Infinite Monkey

More Xanity Design websites featured by Extensis WebINK

2012-01-12T20:54:00.000+01:00

I am pleased to announce that Extensis has chosen another two websites I designed for their WebINK Showcase. The Xanity Design site itself was already featured (see previous blog entry); now the sites for the International Children's Fund and the Old Catholic parish of Hannover, Germany, both designed and programmed by Xanity Design, have also been added to their showcase.

Additionally, the website for Fuchs und Hase, which Xanity Design programmed and built, is also featured there.

Thus no less than four Xanity sites are now in the showcase – huzzah!

Essay: "I am an Anglican"

2012-01-05T22:59:00.001+01:00

You may recall my mentioning an essay contest from the Anglican Communion back in October. This is the text I sent as my entry. Now that the deadline has passed, the Eve of Epiphany and my 50th blog entry is as good a time as any to publish it here. Comments and pokes in the eye with sharp sticks are welcome.

I am an Anglican

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Given the stormy seas of the Anglican Communion in recent years, I believe Anglicans the world over need to remind themselves of just why we are Anglicans, and why we should remain so in spite of our own discomfort or disagreements.

This article will provide many such reasons of my own, in hopes that others may share in them and build on them with their own. I have divided them into seven parts – an auspicious number, since it is the number of the Messiah, in Whose name and (hopefully) with Whose help I write these words.

I am an Anglican, and I ask you to read these words and join me in sharing our wonderful and glorious faith.

Part I: Expressions of koinonia and communion

I am an Anglican because I believe Anglicanism is the best hope in the world for providing a model for the unity of all Christians. If all the major denominations were to suddenly heed Christ’s prayer that they all may be one, the result would look remarkably like our Anglican Communion, with the Bishop of Rome taking on a position analogous to our Archbishop of Canterbury, as a focus of communion but not the leader of it.

I am an Anglican because our Anglican Communion is the best living reflection of the dictum quoted by Pope John XXIII and usually attributed to Augustine of Hippo: In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas – “in necessary things unity; in uncertain things freedom; in everything compassion.”

I am an Anglican because our church is such a large tent. Where others see weakness, division, confusion, inconsistency, and disharmony, I see a great family united in its diversity. A jewel only reveals its beauty when it has many facets, and so it is with our Communion. Only in our Anglican Communion can one find such a wide range of theology and practice, and yet somehow we stay together, with God’s help. Where there is dissent, we seek to resolve it through dialogue, not by threat of punishment; by communication, not excommunication.

I am an Anglican because we as a Communion can agree to disagree, such as on the issue of women’s ordination. Some member churches practice it, some don’t, some only partially, and there is no pressure from above to conform at an international level. Within some member churches, attempts to make careful provision for those who cannot in good faith accept women’s ordination have been made. Regardless of the success or merits of these attempts, this is a step which goes to show what lengths we Anglicans are willing to pursue to preserve our unity, something which is practically impossible in other churches. Thus we show a way forward to a future where all Christians are united not just in our baptism, but in the communion of our churches as well.

Part II: Expressions of faith in worship

I am an Anglican because of the richness, poetry, and power of our liturgical tradition. Along with the works of Shakespeare and the King James Bible, the words of the Book of Common Prayer are one of the greatest pillars of the English language, sounding immediately familiar to anyone hearing them. No other English-language liturgy comes close. No adaptation of the Book of Common Prayer by other churches, be it the Book of Divine Worship, the Liturgy of St. Tikhon, or others, compares to the majesty of the original language in its entirety.

I am an Anglican because of our glorious musical heritage, from Anglican Chant to Elgar to Prichard to Wesley to Merbecke to Ellerton to Purcell to Byrd to Vaughan Williams. That tradition is second to none in the English-speaking world, perhaps even in the whole world.

Part III: Expressions of koinonia and communion in ecumenism

I am an Anglican because we welcome and engage in dialogue with other churches like no other. The Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral is a unique invitation to all Christians to transcend our differences and to come together as one Body of Christ based on four simple ideas. Similarly, the Bonn Agreement with the Old Catholics shows the way for true communion and fellowship in a model that is unique in its simplicity, forthrightness and mutual respect. The same goes for our agreements with the Philippine Independent Church, the Mar Thoma Church, and so on. And, of course, at a local level member Anglican churches are forging ahead in joining with other churches, such as the “Called to Common Mission” agreement between the ELCA and the Episcopal Church in the United States, or the Anglican-Methodist Covenant in Britain, or the Porvoo Agreement in northern Europe, or the Churches of North and South India.

I am an Anglican because we do not declare other churches or Christians are deficient, invalid, or substandard. Instead we invite them in love to share our faith and to find common ground in humility and charity.

I am an Anglican because we invite all baptized Christians to join us at the table for Holy Communion. As Our Lord Jesus Christ said, “Judge not, that ye be not judged; for with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again” (Matt 7:1). It is not our place, nor the place of any institution on Earth, to judge others and decide for them whether they are worthy to receive the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.

Part IV: Continuity and reason

I am an Anglican because on the one hand, we have an unbroken continuity going all the way back to St. Augustine of Canterbury and the Irish Church, and through them to the Apostles themselves and thus to Our Lord Jesus Christ, while not being suffocated under the rule of a single leader or Magisterium or endless statements and confessions of faith.

I am an Anglican because we do not presume to speak in God’s name infallibly on our own. Instead, we walk together the path of Christ to find and follow God’s Will, wherever that path may lead.

I am an Anglican because our church does not try to explain the unexplainable, as in the case of transubstantiation or consubstantiation, preferring as Richard Hooker did to simply accept that sacraments are mysteries and let God do the rest.

I am an Anglican because our church does not presume to second guess science. Instead, Reason is one of the three pillars of our faith, along with Scripture and Tradition, and Church and science live together in harmony, not as rivals, but as complementary pieces of the Truth. Indeed, the motto of the Anglican Communion is the words of Our Lord Jesus, written in Greek in the windrose that symbolizes our Communion: ἡ ἀλήθεια ἐλευθερώσει ὑμᾶς (“the Truth shall set you free,” John 8:32b).

I am an Anglican because I am proud and delighted to be in communion with scientists like Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, Francis Bacon, Robert Hooke, Lord Kelvin, and Sir John Polkinghorne, as well as with the members of the Society of Ordained Scientists or the Episcopal Church Network for Science, Technology and Faith in the USA.

Part V: Communion of saints

I am an Anglican because we adopt and honor Christians of all denominations as our saints. It is hard to imagine any other church having Martin Luther King (Baptist), Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Lutheran), Óscar Romero (Roman Catholic), and Elizabeth Romanova (Russian Orthodox) commemorated together as statues on the walls one of its most significant churches, as we do on Westminster Abbey, together with “our” modern saints like Manche Masemola and Bishop Janani Luwum.

I am Anglican because we choose to honor certain saints even when it means admitting and highlighting mistakes of the past made in our church’s name, such as Thomas More, John Fisher, and Charles King and Martyr.

I am an Anglican because we join with all the saints in a great communion transcending death each time we celebrate the Eucharist, while not sliding into plain superstition or cults that divert from Christ Himself.

Part VI: Manifestation of the Church Catholic

I am an Anglican because I believe the Anglican Communion is a full and complete reflection of the ideals of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the Church Fathers. It contains the full essence of the koinonia, the community of the early Church, in its episcopal governance in apostolic succession and with territorial jurisdictions, with bishops acting together as equals. The Church has no head but Christ Himself, and in His name the leadership is shared by all bishops together. All bishops, not just the Bishop of Rome, are the true successors of Peter.

I am an Anglican because as Hippolytus of Rome wrote in his Apostolic Traditions, our bishops are commonly “chosen by all the people,” not appointed from above by a distant prelate with little or no consultation of the full body of believers. In this way truly all the parts of the Body of Christ play equally important roles in its vitality and continuity, regardless of whether one is clergy or lay. By this, the Holy Spirit works through each and every one of us to our fullest potential, and it also has the virtue of preventing any one individual from taking the Church in a way it was never intended to go.

I am an Anglican because our priesthood and bishops are closest to the descriptions we find in the Epistles, especially when it comes to having families: In the letter to Titus, bishops are described not as celibate or monastic, but being “the husband of one wife”. The Church Fathers clearly believed all Apostles except John were married and had families, which is supported in numerous parts of the New Testament (e.g. Mark 1:29-31, Matthew 8:14-15, Luke 4:38-39, 1 Timothy 3:2+12). One example is in 1 Corinthians 9:5, where it says: “Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?” Even the so-called “first Pope”, Peter, was himself married, as mentioned in the Gospel of Luke, and at least one Pope, Anastasius I, was succeeded by his own son, Innocent I. Even as late as Pope Honorius (died 1287), there were Popes who were married and had children. Therefore there is no logical reason on the basis of Scripture or Tradition that married people should be excluded from Holy Orders at any level.

I am an Anglican not because Anglicanism is a “Catholic alternative” to Rome, but because it is a true living manifestation of the Church Catholic: a priesthood of all believers where all are one in Christ. As it says in Paul’s epistle to the Romans, “For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved”, and in Galatians, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus”. Thus the whole body of Christ takes part in all decisions in its synods of all believers, rather than being beholden to the decisions of one man or a tiny elite.

I am an Anglican not because it is “Catholic and reformed” or “reformed Catholic”, but because as a local church celebrating the sacraments, in particular the Eucharist, the Anglican Communion is a full expression of the Church Catholic without excluding other churches from being the same. So too are we a full manifestation of the Church just as each person of the Trinity is a full manifestation of God. These are the central aspects of how the Church Fathers describe the polity of the Church (cf. Leuenberg Documents 11, p. 93), therefore from the view of the Church Fathers’ ecclesiology, we are not “reformed” Catholic, nor are we “part” of the Church Catholic, we are Catholic.

I am an Anglican because our Catholicity is reflected most clearly in the fact we celebrated the sacraments in the vernacular centuries before it became common practice in the Roman church, allowing all to participate fully in the sacramental life of the Church. This has sadly been forgotten in other churches, which continue to uphold dead languages as a gold standard, so that few even understand what is being said, whether it is Latin, Old Church Slavonic, Greek or Aramaic. The irony is that the Latin Mass, today so bitterly defended by Western traditionalists versus the vernacular, was instituted originally because the people of Rome didn’t speak Greek, which at the time was the only language used. Latin was the vernacular at the time, so for the same reason the old Roman church celebrated in Latin, we celebrate in our own languages without question or controversy.

Part VII: Homeward bound

I am an Anglican because I searched for years for a church to call home in a place where all churches seem to be slowly dying, with widespread church closures and empty pews, and where committed Christians are now in the minority. In no other church outside our communion partners did I find the same Catholic essence, such as the emphasis on the Blessed Sacrament of Communion or the historic episcopate, combined with the comprehensiveness that is so integral to what it means to be Anglican. In no other church do I clearly see the past in unbroken tradition, the present in being accessible and relevant to the people of today, and the future in its supple institutions and vibrant activity so finely balanced. Once I found a place to live as an Anglican again within our communion, I came home, and that is where I shall stay.

I am an Anglican. I am home, and I hope you come home, too. +

John Grantham
25 November 2011
Hannover, Germany

+Michael of Rio Grande and the Personal Ordinariates

2012-01-05T20:06:00.000+01:00

The Episcopal News Service is carrying an interesting pastoral letter from the Rt. Rev. Michael Vono, who is the current Episcopal Bishop of Rio Grande, one of the more conservative dioceses in the Episcopal Church. The letter is a reaction to the appointment of his predecessor to lead the Roman Catholic personal ordinariate for disaffected Anglicans. Read it all here.

I think it's a lovely way to view this development. Yes, it is irksome in that it feels like Rome is trying to poach believers, but at the same time it also gives breathing space and thus a chance for reconciliation down the road.

It also, by the by, works to undermine the centuries-old trend towards increasing centralism and enforced uniformity in the Roman communion, with the Latin (or Roman) Rite gradually replacing various other older rites and with a clearly preferred place above the other remaining ones. Having a new liturgical use on such a wide scale may hopefully begin to reverse, or at least slow down that trend. Well, here's hoping anyway.

The night before Christmas (in Hannover)

2011-12-24T12:55:00.000+01:00

'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through Hannover,
Not an ex-pat was stirring, nor any Ausländer.
The stockings were hung by the flat door with care.
Pointless, because St. Nick was already there.
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
with bilingual names of presents in their heads.
And us in our jammies, lying down in our beds,
had just settled down from shopping 'til dead.
When out in the courtyard there arose such a clatter,
I jumped out of bed to see what was the matter.
Must be some drunks, I thought with some dread,
but I hope it is St. Nick instead.
The moon was obscured by rain clouds – no snow.
'Twas all rainy and icky. White Christmas, no show.
When what to my wondering eyes should appear,
but a guy in a St. Nick suit, and he was headed here.
Dressed all in red, from his head to his foot,
I knew in a flash that St. Nick had come to it.
But where are the reindeer, I thought to myself,
where's Dasher and Donner, or Rudolf himself?
He strolled his way towards me, his bag in his hand,
bulging with stuff, many presents so grand.
He saw I was watching, and he gave me a wink
and walked right up to me. Didn't know what to think.
And then, in a twinkling, he opened his mouth,
and out came a question, of that there was no doubt.
But it was in German, and my German is weak,
so I stood there dumb, unable to speak.
I asked, "Are you St. Nick?" and he gave me a look
and shook his head slowly, and said as I shook,
"Nein, war am Sechsten", he replied in his German.
"Ich bin der Weihnachtsmann!" Which I had failed to determine.
Then he repeated his previous query,
this time in English, since my German is weary.
"Does Family Müller live here in this house?"
"No," I said, "number seven, next door." So he turned to go out.
"Wrong number," he said with a sheepish small grin,
"I'm new here in Hannover, 'til now in Berlin."
"I'm new here too!" I replied with a smile,
"Come meet us at Mezzo! H4ES, worth your while!"

A very merry (or happy for you Limeys) Christmas to all!

New site from Xanity Design goes live: International Children's Fund Germany

2011-12-21T16:48:00.000+01:00

I am pleased to announce the launch of a new site for the International Children's Fund Germany gGmbH, which is a Christian charity based in Berlin focusing on supporting children in Africa with various development programs. You can see the site at www.childrens-fund.de – enjoy!

Xanity Design site prominently listed on Extensis WebINK Showcase

2011-12-21T16:07:00.001+01:00

I am pleased to announce that Extensis has listed my Xanity Design website on their WebINK Showcase, currently third on their page, which you can see at www.extensis.com/en/WebINK/showcase/.

A candidate for rector of the Old Catholic parish in Frankfurt...just one

2011-11-01T13:52:00.000+01:00

It genuinely saddens me that the Frankfurt parish, which is in a search process for a new rector, has only had one priest apply (see story in Germany on alt-katholisch.de). The deadline has now passed, and the election is therefore more or less a formality (unless of course the parish decides they don't want him, but that's not terribly likely).

Naturally I wish the candidate, Armin Luhmer, currently in Blumberg, blessings and much success with the Frankfurt parish, so I hope I'm not unduly causing offense by complaining about the lack of candidates. That isn't the issue at all, but rather, I'm concerned that this may be a sign of things to come – just one (or none) candidates for a rector position.

At the last synod, there was some discussion at the fringes where concern was shown about the likelihood of a shortage of priests in the near future, but little formal debate and few if any proposals. The thing is, "native" Old Catholic rectors, i.e. those ordained Old Catholic and who became a rector as such, are in the minority, as I'm informed. The bulk of Old Catholic rectors in Germany are those who were Roman Catholic and who changed jurisdictions at some point. There is a seminary, which is part of the University of Bonn and which is integrated into that university's Roman Catholic and Protestant programs, and there is a small number of students there (five or six, I believe). But there is a large wave of priests who will be retiring, opening up all sorts of vacancies that we simply cannot fill, at least not by full-time clergy, and the seminary won't produce enough replacements – compounded by the fact that Roman Catholic priests in Germany are increasingly hard to find anyway, so that supply is also dwindling.

There is one possible stopgap solution, which is non-stipendiary (i.e. volunteer) clergy. The Old Catholics do in fact have a theology distance learning course that qualifies people to become ordained as deacon or priest, but only on a volunteer basis, since under German law, an officially state-sanctioned church must require their rector to have a university-level theology degree and to pass the state exams. We do have a fair number of such volunteer priests and deacons, who could preside at services. But there are some major drawbacks to this.

First, in many people's minds, "priest" is synonymous with "rector", meaning that if there is a priest available, the unspoken expectation is that the priest will run the parish, which is a full-time job at least. Volunteer priests simply would be unable to invest that kind of time.

Second, without a strong and clear leadership in place, the parish government could quickly fall apart as the parish lacks direction. Again, there could be the unstated expectation that any volunteer priest would step into this role, which he or she will just plain not be able to do, neither legally nor practically. Meanwhile the sad truth is that parish vestries, which are also made up of volunteers, are often hard to motivate to invest enough time to govern and manage the parish, and again that requires leadership – and the rector is the logical person to do it. Without a strong rector, the vestry can quickly lose direction or motivation.

Third, having a priest available can make it too easy to just sit back and not bother getting a rector. A kind of "what, me worry" sets in, and people become too comfortable with the band-aid solution, rather than trying to get back to the original healthier state before. It wouldn't take long for the supply of stipendiary priests for rector positions to dwindle under such circumstances.

Thus while this "solution" would solve problems short-term, in the long run it would weaken the church further. Somehow, we need to motivate more young people to study theology and to become rectors. The problem is that there seems to be a cultural reluctance to encourage this at all, for fear of offending or stepping on toes. But I think it is better to openly state the problem and to ask people to step up and help out, either by choosing to enter discernment or to pray for those who do and include such prayers in Eucharist services, not just to ask God's help, but to remind people that the issue still exists.

Sad to say, I have often thought I would like to try to enter the seminary, but at my age it is unlikely I could expect to be placed as a rector. By the time I would graduate I'd be pushing 50. But surely there are others contemplating the idea who are better positioned than I, and who could use a few extra nudges from their fellow Christians to try to follow that path.

We will, with God's help. Kyrie eleison...

On All Saints’, we are all saints

2011-11-01T13:03:00.000+01:00

Note
This sermon was originally written for All Saints' Day in 2008, but since the liturgical year A is back, this is as good a time as any to repost it.

