any respect for the kind of men who go to those places?” A question never before asked of her, she was slow to answer, because it took her by surprise. “Hell no,” she finally said. It is entertainment based upon mutual contempt between performers and audience, but high-paying. Very much high-paying, until fixes are taken, not for the high, but simply out of desperate need.

Some people who call themselves conservative have cultivated the ability to consider any precedent, once it ages a bit, as being a part of what must be conserved. The Block is, as I said, a Baltimore tradition, a fond thing. Don’t mess with it. Don’t spoil the romantic notion that it is just good fun, and that the “ladies” enjoy showing their stuff. Any Libertarian will tell you that you own yourself. The women of the Block establishments are simply exercising their private property rights, and that settles it.

In another case I was given the typical Southeast Baltimore address: “Zone 24,” as the natives call it, referring to the fact that all Baltimore zip codes begin with 212 with the last two digits varying. Going past sites that many people have seen thanks to NBC’s Homicide: Life on the Street series, I arrived at the brick row house, climbed the marble stoop, and found the patient’s mother.

She has not seen her daughter in months. No, there is no father—or rather he is gone—and the hospital must have this address for her daughter because she had lived there a few years before her recent admission. “We had problems. You understand don’t you? I just couldn’t keep her here.” I know these words; they all use the same script: “Well, wait. She might be with her boyfriend at. . . .”

She lives with her boyfriend, and that in spite of the fact that she was diagnosed with HIV a couple of years ago. Of course, he doesn’t mind the way she works to make her drug money. He is a very generous guy.

I have worked on many of these cases over quite a few years, and I see the pattern. Life in Balmer is surrealistic.

Childish Excitement

I cannot count the times over the years when I have heard seemingly decent people talk with wonder and childish excitement about the Block, how many times I have heard it defended as a cherished institution. The notion people have of it is a romantic one, of a harmless pleasure rooted in a fine local tradition.

I do not know whom to pity more: the people who hold these notions or the girls who are doing the dance of death. I suppose the sort of people who frequent the joints at Baltimore and President Streets do not want to know that what they are watching is largely a tragic collection of desperate junkies, already infected and sentenced to an early grave. They are someone’s daughters, and yet they belong to no one. Their bodies will not even come to proper burial.

When I meet patients such as I have described, I find that my words so affect them that they invariably begin to weep. The eyes full of tears are a welcome sight, for it means that the soul is not yet completely given over. Something in them may still wish to live. I am glad at such times that I am doing this sort of work on a self-employed, case-by-case basis, and that no one can stop me from speaking as a priest. In fact, not because I am a priest, but simply because I am a Christian, I do more than I am paid to do.

The experience of these young women is of cruelty, and is felt by them in the form of simple indifference from absent fathers, idiot boyfriends, and greedy employers. Their addiction is known to the men around them, and nonetheless they are helped in their own self-destruction by being hired and put on display so that they can make money to buy the poison they crave. The money is going into the drugs that, even were there no HIV/AIDS, would eventually kill them. No wonder that the apparent compassion of a stranger, of an age to be that father they have not known, swells their eyes with tears.

Aware of an effective yearlong program that is a Christian ministry, I have done what I could to steer addicts to enter it. Even the addicts who are not HIV-positive—yet—and have a hope of normal life if they can be free of their habit, have one problem with the program I recommend. It requires them to suffer through withdrawal instead of giving them methadone as a substitute addiction.

This is what the addicts have in common with all sinners everywhere: the intense fear of withdrawal. The cutting off of the hand, the plucking out of the eye, the only remedy for sin being repentance of a kind that maims and leaves a wound. It also gives life and creates freedom. I have managed to persuade a few of them, though not all, by far not all.

Innocent Vices

The world has given a very innocent meaning to the word “vice.” It now refers to many a little thing, so that I indulge in vice when I light up a cigar or drink Kentucky bourbon. By this reasoning many very evil things are given legitimacy as mere vices, no worse than a cigar or a drink, no matter that it is with temperance. But do men at the Block engage in harmless vice or in the deadly sin of lust? And is the deadliness of these sins something that only a theologian can ponder?

The deadly sins are called deadly because they bring death to the soul itself, and if unrepented, bring the soul to eternal damnation. In the Block, with its exploitation of vulnerable girls, in the girls’ addiction to heroin, in their dying of AIDS, and in the chuckle of an old woman who bought her husband an evening on the town, this deadliness is manifested in a most graphic way. The deadly sin of lust destroys life in this age, signaling its destruction of life in the world to come.

Of course, none of these manifestations is unique to Balmer Merlin.

Trinity XVIII

I Corinthians 1:4-7
Matthew 22:34-46

Soon, before we know it, the new year of the Church will begin, and it will be Advent. When that season arrives, we shall be singing that great hymn of Advent (which many people think to be a Christmas Carol), O Come, O Come Emmanuel. One of the verses of that hymn says:

O come, O come, Thou Lord of might,

who to thy tribes on Sinai's height

in ancient times didst give the law

in cloud and majesty and awe.

It is only fitting for Jesus Christ to comment on the Law- the Torah- and to give us the Summary of the Law in the two greatest commandments. After all, it is He who is the true author of the Law. We need to understand that, because far too many people think that Jesus Christ and his New Covenant contradict the Old Covenant; that God was formerly rather vengeful and mean, until Jesus came and straightened Him out.

But, here is what He said:

“Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Matt. 5:17-20



The Law of Moses was separated into three kinds of law. These are the ceremonial, the civil and the moral. One of the best known sayings of the Jewish people has a double meaning: "The law of the land is the Law.” It means that in whatever land the Jewish people live, they must be law-abiding people. But, it also means that in the Holy Land, the land they call H’eretz Israel, the Law of the land is the Torah, the Law given through Moses. The people of Israel, throughout the Old Testament period, and into the days of the Macabees, had only one national constitution, the Law of God. Therefore, it contains the civil code of the nation, complete with laws of criminal justice, public safety and so on (some of the practical wisdom of which we ignore to our peril. For example, in our Country a person may be convicted on the testimony of but one witness rather than two or three. Ours is an obvious way to perpetrate injustice. Not so the Torah, which requires the testimony of at least two witnesses in order to convict the accused. One of the safety laws of the Torah required that every roof have a railing so that people could not fall off of buildings). Also, the Law of Moses had in it everything we would call a rubric. The commandments tell the people everything that they are to do regarding the worship of God, sacrifice, feasts, fasts, and the details about the Levitical priesthood. These are connected to that third category of the Law, namely the moral law. But, it remains a distinct category nonetheless.

And, it is in the Ten Commandments that the Moral Law first appears with absolute clarity. If you were taught properly for Confirmation, no matter how long ago it may have been, you should recall that the Ten Commandments are split into two parts. The first four teach us how to love God. 1) That we worship no other god, 2) that we make no idols to distract from worship of the true God, 3) that we do not abuse, that is take in vain, His Name, 4) that we keep holy the Sabbath, that is, the day of rest, as holy to the Lord. Then, the second part gives us six commandments about how to love our neighbor. 5) To honor our parents, 6) not to murder, 7) not to commit adultery, 8) not to steal, 9) not to bear false witness (that is, slander or libel), 10) and finally, not even to covet.

