Thursday, July 27, 2006

Outline of an Anglican Life

The man who wrote the book on Continuing Anglicanism was Fr. Louis Tarsitano, a priest of the ACA who was also an Associate Editor of Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity. Now, this book, which has gone in and out of print over the last few years, is available in PDF format. It is useful for educating oneself, for Confirmation candidates, and maybe even to help rescue people from the sinking ECUSA ship- if they will but read it.

I recommend it.

6 comments:

Continuing Home said...

Thank you for this resource!!

Rev. Dr. Hassert said...

Just to let you know, you can still obtain "hard copies" of the Tarsitano text from the publication society of the Reformed Episcopal Church (Classical Anglican Press):

http://homepage.mac.com/klock/ChristChurch/book.htm

Fr Matthew Kirby said...

It has much very good material, but I think it only fair to note that its treatment of the Real Presence is heavily Nominalist in the main text. This is explicated by a hodge-podge of quotations in the footnotes that, coming from theologians who did not all appear to have the same belief about the Sacrament, does not seem coherent. In addition, his implication that Transubstantiation falsely posits a physical and corporal presence is misleading, since Aquinas clearly teaches that while it is the true Body/Corpus that is Present, it is not present in a localised or corporal mode.

His treatment of biological evolution, hermeneutics, and Biblical critical sholarship are, in my opinion, simply and unambiguously wrong in significant ways. The imprimatur given to Young-Earth Creationism is particularly problematic and may serve to undermine the books wealth of good catechesis for informed enquirers. I say this as one who once had exactly the same apporach to "origins".

Also, one cannot help but notice serious omissions in areas such as the doctrines of the communion of saints.

In other words, for Anglican Catholics, I would suggest this is a book only to be used with caution, caveats and in subordination to other material.

Rev. Dr. Hassert said...

Indeed, a good book, but simplistic in some places (my only point was to comment that it is not "out of print," just being printed by another press).

Abp. Haverland's "Anglican Catholic Faith and Practice" is also a good introductory text, but at one point he implies that the Real Presence suggests a physical presence and spends less time in comparison to Tarsitano+ on basic doctrine. Bp. Wilson's "Faith and Practice" is also good (but ECUSA oriented).

Fr. Tarsitano's text is at least a start. Classical Anglicans need to start writing more basic theological texts for the laity.

Fr. Robert Hart said...

AND to revive some of the great Anglo-Catholic theologians. The American Church Union reprint of Francis Hall's Dogmatic Theology series is only a start. It is a scandal that most of the works by Dix, Mascall, etc. are out of print.

poetreader said...

Yes, there's a lot of stuff that badly needs to be reprinted. I'd include Bishop Grafton's works among the important ones also. His are very readable and well-balanced. I find Grafton much superior to Wilson, who tends to be dry, and sometimes overly narrow-minded.

Though I'm far from being a Fundamentalist, I was more than a little put off by Wilson's somewhat less than respecting attitude toward the Scriptures, which shows up in more than one chapter.

I guess all this shows that it is dangerous to rely too much on any one source.

ed