Sermon for All Saints’ Day, Year A

Revelation 7:9-17, Psalm 34, 1 John 3:1-3, Matthew 5:1-12

This being All Saints’ Day, the obvious question is, “what is a saint?” Most people probably think of saints being guys running around with halos around their heads. After all, that’s what you see in icons and paintings like the ones of Jesus and Mary hanging on the wall behind me.

So I brought my own halo tonight. Just some tinfoil, doesn’t look like much, but it’ll do. It looks much like the one in this picture:

Of course, I notice some of you giggling a little. A ring of tinfoil doesn’t make a saint, does it? The halo itself as a ring around someone’s head looks a little ridiculous. Did the saints of old really run around with rings around their heads?

So let’s do a little bit of art history here. The idea of the halo-as-ring is actually relatively new. A halo is more properly called a nimbus, and the original purpose of the halo in art was not to represent something like this ring of tinfoil, but this:

...a candle, or more particularly its radiant glow. Early artists, and indeed the authors of the Gospels or even Jesus Himself, tended to speak in symbols and metaphor, and the halo itself is a metaphor for the inner light.

Jesus is portrayed in the Transfiguration as being a figure of radiant light. In early hagiographies, saints are described as having faces shining, as if they themselves were lamps or lanterns. The artists of the Middle Ages weren’t interested in literal portrayals of people, so they made symbolic portrayals of an idealized, stylized world. Rather than try to paint a radiant glow, they resorted to painting gold disks or just circles, like this:

If you’ve ever seen the ring around the Moon on a wintry night, you’ll know exactly where they got that from. There’s the origin of the halo.

Fast-forward to the Renaissance, and artists like Giotto and da Vinci were slowly “rediscovering” perspective. Realism, rather than symbolism, was the order of the day. The problem is that in the course of time, artists – indeed everyone – had forgotten what the reasoning behind the icons was, and thought that the symbol was to be taken literally. So when they began to paint in perspective, they tried to paint the halo in perspective, as a disc attached to the back of the person’s head, like in this painting by Giotto:

...then later as a ring, like in this painting, where da Vinci is showing off his talent by painting softly glowing rings in perfect perspective.

The problem is only that they didn’t know what it was they were painting. In the passing of the centuries, the original purpose of the halo was forgotten, the whole mentality of the people had changed. The point had been lost with time.

The irony is that the quest for realism stunted our sense of reality as badly as those people of the Dark Ages ignorant of science. Today we are very literal in our way of thinking – a product of the Renaissance and Enlightenment, when we learned to use logic and science to achieve great things. The result is that our metaphors for people change as our environment changes. We are surrounded by machines and computers, and thus we compare ourselves to machines and computers. We don’t think in animalistic terms very well anymore. We don’t think in symbols well anymore, either. We have unwittingly degraded ourselves to machines. Modern medicine arguably treats people as a machine as well. A pain in your leg means your leg is broken and needs to be fixed. A pain in your heads means…well, we won’t go there.

So we need to not just be logical and rational, but to reconnect with more ancient ways of thinking, to rediscover how people thought in those days, as an additional tool to understand. That tool is symbolism.

The symbol we have here today in church is a powerful one. The symbol is the ultimate sacrifice by Jesus Christ for us. We celebrate that symbol in the form of the Eucharist, in the partaking in bread and wine that we believe become the Body and Blood of Christ – not in a literal mechanical sense, that is, you can’t take the consecrated bread and wine and put them under a microscope and see blood cells or skin cells. But in a symbolic sense. The reality behind those things is changed. Mere bread and wine become powerfully precious to us, representing God Himself and the sum of His Creation in our midst.

It is a serious mistake to say “well, it’s not literally true”. Symbols have power, because they explain things that other methods of communication can’t achieve. In the same way our bodies are more than mere machines, so too is this Universe of ours something more than mere molecules. It’s more than the sum of its parts. Symbols give us a glimpse of something else, of the inner light that infuses every particle of our world. The Universe itself lives and breathes, and we with it.

The letter of John that we read today says it in a very straightforward way. “We should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. […] When he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.” Holiness, or seeing God, is thus about seeing the totality of reality. Each of us alone is blind to the vast majority of reality. Each of us casts only a tiny bit of light into the darkness, because we only see just that tiny bit of truth. We don’t see the whole truth. And light is the essence of enlightenment.

God is revealed to us when we open our eyes wide, as wide as we can, fearless of the consequences of the truth. Each of us can share our little bit of light. Each of us carries with us a halo, our own nimbus – some brighter than others, but still, each one of us has it within us. Even though each of us may be little more than a small candle, our light put together – our shared Truth – makes the world ever brighter. We see more as we not only open our own eyes, but we learn to see with the eyes of others. Reality itself is transformed. All of that is communicated by the symbols of the Eucharist. Communion is God revealed.

In the Beatitudes we heard in the Gospel, Jesus reels off a list of all the people who are blessed. It is not an exclusive list. What Jesus is doing is reminding us that even the most downtrodden, pain-ridden, suffering, poor leper of a person carries blessings and truth within them. Every human being has value, no matter how low their station. We need to see through the eyes of everyone, not just through our own. No exceptions.

In the end, each and every one of us is a saint, or has saintliness within us. We celebrate All Saints’ to celebrate the limitless potential of our own sainthood, by remembering those who went before us.

So rather than look at things merely in literal terms, I’d like you to look at the world in symbolic terms. That’s when the poetry of Creation takes shape and begins to sing, with each of us a voice in the chorus. Then the vision expressed in Revelation will come true: For this reason they are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night within his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them. They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Amen.

A Eucharistic prayer, perhaps somewhat defective

2011-10-29T15:40:00.000+02:00

"And our Lord Jesus Christ took the cup, broke it..."

Brace yourselves for Roman Catholic girls on the throne of England

2011-10-29T15:14:00.001+02:00

According to the Beeb, the Commonwealth nations – more or less the successor to the British Empire and mostly made up for former British colonies, many of whom still have the King or Queen of England as their head of state – have agreed to change the succession rules for the throne, allowing the first-born child of either sex (rather than the first-born son) to inherit the throne in his or her own right.

Interestingly, they also undertook to allow the spouse of the future monarch to be Roman Catholic. This was banned under the Act of Settlement in 1701, which essentially cemented Parliament's role in confirming the and controlling the succession and gave legal backing to the overthrow of the Roman Catholic James VII & II* of the House of Stuart, and to the replacement of the (Catholic) House of Stuarts with the (Protestant) House of Hannover. It also ensured that future monarchs could never be Roman Catholic again, nor be influenced by their spouses, who might try to raise their children Catholic and therefore circumvent the law.

This has some significance for the Church of England and thus for all Anglicans. The reason is that the ruling monarch of England is also the supreme head of the Church of England, thanks to Henry VIII (as covered here and here). To clarify, however, the monarch is only the head of the C of E, not of all Anglicans, and while he or she influences the Communion as a whole by virtue of selecting the Archbishop of Canterbury, he (for now likely to only be a he) in practice merely chooses whomever the C of E in synod recommends.

The oddity of the law until now, however, was that in theory a future king or queen could have had a non-Anglican spouse – just not a Roman Catholic one. Atheist, Buddhist, Flying Spaghetti Monster, all these were possible, just not Papists. So in one sense it does clear up something that was difficult to justify in 1701, and is downright anachronistic today.

Just for a little Hannover-related trivia, this is why the current head of the House of Hannover, Prince Ernst August, disqualified himself from the succession by marrying Princess Caroline of Monaco, who is Roman Catholic. His children and younger brother still qualify and took his place in line. Since he was only 385th in line to the throne, I don't think he lost much sleep over it.

That said, in theory, there could now be a strange setup coming in the future – a future king or queen who is head of the Anglican church, but whose consort is Roman Catholic, poses legal problems as well. Roman Catholics are required to raise their children Roman Catholic as well, so even if a future Anglican monarch was not him or herself Roman Catholic, presumably the children would be. Then what? How could a Roman Catholic, or for that matter an atheist or Buddhist, be supreme head of the Church of England, Defender of the Faith** and all that?

I think the only logical solution to this legal issue, but also to resolve many others, is to disestablish the Church of England, that is, to no longer have it be the state church. You may be surprised by this, considering my discussion about the issues around Henry and his wives, but in the modern age, I am convinced that separation of church and state is not only rational and fairer to other religious (or non-religious) groups, it is also beneficial to the church in the long run.

I would argue that the strict separation of church and state in the US is one contributing factor to why religion is still so vibrant there compared to Europe. Admittedly, disestablishment would hurt the C of E in the short term – the loss of tax support, while presumably still having to pay the considerable costs of maintaining public buildings, like all those churches and cathedrals – in the long run I think it would healthy. An example can be found right next door – the Church in Wales, the Welsh counterpart to the C of E (and yes, it's "in" Wales, but "of" England). The C in W was separated from the C of E, and disestablished and disendowed (i.e. stripped of property) by Act of Parliament, namely the Welsh Church Act of 1914. Disestablishment and disendowment only took effect in 1920 due to the war. This was highly controversial at the time, not least among high churchmen such as yours truly. But I would argue that the Church in Wales is now far better off than its counterpart in England, with attendance actually increasing and with the C in W doing well compared with the stronger Nonconformist churches.

I believe this is because the Church in Wales isn't beholden to Parliament and can reform itself as it pleases. A good example of the C of E's farcically being tied down by Parliament is the attempted liturgical reform in 1928, which failed because Parliament voted it down – and was voted down mainly by non-Anglicans who objected to the content of the reform. Even today, the C of E officially uses the 1662 Book of Common Prayer for the same reason, and the de facto standard liturgy, Common Worship, is officially the "alternative", even though few if any parishes use the 1662 BCP as their main liturgy anymore. This is something straight out of Monty Python, not the New Testament. Surely it would be better for the C of E to no longer be beholden to a Parliament that simply has no expertise in questions of theology, and is substantially made of non-members who aren't affected by the C of E anyway. Today there are atheists and Muslims in Parliament. Nothing wrong with that at all, in fact I welcome it – but really, should they have a say in how the Church of England is run?

Additionally, thanks to disestablishment and disendowment, the Church in Wales is not burdened with the upkeep of ancient buildings, and can rebuild and refocus. To put it in economic terms, the feedback loop between the church's actions and its financial health is thus far smaller and faster, so the church is better equipped to adjust and prepare for changes in economic conditions, and thus manage its resources more wisely. The shorter the information has to travel, the more efficient and constructive the response. This is also critically lacking in the Church of England, and these are all reasons why the C of E is so moribund compared to other Anglican churches around the world. If the C of E is to return to the missionary zeal that spread Anglicanism around the globe and made Anglicanism the third-largest church in the world, then it has to break free of the ballast that is holding it back, and I believe disestablishment is the only answer that will have a lasting positive effect.

I think the time has come to not just allow the British monarch and his or her consort to be Roman Catholic. The time has come for the Church of England to stand on its own collective feet. The short-term pain is well worth the long-term gain.

* - While most sources today speak of "James II", that is technically incorrect. James was the second king named James in England – but was the seventh in Scotland. Hence it is more appropriate to number both successions, since at the time the thrones were not actually united, merely occupied by the same monarch. In theory the current Queen should therefore be "Elizabeth II & I", but since the thrones were more or less united under the Act of Union in 1707, it is unnecessary and was abandoned at the accession of Her Majesty. Now the English or Scottish number of succession is taken, whichever is higher.

** - Another little historical trivia bit: The title "defender of the faith" has been claimed by English monarchs ever since Henry VIII – yes, him again. But the real irony is that he was granted the title by the Pope at the time, Leo X, because of his orthodox Catholicism and anti-Lutheran positions. Henry just kept using it after the split with Rome, and passed it on to his successors.

Anglican history, part two: Royal supremacy and the English Church

2011-10-26T14:37:00.000+02:00

For the first installment of this series, about Henry VIII and his reasons for wanting to annul the marriage with Catherine of Aragon, please click here.

In the previous installment, we examined the series of events surrounding Henry VIII's marital and dynastic problems that led to the break with Rome. In this installment, we shall look at the break itself and dismiss the common claim that Henry "founded" a new church, while also examining historical precedents for Henry's action in breaking off relations with Rome.

The decline of Empire, the rise of the Church

Today, many Christians, Roman Catholics in particular, tend to think of the Roman Catholic Church as always having been the way it is now – with a strong Papacy dominating the global church, independent of any national or temporal interference. But historically, this is actually something quite new, arguably as recent as the 1870s and the First Vatican Council.

Before the Great Schism of 1054, when what are now the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches were still nominally united, the Church was in fact organized at a national or regional level. Indeed, the very structure of the church quite intentionally mirrored boundaries and structures of the civil authorities. For example, the word diocese originally was simply a political subdivision of the Roman Empire that had nothing to do with the Church. A presbyter (which in Catholic terminology is a more technical term for a priest) was simply the title of someone who was a local leader, and simply means "elder", hence the Methodist use of the latter term.

This is also the reason Protestant churches generally use different vernacular words for the equivalent offices in the Roman Catholic church, such as "superintendent" instead of "dean", since the reformers wanted to get rid of the Roman influence on their respective churches. Similarly, vestments (clerical clothing) in the Western Church are generally adapted from Roman Imperial badges of office, and were not originally religious at all.

By way of analogy, suppose in some distant future a new religion were to arise in the United States just as America's government was falling apart, and this religion set itself up subdivided in church states and counties, with each church state led by a governor, perhaps wearing a suit and tie or police uniform on formal occasions. Then the United States crumbles and disappears from the scene entirely, but the new religion's leaders are still called governors, the church is still divided in states, and the leader of each local club still wears early 21st century business clothing during religious observances, even though it has long been obsolete and is no longer worn in daily life. Services are still celebrated in early 21st century English, even though that language is long gone and few understand it any more, in spite of it once having been the people's language. That's pretty much what happened in the Western Church in the late Roman and early medieval periods.

The evolution of East and West after 1054

When the Empire began to crumble, the Church did its best to maintain the old structures, but eventually adapted to the new situation by erecting churches within each of the emerging kingdoms, each having its own metropolitan (i.e. chief bishop for that kingdom) and council of bishops. You can still see vestigial signs of this in the Roman Catholic Church today: Each country has its own conference of bishops, and each country has one bishop or archbishop who is considered the lead bishop for that country, called a metropolitan. However, these subsidiary levels of the Roman church were gradually weakened and reduced in importance, so that today they are little more than talking shops with barely any authority of their own, at least when compared to their counterparts in the Orthodox and Anglican communions. Once we examine the issues around royal supremacy in the West, we will see why.

You can see this original structure most clearly in the Orthodox Church today, since there it was preserved from the pre-Schism Church more or less unchanged. This is why people speak of "Greek Orthodox", "Serbian Orthodox", "Russian Orthodox" and so on. The various respective Orthodox churches are in fact one big church, but they are fully autonomous from one another, each led by its metropolitan. Each of these only accords the Orthodox Church's formal leader, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, a place of honor without being subordinate to him. Think of the Patriarch as being a kind of chairman who sets the agenda, but doesn't have any authority to enforce decisions and has to seek consensus. This is essentially how the Papacy was originally conceived and put into practice, but as time went on, Rome's claims of authority over the others became ever stronger, and West and East were ever more alienated from each other as a result.

Precedents for royal supremacy in the late Roman and early medieval periods

The aspect of the Orthodox Church that is most relevant to our discussion, however, is the fusion of church and state that took place once Constantine the Great made Christianity the state religion in 313 AD. This fusion existed in the East right up to the end of the Byzantine Empire (i.e. the last remnant of the Roman Empire) in the late 15th century. There are numerous examples of the Byzantine Emperor appointing and deposing bishops and patriarchs practically at will. If there was ever a sign that royal (or imperial) supremacy of the Church was normal, the Church in the Byzantine Empire is it.

In the West, too, this fusion existed, albeit in a somewhat different form. The Holy Roman Emperors in Germany – who saw themselves as a reconstituted Roman Empire in the West – freely interfered in affairs of the Western Church, with Emperors often appointing or imposing Popes and bishops as they saw fit. But Popes sometimes returned the favor, appointing and deposing Emperors. On the one hand, Charlemagne, arguably the first non-Roman Western emperor, was crowned and given the title of Emperor by Pope Leo III. On the other, at least before 1059, Popes were just as often chosen and appointed by the Emperor, sometimes as an arbiter, or sometimes making the choice independently. Some of the many Popes who were appointed by the Byzantine or Holy Roman Emperors are Vigilius and Pelagius I, Eugene II, John XIII, and Benedict VI. In all these cases, it demonstrates just who was really in control. Not the Pope, but the supreme secular ruler.

As the Western Empire split up into numerous kingdoms, this was carried forward under the new kings in their respective realms. Each new kingdom generally had its own council of bishops, led by a primate bishop or metropolitan, with bishops also acting as secular lords and thus feudal vassals of the king. A last remnant of this still exists in the UK today, the Lords Spiritual, who are the senior bishops in England and therefore automatically are part of the House of Lords.

The royal involvement in the local church was a lucrative business for the monarchs, who generally sold bishoprics (technically termed simony) to the highest bidder. This was a major source of income. Of course, there was an ongoing power struggle between the Pope and the various kings and emperors, which came to a head in the Investiture Contest, whereby the Pope attempted to claim the right to choose bishops without outside interference. This still did not put a stop to the practice, only making it somewhat more difficult, and the various bishops still had to swear fealty to the local king as his vassal when taking office. So even after the Contest ended with the Concordat of Worms in 1122, kings still had considerable rights regarding the church in their realm, and formally at least the church's bishops were subordinate to him.

In addition to this royal prerogative, the Popes were not even masters of their own house like they are today. Right up to the eve of the Protestant Reformation, the bishops and kings across Europe generally believed the Pope should be subordinate to a general council, a movement which we call today Conciliarism. The defeat of the Conciliarists at the Fifth Lateran Council in 1517 was one of the sparks that led to Luther's 95 Theses that same year.

There are many other such examples of royal supremacy from the various countries of Europe, but one particularly interesting one for our discussion is the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, which was issued by the French King Charles VII (who was the king Joan of Arc helped to expel the English in the Hundred Years' War) in 1438, a mere 53 years before Henry VIII was born. This was very similar to the First Act of Supremacy of 1534 that Henry and the English Parliament passed, in that it essentially made the Gallican Church (i.e. the Church of France) independent from Rome and subject to royal authority, while also cutting off payments to Rome.