Part of the great wisdom of our Prayer Book is the Catechism and the Offices of Instruction that teach us how the two great commandments summarize these ten. Furthermore, if we read the New Testament carefully, we see that these commandments are much deeper than they might appear. The commandment to honor one’s parents extends to the teaching that we are to have a respectful attitude to all proper authority. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches us that anger and hatred, and a lack of forgiveness, are all a violation of the commandment against murder; and that all sins against chastity, even if nothing more than the willful indulgence of a voyeuristic streak (the kind our entertainment industry tries to cultivate), violate the true meaning of the commandment against adultery, whether by married or by single persons. When we get to the tenth commandment, against coveting, we learn that the entire concept of applying the meaning of the Law to the hidden attitudes of the heart was not a new idea to the Lord when He preached the Sermon on the Mount; no, for in the tenth commandment, that we are not to covet anything that belongs to our neighbor, we see that He revealed to the ancient Isrealites that the Law must be engraved on the heart.

The Law requires something that it cannot give, that it has no power to impart. It requires a heart that loves God and our neighbor. Furthermore, not simply that we love our neighbors in the plural. That way we could love only some of them, and say that we are fulfilling the commandment. But, the commandment is stated in the singular: “love thy neighbor” teaches the same thing as those words of the Lord Jesus: “as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, “ and conversely, “As ye have done it not unto one of the least of these my brethren.” Charity, that is the highest kind of love, is not about how we treated mankind. It is about how we have treated, forgiven and come to the aid of the one. Especially, perhaps, that one we simply do not like.

And, we learn something else, namely from Saint Paul. Writing to the Galatians he wrote these words:

“But the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe. But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.” Gal. 3:22-24

When we really think about the Summary of the Law, we can be filled with either despair or hope. I know that I have never lived one day in which I have managed to love the Lord with all my heart, all my soul and all my mind. I know that never has the day gone by in which I have loved my neighbor as myself, at least not each one of my neighbors. I would like to be so holy, so filled with virtue. But, I am not.

Saint Paul called himself the chief of sinners. In fact, a genuine mark of a true saint is that he is very much aware of his sins, and of how far he falls short of God’s requirements. Even though he lives better than most people, even though he wants to please God and serve Him truly, even though he abstains from willful sin and repents of every sin into which he discovers himself to have fallen, he never imagines that he has succeeded or become perfect. If the saints know themselves to be sinners, what about those of us who know that we are called to become saints, and yet know that we have not even gotten close? (For, make no mistake, that is exactly what each one of us is called to become.)

The commandments, even the list of negative commandments, that is, those that tell us what not to do, are summed up within the positive commandments, that is, what we are to do. We are to love God, and we are to love our neighbor. That is the whole duty of man, as long as we understand that love means agape, or charity. It never rejoices in iniquity, but only in the truth, says the great passage in First Corinthians.

But, how do we come to hope, rather than despair, from these impossible requirements? The answer is what Saint Paul says, that we are brought to faith in Jesus Christ. Nothing can give me greater confidence in God’s mercy than the impossibility of these two Great Commandments in the Summary of the Law. He knows our weakness, and does not turn away from us if we come to Him with repentance and faith. That is because He sees us in the Person of His Son, as in that wonderful phrase that is repeated constantly in Paul’s Epistles: “in Christ.” That is where we are, by baptism, by faith, by living in the Church with all of its sacraments that are real and powerful through the gifts of the Holy Ghost. We can grow into the love of God by heeding these words of Saint John, in that simple phrase: “We love him, because he first loved us.” (I John 4:19) How did he first love us? As Saint Paul says, “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (Rom. 5:8)

I cannot manufacture love for God, or for my neighbor, as such an endeavor is artificial. But, I can look at the cross of Jesus Christ. I can look at Him in His pain and agonies pouring out His soul unto death for me. As can you; for if you want to obtain this love for God and for your neighbor, you must look up at Jesus Christ on the cross pouring out His soul unto death for you. That is how the seed of charity is planted within your heart. And, it is by returning to the foot of that cross every day that the seed of charity grows and bears fruit unto eternal life. Realizing that He has died for you is the door of hope by which you can rejoice in His resurrection.

The very nature of what is required in these two great and impossible commandments can give either hope or despair. Because I see the mercy of God in Jesus Christ, I can understand the words in today’s Epistle:

I THANK my God always on your behalf, for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ: that in every thing ye are enriched by him, in all utterance, and in all knowledge; even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you: so that ye come behind in no gift; waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall also confirm you unto the end, that ye may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

TAC College of Bishops

Yesterday was the final day of the meeting in Portsmouth, England of the Traditional Anglican Communion's College of Bishops. I have been eagerly awaiting news of a decision coming out of that meeting that, if it transpires, would represent an historic and ground-breaking development in the life of the Church.

Unfortunately, I have been unable to make contact with my correspondent at the meeting, either by phone or by email. If he reads this, would he please file his first dispatch?

For the moment, I am only at liberty to say that the matter relates to the TAC's ongoing discussions with the Vatican about closer relations.

A well-placed inside source told me that a measure was expected to be adopted at the CoB meeting that would substantially further those discussions. In the event that it was adopted, it was to serve as the key subject of further talks in Rome next week.

Contrary to what I was told to expect, I have received no communique from the TAC on the outcome of the CoB meeting. Furthermore, as of today, the only item I can find about it on the TAC's website is one about the consecration on Tuesday of the Revd Michael Gill as successor to the (late) Bishop Trevor Rhodes, Anglican Church in Southern Africa TR.

While this proves nothing, it leads me to wonder whether the measure in question failed or if action on it was postponed for some reason. As I said, I was told that the prospects for its adoption were very strong.

ACC Synod

I bid your prayers for Archbishop Mark Haverland and for all those bishops, clergy and laity who will be joining him in Cleveland, Ohio for the 17th Synod of the Anglican Catholic Church, Oct 8-12.

One of my sources tells me that, among other things, there is a very real possibility that two announcements will be made regarding additions to the ACC family.

The Collect - Trinity 18

Latin:
Da, quaesumus, Domine, populo tuo diabolica vitare contagia: et te solum Deum pura mente sectari.

1549:
LORDE we beseche thee, graunt thy people grace to avoyde the infeccions of the Devil, and with pure harte and mynde to folowe thee the onelye God; Through Jesus Christ our Lorde.

1662:
LORD, we beseech thee, grant thy people grace to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and with pure hearts and minds to follow thee the only God; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Commentary
This collect, translated from the Gelasian Sacramentary by Cranmer is, as usual, the Tridentine collect for the previous week, the 17th Sunday after Pentecost.

Reflection
When did you first make your baptismal vows? If you were baptised as a baby, then your parents and Godparents will have made these vows for you. After that, the vows are repeated at your confirmation when you remove the yoke of spiritual care from the shoulders of those sponsoring you at your baptism and put it upon your own shoulders. If you were baptised later in life, how did you feel when you made those vows? Do you actually remember making them?
We're used to renewing these vows at the great Easter Vigil, just after recalling the agony and death of Our Lord. At this time, this time of expecting Our Lord to rise from the Dead, we recall that at our baptism we too have died in Christ, we identify ourselves in His Death, and with Him we rise to a new life.
This makes sense, to us. However, why in October should our Collect urge us back to our Baptism?
It is fully half a year since Easter. We have sat in Ordinary Time now for 18 weeks, and it's so tempting to think of this time as being without a major event. It's easy for us to become jaded with the green colour of the hangings of Ordinary Time.
If we think like this, then this collect is for us! It's a prayer for those for whom life has become samey. We ask God to draw us back to the waters of Baptism, to be refreshed and to revive us from the torpor of leading a life half a year distant from the Cross and the Resurrection. Ordinary Time has not been ordinary: there have been feasts - Michaelmas, the feast of Our Lady, the feast of the Transfiguration, the Holy Guardian Angels and so many more. It is because that there is no commercial value in these wonderful joys that they are largely ignored by Society. Consequently Ordinary Time becomes samey for the World.
Our Collect invites us and pleads to Our Creator for that first excitement of belief when the green hangings of Ordinary Time first shone for us, when the refreshing water invigorated us, and the figure on the crucifix seemed more alive than any human being in the church. We beg God to prevent the World from dulling the joy through the temptation to see every day the same in a vanity of vanities. It is something that He promises to all who seek Him. How deeply will you drink of this Collect?

---------------------------------------Jonathan Munn

Personal announcement

Birth of our grandson

Yesterday, Oct. 3rd, at about 5:30 pm (EST, not Cyprus time, I say, since Albion's island home is the reason our time and date are so far ahead of the Americas), Mrs. Hart and I met our son in law in the lobby of a hospital; he led us to the room where our daughter Hannah had, only forty minutes earlier, given birth to Olafur Ivan Nelson Jr., five lbs, 12 oz. They are both doing very well.
-Grandad Hart

Irrelevant Relevance

"You are in the village."

An advantage to being young, to being twelve years old in fact, was that I could see through the silliness of a very up to date priest trying, despite his quadragenerian years, to make the service of Holy Communion seem hip, cool and, dare I say it, relevant to the young. It was 1970, and just as flower children were becoming a thing of the past, their style and message were being noticed by East Coast Episcopal clergy and liturgists.

So it was that at the Summer camp of the Claggett Diocesan Center, a gathering of kids ages twelve to fifteen from all over the Episcopal Churches of Maryland for a week’s fun in the sun, the priest who was in charge that year began the service in a colorful, painted tee-shirt with a weird rainbow stole, while a camp counselor played George Harrison’s Here Comes the Sun for our opening hymn. "Little darlin’, it’s been a long and lonely winter...here comes the sun..."

Then suddenly we were using those familiar words of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer (American). Even at age twelve it struck me that Cranmer and the Beatles make a very superficial combination. Do not misunderstand me; I liked the Beatles and had every record that a twelve year-old boy could afford; but, I also knew when my leg was being pulled, and an adult was making a fool out of himself. I am glad he did not see Hair or he might have looked sillier. Of course, he would have worn his stole, or so I assume.

I would not have worded it this way back then; but, it all comes of trying to be relevant. In fact, it comes of trying to make Christianity relevant to the times, instead of being faithful to the timelessness of its eternal verity. Only in its timeless and unchanging truth do we see that Christ’s light in this world is always and everywhere relevant because of its nature. Attempts to make it relevant only put it a bit beyond reach, and rob it of its force. They also expose a certain disingenuousness.

This is because the all too familiar issues of the day get in the way, and crowd out the genuine relevance of the Gospel. Why is it assumed that the beauty and meaning of traditional liturgy, the words of scripture, and the classic hymns must undergo a mutation, and be encumbered by all of the trappings of secular culture and entertainment? Not to mention the oft distressing news headlines from which a few minutes respite can be therapy in itself.

Perhaps without the dilution of perceived relevance, the true relevance is too disturbing. The words of the liturgy and the scripture pierce the heart, and bring us face to face with the greatest reality of all. "Men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil..." When the light hurts the eyes, perhaps blinding them as the eyes of St. Paul at his conversion, a bit of today’s news, some meaningless- or at least less meaningful- chatter can provide comfort and protection.

A lot of noise is quite useful in helping the mind not to think. The Village, from the 60s television series The Prisoner, was a place in which thinking was discouraged in every possible way. The brain child of a life long Catholic, Patrick McGoohan, the series portrayed the horrors of life as it would be in a secularist’s paradise. A motto known to every villager was "Questions are a burden to others, answers a burden to oneself." The most effective remedy for an overly inquisitive mind was a frontal lobotomy, though used only in extreme cases.

In the world of today no one needs a lobotomy; the constant intrusion of rollicking, bumping "music" is quite sufficient for the same purpose. I have found that I cannot use a grocery store, shopping mall or even a restaurant without the intrusion of constant noise. A lover of Bach myself, I would have it very differently were I running these places. Real music stimulates the mind, or as Bach put it, alluding to St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, it "renews the mind."

But, when I must eat out, in an affordable spot for lunch, I often carry a book with me, or perhaps the latest Touchstone, wishing to read and engage my mind. Reading with a plate of Szechuan chicken seems very pleasant in the early afternoon. But, who can read when thudding and imbecilic music is suddenly attacking the mind, competing with the thoughts of writers, and demanding attention (as also with conversation; how often do we have to shout our conversations to the people sitting next to us in these places?)? Shopkeepers and restaurant managers used to know better. Oh, to find a quiet place.

I recall once going into a well-known restaurant, one of the big chains, to meet a man who needed to see me. The experience was surreal. In every corner a television set was playing some inane soap opera, but at the same time a radio was blaring "music" from ceiling speakers arranged to create equal intrusion into every corner. Obviously, it was assumed that people want to be surrounded by sight and sound, but not to concentrate on anything, just as in McGoohan’s Village it was impossible to turn off the sound system.

My point is that "relevance" does to the liturgy and to the scripture what the noise does to the mind in secular venues. Other methods can be employed as well.

Sermons often become the place for relevance, of the distracting kind, either upon special occasions or when big news has taken place. A very sad piece of news to come to us, only a few years ago, was the destruction of the Columbia as it reentered the earth’s atmosphere, and seven lives were lost. I was scheduled to preach the next day, being Sunday.

I was handed a list of the seven names by a helpful friend, with the suggestion that I carry the list to the pulpit for my sermon. That Sunday was the Feast of the Purification, in which we remember when St. Joseph and the Blessed Virgin Mary took our Lord to the temple. The Gospel reading was a selection from the second chapter of St. Luke, including the place where Simeon first prays the Nunc Dimittis, "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation..."