Papal reaction to royal supremacy, crisis and centralization of power

In reaction against all this, over the centuries the Popes tried to combat royal control over the various churches by asserting the right to appoint bishops, to claim jurisdiction, and receive donations from the local churches. In the early Middle Ages, the Pope was little more than the Bishop of Rome, and compared to the other four Patriarchs, relatively insignificant aside from its formal place of honor. Many of the early councils of the patriarchs were not even attended by the Pope. The Popes were totally dependent on the Emperors for protection, who in turn used the Church as their own tool.

It took centuries for the Papacy to develop an independent identity, and progress was extraordinarily slow, punctuated by controversies such as the Invetiture Contest noted above.

Historically, each time the Roman church was in conflict with temporal powers, the Papacy used the occasion to cement and strengthen its position within the Roman communion as a defensive measure, accumulating more power and weakening local churches and chapters, until the final coup de grâce: the twin dogmas of papal supremacy and infallibility. These were promulgated at the Second Vatican Council in 1870, and were themselves a reaction in part against the loss of the Papal States to Garibaldi's Italian unification war and the loss of papal influence in Italy. The true irony is that the Pope at the time, Pius IX, claimed that these were not new doctrines at all, but always were so from the beginning – almost Orwellian in its inversion of the actual history.

Royal supremacy in England prior to Henry VIII

This concept of royal supremacy was not new in England at all. In 1350, Edward III enacted a law, the Statute of Provisors, which forbade the English church from paying money to the Pope or other foreign church institutions.

A little later, Richard II enacted a law in 1392, the Statute of Praemunire, which essentially declared the English church free from papal interference, again long before Henry. There are numerous other examples of this in English history.

So we can see that Henry not only had ample precedent for his actions regarding Catherine of Aragon as we discussed in the previous article, he had ample precedents to call upon throughout the history of Christendom and within England herself to support his decision to cut ties to Rome.

So what did Henry found?

Strictly speaking, Henry did not found a church at all. The Church of England existed ever since the Irish missionaries from the north and Roman missionaries under St. Augustine from the south merged their churches at the Synod of Whitby in 664. So if any date could be given for the "founding" of the Church of England, it would either be 664, or 597, the year St. Augustine came to England to begin the Roman mission.

Some readers might argue that the English church had no identity of its own until Henry, but even that is highly unlikely. If we look at the Statute of Praemunire from 1392 mentioned above, there the church is specifically called (in Norman French) seinte eglise d'Engleterre – in English, that literally means the "Church of England", and that 200 years before Henry's crisis. The Pragmatic Sanction also spoke of a national church, the Church of France or Gallican Church, with its own identity. For that matter, even as far back the 8th century, the Venerable Bede refers to the ecclesia anglorum, which means the same. So the name "Church of England" was not new at all – in fact it was the logical name based on custom.

Ultimately, what Henry's Act of Supremacy of 1534 did was simply to tie together the existing law and customs his predecessors and counterparts had established – the two Statutes mentioned above – and formalize what had been claimed for centuries, that the already existing Church of England was independent of the Roman Pontiff, just like the various Orthodox churches in the East. Henry's actions fit squarely with centuries of precedent across Christendom, and we can comfortably state that the Church of England was not founded in 1534, 1559, or 1662, but rather 597 AD – or, through the apostolic succession, right back to Jesus Christ Himself.

In the next article, we'll explore the claim that Henry created a Protestant church and was most important in defining the Church of England. Hope you're enjoying the reading so far, and I look forward to comments and discussion.

Live map of fonts being bought

2011-10-26T12:21:00.001+02:00

There is a really nice tool for seeing what fonts are popular these days – a live world map showing what fonts are being bought where, in real time. Pretty slick idea, nice execution, and fun to watch.

As my typography professor and I once joked with each other, "he who dies with the most fonts wins".

Click here to see the map.

This blog has been occupied

2011-10-25T22:42:00.000+02:00

We, the organizers of our global protest movement, have taken control of this blog in order to make a statement on the injustice and greed in this world. The great mass of people simply are not aware that 99% of the inanity and dry wit are on only 1% of the blogs. Therefore we are occupying this blog until such time as other blogs have their fair share of well-written humor, satire, knock-knock jokes, potty humor and/or whoopie cushions.

We also proclaim our solidarity with the occupants of St. Paul's Cathedral in London, mainly because the blog's owner never liked English Baroque architecture anyway. Er, the blog's owner said this as we tied him up and took his keyboard. We really aren't him pretending to be someone else, honest. Well, OK, there was that time he posed as a 19-year-old girl in a chat room, but was profoundly disturbed when the person he was chatting with thought to be an older man was in fact a 19-year-old girl and swore off that kind of thing forever. You have my word. Er, our word.

Lastly, we wish to say that this is the very last piece of humor riffing on the whole occupy movement that will be considered funny. After this, all others will simply be too much and old hat and generally jump the shark. Though the Cookie Monster one was hard to beat.

We now return you to your usual reading of theological nonsense and droning by your simian host.

And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by...

2011-10-25T22:15:00.000+02:00

This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Today is the Feast of St. Crispin, 25 October, the anniversary of the battle of Agincourt almost 600 years ago. A good time as ever to trot out my favorite scene of my favorite adaptation of my favorite Shakespearean play.

Do we all holy rites;
Let there be sung 'Non nobis' and 'Te Deum;'
The dead with charity enclosed in clay:
And then to Calais; and to England then:
Where ne'er from France arrived more happy men.

Monty Python on religion

2011-10-25T15:11:00.001+02:00

I somehow managed to be a Python fan for as long as I can remember and not have heard about this debate before. As a deeply religious person, I can't tell you how saddened I am by the way the two "offended" Christians, one of whom was Bishop of Southwark at the time, reacted to the movie and to the (quite sensible) arguments presented by Cleese and Palin. It is also amazing to see Palin in particular clearly frustrated and angry, and I can't blame him: In the same situation I'd have either gotten up and left or started to go for the jugular far more than Cleese and Palin did. It seems the good bishop and Mr. Muggeridge had nothing substantive to offer except cheap shots and feigned offense. The closing remark about thirty pieces of silver was blatant in just simply grandstanding and trying to play to the audience, which clearly had sided with the Pythons – and of course it didn't work because of how transparent and juvenile it was.

The truly most ironic moment was when Muggeridge claimed that Jesus had inspired the greatest art, while "Life of Brian" was the lowest form of art. I would actually agree with the first part of his statement – but also say that "Life of Brian" is some of the greatest art of its kind, a beautifully done satirical movie, one for the history books. Few if any remember Muggeridge, but "Life of Brian" is as popular and well-known as ever. And it carries Jesus' message in a way no other film or book has done, highlighting our flaws as human beings while encouraging us to think for ourselves and make an informed decision to follow Christ, rather than blind faith.

As many have said elsewhere, and as Palin said in the debate, if your faith is that easily offended and challenged by a movie, then it's not much of a faith. Not only that, I think "The Life of Brian" is actually a profoundly religious and insightful movie, in that it does not make fun of Christ one bit – it makes fun of the folly of some of His followers who think they have all the answers, something which Christ Himself criticized every time He ran into the Pharisees and Sadducees. In fact I would even suggest showing it as part of Confirmation class.

John Cleese on creativity

2011-10-25T13:36:00.000+02:00

Antireligion: All the evidence you need

2011-10-24T21:31:00.001+02:00

The claim has often been made by antireligious* polemicists that religion is the source of all evil, and if only we would get rid of religion, then Bambi's mother would come back and we would all would live happily while singing Imagine. Oh, and religious persons are inherently intolerant, bigoted troglodytes blinkered by their own beliefs and unable to engage in intelligent debate.

If you want some evidence that abandoning religion is anything but a cure for bad behavior, in fact quite possibly the opposite, may I present the comments in this post over at the Guardian's website. Keep in mind that the author of the article is himself an atheist and skeptic – and read the reaction from the great mass of enlightened superior co-nonreligionists.

If I was Prof. Came, I'd be thinking with friends like this, who needs enemies. Good grief.

* - I deliberately do not use the term "atheist" or "New Atheist" to describe such persons. First, not all atheists are necessarily against religion per se. Second, I dislike the label "New Atheists" because of the way it has been used to tar a lot of people with a broad brush. Third, many of those against religion are not in fact atheist, but agnostic, a distinction that seems to be lost on many people, including many atheists. The adjective "antireligious" seems to me to be far more accurate – and far more appropriate.

When heresy really is heresy: The Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta and a bizarre draft resolution

2011-10-24T20:02:00.002+02:00

As mentioned before, I would generally place myself on the liberal side of the middle of the Anglican spectrum. That said, it may come as a surprise to those who are more conservative and who disagree with me on things like women's ordination that I do, in fact, place great value in Tradition and ecumenical councils – I merely come to different conclusions on some issues. I'm quite willing to use the H word when I see it – heresy.

Jansenism

This is one reason I am so uncomfortable with our parish's choice of a patron saint, as mentioned previously. (I decided I can at least live with it, since she was chosen for her reforms and personal spirituality and not for her doctrine or associations, but I'm still not very happy about it.) While the Jansenists generally were maltreated and persecuted, and I certainly don't approve of any of that, I also agree quite firmly with the verdict that Jansen's teachings were in fact heretical.

I was particularly irked at our church's consecration in September by the speech of a professor of theology at the end of that service, who basically ignored the entire content of Jansen's or his supporters' writings and described the Jansenists (without naming them as such) merely as a persecuted minority. She also claimed that theologists today are reappraising Jansenism, that the verdict at the time was overly harsh, and so on.

Dunno, but the doctrine of free will so central to what it means to be Christian for anyone of a Catholic bent (that includes the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches) that I can't get my head wrapped around the idea that someone denying free will, claiming that God predestines some (indeed most) of us to suffer eternal damnation with no chance to do anything about it, isn't a major problem for the faith.

Gnosticism

I feel the same way about the Gnostics. For some time it has been in vogue to view the Gnostics as misunderstood proto-hippies and kinda-sorta-feminists as portrayed in The Da Vinci Code. Yet I think all you need to know about the Gnostics and their view of women (and thus of humanity) can be summed up in the Gnostic so-called Gospel of Thomas:

Simon Peter said to them, "Make Mary leave us, for females don't deserve life." Jesus said, "Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of Heaven."

I don't see how you can remotely think of the sexes being equal while believing something like that. Yet it is precisely in some of the more extreme liberal circles where the very same people who ardently support women's ordination also want to reappraise Gnosticism. The cognitive dissonance is mind-boggling.

Mind you, I have no problem with someone believing Jansenism. That is anyone's right. I would even happily go to the altar with them if they did and receive Communion, nor would I do anything to exclude them from the Church. Dissent is always allowed, and even should be protected and welcomed: Dissent is a necessary part of the dialectic to seek the Truth. But once that person starts to push to change long-held and explicit teachings of the Church as defined in ecumenical councils, even if only by implication, my alarm bells start ringing. Loudly.

Pelagianism

So you can imagine my disquiet when I read Resolution R11-7, a piece of proposed legislation (!) for the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta. The text reads in its entirety:

Whereas the historical record of Pelagius’s contribution to our theological tradition is shrouded in the political ambition of his theological antagonists who sought to discredit what they felt was a threat to the empire, and their ecclesiastical dominance, and
whereas an understanding of his life and writings might bring more to bear on his good standing in our tradition, and
whereas his restitution as a viable theological voice within our tradition might encourage a deeper understanding of sin, grace, free will, and the goodness of God’s creation, and
whereas in as much as the history of Pelagius represents to some the struggle for theological exploration that is our birthright as Anglicans,

Be it resolved, that this 105th Annual Council of the Diocese of Atlanta appoint a committee of discernment overseen by our Bishop, to consider these matters as a means to honor the contributions of Pelagius and reclaim his voice in our tradition. And be it further resolved that this committee will report their conclusions at the next Annual Council.

Wait, what...?!

I could hardly believe my eyes – that anyone could submit such a resolution with a straight face. It sounds like something The Onion would publish as satire, not a serious proposal. What next, reappraise Aleister Crowley?

It is true that, based on some of my thoughts and positions on free will and grace, many Western Christians, in particular Protestants of a Calvinist or Lutheran hue, would accuse me of being Semipelagian. Then again the same people generally like to accuse the Orthodox Church of the same, so I feel I'm in good company. (See the Orthodox concept of theosis.)

But here is why I think Pelagianism is such a danger for the Church and for belief in general: It essentially teaches that we are not hard-wired to sin, and that it is possible on one's own to achieve spiritual perfection without the action or support of God, or of anyone else for that matter. If these things were true, then there would essentially be no purpose to the Church at large – why bother if we don't need to try in order to free ourselves from sin? If we are already free from sin, what is the point of Jesus' sacrifice on the Cross?

The heresies of the unloving God and of hubristic humanity

Orthodox teaching on the subject of justification and sin is really quite simple to understand and, I think, common sense. I think it could be summed up with two words: "Nobody's perfect". (Well, except for Jesus, of course.)

I strongly disagree with extreme Calvinist views where humanity is described as being "depraved", not least because that implies that God somehow created something that He either wasn't able to improve or control, or never intended to improve in the first place, both of which are impossible for me to swallow. I cannot believe that a loving God would create a living thing expressly for it to suffer the fires of Hell, without giving him or her a chance to turn oneself to God and accept Jesus in their hearts so that they really can change things with God's help. That just sounds incredibly cruel. And pointless, too.

At the same time, the opposite extreme of Pelagianism seems equally implausible – it implies that we began spotless and only choose to do bad or good things based on circumstance. Yet I think that anyone who studies the human condition will come to the conclusion that we are at heart intrinsically prone to be selfish, greedy and cruel when left to our own devices – all you have to do is observe how children act in a kindergarden towards each other to prove that we aren't little angels from the beginning. Without some firm and loving guidance, children generally turn into little monsters. That's really all orthodox doctrine is saying, that we need that firm guidance as well, throughout our whole lives. Compared to God, we are all children, no matter how old we are. It's hubris to think otherwise.

Walking in love as Christ loved us

The thing is, Jesus repeatedly emphasized our collective responsibility to aid one another in our spiritual journey, and described Himself as The Way – not a goal, but a path with no end, and one with a heavy burden: to take our Cross and follow Him. As mere human beings, we cannot and will not ever achieve true perfection in this life, but we can still walk that path towards perfection. To do that we need Christ to guide us, and we need each other to support one another along that path. This is precisely why the Church exists as a gift from God, to support, encourage and sustain us along that difficult and arduous path to the end of Time. Like it says in Ephesians, we must walk together in love as Christ loves us. It is our only hope of saving ourselves from war, disease, hunger, greed, injustice and all the other ills that afflict humanity from its earliest days.

Mind you, I am quite happy to entertain the idea that Pelagius himself was misunderstood. In fact what few of his writings I am aware of, he seems to have felt just that, while (to my knowledge) the things he was accused of teaching or claiming are not documented in his extant writings, so it is quite possible that he as a person was unjustly accused of the doctrine that bears his name. But in any such examination of the history involved, we have to also be incredibly careful to continue to stay away from the doctrine of Pelagianism, whether its name is justified or not, and most certainly not to legislate such change before the case has been made and accepted by consensus.

I hope that this resolution is shot down, or at least amended in dramatic fashion to distance the church from the doctrine of Pelagianism. I can only shake my head in disbelief that anyone felt it necessary to even submit it. It's one thing for Anglicanism to be comprehensive and inclusive. I think it's part of the beauty and strength of Anglicanism that we generally don't try to define every aspect of faith in detail. But It's another thing entirely to effectively say "anything goes" and challenge what few standards we do have. No matter how expansive or inclusive the faith, it still will have boundaries at some point.

An appeal

In closing, I would like to address an appeal to the people of the Diocese of Atlanta: Please consider what you would be saying with this resolution if it passes. Please think of what signals you would be sending by accepting it, and how you would be cutting yourself loose from the conciliar church just for the sake of rehabilitating one man, no matter how noble the motive behind that wish my be. Please remember the three Anglican pillars of Scripture, Tradition and Reason – and that this resolution challenges Tradition by definition. With all due respect and Christian love and charity, this resolution is simply wrong, pointless, a waste of time (what does it do to help people in need or to further Jesus' message?) and should be defeated.

Anglican history, part one: Henry VIII and his divorces

2011-10-23T00:18:00.000+02:00

Note
On 25 October I made some minor additions and corrections to the text below for clarity's sake. Part two of this series, published 26 October, can be read here.

Here in Germany, the vast majority of people I have talked to about the history of Anglicanism – including, unfortunately, many Old Catholics – have only a very dim, and usually quite mistaken, idea of the history of the English Church, in particular the events around Henry VIII and his wives. The most common blunder is to say that Henry somehow "founded" the church, as if it was a new thing, and many also assume that the Church of England is Lutheran or something like it. Sad to say, but many Americans seem to have the same odd ideas about the origins of Anglicanism as a whole.

All of that is utter nonsense. I'll explain why.

In a series of articles, I will describe the events of the 16th century in detail, to make it clear just what really was going on. While Henry was no angel, he also wasn't the cynical sexually licentious brute people think of today.

In this first article, we shall examine the issue of Henry's "divorces" and having male children. A second article will look at the Acts of Supremacy and founding of the English Church, along with the theological positions taken by Henry, and his daughters Queens Mary and Elizabeth I.

Henry Tudor, the pious prince

The common mistake is to say that Henry was seeking a divorce from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. Usually the assumption is made that this was only because he wanted a son, and Catherine wasn't bearing him any, suffering repeated miscarriages and eventually producing one daughter who survived, Mary. It is also assumed that Henry was merely horny for Anne Boleyn and wanted to get rid of Catherine to hook up with Anne. This is at best wildly distorted, at worst downright slanderous.

Some background: Henry was not actually supposed to be king at all. His older brother, Arthur, Prince of Wales, was heir apparent and quite popular when he died suddenly in 1502 at the age of 15 of unknown causes, probably of consumption. He was, however, already betrothed to – and married – Catherine of Aragon. They married on 4 November 1501, and just five months later, Arthur was dead, and Henry suddenly was heir apparent.

Henry, unlike his older brother, was a rather studious and quite pious person, well-versed in Scripture and church doctrine. This is important to note – it is precisely because of his piety that the later events unfolded as they did, not because of cynical lust, as most assume. Henry then was pushed and bullied by his father, Henry VII, into marrying Catherine, since Henry père wanted to use the dynastic marriage for diplomatic and political reasons, namely to forge an alliance with the Spanish Hapsburgs against France – and also didn't want to have to return the sizable dowry that Catherine had brought with her.