My task was to expound upon the Word of God, and I could think of nothing more relevant to the true need of everyone in the church that day than "a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people Israel." This is the testimony, that light has come into the world; and with all due respect for the astronauts who had died the day before, I could not lessen the relevance of my sermon by the distraction of news (but, of course they were remembered in prayer).

Perhaps, if I were more clever, I could have managed to do both, and I have no doubt that other preachers with more talent than I, did achieve this very goal. But, I could not think of a way, at least without it being forced and awkward. I have a very real fear about dwelling upon current events in the pulpit, not that it is always unwise to address them. Indeed, it can be necessary at times. However, sermons do not need anything but the honest work of exegesis, to accomplish their best purpose. The Word of God is always relevant, far more relevant than today’s headlines, to everything in human life that truly matters. I will not dilute its effect, or weaken its force.

Suggesting that we need to refrain from concentrating upon the less meaningful chatter, the perceived relevance, and that we need to give it no place in the worship of the Church, is a very practical and simple application of basic Christian asceticism. It is consistent with the spirit of St. Benedict, ascetical practice to advance spiritual progress, no less for the layman than for the religious or the cleric. Distracting the people with relevance from the spirit of the age is a very indulgent practice, and obstructs the work of the Holy Spirit upon the human spirit.

For true relevance, it is best neither to assume a persona in accord with the latest fads in popular culture, nor to mimic the talking heads on the News. The truth of the Gospel is only dulled by such efforts. One must instead "put on Christ," especially those who are leading the people in worship, and preaching in the pulpits. The eternal and unchanging light of Christ is sufficiently relevant to lighten every corner where darkness dwells.

Howe to be One of the Good Ole' Boys

Following my post of September 24, and still with all due respect for the work Bishop John Howe did in his days as national director of NOEL, I am posting yet another of the ECUSAn bishop of Central Florida's public statements. I am posting it because it demonstrates the problem facing any ECUSAn parish whose people want to leave that heretical sect. Since this blog is international, it may come as news to some readers that, for the last few decades, parish properties, as such, have not existed in the Episcopal Church. Except for California, where, long ago, now retired Archbishop Robert Morse won a lawsuit to keep church property for the local congregation in Berkeley where he had served as parish priest, the church properties are owned by each diocese, a rule protected by legal precedent. Furthermore, the Episcopal Church managed to have the Canon Law amended so that each diocese holds these properties in trust for the national "church" headquartered in New York. With the exception of California, and a few rare cases regarding very unusual land grants, the courts have always ruled in favor of the diocesan ownership. This may be good news for bishops such as Bps. Iker and Ackerman, and all "Common Cause" bishops, if they pull their dioceses from the denomination, since the courts may consider national ownership to be in conflict with the "local" or diocesan ownership that has been upheld by precedent. Whether or not to contest in court such a congregation's wishes to withdraw, however, is the call of each diocesan Ordinary. But, for ECUSAns, or may I say, for Episcopalians in Central Florida who wish to convert to real Anglicanism, or something a little closer to it than ECUSAn heresy, the Evangelical, Charismatic John Howe stands as much in the way as do the bishops who support Same Sex Blessing, or, for that matter, "a woman's right to choose" to murder her baby.

The religion business makes strange bed fellows.

Bp. Howe's dictatorial statement, to those whose money, time and energy have been keeping church properties in good repair:

Dear Brothers and Sisters,
There has been a great deal of conversation over the past few years about whether or not those who wish to leave The Episcopal Church might "negotiate" with the Diocese of Central Florida to purchase church properties and affiliate with some other Province of the Anglican Communion. It is time to end these discussions. The simple answer is: No. The Windsor Report and the several Communiques from the Primates of the Communion have said that the incursions by foreign Bishops and Archbishops are illegitimate. The Presiding Bishop has said that The Episcopal Church will not allow the purchase of any property by any group that seeks to affiliate with an offshore Province. I will not permit the passage of any Resolution by the Diocesan Board, the Standing Committee or the Annual Convention of the Diocese of Central Florida that seeks to alter the accession clause in our Constitution to the Constitution and Canons of The Episcopal Church, or that seeks to transfer any property held by parishes in trust for the Diocese of Central Florida and The Episcopal Church. If you must leave, for conscience sake, I will do all in my power to make your leaving amicable. But when you make the decision to leave you immediately cease being a member of The Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Central Florida. You immediately cease having any say in decisions regarding any congregation of the Diocese or its property. Please be aware of this in any plans you might be making.

Warmest regards in our Lord,
The Rt. Rev. John W. Howe
Episcopal Bishop of Central Florida

Compare this to the very important line in our own document, The Affirmation of St. Louis: "The right of congregations to control of their temporalities should be firmly and constitutionally recognized and protected." Is it hard to see which is ethical, and which is tyranny?

English, how she should be spoken

Agathe Christie's famous Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, once told his associate, Captain Hastings, that the book that had helped him master the tongue of his new country, England, was English How She Should be Spoken. I wonder if, should such a book really ever come into existence, it would include that one element of most languages that English does not have. That element is a wide use of gender, giving almost everything anthropomorphic character; or at least, in the Greek sense, animation. Ah, but English, she does not have much use of gender. Funny, then, that the word "gender" haunts us constantly. No doubt, young people today are trying to determine if such a term as "gender intercourse" might apply to the art of copulation. These poor uneducated youths, suffering the deprivation of this, the age of higher illiteracy in which a college degree may soon come to indicate the opposite to what it did in my day, are exposed to applications that ask for name, age and gender, and to a social ideal of "gender inclusion."

What is equally sad, as we lament the deprivation of the young, is that the paradigm that has made C.S. Lewis understandable to civilized people everywhere, when he made reference to a ball as a meaningful symbol of the Church in its liturgy, is vanishing from their sight. Fundamental to understanding his well known essay, Priestesses in the Church 1, is his ability to move from sex to gender, and back again. If the distinction in meaning between these words is forever lost, we are left with something more profound than merely a linguistic shortage. Gone, as well, is the oft symbolic but necessary distinction between masculine and feminine, leaving us with male and female only. The deep psychological needs of human beings, endowed with intelligence that creates a myriad of complexities, require symbols of important realities. These symbols are both social and spiritual, and therefore take on a great deal of importance to human psychology, which might try to hide from reality on many levels, but cannot ignore it at the deepest level. Not only does God "desire truth in the inward parts 2," but so do we; in fact, to avoid madness, we must have it, if only under every dream and fantasy as the safe foundation.

Our age has acquired a level of equality between the sexes, and that equality is both a gain and a loss. In his essay, Lewis mentions what we have gained (which has advanced in the years since his writing):

"We have discovered in one profession after another that women can do very well all sorts of things which were once supposed to be in the power of men alone. No one among those who dislike the proposal is maintaining that women are less capable than men of piety, zeal, learning and whatever else seems necessary for the pastoral office."