According to canon law at the time, the marriage of Henry and Catherine was forbidden on grounds of affinity. In particular, it was not allowed to marry one's brother's widow. Such an act required a dispensation (i.e. special permission) from the Pope, otherwise it was simply not allowed.

Henry VII and Catherine's mother, Queen Isabella of Castile, therefore intensely lobbied Pope Julius II to do just that. Julius was highly active in European politics, and no doubt saw a chance to gain influence with the English and Spanish courts, and thus agreed.

Henry junior wrote a letter to the Pope in protest. He specifically mentioned affinity as a reason not to marry Catherine, and quotes Scripture to back up the argument. In Leviticus, it says "If a brother is to marry the wife of a brother they will remain childless" – a curse that haunted Henry later on as he and Catherine repeatedly had children die early or be lost to miscarriage.

The marriage was duly performed, and Henry seems to have accepted it at first. But then troubles began that deeply troubled him.

Death of a child, again and again

All but one of his and Catherine's children died while still infants, with Mary the only one who made it to adulthood. Their first daughter died at the age of two days and was never even christened. Their second child, a son named Henry, lived a little over a month and a half, but then also died. A third child, another son also named Henry, died at about a month old. Then came Mary, their fourth child, and then another daughter who died after only a week.

Even the most secular of people would under the circumstances start to wonder about this, and a devout person like Henry naturally came to the conclusion that this was God's revenge for breaking the laws in Leviticus. It took some time, but he appears to have become convinced of this.

Royal randiness and (il)legitimate children

In the meantime, it is true that Henry had begun an affair with Anne, but there are some things about this which should be taken into account.

First, such affairs were considered quite normal in those days for royalty and was openly acknowledged. Some of Henry's own ancestors, the House of Beaufort, were in fact themselves illegitimate and had been regularized retroactively. That was common practice throughout Europe in all royal families, when the illegitimate children generally being awarded titles and treated as nobility, sometimes even becoming heirs to the throne.

Second, before Anne, Henry had a child by another woman, Elizabeth Blount, in 1519 – a son, Henry FitzRoy, who was given the title Duke of Richmond and who Parliament was preparing to acknowledge as heir to the throne in 1539, when Henry FitzRoy suddenly died. On top of all the other children lost, you can imagine what must have been going through Henry's mind at this point. He was completely convinced he was cursed, and had to do something to change that.

Third, Henry had affairs with several other women. Two of them are documented and were acknowledged – Mary Boleyn, Anne's older sister, and Elizabeth Blount – but while not conclusively documented, many others were claimed at the time, such as Anne Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, herself married to Lord Hastings, who in rage sent her to a convent. Thus there was nothing particularly special about Henry's relationship with Anne Boleyn.

Badly wanting a boy – with good reason

So here we have Henry, losing child after child, well aware of the Leviticus curse. I think it is only understandable that he should have felt his marriage to Catherine was a mistake under the circumstances. Not only that, but with Catherine now getting old, and thus unlikely to bear any more children at all, let alone a male child, Henry must have been utterly desperate.

Of course, this might seem all so vain – modern people would ask what the big deal is, and would assume Henry wanted a male child just for his own pride. But here too we have to look at the historical context.

The English at the time still had the Wars of the Roses fresh in their memory, when uncertainty over the succession to the throne caused havoc and war between the rival royal houses of Lancaster and York. The Tudors, related to both houses, eventually ended up managing to unite England again under their rule, but there was quite a lot of fear that the chaos of the wars would return, should there be another dynastic problem. This suited Henry VII just fine, as it dovetailed with Tudor propaganda about being the saviors of England from chaos.

If Henry VIII failed to have any male children, there would have been serious controversy and upheaval upon his death, since the succession would have been contested as rival factions would have tried to get "their" heir onto the throne – exactly the same problem that led to the Wars of the Roses in the first place.

So Henry had perfectly sensible reasons for wanting a male child that had nothing to do with venality or pride (though that too certainly must have played a role). Not only that, but Henry began the annulment proceedings in 1527, fully eight years after the death of their last child – which hardly sounds like he was rushing into anything on a whim. Most importantly, in 1527 Henry FitzRoy was still alive, at eight years old, and Parliament was willing to recognize him as heir, so Henry did not in fact need to have a boy when the proceedings started.

Thus Henry had the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Wolsey, try to convince the Pope – by now Clement VII – to grant an annulment – not a divorce. The distinction is important, because the grounds for the annulment were that the marriage was unlawful to begin with, and therefore void, rather than simply being broken, as in a divorce. This distinction says much about Henry's motives, and makes sense in light of his earlier protests at the marriage when first pushed into it by his father and the following deaths of his children.

Henry and Wolsey provided ample legal basis for the request. Wolsey expressed his confidence that it would succeed, which under normal circumstances it would have.

Geopolitical games

The snag was that Clement VII was imprisoned by Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI, who just happened to be Catherine's nephew. Charles of course took a dim view of Henry dumping his aunt, by now far too old to easily be married off again – and thus in the eyes of the Hapsburgs useless for their ambitious dynastic plans. In spite of the clear legal basis of Henry's request, backed up by the dons at Oxford and Cambridge and supported by Wolsey, and in spite of the fact that such annulments were at the time quite routine for royalty and higher nobility, Clement tried to dodge the question and dragged his feet in making a decision. This left Henry stuck without the annulment he wanted, and with his proverbial biological clock ticking.

Eventually, in 1528, the Pope at last agreed to let Wolsey decide the matter – on the condition that he make the decision jointly with another papal legate, Cardinal Campeggio. This was almost certainly a delaying tactic, and indeed Campeggio also dragged his feet, preventing Wolsey from approving the annulment.

Henry was now in a serious bind. He feared the return of war if he didn't get a male heir; his wife was unlikely to have any more children, and even when they had had children, they all died (except for Mary); he believed he was cursed; and the geopolitical problems surrounding the marriage made it impossible to go through the normal channels.

Henry gave his secretary, William Knight, a last-ditch mission to try one last time to convince the Pope to grant the annulment. This failed, and Henry was now forced to find another solution. Angered at Wolsey's failure and blunders, and suspecting him of being disloyal or at least beholden to the Pope (and thus Charles V), Henry removed Wolsey and had him arrested for treason. Henry's friend Sir Thomas More now took the lead in arguing Henry's case, and promptly denounced Wolsey in Parliament, backing up his arguments with support from Oxford and Cambridge.

At this point, however, Henry simply had no options left. The Pope was clearly not going to cooperate so long as he was under the control of Charles V; Charles was clearly not going to relent any time soon, and anyway Henry needed him for his alliance against France; and Wolsey was either powerless, traitorous, or both (from Henry's point of view).

Dusting off royal supremacy in the Church

It was then that the learned experts at Oxford and Cambridge began to revive doctrines of royal supremacy in the Church. Today people often assume that this was Henry's idea entirely, and that it was cynically manufactured and manipulated just for the occasion. That is once again wildly distorted.

Historically, there were often clashes between the Papacy and kings and emperors across Europe over who had what control over the Church. The best-known and most obvious example is the Investiture Contest, where the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope at the time battled over who had the right to appoint and control bishops. This had in fact been the normal practice until the 11th century, since bishops were normally also secular lords in their own right, and thus firmly woven into the politics of their countries. Bishoprics were also routinely sold by kings, which brought in substantial revenue – anyone who wanted to be a bishop would simply pay the king a bribe, and hey presto, they became bishop. Thus they owed feudal homage to their king as lord, and were therefore in practice answerable to him, rather than to the Pope.

In 1075, Pope Gregory VII began to insist on changing this so that the Pope, not the Emperor or kings, would be the one to appoint and control bishops. In hindsight, of course, this only makes sense, but at the time it was highly controversial and unpopular with the kings, who of course stood to lose a lot of power and income if they let the Pope get away with it. After an intense political struggle, an agreement was reached, the Concordat of Worms, in 1122. This was essentially a compromise, but the wording was such that each side could readily bend its meaning to suit themselves, leaving the issue unresolved in reality, and periodically conflicts would erupt again and again. Thus it was still quite normal for kings to feel they had the right to interfere in church polity and control the Church in their kingdom as an arm of the state, and indeed the language used at the time made it clear that that was the general assumption – one spoke of "the French church" and "the English church", not "the Church in England", making it clear that the church was (and is) organized at a national level, not supranational. The supranational tendency in the Roman church only came to the fore during and after the Counter-Reformation. The Orthodox Church, meanwhile, remains plainly national today ("Greek Orthodox", "Serbian Orthodox", "Russian Orthodox"), just as it always was.

This is precisely what the experts at Oxford and Cambridge argued, based on ample ancient precedent, going right back to the 4th century when Christianity became the state religion in the Roman Empire. Indeed, this was the case in Byzantium – the successor state to the Roman Empire – right up until its downfall just before Henry was born: The Byzantine emperors generally did exert enormous control and influence over the Orthodox Church, installing and deposing patriarchs at will. So the notion that the King had that kind of power over the Church was by no means far-fetched at all – in fact it could be argued that it was indeed the normal and legal practice at the time, regardless of how we would judge it today.

The case for the defense

So to sum up for this part, Henry was at this point well within his rights to have the marriage to Catherine annulled, but those rights were blocked strictly for reasons that were political, not legal or theological. Henry also had perfectly good reasons to believe that the marriage was in fact harmful and should be annulled. Furthermore, once Henry realized the Pope was not going to follow precedent and canon law, he was perfectly well in tune with other monarchs throughout Europe for centuries in believing that the Church in his kingdom was subordinate to him. I don't know about you, but to me that all looks rather different from the stereotyped image of the horny Henry obsessed with getting a boy and breaking the rules to get one.

This brings us to the subject of the "founding" of the Church of England, which we will explore in the next installment of this article. Hope you enjoyed it so far and come back for more. Comments are more than welcome, so please do chime in.

The next best thing to a Transporter: a 3D virtual world

2011-10-20T22:19:00.002+02:00

Going back to the topic of computer graphics, here is a video on YouTube that is even more mind-boggling, both in terms of the sheer genius behind it and in terms of the applications.

The remote collaboration example is particularly eerie. But for someone whose kids, sadly, have pretty much only had contact with Grandma and Grandpa through telephone and Skype, it raises hopes that maybe more is possible while remaining thousands of miles apart. A Star Trek-like transporter is still ages away, but this would do for now...

(Hat tip to Lael Tucker for the link.)

Well, I’ll be a monkey's bishop!

2011-10-20T21:16:00.000+02:00

Something occurred to me recently as I was swinging through the trees of Hannover with one hand (the other holding a banana). While there are bishops for just about every square inch of the Earth, there are not as yet any for cyberspace. And of course that means that there are no cyber-archbishops or metropolitans – obviously with no bishops, you can't have senior bishops, either.

So I decided to institute a new office, that of Bishop of Cyberspace, and install myself as its first occupant, exercising jurisdiction upon my election (by me) regardless of whether or not I am ordained (if I can talk someone into doing it). Which, as the first bishop of the Internet, would make me Primate of All Cyberspace.

Which, given that I am in fact a monkey of the infinite sort, is only appropriate.

You know, I bet you're online right now. If so, you may kiss my ring now. Er, virtually.

Vesper blessings and “Phos hilaron”

2011-10-20T19:53:00.000+02:00

A couple of years ago, I wrote a small prayer of blessing in German for a vesper service, used for the closing blessing, and later translated it into English. I'd like to share it with you as the daylight fades here in Hannover and the night approaches.

First, the English version:

Lord of all Creation,
bless the night in which we sleep.
Let your blessings come upon us
in the moonlight which flows through our windowpanes,
in the stars which shine in the night sky,
in the evening winds which whisper through the trees,
in the glowing embers of our hearts
which ward off all chills.
Stay with us and remain with us
and grant us the blessings of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

And then the German original:

Herr, segne die Nacht, in der wir schlafen.
Lass deinen Segen auf uns kommen,
im Mondschein, der durch unsere Fenster fließt,
in den Sternen, die im Himmelszelt funken,
im Nachtwind, der durch die Bäume flüstert,
in der Feuersglut unserer Herzen, die uns vor jeder Kälte schützt.
Bleibe bei uns
und schenke uns den Frieden des Vaters,
und des Sohnes und des Heiligen Geistes. Amen.

Then I also wrote an English version of the German text used by the Old Catholics for Phos hilaron, hymn number 735 in the German Old Catholic hymnal Eingestimmt, which can be ordered from the diocesan website. While the content more or less parallels the German text in meaning, it is written in rhyming meter, whereas the German version is simply prose.

Refrain
O wonderful glorious Light of Lights,
you light up the face of God's great might.
In love and in grace does your fire flame bright
to light up our hearts with Christ this night.

O gladdening light of God us bless,
a sign of the faith that we profess
in Heaven and on Earth. His faithfulness
will be our Light and Guide on the path we progress.

Refrain

We reach the end of day, the night awaits.
By your fire we all sit as it shines from your face.
With songs on our lips, we contemplate
the Father and the Son and the Spirit of Grace.

Refrain

At all times, and all places, as we walk along
the Path of our Christ, a lifetime long,
all Creation sings your praises, of your light so strong.
With angels and with saints we join in song.

Refrain

Feel free to use them in your services – as with the sermons and other texts, they are offered under the Creative Commons License Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported. A short note letting me know you used it in some fashion would be appreciated and reward enough.

Humor time: What makes an Anglican priest

2011-10-18T23:21:00.002+02:00

An old favorite:

Q What's the difference between an Anglican, Orthodox and Roman Catholic priest?
A In their sacristies, the Orthodox has an icon, the Roman Catholic has a portrait of the Pope, and the Anglican has a mirror.

Some would say we high church Anglicans like it a bit, ah, flamboyant. They would be right.

The blessing of bells for our new church

2011-10-18T22:41:00.000+02:00

After struggling for years after its founding in 1955 and drifting from church to church as guests, our Old Catholic parish in Hannover finally fulfilled the dream of having our own church, which was consecrated by Bishop Matthias Ring in September. The diocese came together to help finance the construction, which all told cost around €1 million, which all came from the parish itself, the diocese, the Bonn parish, and numerous donations from individuals.

However, the church is still lacking some things that were planned, in particular bells. If you look at pictures of the church, you can see the bell tower on one side of the roof, between the church and parish hall, but it is as of now still empty.

As a sign of the warm ecumenical relations we have with the other parishes in the area, the next-door EKD Lutheran Parish of St. James (Jakobikirche) donated one of their bells for us to install, which as it happens is g´´. We then ordered a second bell, which is e´´ and thus goes well with the smaller, older bell, and it was cast in a small ceremony. The bell will then come to join its older sister, and both will be consecrated Bishop Matthias in the name of our patron, Maria Angélique, on November 18. I'm happy to say that it was entirely financed by donations, to the tune of €12,000 -- something which I never dreamed would be possible just five years ago. But it is a further sign of how our parish is really flowering in recent years, by the grace of God and the hard work of our members, in spite of the general decline of churches in Germany and Europe as a whole.

The bells will be installed in early December this year and will be heard for the first time, fittingly enough, during the Christmas midnight mass, where we will no doubt sing "Ding! Dong! merrily on high" or something similar. (Hey, I always loved the Gloria in that hymn...one of my favorite carols.)

Anglicans and the Orthodox: A view of the past and (hopefully) future

2011-10-18T22:15:00.000+02:00

At Project Canterbury, there is an interesting collection of various historical documents related to Anglicanism and its history. One particular article caught my interest, written by the Most Rev. Archbishop Germanos, Metropolitan of Thyatira, dated 1929. He describes the history of relations between the Orthodox and English Churches, and interestingly seems to think of the English Church in the way Anglo-Catholics generally do -- as a church whose history was essentially independent of Rome and merely severed ties with the See of Rome, rather than founding a whole new church. In other words, the Church founded by the Irish missionaries and St. Augustine of Canterbury is embodied in today's Church of England. Henry VIII merely cut off that church from the Pope and didn't found a new church at all.

He also talks at some length about the Non-Juror bishops in Britain in the early 17th century. These bishops were the result of a mini-schism in the Church of England that arose with the deposition of the House of Stuart and the installment of the House of Hannover on the English and Scottish throne, which was codified in the Act of Settlement. These Scottish bishops wished to remain loyal to the (Catholic-friendly and Scottish) Stuarts, and thus were in essence "high church", perhaps forerunners of Anglo-Catholics in the modern sense. These bishops then contacted the Orthodox with a view to creating an Anglican church within Orthodoxy, and discussions were well advanced when the Archbishop of Canterbury became aware of them, informed the Orthodox patriarchs that they were not authorized, and the patriarchs in turn ended the dialogue.

The Non-Jurors went on to provide the fledgling Episcopal Church in America with their first bishop, Samuel Seabury, on the condition that the Episcopal Church use the Scottish rite for their ordinations, which was duly agreed. +Samuel remained high church, and ironically loyal to Britain (and thus to the Hannoverian George III) during the Revolution, but did in fact pass on his line of succession and the Scottish Rite to the Episcopal Church. One possible artifact of this is the "Old Scottish Gloria" in the 1982 Hymnal of the Episcopal Church, which I believe is clearly influenced by Orthodox solemn music for the Divine Liturgy, such as the Akathistos hymn to the Virgin Mary.

Thus there are long-standing connections between the Orthodox and Anglicans. On the face of it, there are some issues that are simply impossible to resolve, even back in 1929, before the issues of women's ordination or homosexuality were even on the radar screen. However, the author writes in closing:

On my last journey to the East, when the question of the reunion of our Churches was raised, an Orthodox cleric said to me: "It is evident that Unity in Faith is not a sine qua non in the Anglican Church; for in that Church different views are held, not only in secondary matters but in fundamental matters of faith. The appeal of the last Lambeth Conference to all the Christians and the conduct of the English Church towards ecclesiastical bodies which had severed their continuity with the ancient Church, and finally the well-known discussions at the time of the revision of the Prayer Book, show clearly how wide the conception of the Church is among Anglicans. What can further discussions avail, when there exists a radical disagreement between the two Churches on this fundamental point? If, on the other hand, the object of the discussion is to define the common teaching of the Faith, as a link uniting the two Churches to each other, and one of the debating parties has made advances to others on a much wider basis, does not any further discussion seem in vain? Let us therefore be content to cultivate friendly relations and intercourse with the Anglican Church also, and stop deceiving ourselves as well as others with hopes that Unity in Faith is possible."

I answered him thus: "I recognize in one way your doubts and I share your uneasiness, but I shall never reach your despair; you despair because you ignore the nature and constitution of the Anglican Church, and you have not followed at close quarters the slow but undoubted evolution of this Church. If you knew this Church from the moment of its emancipation from Rome; if you had studied the many struggles of some of its members to save what is truly Catholic in it; if you, through close touch, became persuaded of the sincerity of their intentions and the depth of their religious convictions, then despair would not have found a place in your heart. Why should we not think that a time is coming when the Catholic nucleus which always existed in the Anglican Church should not prevail over the whole body, so that it should appear in that form which would make reunion with our Orthodox Church possible? Meanwhile, the duty of the Orthodox is not to break the definite bond which binds us to the Anglican Communion, but to help in such an evolution, through friendly intercourse and in a spirit of peaceful discussion. And finally, since the work of reunion appertains first to the glory of God and the prevalence of His Kingdom on earth, why should we not lay our hopes on Him, who is everything and in this also, as in the work of our religious edification?" So then, "neither is he that planteth anything, neither he that watereth, but God that giveth the increase" (i Corinthians iii 7). Oremus et laboremus. [Emphasis mine.]

For me, that is a remarkable way of looking at it, and I hope that his optimism will be rewarded, not just with Anglicans, but with Old Catholics as well. Even the most troublesome issues will surely be resolved if we prayerfully and genuinely want reunion between East and West, and above all we must remain in close contact for that to happen. One side or the other won't simply change to suit the other overnight, nor should they. But through common shared experience, each can learn to see, recognize and appreciate the holy in the Other, and come to see that they too are indeed truly part of God's one Church. Once that is achieved, all else is secondary. Oremus et laboremus. Amen.

Computer graphics: You've come a long way, baby

2011-10-17T18:50:00.000+02:00

This is a truly stunning video, the opening credits of the Spanish movie Eva.

Eva / Film Main Titles from Dvein on Vimeo.

When I think back to the mid-1980s, when I was so awestruck by the IMAX movie The Magic Egg, or a bit later The Lawnmower Man, it just makes this all the more incredible to see how far computer-generated graphics have come.Now if only they could finally get people's faces and body motion to look more realistic. Something about the eyes is just still...wrong...

Sermon archive

2011-10-16T21:58:00.001+02:00

For some years, from late 2006 to mid-2010, I was responsible for planning and leading our monthly (at times twice monthly) English-language Anglican services in Hannover. While our priest celebrated the Eucharist, for various reasons I took over all the parts that involved reading or speaking a lot of English but didn't require a priest. That included the homilies. At first, our priest would read them beforehand, but after some time as I got more accustomed to it, he generally left me to my own devices.

Many people have asked for copies of the sermons, and I generally sent them as PDFs by e-mail, but I decided to also use this blog as an archive of some of my favorites. You can find all sermons on this blog by using the label or tag "sermon" -- the labels/tags are the lists of words you see under each blog entry, which you can click on to find other posts with that same tag. Or you can just click here to find all sermons in the archive. I will continue adding some from time to time, so you can keep checking back for more.

I hope you enjoy them and look forward to feedback, criticism, debate, and cries of astonishment at their sheer excellence.

These sermons are made available under the Creative Commons License Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported.

A memorial most memorable for soldiers doomed to die

2011-10-14T20:53:00.004+02:00

I was just reading an article about the Allies' ill-fated Gallipoli campaign against the Ottoman Empire in World War I. In it, they mention the inscription on the memorial in Anzac Bay. The words were written by Kemal Ataturk, the Turkish commander who defeated the Allied forces, and went on to found the modern republic of Turkey on the ruins of the Empire. The inscription reads as follows:

TO THOSE HEROES THAT SHED THEIR BLOOD AND LOST THEIR LIVES
You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore, rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours. You, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.

Wow.

Utrecht Old Catholics and the Orthodox Church: Meeting on Crete

2011-10-11T19:37:00.001+02:00

Last year, a delegation of eleven representatives of the Union of Utrecht visited Crete to meet with various representatives of the Orthodox Church. The meeting was planned by the Orthodox-Old Catholic Working Group as a way of building on the successful work of the joint commission in 1987 and deepening ties further.

The German Old Catholic diocesan website has an interesting report in German about the visit. I will summarize it here for those of you not up on your Goethe and Brecht, while adding some thoughts of my own.

The host, Crete's local Orthodox church, is semi-autonomous, formally belonging to the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople. The Old Catholic visitors noted how well received and respected they were by their hosts. One of the most arresting signs of this was when the Orthodox bishop of Kisamos and Selinon invited the attendees to a service that Sunday, where both Orthodox and Old Catholics were included in commemorative prayers -- an act that is normally only done for Christians in communion. The Archbishop of Crete also attended to his guests in such a way that the reporter is reminded of Mark 10:43 -- whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant.

During the meetings, it was repeatedly and clearly emphasized that the Ecumenical Patriarch himself has a strong interest in continuing and deepening dialog and relations with the Union of Utrecht, regardless of the differences and problems that still exist that may seem to make full communion difficult if not impossible. Interestingly, the ordination of women is expressly not the central issue -- Orthodox theologians have said that women's ordination is not dogmatically impossible -- but rather the expression of communion on differing levels. That is in reference to Old Catholics having a relatively low bar for agreeing to communion and inviting to partake in the Eucharist, specifically to the agreements the Old Catholics have with us Anglicans (full communion) and the German mainline Protestant church, the EKD (invitation to members to partake in Eucharist, without full communion). From an Orthodox perspective, these agreements simply could not exist under their standards for full communion or sharing in the Eucharist, and indeed the Bonn Agreement is remarkable for how little it defines or declares.

Overall, the study trip was well received by all participants and gave the visiting Old Catholic students a much deeper appreciation of the Orthodox Church.

Kyrie eleison. :)

Just what is a gay service, anyway?

2011-10-11T08:10:00.000+02:00

A few days ago, the German Old Catholic diocese posted a story on their site celebrating "five years of gay-lesbian services in Karlsruhe". Here is a translation of the text into English:

For the past five years, the Old Catholic parish in Karlsruhe has been host of so-called "Queer Services", which take place every two months in the Old Catholic Church of the Resurrection in Ökumeneplatz. To celebrate this anniversary, Bishop Matthias Ring will take part in the service on 9 October 2011 at 6 pm. The ecumenical project team that is preparing the service is pleased to welcome the bishop of the parish who church has been the venue of the services from their beginning, with no charge for the use of the church or the parish hall.

I'm not going to get into the thorny issue of homosexuality and Christianity here. Suffice it to say that enough heat and light (more heat than light) has been generated in the blogosphere to fire a thousand suns.

But I am perplexed at just what a "queer service" is supposed to be. Which isn't surprising, because I also don't see why it is necessary to have extra "women's" services or services for singles or whatever. The thing is, I find this phenomenon to be very unhealthy, because it turns the Church into little more than a fragmented collection of interest groups each trying to get their special share of attention, and tailoiring "their" services to their own needs -- which practically by definition will be alien, or at best strange, for others. It is a kind of auto-ghettoizing, whether intentional or not.

Yet the Church has always been quite clear that Christ is the Savior of all people. We have no record whatsoever in the New Testament of special meetings just for, say, Judeans or tax collectors or unmarried women over 35 with a car (sorry, chariot) and two cats. On the contrary, we are told explicitly that in Christ, there are no Jews or Gentiles, no male or female, all those divisions are overcome in the form of the Holy Church of God. Every attempt is made to have rich and poor, man and woman, all walks of life represented in each and every gathering. Paul's Epistles repeatedly berate the early congregations for not including everyone and not treating them scrupulously equally, and encourage every effort to bridge and transcend, not cater to each and every person. No special treatment, just one in Christ.

The major concept behind any service, regardless of denomination, and in particular in the Eucharist, is to attempt to create a vision of the Kingdom of God in our limited space. That is impossible if you begin to customize services for particular interest groups. Yes, I'm sure it is useful for marketing and publicity reasons. Yes, I know gays, women, etc., have all been oppressed and treated badly for centuries and could use a bit of special attention and care. Yes, I know that traditional forms of liturgy tend to be male- and Euro-centric and may have little to say to women or children or whomever. That's all well and good. But special services for individual groups is simply the wrong way to go about it.

Certainly the Church should reach out to groups who are or have been marginalized, and should do what it can to welcome them and to reach them with God's message of love and hope. Certainly things could be done to modify the liturgy or practice to accomodate as many people as possible, and attempt to include as many as the Church can.

But the truly exciting, breathtaking part of Jesus' message is not "take us as we are", but "that they may be one". That is the ultimate vision we get in Galatians 3:28 -- There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And again in Romans 10:12: For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. Or most spectacularly in Acts 10:10-16,34-36:

About noon the next day,
as they were on their journey and approaching the city,
Peter went up on the roof to pray.
He became hungry and wanted something to eat;
and while it was being prepared, he fell into a trance.
He saw the heaven opened
and something like a large sheet coming down,
being lowered to the ground by its four corners.
In it were all kinds of four-footed creatures
and reptiles and birds of the air.
Then he heard a voice saying, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’
But Peter said,
‘By no means, Lord;
for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean.’
The voice said to him again, a second time,
‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’
This happened three times,
and the thing was suddenly taken up to heaven.
Later, Peter began to speak to the disciples:
‘I truly understand that God shows no partiality,
but in every nation anyone who fears him
and does what is right is acceptable to him.
You know the message he sent to the people of Israel,
preaching peace by Jesus Christ—
he is Lord of all.’

The vision of us all being one in Christ is what the ultimate attraction is and should be, and we should never lose sight of that, least of all for short-term goals such as pandering to ever-narrower special interests in hopes of filling the pews. The more we divide ourselves, the harder we make it to unite and to make that vision a reality.

No matter how well intended, using a church service to deliberately draw distinctions between us -- even if intended as a stepping-stone to something more -- turns this vision upside down, and ironically delays the ultimate realization by cementing division, rather than bridging it by providing a common home. By providing a service with a label, it reduces its participants to that label. Our home is Christ, not our own ghetto.

There is a perfect example of this -- V. Gene Robinson, the first openly gay Anglican bishop. From all I have been told and have read, he is a very spiritual and kind person. Aside from his sexuality, he seems to be quite orthodox and even a bit inventive in communicating difficult issues. And gays were understandably happy to have one of their own in such high office. But think about it. +Gene is nothing more than "the gay bishop". You see him on TV and in magazines all the time being interviewed about being gay, but never on the finer points of Christian morality or charity or any of those other things, except perhaps as throwaway questions at the end of the interview. He has been quite effectively reduced to being just gay, and all else is ignored. "Queer services" accomplish the same thing -- an own goal if there ever was one.

Ultimately we all have to ask ourselves: Do you want the people who come to your services to celebrate God, or their own sexuality or gender or skin color? Do we go to church to worship God, or ourselves? Is the Church a vision of the way things are, or of the way they should be?

Web design links: Content management systems

2011-10-08T14:02:00.000+02:00

As a Web designer, I have to work with content management systems (CMS) quite often, and am always on the lookout for new and interesting comparisons of the CMS tools on the bleeding edge. Whereas older ones like WordPress or Joomla! will usually do the trick for smaller sites, they still tend to be stuck in their blog origins and are harder to customize or extend than the more powerful ones like Typo3, Silverstripe, or Fork.

So this blog entry is as much for my own information as for you, dear reader. Here are some links with current comparisons of CMS tools that use PHP (an open source scripting language) and MySQL (an open source database) as their technical underpinnings. I'm most familiar with PHP and MySQL, hence my focus on that area.

In the last couple of years, I have focused on Silverstripe, which has done me fine for the things I need, but I'm always on the lookout for new and improved CMSes elsewhere. A few sites I've built with Silverstripe:

bund alt-katholischer frauen (baf)
Association of Old Catholic Women
Alt-Katholisch Hannover
Old Catholic parish in Hannover
GB Cars
Mechanic specializing in British cars, especially Minis
fuchs und hase GbR
A small design agency in Hannover

And one built in Typo3 where I assisted:

Katholisches Bistum der Alt-Katholiken in Deutschland
Diocese of Old Catholics in Germany

So, here are the comparisons:

Roundup of 17 Best Template Engines
A "template engine" is not quite the same thing as a CMS. The template engine simply helps control the appearance of pages globally, without having to edit each page. A CMS will normally have its own template engine built-in. In cases where templates are useful, but a full-blown CMS is not, these tools can come in quite handy.
Enterprise CMS Comparison
Enterprise-level CMSes have nothing to do with Star Trek and everything to do with websites that have hundreds, or even thousands or millions, of pages and many administrators, users, and especially visitors.
20+1 lesser-known open source CMSes
This is a roundup of up-and-coming CMS tools that are more specialized.

Feel free to post comments with your experiences with various CMS tools.

Hexham Abbey Men's and Boys' Choir paying us a welcome visit

2011-10-07T10:12:00.000+02:00

Late last year, I had a rather unexpected e-mail from England. It seemed the Hexham Abbey Girls' Choir was on tour and wanted to know if they could sing at our church. Together with our rector, I made the arrangements, and in February we had a wonderful concert (photos here) and a Holy Eucharist service accompanied by their singing (photos here). As an additional pleasure, their priest also came along, and jointly celebrated the Eucharist with our priest – a lovely expression of the full communion that exists between Utrecht Old Catholics and Anglicans.

As noted on our parish website, the people from Hexham Abbey are again paying a visit, this time the Men's and Boy's Choir, on 22 and 23 October. The first date, at 7 pm, will be a concert, and the following day at 11 am, we will again celebrate the Eucharist accompanied by the Hexham singers. I'm quite pleased by this, and as our rector said at the last visit, it was like we were used to driving an old car, but suddenly could use a luxury model. Very apt. :)

Essay contest entitled "Why are you an Anglican?" – and the trap of schism

2011-10-07T08:14:00.000+02:00

Over on the blog of +David Hamid, who is suffragan bishop for the Church of England's Diocese in Europe, he mentions a new contest for writing a 5,000-word essay on why you are an Anglican, and will remain an Anglican. The grand prize is £1000. More information is available on the website of the Anglican Communion.

Given all the strife and division that has been rocking the Anglican Communion over the last few decades, hopefully this will encourage people to think about why we should stay together, rather than heading for the exits and essentially excommunicating each other.

The seed of my essay will be this: Surely we have more to gain by sticking together than by dividing ourselves into ever-smaller splinter churches, as the history of the "Anglican Continuum" of Continuing Anglican churches has sadly demonstrated.

Those of you who know the Monty Python movie The Life of Brian will no doubt remember the farcical scene where the "Judaean People's Front" condemned the "People's Front of Judea", and vice versa. Well, I kid you not, but there is an Anglican Church in America competing with the Anglican Province of America, with nearly identical logos, as just one example. Of such things are schism made. As it happens, the ACA and APA now have full communion between them, but it remains to be seen how long it will last: Such churches are constantly merging, falling apart, reorganizing and such, so that it is extremely difficult to keep track of them all. Over time, they tend to get ever smaller as schism becomes ever more attractive for those intolerant of other views. Invariably some bishop with a big ego decides to go it alone and start his own church, and the cycle of schism starts anew. The list of "Continuing Anglican" churches is thus long and getting ever longer. So much for Catholic faith and order being a pillar of Anglicanism.

I certainly don't see how cutting each other off, fighting over church property, freezing out members with differing views, and all that has anything to do with being Christian, let alone Anglican. (And that goes for both sides of the argument, by the way.) Surely Anglicanism means to join together in one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, which almost by definition means we have to accept a variety of views and try to stick to the ecumenical Creeds as the basis of our communion, and above all, to overcome our differences. Instead, far too many "Anglican" churches come up with laundry lists of beliefs suddenly deemed mandatory, as is all too common in Lutheranism (which is even more fragmented than the Anglican Continuum) or the various Congregational churches. Oh, by the way, there is even an "Anglo-Lutheran Catholic Church".

So...dear reader, if you are Anglican, please do participate in this contest and maybe even publish your essay online to inspire others. I certainly intend to, and will plant the seed in the hopes it will grow. Ut unum sint: That we may all be one.

Steve Jobs: In permanent sleep mode

2011-10-06T18:53:00.001+02:00

I am saddened by the news that Steve Jobs has died. I'm an old Machead, having first used a Mac all the way back in the very beginning in 1984, and before that Apple II computers. I will never forget the classic Super Bowl ad, either.

(Unfortunately my favorite team, the Redskins, got trounced in that Super Bowl, which I also remember.)

It is practically a cliché and more than a little trite to say how Steve Jobs changed the world of computing. But it's true: Before Steve Jobs and his partner Steve Wozniak, personal computers were a tiny niche market, only for geeks and very specialized users. At that time, when people heard the word "computer", they thought of big hulking machines that took up entire rooms, and which were only used for things like databases, and could only be operated after extensive and arcane training. Like this:

The notion that personal computers would not only be ubiquitous, but also so small as to be carried in a pocket like the iPhone and powerful enough to record and play video or even 3D graphics -- in 1984 all of that was unimaginable.

I distinctly remember visiting Control Data as a Boy Scout in 1984. Our Scoutmaster worked there, and he was using what Control Data claimed was state-of-the-art -- and it was operated entirely by punchcards. No monitor. Just paper. Hanging chads were just as much a problem then as they were in Florida in 2000. Needless to say, Control Data is long gone.

While Apple didn't invent the concept of a graphic user interface -- much of Apple's GUI was inspired by Xerox's research in the subject -- it is thanks to Apple and particularly Steve Jobs whom we have to thank for being able to take a graphic interface for granted (i.e. point and click pictures on a screen). It was revolutionary at the time, and many believed it couldn't be done while still being affordable for the masses and easy enough for them to use. True, the Mac was pretty expensive at the time, but it was within reach, and was enough to completely change the computer market almost overnight.

Fast forward to the mid-90s, when Jobs returned to Apple, and the iMac -- remember the brightly-colored egg-shaped ones? -- was widely mocked and had many scratching their heads, but it too turned out to be a breakthrough. Jobs' vision once again outpaced the industry. And again with the iPhone, and again with the iPad.