But, he gets to the point at which "equality" turns from a blessing into a curse, the point at which it turns from truth and spins off into error, as he continues:

"The point is that unless equal means 'interchangeable', equality makes nothing for the priesthood of women. And the kind of equality which implies that the equals are interchangeable (like counters or identical machines) is, among humans, a legal fiction. It may be a useful legal fiction. But in church we turn our back on fictions. One of the ends for which sex was created was to symbolize to us the hidden things of God. One of the functions of human marriage is to express the nature of the union between Christ and the Church. We have no authority to take the living and semitive figures which God has painted on the canvas of our nature and shift them about as if they were mere geometrical figures."

And, using the word "masculine" that applies to gender, rather than "male" that applies only to the physical dimension of sex, Lewis makes a profound point with his customary genius of light reading but heavy thinking:

"But it is an old saying in the army that you salute the uniform not the wearer. Only one wearing the masculine uniform can (provisionally, and till the Parousia) represent the Lord to the Church: for we are all, corporately and individually, feminine to Him."

The entire essay is built upon the thesis that male and female are shadows of a reality deeper than what our eyes behold. They remind us of many important theological facts. They remind us of the relation between God the Father and the creation that He spoke into existence; our Scriptures never mention a goddess who gives birth to the world, but of the God who is Father and begets the universe by speaking. Our scriptures have, in the books of the prophets, the God who is husband to Israel and calls his people to fidelity. Our scriptures bring all of this into the sharpest focus by teaching the mystery of Christ and the Church, that our Lord is the Groom and the Church is His bride.

Our age has seen certain things happen simultaneously. How can we miss the connection in time and culture between them? The new idea that women can be "priests" comes at the same time as these things, but some Christians naively consider it mere coincidence. As radical feminism has increased, and girls are given neutral, or even masculine, names in place of feminine names (names that, as my fellow Touchstone editor Anthony Esolen has noted are "stolen" from boys, specifically names ending in "son," such as "Madison"), the images in everything from action movies to video games show women in masculine clothing (over obviously female bodies), in traditionally masculine roles. They carry swords and shoot bows that, if real, the actresses would not have the strength to carry, let alone use. These women are everything from pirate ship captains to space warriors. The leading men, instead of employing enough honor to protect them and insist that they stay out of danger, lead them into battle, respecting not their equality as persons, but their fictional (and fictitious) interchangeability as fighters. Leading ladies in fiction have been replaced by leading sluts, not loved for their feminine beauty and personhood, but taken to bed simply for their bodies. The modern actress is supposed to unclothe herself as a star of "soft porn" rather than playing the ideal woman who is loved by the hero.

In real life young men no longer have the sense that gentlemen treat ladies with deference, because that would violate the interchangeability of false equality. Romance has given way to animal passion, not as the anticipated beautiful experience of the wedding night, but as the anticipated consummation of every first date. The "liberated" woman is free to be abused as never before, to take the burden of disposing of the fruit of her womb, rather than at least expecting a man to do right by her. As women have been "liberated" from traditional femininity, they have been subjected to the abuses of mere sexual distinction that even animals make. No wonder they have become so outwardly promiscuous, since they cannot dress like ladies, be treated like ladies and given all of the symbolic, but psychologically necessary attributes of a well mannered distinction that treats sex as a profound type and shadow of spiritual reality.

We need to understand these things, partly to learn all over again the true human need for a ball. English has little use of gender, at least in so far as "how she should be spoken." But both the realities and needs of psychology and the revelation of theology must have it.


1. God in the Dock, Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, Publishing Company, 1970, p. 237. This essay is also available to read online.
2. From Psalm 51.

The Collect - Trinity 17

The Collect (a literal translation from the Latin first found in the 8th century Gregorian Sacramentary)

Lord, we pray thee that thy grace may always prevent and follow us, and make us continually to be given to all good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

While we recognize that salvation doesn’t come by doing good works, yet in this collect we pray that the Lord might “make us continually to be given to all good works.” The more we observe the good works of God on our behalf, the more we desire to do as God does; to be charitable, merciful, tender-hearted and forgiving. The more we hope in Christ, the more we desire HIS grace to go before us and to follow us, so that we might “walk worthy of the vocation to which we are called” (Eph. 4). No small task! It is possible only as HIS grace makes us able.

And what can we do to receive a greater measure of God’s grace? The Gospel reading assigned for this Sunday points us in the right direction: “For whoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” (Luke 14)

Humility must go hand in hand with good works or else everything is overthrown! St. Mark the Ascetic reminds us that we are not to rejoice when we do good to someone, but when we endure with humility and “without rancor the hostility that follows. For just as night follows day, so acts of malice follow acts of kindness.” That is why we urgently need the Lord’s grace to go before us and after us.

------------------Alice C. Linsley

Sermon St. Michael and all Angels

Rev. 12:7-12

Matt. 18:1-10

And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon…

The fact of spiritual warfare is often neglected. Many churches give the impression that the Christian religion is a vacation luxury cruise ship instead of a battle ship, with battle stations. But, we see in the New Testament and other writings of the early Church a tendency to use military expressions regularly and somewhat spontaneously. Saint Paul, for example, telling the Ephesians to put on the whole armor of God in order to stand against principalities and powers, rulers of the present darkness of this world, and wicked spirits in heavenly places. He tells them to stand, that is, to hold their ground. Our Lord Jesus did not tell us to hold a party until He comes, but to occupy until he comes.

It is fitting on this, the Feast of Saint Michael and all Angels, to remember who the angels of God are. They are our fellow servants who are spoken of in the Books of the Kings by the prophet Elisha. When the Syrians came to capture the prophet, his servant and disciple, a young “son of the prophets” was afraid; so Elisha prayed that God would open his eyes to see the hills filled with chariots of fire and horsemen. “There are more that be with us than with them.” And, centuries later the prophet Daniel, after several days of fasting, saw the angel Gabriel who spoke to him those rather mysterious words, to the effect that he would have arrived sooner, but the prince of Persia withstood him. He then spoke of Michael as the prince who stands for the people of Israel. The implication is, all of the nations of fallen mankind are under the evil power Saint Paul calls “Principalities and powers,” but that Israel was under the protection of a holy angel, the warrior Michael. The Church has always lived with the realization that all around us are unseen beings of intelligence and power locked in a war, a war that seems to rage for mankind as the very battleground. Also, that we are not spectators, but rather that we are engaged in this war. The image of angels as effeminate or as cute little babies with wings, is as ridiculous and insulting as a “Precious Moments” picture would be of the Marine Corps.