Jobs had a dark side, of course. Legend has it that anyone who happened to be in the elevator with Steve and couldn't explain to him in that time what exactly their job was would be summarily fired. He drove his workers to extremes in the pursuit of his ideas. He never really did give Steve Wozniak the credit he was due. And so on. But then again, visionary people like Jobs tend to be difficult precisely because they...well, think different from the rest of us.

Now the big question is, can Apple continue at the pace Jobs set since his return? Hard to say. The talent is still there, of course, but his unique leadership style and ability to motivate employees, the press and above all customers (who drooled at every Macworld expo in expectation) will be sorely missed. Apple now lacks a consummate salesman like Jobs, who for years was ruefully described as having his own "reality distortion field", where he made the ridiculous and preposterous sound like a good idea.

I can't help but wonder what else he had up his sleeve when he died. Sadly, this time there won't be one of his infamous "oh, one more thing..." interjections to find out.

Though Jobs was Buddhist, I still offer this prayer for him:

Though we are dust and ashes,
God has prepared for those who love him a heavenly dwellingplace.
We commended Steve into the hands of almighty God.
We commit his remains to theearth,
as we entrust ourselves and all who love God to his loving care.
(Adapted from Common Worship)

You turn us back to dust and say: *
'Turn back, O children of earth.

'For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday, *
which passes like a watch in thenight.'
(Psalm 90:3-4)

Requiescat in pacem.

Have an un-merry Christmas

2011-10-06T07:18:00.000+02:00

I just stumbled across something on the website of the Church of England's Diocese of Lincoln, specifically from their liturgical commission. (There's my liturgy junkie side again.) It is something they call a "Quiet Christmas", a liturgy for those people whose Christmas spirit is dimmed by personal conflict, loss, depression or other crises.

I'd never heard of the idea before, but I have to say that I really could have used this last year, when I also was going through my own little year of hell (which thankfully feels like it is finally coming to an end, one reason I started this blog). The liturgy, which can be downloaded at the link above, is rather interesting in the way it describes pain as the sacrifice we bring to the Christ Child. While I've often thought of pain and suffering as something Christ shared with us in the agony and humiliation of the Cross, and His sacrifice for us, I have to admit I never thought of it in reverse, as a way of letting go from whatever it is weighing us down.

Kudos to those who wrote the liturgy and came up with the idea. I hope with all my heart that it gets used, and touches the lives of those going through a very un-merry Christmas.

Ordination of deacons in Koblenz, and the future of the north

2011-10-05T07:46:00.000+02:00

Hat tip to Walter Jungbauer for the link to the photos.
Update Yet more pictures are available from Heike Kiefel. Many thanks!

On 3 October 2011, day before yesterday, three deacons were ordained by Bishop Matthias Ring in Koblenz. (I had hoped to go myself, but because of my day job and a critical deadline Tuesday, I decided against it.) One of them, Jörn Clemens, will be our full-time deacon in Hannover, which will be very welcome for our rector, Oliver Kaiser, who was under immense strain and pressure during the whole project of building the church.

Stefan Neuhaus-Kiefel, a priest and vicar in our diocese, took lovely photos which you can see on his photo album page. Additionally, Heike Kiefel also posted pictures from the service. Many thanks to both!

Not only was the planning of the church and managing its construction a Herculean task, but the position of rector of the Hannover-Lower Saxony parish was already taxing enough. Our parish has by far the largest territory of any in the diocese, essentially the entire state of Lower Saxony, and also by far the most members, around 1600 scattered around the state, with clusters in Hannover, Osnabrück, Braunschweig and East Frisia. By way of comparison, the average parish in our diocese has around 300-400 members and usually is only a few Landkreise (roughly the German equivalent to a county in the US) at most. The parishes in Nordstrand (an island in the North Sea close to Denmark) and Berlin also have similar problems, but are smaller in membership -- though it has to be said that Nordstrand's rector has to drive even farther, since his parish is responsible for mentoring the Hamburg parish, which has no rector of its own, and the small number of Old Catholics in Bremen.

Thus the situation in the northern part of Germany is particularly problematic for anyone to manage -- just plain too much area for one person to cover, in both cases of Hannover and Nordstrand. Until recently, the parishes in the north (Hannover, Nordstrand, Hamburg) were not even in their own deanery, but rather were directly under the bishop, with the vicar general (roughly the Old Catholic equivalent to an Anglican archdeacon) acting as dean.

The good news is that this is finally changing. Some months ago, right after he was ordained and took office, Bishop Matthias initiated a project that had been proposed by the rectors and vestries in the north. This project envisions a dramatic reconstruction of the parishes and their pastoral care. First and foremost, these parishes are now in the Deanery North (Dekanat Nord), and our rector was promptly elected dean. Second, the cluster in Osnabrück will be split off and made into its own parish, although the pastoral care will still be in the hands of the Hannover rector. Third, the so-called Speckgürtel (literally "bacon belt") of Lower Saxon counties adjoining Hamburg will be split from our parish and attached to Hamburg's, and eventually Hamburg will have its own full-time priest, thus relieving Nordstrand of the considerable strain of caring for Hamburg and Bremen.

Another bit of good news that is coincidental, but further helps this project, is that we have a new priest (albeit non-stipendiary) who lives in Osnabrück and who serves as a part-time priest there, saving our rector the effort of driving to Osnabrück every Sunday evening to conduct the services there (a good two-hour trip each way, roughly 160 km).

And now that we have a full-time transitional deacon, who will be ordained as a priest and become our vicar, the load on all the clergy in the north ought to dramatically lessen. Which is good, because frankly the load on the priests in Hannover and Nordstrand was downright inhuman. So I'm particularly happy that Bishop Matthias supported this project so well, and am also happy for our priest, who can now spend much-needed and much-deserved time for himself and his family.

So where to from here?

I'm hopeful that this new plan will also have a positive effect on mission work. "Mission" is a bit of a dirty word 'round these parts, but let's face it, membership in all churches here is in free-fall. It is not at all unusual to hear parts of Germany being described as "post-Christian". Many people have turned their backs to the church -- or rather all churches -- not least because of pedophilia scandals and maladroit handling of them. The deeper reason, though, is because the churches have singularly failed to stay relevant to people's daily lives and to actively reach out and spread the Gospel, rather than just sit and wait for people to walk in. The contrast with the US is striking. There, it is still common to attend church every Sunday; that is almost unheard of here, and saying that you do generally raises eyebrows.

In the US, the building of a new church would attract some mild attention, but not much, since it just isn't that unusual. In fact it seems like Americans are constantly building and re-building churches. But here, the fact that a parish is actually building a new church, in a climate where dozens of churches are being closed down and shuttered, was something of a sensation.

We got a lot of free press for it, and indeed attendance at the church's consecration was immense -- in the ballpark of 300 people. Our attendance has also noticeably gone up. Whereas our average Sunday attendance was around 17 or 18 people each Sunday, since we began using the new church at Easter Vigil in 2010, my rough estimate is that the average is now around 25 or even 30. In fact, what amuses me a little is that whenever I think our group is rather small, I count the people attending -- and invariably it's the old average, and rarely below it.

So we have lots of opportunities, and I think the hand and glory of God is clearly recognizable in all of this. We now have a great chance to stem the tide of the collapse of the church in Germany, maybe even to turn the tide, at least in our area. And we have the chance to revitalize ourselves after the strain of building our church, to reconnect with who we are and to carry the Gospel into our neighborhood. And that is all worth celebrating indeed.

Glory be to God on high, and on Earth, peace, goodwill towards men.

So what's an Old Catholic, anyway?

2011-10-04T20:20:00.001+02:00

You will no doubt have noticed me talking a lot about not just Anglicans and Episcopalians, but also "Old Catholics". The thing is, relatively few people have heard of them, and many immediately get the wrong idea from the name. One question that gets asked a lot is whether we do Masses in Latin -- i.e. Old Catholics get confused with the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), which is a quite different thing to say the least. In fact Old Catholics and the SSPX are almost mirror images of each other.

Essentially, Old Catholics in Europe have two origins -- the first in the general chaos of the Reformation in the Netherlands and the controversy over Jansenism, the second as a backlash predominantly in German-speaking countries against the papal dogmas proclaimed by Pius IX at the First Vatican Council in the 1870s.

To make matters more confusing, in North America there are many groups claiming the use of the name "Old Catholic", with wildly varying degrees of legitimacy. Usually the term "Old Catholic" pops up amongst people calling themselves "Independent Catholics" or similar. Sad to say, but many would-be bishops seem to view getting an Old Catholic line of succession as a kind of quick and easy way of claiming legitimacy, as if ordination was a magic trick performed by the dude with the right mojo and hey presto, you've got your very own church. So many "Old Catholics" in America are what are called episcopi vagantes, or wandering bishops -- bishops without a church, in effect. Which in Catholic ecclesiology is a total non sequitur.

It is thus important, for clarity's sake, to differentiate between the "regular" Old Catholics in the Union of Utrecht, and the "irregular" Old Catholics in North America. The relations between the two have been strained or virtually non-existent, with the Utrecht Old Catholics generally taking a dim view of their counterparts in North America partly because of their association with Arnold Harris Mathew (see below).

The only "regular" Old Catholic jurisdiction in North America was the Polish National Catholic Church (PNCC), which in spite of the name is located in the US, based in Scranton, Illinois. Unfortunately, they left the Union in the 1990s over women's ordination, so the Union currently has no representation in North America -- there are thus no "regular" Old Catholics there (though that hopefully will change, as contacts are being established and the various irregular churches being nudged into joining together).

To get an idea of what the Old Catholics are, I'll concentrate on the regular Old Catholics as defined above. I mean no offense to Old Catholics in North America when I make this distinction, but it is an important one for outsiders to understand the workings of Old Catholicism, and obviously I'm far more familiar with the Utrecht Old Catholics. So let's look at the history and origins.

Old Catholics in the Netherlands, 17th century

The Dutch Old Catholics were once part of the Roman Catholic Church, as the Archdiocese of Utrecht. That archdiocese had the right to elect and choose its own archbishop, without consulting Rome -- something which today is, sadly, almost unheard of in the Roman communion. Then in the 17th century, there was some controversy over Jansenism in Holland, with the Jesuits in particular accusing the Utrecht church of harboring Jansenists and also sharing their views, which Rome condemned as heresy. A convoluted series of events led to the chapter in Utrecht electing their own archbishop, and getting a Roman Catholic bishop travelling through to agree to ordain their elected bishop. Then Rome excommunicated them for what Rome regarded as open rebellion, and essentially disclaimed any presence in the Netherlands until the 1850s. All subsequent Archbishops of Utrecht were excommunicated as soon as they were ordained, again because they supposedly did it without permission from Rome. This led to the rather bizarre legalistic hair-splitting way Rome views Old Catholic holy orders and sacraments -- "valid, but illicit". So the Dutch continued to have bishops with valid orders, preserving their line of apostolic succession.

The name "Old Catholic" came into being when Rome began to re-establish their own jurisdiction in the Netherlands in the 19th century. Since the Utrecht archdiocese considered itself to be the "regular" Catholic Church in the Netherlands, they became known as the "Old" Catholics, since they were there first. Indeed for some time they continued to refer to themselves as being Roman Catholic, but with an "old" jurisdiction.

Old Catholics in German-speaking countries, 19th century

Fast forward to 1870 and the First Vatican Council. There, Pope Pius IX rammed through the twin papal dogmas -- papal infallibility and universal jurisdiction -- over the protests of many bishops, especially in Europe and particularly in German-speaking areas. These bishops tried to boycott the council and thus prevent the dogmas from taking effect, to no avail. At that time, many clubs and groups formed to resist and protest the dogmas. Eventually Pius IX simply excommunicated the lot of them, leaving them effectively without a church of their own.

A large number of these Catholics didn't want to become Protestant or Orthodox, but to remain Catholic and to stay true to what they believed in. They established contact with Anglicans and the Utrecht archdiocese, and formed churches in the various countries they represented -- in particular Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Poland. These churches were intended and described as "provisional" churches, that is, they expected to rejoin with Rome at a future date when the First Vatican Council was revoked or revised.

Since Catholic ecclesiology requires a bishop with valid orders, they were able to have the Archbishop of Utrecht ordain their first bishops. Then these churches joined together in the Union of Utrecht, which is the Old Catholic counterpart to the Anglican Communion. Early on, talks were held with Anglicans and Orthodox with a view to uniting them, but in the end only the Anglicans agreed to join up, and did so with the Bonn Agreement in 1931. Ever since, Anglicans and Utrecht Old Catholics have been in full communion, exchanging priests, liturgy, theology and so forth, and members of the respective churches are welcomed as full members of the others. (Hence I'm still formally Episcopalian, while being a member of an Old Catholic parish and serving in the Old Catholic synod.)

Arnold Harris Mathew and the English Old Catholics, late 19th century

In the meantime, a rather colorful character named Arnold Harris Mathew approached the Union with a view to establishing an English Old Catholic church. There is much controversy surrounding Mathew, and he does seem to me to be a bit of a dodgy person -- not a charlatan, but certainly erratic and unpredictable. It turned out that the "church" he claimed to represent simply did not exist, at least not in the way he claimed, and the Union cut off support and ties with Mathew. He in turn declared independence from the Union (which seems to me to be like saying "you can't fire me, I quit!") and made contact with various people in North America, ordaining large numbers of bishops without much apparent concern for whether or not they had a legitimate interest in being a bishop or whether they were appropriate for the office. Eventually he converted back to being Roman Catholic and died isolated from the Old Catholics.

Irregular Old Catholics in North America, late 19th century to today

It is from these episcopi vagantes in North America that most of the "irregular" Old Catholics have their holy orders and apostolic succession. The North American Old Catholic movement, if it could be called as such, quickly splintered into a myriad of various churches with a wild range of beliefs, such as the "Liberal Catholics", who regrettably incorporated things like reincarnation and theosophy into their belief systems.

Today many of these irregular Old Catholics -- those with more orthodox beliefs, unlike the Liberal Catholics -- are trying, with guidance and help from the Episcopal Church USA and the Union of Utrecht, to finally come in from the cold and become a regular Old Catholic jurisdiction with recognition from and in communion with Utrecht. Unfortunately from what I am told, there are a lot of egos at work, preventing serious cooperation, and the project has not been crowned with success so far, but at least some progress has been made.

Of special note is the Cornerstone Old Catholic Community in Minneapolis, Minnesota, whose priest, Robert Caruso+, has been beating the drum to try and encourage more cooperation and to reconcile European and American Old Catholics; the Conference of Old Catholic Bishops, which transformed itself in September 2010 into the Old Catholic Church Province of the United States (sponsored by the Union of Utrecht); and the North American Old Catholic Church, led by Bishop Michael Seneco. Each of these are attempts at getting such a joint jurisdiction off the ground by getting the various bishops under one roof. Hopefully they will succeed and join the Union, and someday the Union of Utrecht can also deepen its ties with the Anglican Communion, maybe even fully merge. But that is years, maybe even decades, away -- sad to say.

Similarities and differences between Old Catholics and Anglicans

An obvious question is, what are Old Catholics like? Given that each national member church is autonomous and has its own history, it is difficult to make blanket statements. But it is possible to note a few differences from Anglicans. First, the liturgy and style is more "high church" as a rule than what you find in Anglicanism. Second, the traditions, tastes, and accentuations are clearly Continental and not English. Third, there are more concrete and clear practices related to the Real Presence in the Eucharist -- things like tabernacles and sanctuary lamps are more widespread. (Which I think is a Good Thing.) And lastly, I would argue that Old Catholics as a whole are more liberal than Anglicans in general, particularly in the question of homosexuality, and in a more limited sense in women's ordination. Old Catholics also are clearer in their belief in seven sacraments (which Anglicans tend to hedge by calling baptism and Communion the "great sacraments", implying the others are subordinate or not important). And of course, Old Catholics' holy orders and sacraments are recognized as valid by Rome, whereas Anglican orders are not.

I was once asked by my priest if I noticed any differences with Anglicanism, and I jokingly asked him, "I dunno, what's your position on polygamy?" He never did answer, so I can't tell you. ;)

There are also parallels and similarities. For one thing, German Old Catholics have borrowed liturgical elements from Anglicans, in particular from the Canadian Anglican liturgy, as well as a number of classic Anglican hymns, such as Hyrfrydol and The day thou gavest (an old favorite of mine). Theologically speaking, I have yet to detect any particular differences of note. Both support and practice women's ordination; both have an international communion with a clearly Catholic and episcopal ecclesiology (i.e. run by bishops with territorial dioceses); both are set up as a group of autonomous national churches in communion with each other; both believe in the Real Presence as the fundamental understanding of the Eucharist, albeit with different ways of reflecting that. So while on the surface, you would see some differences in style and practice, on the whole there is really no difference in substance as far as I can see.

As an Episcopalian in an Old Catholic parish, I have served as diocesan delegate three times, as a member of the parish vestry for five years, and numerous other jobs. In other words, I feel quite at home and am living out the promise of full communion. I look forward to the day when that full communion can blossom and add other episcopal churches to create a new super-church, with Anglicans, Old Catholics and various independent episcopal churches such as the Mar Thoma church or the Philippine Independent Church joining as one global jurisdiction as a counterweight to Rome and Constantinople.

Here's hoping that the Way of Christ leads to that unity, and to unity with all Catholic Christians and beyond.

What liturgy means to me

2011-10-04T18:29:00.001+02:00

If you look at the list of links way down at the bottom of the page, you'll notice that there is a whole section dedicated to just liturgy. While "only" a layman, or rather not ordained, I am a liturgical junkie and love checking out other liturgies, particularly those related to the Anglican Book of Common Prayer in some fashion. Some examples are the Liturgy of St. Tikhon (Russian Orthodox) and the Book of Divine Worship (Roman Catholic Anglican Use). It is particularly interesting to see what changes were made, where, and why.

I'm spoiled by the fact our priest is himself something of a specialist for liturgy, and for a time chaired the German Old Catholics' liturgical commission before retiring to focus on our church building project. Many evenings after Friday vespers have been spent picking his brain about various liturgical issues.

But to give you a clue as to just how much I have been known to get into liturgy, take to heart what I am told our deacon once said about me:

For John, liturgy is like sex.

The problem of Jansenism

2011-10-04T17:22:00.000+02:00

You may have noticed (of course you did!) that I renamed the link to my parish in the bazillions of links down below. Previously we didn't have a name at all, aside from "Old Catholic Parish of Hannover-Lower Saxony". Now that we finally have our very own church, it was high time to pick a proper name.

The parish has been at it for literally years, with no sign of progress and a couple reverses. But this time there was enough determination to finally just pick one that it went through. The new name is "Marie Angélique", named for Maria Angélique Arnauld. Who's she, you ask? Go ahead and read her entry on Wikipedia.

I have to say, I ain't happy.

She seems to be a wonderful person. She was the major force behind reforming the Order of Port-Royal, a nunnery that had pretty much gone all to pieces and where standards were virtually non-existent -- indeed from the sound of things, it had more to do with a home for juvenile delinquents than a nunnery, and in some descriptions it even sounds like it was practically a bordello when she took over. Thanks to her, the nunnery was thoroughly cleaned up and revitalized. Truly a remarkable feat, and one that deserves to be remembered.

But there is something about her connections that seriously bothers me. While I've talked to our priest many times about it, and have accepted that that is the new name and that's that, I still am uncomfortable with the choice because of her connections to Jansenism. You can read up about it on Wikipedia, but I'll sum up my complaints here.

Take Blaise Pascal, a close associate of hers and another leading Jansenist. He wrote (emphasis mine):

And yet it pleases God to choose, elect, and discern from this equally corrupt mass, in which he sees only demerit, a number of men of each sex, age, condition, complexion, from every country and time, in short, of all sorts. God has distinguished His Elect from the others, for reasons unknown to men and to Angels, by pure mercy, without any merit involved. [...] God, through an absolute and irrevocable will, willed to save His Elect with a purely gratuitous goodness; He abandoned the others to their evil desires, to which He could with perfect justice abandon all men. In order to save His Elect, God sent Jesus Christ to satisfy His justice and merit from His mercy the grace of Redemption...

In other words, there is pretty much no such thing as free will, at least not according to Cornelius Jansen or his adherents. Jansenism was roundly condemned by Rome as heresy, mainly because of that denial of the free will of humanity to choose to turn to God. Certainly the opposite extreme, Pelagianism, is also full of problems. But Rome and the Orthodox Church are quite clear on what they see as problematic. Take this article from +Kallistos Ware, a former Anglican who is now an Orthodox bishop and metropolitan in England, where he states:

Grace and Free Will. As we have seen, the fact that man is in God’s image means among other things that he possesses free will. God wanted a son, not a slave. The Orthodox Church rejects any doctrine of grace which might seem to infringe upon man’s freedom. To describe the relation between the grace of God and free will of man, Orthodoxy uses the term cooperation or synergy (synergeia); in Paul’s words: "We are fellow-workers (synergoi) with God" (1 Cor. 3:9). If man is to achieve full fellowship with God, he cannot do so without God’s help, yet he must also play his own part..."
[...]
The west, since the time of Augustine and the Pelagian controversy, has discussed this question of grace and free will in somewhat different terms; and many brought up in the Augustinian tradition — particularly Calvinists — have viewed the Orthodox idea of ‘synergy’ with some suspicion. Does it not ascribe too much to man’s free will, and too little to God? Yet in reality the Orthodox teaching is very straightforward. "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in"(Revelation 3:20). God knocks, but waits for man to open the door — He does not break it down. The grace of God invites all but compels none.
[...]
Orthodoxy, holding as it does a less exalted idea of man’s state before he fell, is also less severe than the west in its view of the consequences of the fall. Adam fell, not from a great height of knowledge and perfection, but from a state of undeveloped simplicity; hence he is not to be judged too harshly for his error. Certainly, as a result of the fall man’s mind became so darkened, and his will-power was so impaired, that he could no longer hope to attain to the likeness of God. Orthodox, however, do not hold that the fall deprived man entirely of God’s grace, though they would say that after the fall grace acts on man from the outside, not from within. Orthodox do not say, as Calvin said, that man after the fall was utterly depraved and incapable of good desires. They cannot agree with Augustine, when he writes that man is under ‘a harsh necessity’ of committing sin, and that ‘man’s nature was overcome by the fault into which it fell, and so came to lack freedom’. The image of God is distorted by sin, but never destroyed; in the words of a hymn sung by Orthodox at the Funeral Service for the laity: ‘I am the image of Thine inexpressible glory, even though I bear the wounds of sin.’ And because he still retains the image of God, man still retains free will, although sin restricts its scope. Even after the fall, God ‘takes not away from man the power to will — to will to obey or not to obey Him’ (Dositheus, Confession, Decree 3. Compare Decree 14). Faithful to the idea of synergy, Orthodoxy repudiates any interpretation of the fall which allows no room for human freedom.
[...]
Most orthodox theologians reject the idea of ‘original guilt,’ put forward by Augustine and still accepted (albeit in a mitigated form) by the Roman Catholic Church. Men (Orthodox usually teach) automatically inherit Adam’s corruption and mortality, but not his guilt: they are only guilty in so far as by their own free choice they imitate Adam."

This quote is from his book entitled The Orthodox Way, which I highly recommend -- very interesting and insightful as an introduction to the Orthodox Church. This kind of understanding of God seems both far more satisfying and more loving than the cruel God who damns people from the get-go, while also being more rational. What would be the point of condemning people in advance? It simply makes no sense and can't be reconciled with a truly loving, caring God interested in His Creation.

Here is another quote, this time from the Orthodox Church in America (OCA), about the sin of Adam and the redemption through Christ:

The sufferings and death of Christ in obedience to the Father reveals the super-abundant divine love of God for his creation. For when all was sinful, cursed, and dead, Christ became sin, a curse, and dead for us -- though he himself never ceased to be the righteousness and blessedness and life of God Himself. It is to this depth, of which lower and more base cannot be discovered or imagined, that Christ has humiliated himself "for us men and for our salvation." For being God, he became man; and being man, he became a slave; and being a slave, he became dead and not only dead, but dead on a cross. From this deepest degradation of God flows the eternal exaltation of man. This is the pivotal doctrine of the Orthodox Christian faith, expressed over and again in many ways throughout the history of the Orthodox Church. It is the doctrine of the atonement -- for we are made to be "at one" with God. It is the doctrine of redemption -- for we are redeemed, i.e., "bought with a price," the great price of the blood of God (Acts 20:28; 1 Cor 6:20).
[...]
In Orthodox theology generally it can be said that the language of "payment" and "ransom" is rather understood as a metaphorical and symbolical way of saying that Christ has done all things necessary to save and redeem mankind enslaved to the devil, sin and death, and under the wrath of God. He "paid the price," not in some legalistic or juridical or economic meaning. He "paid the price" not to the devil whose rights over man were won by deceit and tyranny. He "paid the price" not to God the Father in the sense that God delights in His sufferings and received "satisfaction" from His creatures in Him. He "paid the price" rather, we might say, to Reality Itself. He "paid the price" to create the conditions in and through which man might receive the forgiveness of sins and eternal life by dying and rising again in Him to newness of life (See Rom 5-8; Gal 2-4).

I don't know about you, but that sounds far more coherent and loving than a God that just decides to create billions of people who will burn in the fires of Hell with no chance whatsoever to change that.

Fair enough: Marie Angélique herself may or may not have had much to do with Jansen and may or may not have shared his views. She does seem to have been a remarkable and formidable woman. I've also been told that modern theologians, including Roman Catholic ones, have reappraised Jansenism and think Rome's criticism at the time was wildly overblown. The "five points" of Jansenism that she was forced to condemn were at least technically not really what Jansen himself proposed, and she was badly mistreated and unjustly abused, when there should be tolerance for other viewpoints. And guilt by association is really playing dirty pool, no matter who does it.

But given her close association with leading Jansenists, and the close association of Port-Royal with Jansenism, it still makes me very uncomfortable to say the least, especially when I read what Jansenists themselves wrote. Go to the source and read Jansen's original paper for yourself. Read Pascal's writings as well, as linked and quoted above. I think you'd have to agree than the views expressed are difficult to digest at best, and I'd much rather stay distant from such viewpoints. To make it absolutely clear, I don't condemn her, Jansen, or anyone else, and it is not my place to do so. It is simply a matter of who I want to be associated with, whose views I can support and agree with. By choosing her name, there is an implied endorsement of her views or the views of her order, and that is why I'm uncomfortable.

I would have much rather have taken a simple name associated with Christ Himself, as was the tradition in the early church. The Good Shepherd is a good example, being one of the earliest representations of Christ in iconography, or just plain "Christ Church" (which unfortunately is already taken in Hannover). One of the suggested names was "Taufe Jesu", or "Baptism of Christ", which I thought was ideal given that our church is the first Old Catholic church to be built with a full baptismal pool. And it would avoid the kind of associations that any individual saint would inevitably conjure up.

But alas, it was not to be. I missed my opportunity to raise the issue, and by the time I did so, it was simply too late to stop the momentum. The proverbial bus was long gone by the time I got there. So in a lot of ways I only have myself to blame.

Being a "good Catholic" as I try to be, I have to accept the will of the church as expressed through our parish assembly meeting, and live with it. It's not something that would make me jump leagues or whatever. But it's still disappointing. Here's hoping that she can do us some good with the Big Guy upstairs and pray for us, and forgive my doubts about her.

Church and communion: Rome and Utrecht

2011-10-03T16:03:00.002+02:00

According to a news report on the German Old Catholic diocesan website, the Old Catholic-Roman Catholic dialogue will continue after a positive reaction from both sides. I'm quite pleased, if skeptical that it will lead anywhere, but at least both sides are willing to try.

At the last Old Catholic synod in 2010 in Mainz, where I was a delegate, we discussed the joint paper released by the dialogue commission, not without some serious controversy. It saddens me that some Old Catholics who used to be Roman Catholic can't seem to get past their own personal animosities -- no matter how justified those animosities may be -- and thump tubs against Rome at every opportunity, but that is exactly what went on there. Some of the arguments used against talking with Rome were absurd, to say the least. The bishop had to intervene in the debate more than once because of that.

That said, there are indeed some potential roadblocks which on the face of it don't have any obvious solutions.

The most interesting question, I think, is how women's ordination will be handled. There is simply no way Old Catholics can or will turn back from it. Rome could, in theory, still tolerate it -- in fact that is the exact wording in the joint report -- in a church with which it is in communion, but it would be extremely tricky given the language used in Ordinatio sacerdotalis, wherein John Paul II essentially said that the Church is not able, or is not permitted, to ordain women.

While Ordinatio sacerdotalis is not formally a dogma, it would still be a remarkable about-face if Rome were to accept Old Catholics ordaining women, and at the very latest, once Old Catholics decide they want a female bishop -- which is only a matter of time -- then Rome will be really in a corner.

The second issue that will be thorny, to say the least, is indeed all those former Roman Catholics who are now Old Catholic. By leaving the Roman communion, they were automatically excommunicated as schismatics. If Rome were to establish full communion with Utrecht Old Catholics, then the status of these people -- such as, oh, most of the Old Catholic priests as well as a good-sized chunk of the membership -- would have to be clarified in such a way as to allow them to join the Roman communion without having some kind of penance or guilt hung on them. Even the relatively mild phrasing in the report, where Rome would offer a kind of amnesty or lift the penalty of excommunication, caused angry and pained reactions among many members, who felt that they had done nothing wrong by following their conscience (which, strictly speaking, is true). And of course Rome would also potentially lose credibility by merely lifting a penalty for something it has so long condemned.

A third issue affects me more personally -- what about the Old Catholics' relations with us Anglicans? The plain implication of the document is that if Old Catholics want communion with Rome, they will have to sacrifice their communion with Anglicans, as well as their cordial agreements with the mainline Protestants in Germany, the EKD. From all I have heard and have been told, this is one thing Old Catholics are not willing to sacrifice, meaning Rome would have to somehow reconcile themselves to being in communion with a church that is in turn in communion with a church whose orders and sacraments it doesn't recognize (see Apostolicae Curae).

There is one possible solution to this that has been discussed before, mostly by Anglo-Catholics. While Rome has not recognized Anglican orders at least since Apostolicae Curae was published, the reason rests almost entirely on the supposed defects of the ordination rite used during the reign of Edward VI. The concept is that the line of succession of valid bishops, and with it the validity of the church, was broken by using a rite that wasn't up to snuff. Reinstating a valid rite later, therefore, would not restore the validity of the church -- at least according to the usual "pipeline theory" of apostolic succession.

But here's the thing: Anglican ordination rites in their current form do not have the alleged defect. So if a validly ordained bishop were to participate in an Anglican bishop's ordination, he (though probably not she...) would in theory be validly ordained, even in Rome's eyes, and could pass that valid succession on to someone else, at least assuming that someone else is male. Since that has indeed been happening ever since the Bonn Agreement between Old Catholics and Anglicans in 1931, in theory most if not all Anglican bishops today should therefore be validly ordained, no matter what Apostolicae Curae says. (I did spend some time a while back checking the successions of all current American Episcopal bishops, and sure enough, all can trace one or more lines back to Utrecht.)

So there is a possible grand bargain here. Rome finally recognizes Anglican orders, which removes a block to Rome agreeing on communion with Old Catholics. And in both cases, Rome agrees that women's ordination is a possibility, but refuses to do so itself -- more or less the same solution used within the Anglican Communion, which has churches that do and don't ordain women.

Hey, I can dream, can't I?

No matter what, the continuing dialog between Rome and Utrecht will be fascinating to watch. I highly recommend ordering and reading the joint paper, Kirche und Kirchengemeinschaft (Church and Communion), which can be ordered on the German Old Catholic diocesan website. There is also an English-language research paper that discusses the current state of the dialog between Utrecht and Rome, as well as the PNCC, an Old Catholic church that split from the Union of Utrecht over women's ordination. +David Hamid, Suffragan Bishop of the Diocese in Europe, also published an article on the topic. Lastly, the Union of Utrecht has an article in English discussing the current state of dialogue with Rome.

Women's ordination: The real question is...

2011-10-03T15:03:00.000+02:00

I wrote this in German as a post on the blog "Frech. Fromm. Frau.", but felt it is useful as a worthwhile summary of my views on the issue of women's ordination. Here is a translation into English, slightly edited.

As a child, I experienced the controversy in the Episcopal Church USA over women's ordination, which was emotional and at times bitter. My mother was a diocesan delegate at the time and took me along to the plenary sessions. I can't remember much of the content, but I will never forget the very tense and angry atmosphere.

In the end, many opponents of women's ordination left the Episcopal Church and formed their own splinter churches, usually referred to as "Continuing Anglican" churches. Many of these are now forming a new anti-church, the Anglican Church of North America, or ACNA.

Thus after those bitter times, women's ordination was "legal", but it took some time before female priests became a reality for most people. After all, it takes time to educate and examine potential candidates. So you could say I experienced the whole development of women's ordination live.

For me, women's ordination is simply reality. Granting women holy orders is thus quite possible, period, end of story. Female priests are an enrichment of our lives -- insofar as one is open to the possibility.

I would say that they are not merely priests with XX-23 chromosomes. Women as priests bring change with them, and that is to be expected. However, I would also say that their gender had less to do with the changes relative to Roman Catholic priests than the fact that most are married and have children. That is the critical difference between Roman Catholic and Anglican or Old Catholic priests, not their gender. I am convinced of it.

There is also the question of whether such changes can be accepted by the grassroots. Here are the strongest arguments against women's ordination. It has little to do with Holy Scripture or dogma. Instead, it has everything do to with acceptance. The arguments for and against women's ordination are plainly smokescreens for what the individual people want -- otherwise one or the other side would have won the debate long ago and it would no longer be an issue. Instead, it grows.

If one tries to force their own idea through against the will of the grassroots, then schism is pre-programmed. You have to be honest enough to accept that as reality, whatever your theology. The only question is how this schism is handled or discussed. The model of "flying bishops" in the Church of England was a messy compromise, but it did work rather well for a time, until that compromise began to crumble because of pressure from the left, and until Rome decided to try luring conservative Anglicans across the Tiber.

Naturally you can dismiss the necessity of open discussion and just say the church is being held hostage by conservatives (or liberals). Maybe there is even something to that. But in the end, we must all ask ourselves the question: What is more important? Equal treatment of man and woman? Or the unity of the Holy Church? It is highly unlikely that both will be possible in the foreseeable future. And that is the question that everyone who discusses the issue must ask, and answer honestly, before any discussion can be productive.

Welcome

2011-10-03T14:07:00.000+02:00

Welcome to my blog. This is my platform for holding forth at length on whatever comes to mind, and engaging in conversation (at least when I have a moment) on those topics that interest me, particularly theology.

By way of introduction, I am an American who has lived in northern Germany since 1993. I speak English, of course (well, Brits might argue with that) and fluent German. I'm separated and have two young kids, both of whom live with me part-time and are bilingual (mostly). I was raised in the Episcopal Church in the US, had a phase where I didn't have much to do with church, then groped my way back to faith by exploring various parishes in my area, mostly EKD Lutheran, but generally running away screaming from all of them.

Once I found the Old Catholic parish I'm in now in late 2004, I finally felt at home, and since then I have been doing all kinds of work for the parish -- cantor, diocesan delegate three times, parish council member for five years, webmaster, parish bulletins, acolyte, and whatever else tickles my fancy. I'm something of an unusual animal around here -- I'm one of the few people I know who attends church every Sunday. I also used to go to vespers every Friday, but since the separation, I haven't been able to go as often.

While I would generally be considered a more liberal Christian -- I favor women's ordination, believe homosexuals should be welcome in the church, etc. -- I also have a deep respect and appreciation of the Orthodox Church, and also look forward to a time when Canterbury, Utrecht, Rome and Constantinople are once again united.

Other than theology, I'm also interested in history, cosmology, early music, computers, console games and cooking. I should also mention that while I'm obviously a committed Christian, I also enjoy discussing faith with non-believers as well as with other faiths, and have made many friends over the years doing so.

I'd like this blog to be collegial, friendly, informative, and on the level, but also controversial and engaging. I don't like echo chambers, not even when it's my echo. But I also place great value in mutual respect and decency. Please be sure to abide by that when posting.

So...once again, welcome to my blog, and I hope you enjoy your stay. Pull up a chair and sit a spell.

Our prison walls: Sermon for the Seventh Sunday of Easter, Year C

2010-05-17T18:00:00.004+02:00

Acts 16:16-34, Psalm 97, Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21, John 17:20-26

There is something striking about the reading from the Acts of the Apostles. Paul and Silas end up in prison for no other reason than curing a woman of an affliction. Rather than complain about their suffering the consequences of their beliefs, Paul and Silas sit there, with their feet in the stocks, and sing songs praising God.