The mystery of iniquity, spoken of in scripture, begins with the mystery of how a majestic creature, an angel called the “anointed cherub who covers” became the devil, and the mystery of his domain of fallen angels and sinful humanity. But, the fact that it is a mystery does not erase the obvious evidence set before our eyes, namely that a mad hatred of mankind is coupled with a mad hatred for God, and a rebellion that existed prior to all recorded history. People may not know how to see through the mystery to what evil is, and what motivates and energizes it. Nonetheless, everyone sees that it exists. The scriptures make clear, as well, that evil has already lost in the ultimate sense, that when our Lord Jesus was crucified the devil was, in the Lord’s words, “cast out.” The serpent’s head was crushed when he bruised the heel of the Man Who was the seed of the woman, that is the One born of the Virgin. And, when He rose from the dead Christ made an open show of the devil’s defeat by leading a Triumph. Therefore, the ongoing battle has nothing to do with ultimate victory. Never has there been the slightest possibility that a mere creature (no matter how powerful in our estimation) would even threaten, let alone defeat, God. Rather, the ongoing battle has everything to do with evil that is not superhuman, but rather subhuman, base and completely mad. The ongoing battle is all about unreasoning hatred for mankind in a battle for individual human souls, and about a proud rebellion against God, the war of a rebel without a cause, but with a grudge. This is the war that we see reflected in the lies and violence of the modern world. It does not appear to be sane, because it is not sane.

In the Gospel for this feast, we have been told of the need to humble ourselves as the little child. We are not told that children are an example to follow, as some preachers give out with muddle-headed sentimentality. Rather, our Lord told us to humble ourselves as the little child, that is, as he put it in another discussion when he was at a dinner and saw men choose the places of honor for themselves, that we should take the lowest place. We should assume no place of honor for ourselves, but rather give place to others. But, he did not say that children were examples for us to follow. Rather, He spoke clearly about their need to be protected, especially, their need to be protected from the influences that would corrupt them, deprive them of their innocence and rob the children of childhood.

It is in this context that we learn more about angels. We learn that even as they are engaged in the war for individual souls, they are, at the same time, beholding the face of the Father. The Church has always taken this to mean that the holy angels contemplate God. Clearly, they intercede in prayer, prayer that is in their own tongues and on the level of their own understanding. And, this passage, speaking of the angel of each child, is the passage that has always been taken to mean that God has appointed for each person a guardian angel. But, in this Gospel text we must see the warning of judgment.

This warning has everything to do with the reality of our spiritual warfare, and of how that warfare applies to the little child of whom Jesus our Lord speaks. Anyone who leads one such child into sin, who robs a child of innocence, who destroys the protection and sacredness of childhood, who despises the frailty of the weak instead of defending it, would have been better off to have had a millstone tied about his neck and to have been drowned in the depths of the sea. For, to lead children into sin brings about a judgment that is terrifying. Only of the traitor Judas are similar words spoken: “Better for that man had he not been born.”

What does this have to do with war in heaven, the vigilance of Saint Michael and the holy angles against the dragon, and therefore of our stand against principalities and powers, rulers of the present darkness of this age, and wicked spirits in heavenly places? I will answer first by posing a question: In the New Testament, what is the source of false doctrines about God? The phrases used by the writers of the various Epistles, Saints Paul, Peter and John, all agree. “Doctrines of demons, seducing spirits, the spirit of error, the spirit of Antichrist…” These are the phrases used when speaking of false teaching itself, those lies that amount to deception about God, about salvation, and about morals. One of the big challenges that I found facing me while I was in Arizona, was to help the people of Atonement Church understand the radical difference between those of us who Continue to practice the old orthodox Catholic faith preserved in our Anglican tradition, and the church which had left us behind. More than keeping the old services we like, and even the wonderful Prayer Book itself, is the simple fact that light cannot have fellowship with darkness. I said to them, “let others keep the endowments, the real estate, and the social prestige of being Episcopalians. We will keep the Faith.” I found it inexplicable that, before I had arrived on the scene, some families had returned to the local, very modern and apostate Episcopal “Church” simply because it had a nicer Sunday School, rather than working to have a good one where they were.

One of the main problems with a church that presents the confusing message of priestesses, and that preaches moral license that it calls tolerance, is the harm that it is doing to the children. And, when I find the so called “conservative” Christians who think they ought to stay in that denomination in order to fight and change it from within, I wonder that they cannot see that it is futile; but the ones who amaze me the most are the ones who take their children there. Isn’t it bad enough that some public schools teach them how to be immoral, and that they ought to accept any and all kinds of human sin in the name of “tolerance”- so-called? Should they be taken to a church, to a Sunday School, where they will learn false doctrines? Right now the world is not aiming its deception and temptations simply at adults, but at children, and constantly at younger and younger ages. The advertisements and entertainment aimed at their young minds should anger and shock us. It is not simply that children should not have perverted life styles presented to them as good; it is deeper. They ought to be allowed those early years of innocence and not be presented with what is called “adult themes.” If they are to be protected it is necessary that their parents resist the spirit of the times- real spirits of deception. And, the Church must teach right from wrong, not “tolerance.”

Back around 1990 I was warned that the new Batman movie might be a little dark and scary, and that I should look it over before letting my children see it. So, I watched it late at night. I was very alarmed at one scene, and quite amazed that I had heard nothing about it. Outspoken Christians whose faith was known to the public, had taken their children to see the movie. A good number of well known Christians had written or spoken about the movie. Why did no one catch the scene in which, after a first date, the leading lady (I use the term loosely) wakes up in Bruce Wayne’s bed? People were taking their children to a movie that taught them that the good guy, the hero, the one to emulate, Batman himself, takes the girls to bed. This was not James Bond, father of the hundreds of illegitimate Bond Babies- a new line of dolls I would like to patent. This was a children’s hero presenting a bad and immoral example. And a whole culture, Christians included, were oblivious to the message transmitted to young minds, however subliminal its delivery. My children were not allowed to see it; I returned the tape the next morning. I would suggest to you that many people, many Christians, were oblivious to the deception because we live in an age of deception, an age where lies are preferred over truth. This too is spiritual, and we need to be vigilant.

As I said, when the Lord Jesus was obedient even to the death of the cross, the serpent’s head was crushed. When He rose from the dead He showed that He was triumphant over the powers of darkness and had defeated sin and death. As we occupy this ground until He comes, warring for our souls and the souls of others, we are joined in the battle by Saint Michael and the holy Angels. There are more that be with us than with them.

______________________________________________________

Icon of St. Michael from Monastary Icons

Last One Out Turn Off the Lights

My head is spinning. I never would have imagined that it would happen so fast, but then it really didn't. It has been in the offing for four years.

The Common Cause Partnership (CCP) is born.

This is Explosion Number One, as predicted here just a few days ago:

"Anglican bishops from ten jurisdictions and organizations pledged to take the first steps toward a “new ecclesiastical structure” in North America. The meeting of the first ever Common Cause Council of Bishops was held in Pittsburgh September 25-28.

"The bishops present lead more than 600 Anglican congregations. They formally organized themselves as a college of bishops which will meet every six months. They also laid out a timeline for the path ahead, committed to working together at local and regional levels, agreed to deploy clergy interchangeably and announced their intention to, in consultation “with those Primates and Provinces of the Anglican Communion offering recognition under the timeline adopted,” call a “founding constitutional convention for an Anglican union,” at the earliest possible date agreeable to all of the partners.

"'We met deeply aware that we have arrived at a critical moment in the history of mainstream Anglican witness in North America. God has led us to repentance for past divisions and opened the way for a united path forward. To him be the glory,' said Bishop Robert Duncan, convener of the council."

Read it all here.

The Episcopal Church has been hit by the first major blast, as a whole host of groups and jurisdictions come together to form a new church. They are the American Anglican Council (AAC); the Anglican Communion Network (ACN); the Anglican Mission in the Americas (AMiA); the Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC); the Anglican Province of America (APA); the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA); the Anglican Essentials Federation (AEF); Forward in Faith, North America (FIF/NA); and the Reformed Episcopal Church (REC).

Therein lie the elements that will cause Explosion Number Two, as I see little hope of such a disparate group maintaining any sort of real unity.

In the short term, however, we face the prospect of Avignon versus Rome -- two entities vying with each other as the true face of "mainstream Anglicanism" and seeking to convince the world of their bona fides. The Episcopal Church will no doubt retain its recognition by Canterbury, while the CCP will be embraced by the so-called Global South.

There will be more explosions to come, as catholic individuals, parishes and dioceses now belonging to the ten founding entities of the CCP find that there is no place for them in an institution that, in all likelihood, will continue to "ordain" women and worship with the 1979 "book of common prayer."

On that first point, the declaration says as much, when it states that one issue that will have to be dealt with is "How we will live together with bishops and congregations and dioceses that do ordain women and others that do not ordain women, affirming that we will not violate anyone’s conscience on this matter."

As to the second point, it hints as much when it says that two other issues to be dealt with are common worship and stating and maintaining a common Anglican ethos.

Both of these points are a far cry from the clarity provided by the Affirmation of St Louis.

I would so very much like to think that I am wrong, and that there will be no second or subsequent explosions; that the CCP could indeed be the foundation of a truly orthodox and catholic jurisdiction. But I fear that I will be proved right.

Let us pray for Bishop Duncan and all those involved in this bold venture, that they might take the steps necessary to prove me wrong. May God bless them.

And let us in the continuing movement not stand on the sidelines, pooh-poohing. Instead, let us seek dialogue with the CCP. They have already thought of that. The very final point included in their list of issues to be dealt with is this: Consistent with resolutions of Lambeth Conference, seeking to draw continuing churches, not members of the Common Cause Partnership, into fellowship.

Meanwhile, watch as the implosion now begins in earnest, as liberal, faithless "Anglicanism" begins to wither before our very eyes.

At least they'll save on their electricity bills.

Essay on St. Michael and all Angels

My sermon will be posted on or by Saturday.

September 29th is the feast of St Michael and all Angels. Angels are our fellow servants of God. Like us they are created beings, and do not share the uncreated nature of God. But, they are spirits, and their existence is both known to us and yet mysterious to us.

I have never understood the readiness some clergymen have had to proclaim themselves sophisticated by stating that they do not believe in angels. I once heard an Episcopal priest stand in the pulpit of a church, and make this very statement- but this same priest was also a devotee of H.L. Mencken. So, it should not surprise me that his idea of sophistication was sophomoric. He did not deny the Virgin Birth, or the Resurrection of our Lord, but one had to wonder what next? What else will he dismiss as beneath his own brilliance of mind, simply because it is too glorious and transcendental for his awkward attempt at honest skepticism? He thought his unbelief a thing impressive, as if it were a badge of wisdom.

I recall some years ago that Archbishop Peter Akinola, Anglican Primate of Nigeria no less, was visiting the United States, and was approached by members of the "Gay" advocacy group in the Episcopal Church. Without hesitation, the archbishop began to command the demons in them to be silent, and spoke the commands of exorcism. Word of this got to Mr. John Shelby Spong (I do not recognize him as a bishop), who attempted to make light of the African bishop’s lack of sophistication.

Surely, that is backwards. The ones who lack sophistication are the Western modern elitists, such as Mr. Spong. They cannot conceive of the supernatural world. Their ability to understand is limited not by reason and knowledge, but by foolishness and bigotry (the “benevolent” bigotry of liberals in this case). How easily they show contempt for African bishops who are not only their spiritual superiors, but who are also their superiors in scholarship and in theology. Mr. Spong no doubt thinks that he is the enlightened and educated one compared to the Anglicans of Africa, which only indicates that some of the people we are calling "liberals" these days are racists.

Indeed, to understand that a whole world exists that is invisible to us, inhabited by beings of a nature higher than our own- as every nature is supernatural to the natures below it- requires not so much the faith of a child, but the intelligence of minds which have been lifted to the great height of humility, raised to lowliness, able to see that even the science that we do know reveals a magnificence and intricacy of design which, with each new discovery, opens more questions concerning the things that we do not know. Scientists who learn new facts make us all less knowledgeable as a result, because the more we learn the less we know in proportion to any measure of a complete understanding. We gain ground only to lose more ground in our quest for knowledge. For, whereas before, questions could be few, we have now more questions; for the increase of knowledge shows that the percentage of it that we have is less than we thought. For every discovery of fact opens more questions than we had been asking before. So, a truly learned and intelligent person becomes humble, for all his knowledge can only tell him how ignorant he is.

Not so those who misunderstand the progress of science, and think that we now know just about everything, and that we can understand every phenomenon with what they sophomorically call "a scientific explanation". But, they do not have the courage to face real science, and its unsettling effect on human pride.

They think that their limited knowledge should rule out what they characterize as things "simple" and "childish." How simple and childish of them. The spiritual side of this is the statement of our Lord, that only the one who humbles himself as a little child 1 is great in the Kingdom of Heaven. While Western Rationalist clergymen, such as Mr. Spong and the Mencken enthusiast, applaud their own sophistication, truly wise men are worshipping God with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven. Those who are humble enough to receive the wisdom that comes from God have no time to waste trying to look clever by the low standard of Western Rationalism.

The reading we have from the twelfth chapter of the Book of Revelation tells us why. It tells of spiritual warfare. It speaks of the battle St. Michael and the armies of God are fighting against the devil and his angels. We see it all around us, unless our delusion of sophistication blinds us to the war. Is it not obvious to us that the world around us is hostile to God, to everything that is true and good? For example, every time a new discovery of medical science brings home just how depraved and viscous it is to murder children in the womb by abortion, that discovery is ignored by the major press. When the discovery is invoked as yet more evidence for life, it meets with a hostile attempt at censorship, as though the most obscene thing in the world is to speak the truth. And, indeed, it is, by the standard of this world and its prince. This would be a great mystery to me if I did not know about spiritual warfare. But, as one who knows of it, I have been prepared to recognize the war for what it is.

The war is very real; I have had the very Biblical experience of performing genuine exorcism and of seeing a human being released quite suddenly from the grip of demon possession. I do not know fully what demon possession is, for it is still a mystery; I cannot put it under a microscope. But, I know enough to have been ready to act when a person was in need, and to do what Jesus said to do. The results were quite wonderful.

"Our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against rulers of the spiritual darkness of this world, and against spiritual wickedness in heavenly places." So says St. Paul;2 and he tells us to put on the whole armor of God in order to stand in the evil day. We do not know when the evil days are gong to be. We have all had an evil day of weather, with enough warning that people should have been ready for winds and flood. So it is with days of spiritual warfare, evil days. We must be prepared by wearing the whole armor of God, as explained in the sixth chapter of Ephesians. Otherwise our minds and hearts will be exposed to all of the weapons of deception and damnation. We must also be ready through the regular practice of prayer and of fasting. This should be part of our routine, just as the whole armor of God should be part of our daily life. Unless we live on a war footing, we are not prepared.

We know, or should know, that the angels are messengers. The words in Hebrew and Greek translated "angel" in our English Bible, mean messenger. In fact, John the Baptist was the greatest born of women, for though he was a man he is registered in the company of angels. He was the Messenger of the Covenant (H’ Melech H’ Br’it).

We know that when God sent important words to man, especially when the Word was made flesh, it was done by the Message of an Angel. For Gabriel appeared to Mary and announced that she would be the mother of our Lord, that indeed not simply despite her virginity, but because of her virginity, she would bear and bring forth God in the flesh. Who but an angel could bring this word as a message which causes the event to happen? A word with the creative power of God Himself, put in the mouth of God’s own messenger as God’s own words.

And in addition to their being messengers, we see them as warriors. The scriptures speak this way quite a bit, especially in Joshua and in Daniel, and of course in the New Testament, such as in the Book of Revelation. This ought to comfort us in all our tribulation. For we are not alone. There are more with us than with them, angels fellow servants of God.

1. See Matthew 18:4, which happens to be part of the Gospel reading for this feast. I will say more about this in the sermon to follow.

2. See Ephesians 6:10f

Prayer to the Saints

Canon John Hollister, one of our regular readers and very active commentators, has kindly given me permission to publish the following cybernetic conversation he has had at another venue.

"Why would any Anglican Christians want to pray to anyone other than God at any time? I have been told by an ACC member that many Anglicans pray the rosary and pray to the saints for their intercession."

Here is Canon Hollister’s reply:

Have you ever asked another Christian to pray for you? Have you ever asked for the assistance of a prayer group or prayer chain, or as a member of such a group prayed for someone else? I would be very surprised if you had not, because praying for one another is both a natural human impulse and a Christian duty.

But if you have done that very natural, communal, and traditional thing, then you have "prayed to someone for their intercession". "To pray" is merely a somewhat antiquated phrase for "to ask sincerely"; thus when a lawyer drafts a Complaint or Petition to begin a lawsuit, it always ends with a "Prayer for Relief" in which the Complainant or Petitioner sets out what it is he wants the court to do for him.

Similarly, "intercession" merely means "asking on behalf of someone else".

"Saint" means "someone who has been sanctified", that is, "has been made holy", which each of us has been by our dedication to God's service that was a major result of our baptism. (That we often do not live up to this holy calling is cause for regret but it does not make our "sanctification" any less real. That is why St. Paul could write "To the Saints which are in Corinth", even though those folks were behaving in a very unholy fashion.)

When we recite the Creed and declare that "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church; the Communion of Saints", we declare our belief that the Church Militant (struggling here on earth) and the Church Triumphant (those who have passed through the Gates of Larger Life to be in fellowship with God) are both one body. That is, because time is merely an aspect of the created order and God, as the Creator, is outside of and not bound by the restrictions of that created order, to God what we think of as past, present, and future are all equally accessible.

Thus all Christians who have ever lived, live now, or will ever live are all equally members of the Church which is the Communion of Saints.

Thus while you may very properly ask me, as another member of the Church Militant, to pray for you, so either or both of us may properly ask a member of the Church Triumphant to pray for us as well. The only difference is that I may well respond to you, or you to me, that "I have put you on my prayer list". The member of the Church Triumphant from whom we beg the same favor cannot respond in a way that we will hear but, as a matter of faith, and if we have chosen a responsible person to whom to address that request, we can be confident that as a good Christian he or she will do as we ask.

Many of us, knowing that Our Lady is, out of all Christians, the most perfectly obedient to God's will, feel that confidence in even greater degree with respect to her. Thus many of us choose to include her among those we ask to pray for us.

It is important to note that in all these cases, we are asking a fellow member of the Church to address his or her prayers TO GOD on our behalf. We do not ask Mary or any other named member of the Church to pray for us because she or he has any greater power than any other member of the Church; it is just another basic human instinct that when we need others' prayers, the more of them we can get the better we feel about it.


"I do not pray for the dead. I believe they are beyond my interference, and are in the hands of God. So why should I ask the dead to pray for me?"

All of us at some time get caught up in the fallacy of thinking about Heaven in the terms we have learned through our experiences here on earth. You say of those members of the Church who are, in merely earthly terms, dead that "they are beyond my interference". But you can only say that if on some level you believe they have been placed beyond the reach of prayer by some force that we cannot withstand.

Here on earth there is one such primary force: time. It is the one dimension known to us which is unidirectional: it flows in only one way and we can neither turn it to the side, and so slow it, or turn it around, and so reverse it.

Time, however, like length, breadth, height, mass, etc., is only an aspect of this created, physical world. It has no application outside of this created order. Thus to God, and we must assume to those who live in fellowship with God, what we perceive as past, present, and future are all equally capable of being known. It is a poor metaphor, as all metaphors
at bottom must be, but think for a moment what it is like to walk down a crowded street. The walker is separated from the others there by physical distances which he or she perceives as forward, backwards, or to one side or the other.

Sometimes, indeed, the effect of those distances is not just to separate us from other walkers but to conceal them from us, behind the crowd or some obstacle, around a corner, or over on the next street. To an observer posted on the top of a tall building, however, his vantage point makes those factors of distance in front, distance behind, or distance to
the side merge into the background and become largely irrelevant: he can see all the walkers on the block below him, and most for many blocks around, equally well.

So it is with God and those who have lived, live now, or will at some future time live where we live now. And since all of these persons are equally present to God, it makes perfect sense for me to pray to Him for His grace and mercy upon them, even though some of them have, from my very limited perspective, "already" died. If you prefer to think of it this way, then you can put it that God knew from the beginning of time that I
would be offering these prayers, and so has, I trust, already taken them into account.

To refuse to pray for the "dead" is a classic Protestant error, one that makes a mockery of the "Communion of Saints" to which we give our assent every time we recite one of the Creeds. It has always been a mystery to me why the Puritans took such a dislike to the departed, especially to the long-departed. After all, they could scarcely have known their forebears in person, and therefore had no principled basis on which to condemn them and to eject them from the Church.

But then Puritans have always had very little time for anyone who was not exactly like themselves, haven't they?