Not long ago, Elizabeth and I were at an ecumenical meeting for the World Day of Prayer, where all those present were supposed to imagine they were particular characters in this story, and tell the group what they were thinking at that precise moment in the story. Sad to say, but many of the attendees were trying to outdo each other with overly pious statements, with plenty of overacting to drive home their piety. I was doing my best not to let my eyes roll into the back of my head, and then I leaned over to Elizabeth, told her I imagined myself to be Silas, and thinking, “Damn, Paul, when’s the last time you trimmed your toenails?”

This highlights how people project things they want to see onto Bible stories, rather than finding what lies hidden within them. A straight pious reading is more likely to lead to a spiritual dead end. It’s just too pat, too simple, and in the end an empty message.

This reading has something extraordinary that the attendees simply ignored. Here are two people, Paul and Silas, who have been tossed into prison after being caned and flogged, with their feet in the stocks, apparently with no hope of escape or freedom. Yet here they are, cheerfully singing songs praising God, as if nothing was wrong. Even when the doors are opened wide, they sit there singing.

Of course, the simple pious reading is that God heard their prayers and destroyed the prison to set them free. But I think that’s too easy. For one thing, Paul and Silas don’t leave. Even though the prison door is standing wide open, they stay put. That should raise a red flag that something incredible is happening here. Something much, much deeper.

The deeper dimension is that the prison wasn’t a prison at all. It is only a prison if you let it be one. If you have enough faith, you can triumph over any adversity and turn it into something more, a blessing. Even sitting in a rotten cell, one can be free, because our minds and our hearts are free. No matter where we are, no matter what situation, we are as free as we want to be, and free to praise God, no matter the consequences. Jesus said, the truth will set you free, and indeed the bigger the picture, the smaller our problems are, and the more we can free ourselves from their burden. Paul and Silas didn’t leave that prison, because they were never in a prison to begin with.

[By way of illustration, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Christian who resisted the Nazi regime in Germany, wrote his famous poem while waiting to be executed. That right there should speak volumes.]

The thing is, we tend to build prisons all the time. By that I don’t mean the kind with bricks and mortar. I mean the spiritual kind. We imprison ourselves in all sorts of ways. Addiction, narcicissm, navel-gazing, chasing after fads and fashion, worrying about our place in society and our social station: All these things imprison us by shackling our minds to things that don’t really matter. We pursue these things, the pursuit of happiness, but in the end none of it will make you truly happy, and certainly not truly free. They are all crutches, things that we lean on. But because we lean on them too much, our spiritual muscles atrophy, and we forget just what it means to be free, to be truly free of everything.

We also tend to build prisons in other ways, by building walls that shut ourselves in, but also by building walls to keep others out. We human beings are great at dividing ourselves up, and placing other people into neat little compartments, then getting mad when someone doen’t quite fit into one of those drawers. We find things to fight about, to separate ourselves from the rest. American and Russian, white and black, Jew and Muslim and Christian, Redskins fans and Cowboys fans, and on and on. Borders are drawn that in reality only exist in our heads – they certainly aren’t visible from space.

This is most visible in the Church, and by that I mean the whole Church, the Body of Christ, the sum total of all the baptized, regardless of denomination. Why do we have so many denominations? What issues separate us? What causes us to call someone else a heretic and condemn them? What right do we have to do so?

Today’s Gospel gives us a powerful counterpoint. Jesus prays to God the Father that we should all be one, just as He and the Father are one. I would ask you to consider something you may not have thought of before: Maybe we are all one already. Only we are too blind to see it. We have placed ourselves inside our four little walls, and are comfortable with that holier-than-thou feeling that we’ve got it right, while the Roman Catholics or the Methodists or the Lutherans or the Orthodox or the Calvinists or whoever have it all wrong. The prison has become our home.

But we are all one through our baptism. The Bible makes no other definition. You are part of the Body of Christ as soon as you are baptized, no matter who performs that baptism. Certainly I believe that the Church has and should have a Catholic essence, I believe in honoring and maintaining Catholic tradition, I cherish the Church Fathers and so on. But I question whether the Church is truly divided, just because we human beings say it is. We invent hurdles to trip up others, be it transubstantiation, the apostolic succession, teachings on justification, on the proper interpretation of the Bible, women’s ordination, homosexuality, and no doubt someday we’ll end up arguing over whether Jesus was left-handed or right-handed and whether He buttered His toast on the top or the bottom.

Are all these things really that trivial? Many self-defined true believers would have you believe it. We have to be separate from all those others because...well, just because. Each of these bits of doctrine – or more precisely the abuse of them to sow discord and disunity – is another brick in the wall of our prison.

The point of dogma and doctrine is not to divide, but to unite. To invite, not force out. Christ wants us to be one, and indeed we are one – only we are so petty and short-sighted that we can’t see it, and come up with ever more inventive ways to stay in our prison home.

We can, however, be free of all of that, by thinking outside these walls that divide us, and not letting them get in the way of our love for God and one another. The prison is not our home. The love of God is. Amen.

Catalyst: Sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year C

2010-05-03T18:00:00.003+02:00

Acts 11:1-18, Psalm 148, Revelation 21:1-6, John 13:31-35

When we talk about religion, or about belief in general, one of the common criticisms is that religion supposedly seeks to divide the world. Critics of religion tell us that religion thrives off of division and fear, that it foments discord and creates problems, only to claim to solve them itself. How many times have you heard the tired claim that religion is the cause of all wars, for example?

Today’s readings offer an excellent counterpoint. True enough, the God of Israel we find in the Old Testament pretty clearly divided the world into Jew and Gentile – the People of Israel, and everyone else. That would seem to play into the hands of the critics. God set apart this one elite of people, so obviously God is an elitist jerk out to play us off against one another, right?

But the reading from Acts is the decisive turning point. At this point in the story, the Apostles were one and all observant Jews. They would have all been circumcised; they would have all obeyed the Law, kept the feasts, ate only kosher food and so on. They would also have normally refrained from contact with non-Jews – that is, with Gentiles. Us. Pretty divisive stuff. Since this was all God’s idea, clearly God is to blame for dividing us into Jew and Gentile – or so the critics would have you believe.

But Peter, who after the death and resurrection of Jesus has become in effect the earthly figurehead of the Christians, has a vision where he is encouraged to eat strange things. The animals on the cloth dropping from heaven are all quite explicitly things that Jews were not allowed to eat – hence the quote, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat; what God has made clean, you must not call profane”. Peter takes this as a message that it is time to not only consort with the unclean uncircumcised – i.e. Gentiles – but to actively love them. He realizes that God’s love is most certainly not just for Israel, that the unclean Gentile is not profane. He says, “If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” So he realizes, this gift is not just for Israel at all. It is for all of humanity. And it is the task of all Christians to not just share this love amongst themselves, but with all human beings.

God gave Israel a special gift, the gift of being the first people to clearly hear and follow His voice. That gift is not one of division at all. It is more like choosing the right catalyst.

In chemistry, a “catalyst” is a substance or thing that is necessary to set off a reaction, to set a process in motion. A catalyst works by creating an alternate pathway for energy to flow, for electrons to be exchanged, to set different molecules in contact with one another that would otherwise avoid each other. A catalyst can also be an enzyme in the bloodstream, making it possible for the body to absorb nutrients that it needs to live. When the body introduces that enzyme, that catalyst, into the bloodstream, it is clearly not changing anything – it didn’t change its mind suddenly and abruptly decided to make enzymes for the sheer sake of making enzymes. Instead, it does so as part of a natural, necessary process. Our bodies need catalysts to even work, to grow, to prosper. It is the exact same principle in human history. God never changes His mind, but rather, at certain times a new stage of God’s plan opens up before us, as God adds another catalyst to the mix.

The catalyst in human history is the voice of the One God calling to Abraham from the tent of stars, which created the People of Israel. That catalyst reappears as the voice calling to Moses from the burning bush, welding the People of Israel together, so that they could enter the Promised Land. That same catalyst reappears as the One Savior Jesus Christ bringing the Apostles together, to start a chain reaction; He gave them the gift of Himself, so that they would give of themselves.

Peter stands here before the Jews, and once again acts as a catalyst. The Jews he lives with have accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior. But they still are blind to what the full meaning of this is. They criticize him for consorting with Gentiles, with the uncircumcised. But Peter tells them about his vision, of people liberated from those laws and strictures, and united under one God, no differences, no barriers, no walls, no borders, no bars on the windows. That vision of one people, one humanity, one God, is the ultimate vision of oneness – the very opposite, the antithesis of division.

In the Gospel, Jesus gives us His parting words, just before he is betrayed to certain death, after the Last Supper. He tells them, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Where Moses was the catalyst welding Israel together, Jesus Christ is the catalyst to weld us all together, from all nations and peoples.

Far from religion dividing us, Jesus is telling us to love one another as He loves all of us. God loves us all infinitely. The great catalyst in the chemistry of human history is there not to cause explosions or discord or dissent, but to fuse us all together into one whole, to reconcile, to love, to share. There was never a change in plans because God or we human beings screwed up; instead, it was all part of God’s plan, as He added catalyst after catalyst to the mix to get the result He wants. That result is what we call the Kingdom of Heaven.

We see a glimpse of that goal, the Kingdom of Heaven at the end of time, in the Book of Revelation. ‘I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.”’

This is what Jesus wants for us, and what the Will of God has always been and always shall be. An end to war, an end to pain, an end to suffering. But we are the keys to this. We are all catalysts if we care to be, catalysts for peace and justice. Each of us was added to the mix to fulfill our greater purpose. But we can only do it to the fullest if we obey that last commandment of Jesus. “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” Everything we do, every waking moment of our lives, should be tested against that one sentence. We must let Jesus act as a catalyst in our hearts, so that we can act as a catalyst in our wider society.

When we do this, Jesus is working through us. We literally become the limbs and hands of Christ, the true Body of Christ. Jesus works His miracles through His body, and that’s us. And it’s Jesus who is seated on the throne saying, “See, I am making all things new”. With His help, we can make all things new, now and forever.

But there is a catch. Critics of religion have one thing dead-on: We as Christians have to live up to our fine words. All too often we Christians have made excuses for our failure to live up to the Gospel. Critics of religion love to point out the hypocrisy and moral failures of Christian leaders. Even many Christians like to feel just a little vindicated and more than a little Schadenfreude when the likes of Bishop Mixa or Käßmann are hoisted on their own petards – where they acted as great moralizers, their own moral failures weakened them. But here again is the answer for us – not to give up, to toss religion onto the scrapheap of history just because our leaders have failed us, but to try harder ourselves. The critics of religion do us a favor, by holding up a mirror and reminding us that we aren’t what we should be, by our own standards. What the world needs is not more self-proclaimed hypocritical self-serving Christians looking for a cheap ticket to Heaven. What it needs is real Christians – those who say what they mean and do what they say in the name of Jesus, whatever the consequences.

Imagine how impressed people are when they find a “real” Christian – someone who really does live as Jesus taught. Someone like, for example, Frère Roger of Taizé, a very simple and humble man who acted as a catalyst to reignite Christianity in Europe and worldwide. Before Taizé became well-known and popular, Christianity was arguably dying in Europe; arguably it is still very feeble. But Frère Roger’s personal credibility, his soul like a flame, his humility and care for others, was a catalyst that started a fire to reignite the spirit of the Church in Europe and far beyond.

Potential Frère Rogers are all around us. You and I could just as well do things as great as he did, passing on the fire of our conviction and love of one another. You might think that’s preposterous, but if you think hard about it, what’s stopping us from doing it? Only ourselves, our own narrow interests – nothing else. The answer to this is not “I can’t”, but “I’ll try my best”.

Each of us can be another catalyst that makes the vision of the Kingdom of Heaven come that much closer. When we drop our own cares and worries, when we forget about all the things that bother us, when we stop letting our own goals and desires dictate our lives, we gain the inner peace and resolve to spread the peace we suddenly find in ourselves. The true catalyst for this peace, inside and outside, as it always was and ever shall be, is love. Like it says in an old Beatles song, “and in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make”. Amen.

Queens and quandaries: Sermon for Palm Sunday, Year C

2010-03-27T18:07:00.003+01:00

Luke 19:28-40, Psalm 118:1-2+19-29, Isaiah 50:4-9a, Psalm 31:9-16, Philippians 2:5-11, Luke 23:1-49

When I was planning today’s service, one particular phrase leapt out at me. I’m a bit of a history junkie, particularly for English history; those of you familiar with English history may well have thought the same thing when hearing that particular phrase.

The phrase I have in mind is in the psalm we heard as we processed into the chapel, Psalm 118. The phrase is, “This is the LORD’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.”

Legend has it that this was uttered by Princess Elizabeth, upon hearing that her Catholic sister Queen Mary had died, thus making Elizabeth Queen of England. There is a special resonance to them for Elizabeth, because during her sister’s reign, Elizabeth was a constant potential rival, as Protestants in England repeatedly started uprisings to overthrow Mary and install Elizabeth on the throne. Mary repeatedly and openly considered executing her own sister, to protect the Catholic faith in England. Elizabeth had to constantly swear her loyalty and grovel before her sister to spare her own life. So with Mary’s death, Elizabeth must have felt immensely relieved – while also facing the enormous burden of ruling a deeply divided England, at war with itself over religion.

I admire Elizabeth a great deal (though I should add that my daughter having that name is actually a coincidence). You see, most people, when thinking about the Church of England, think of her father, Henry VIII. But in reality Henry, aside from severing ties to the Pope, left little trace of influence on what Anglicanism became. His son Edward VI (again the name is a coincidence, I swear) tried to radically Protestantize the church; Mary succeeded him and re-catholicized it, reversing everything her father and brother had done; and finally came Elizabeth. More than anyone else, Queen Elizabeth I left her mark on the church. “This is the LORD’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.”

The reason Elizabeth’s words resonate with me is because of her vision of the Church. She felt strongly that Christians should be united in one church, and also saw that the only way to do so was to tread the Via Media – the middle path between Catholic and Protestant, uniting the best of both. To this day we say of ourselves, we are Catholic and reformed.

There is a short poem attributed to Elizabeth that sums up her pragmatic way of seeing Truth in competing visions. It is about the Real Presence in the Eucharist, and goes like this:

“’Twas Christ the Word that spake it,
The same took bread and brake it,
And as the Word did make it,
That I believe and take it.”

In other words, if you believe Christ is truly present, if you appreciate the dignity of the sacrament of Communion, then you are welcome at the table.

This vision of unity, sadly, came at a price – many people resisted it, from both extremes of the spectrum. The Puritans and Pilgrims regarded anything remotely Catholic as being work of the devil; the Catholics despaired of restoring ties to Rome and the wider church, while also despairing of a more vigorous sacramental theology that they felt was lacking in the Church of England. There were still uprisings, there was still conflict, there were even plots to assassinate Elizabeth from both sides. In the end, all had to make sacrifices in order to live with the compromise that the Church of England became, which was in turn passed on to all other Anglican churches worldwide.

Elizabeth’s vision remains important even today. The Via Media, I think, offers the only hope of reconciliation of all Christians around the globe. It is more important than ever to try and find this middle path, to unite as many people as possible. The Anglican Communion is, of course, currently rocked by anger and division over teachings revolving around human sexuality, particularly homosexuality. It is also struggling with the bait placed in front of Anglo-Catholics by Rome, to lure them into a uniate Anglican church in submission to the Pope. The centrifugal forces at work are enormous. Particularly the strife over homosexuality is painful and difficult, with accusations of heresy and intolerance flying around. People claiming to be Christian seem to have nothing better to do that self-righteously hurl insults at each other. But the thing is, we all – regardless of our denominations – have a duty to try and bridge these differences, and to be united in Christ. Whether we like it or not, we need each other – Evangelical and Catholic, liberal and conservative, high church and low church. Each bit of the immense spectrum of Anglicanism carries a bit of the full picture of Christianity within, and each bit has something to contribute. Indeed Anglicanism mirrors the Church as a whole, covering the range from Catholicism to a diluted form of Calvinism.

So if we are to fulfill Christ’s final plea as He prayed in the garden of Gethsemane, “that they may all be one”, then we have to accept that we all, each and every one of us, have a place in the Body of Christ – and that means being willing to compromise, to sacrifice things we may hold dear in the name of greater unity. We cannot expect the Other to make the first step; we have to individually all make first steps, to build trust, to recognize the fullness of faith in all corners of the Church, whether Catholic or Protestant or Orthodox or indeed Old Catholic.

Recently I attended an Anglican conference in Düsseldorf. As it happens, I would place myself squarely in the liberal side of things regarding sexuality and women’s ordination; I would also place myself squarely in the high church Anglo-Catholic wing of Anglicanism. But at this conference, the range of Anglicans represented was huge. The church itself in Düsseldorf was a good example – as I entered, I noticed there was no altar, just a table; and on the table, nothing except a huge Bible. No tabernacle or aumbry, either. It doesn’t get much more low church and evangelical than that.

In particular there was a fellow there I had heard about, the rector of a particularly conservative evangelical parish here in Germany. Indeed he and his parish are so angry about the liberal drift in parts of Anglicanism that they no longer call themselves “Anglican”, and have resigned their official representation at Anglican conferences (while still being observers). I had visited their website a few times, and my curiosity was piqued, particularly by the profile of the rector, who is originally a white African from Malawi, of English extraction.

It so happens that he and I ended up riding next to each other in the car to the station, and then taking the same train (he had to pass through Hannover to get to his home parish). So I struck up a conversation, and we talked about church politics.

The thing is, we come from opposite ends of the spectrum. He favors things that I disapprove of, like lay presidency at the Eucharist; he disapproves of my stance on homosexuality and the catholicity of the Church. Conservative evangelical versus liberal Anglo-Catholic. But he is a good case in point for what I am talking about, in that we need each other. He is vehemently against homosexuality. But he is also not a wild-eyed lunatic. He, like everyone else, is a rational human being, searching for the truth as best as he can. I am certainly no better than he is – we are both sinners, we both have our flaws, and we both admit that freely. And in spite of our disagreements, we both showed a generosity of spirit towards one another that is sadly lacking in the whole debate storming the Church worldwide. Meanwhile his parish is flourishing, attracting more people to Jesus. Obviously we need more like him, just as we’re doing our best here to build up the Church in Hannover. We need each other to win as many people as possible for the Gospel, because in the Holy Church of God, we have – and I say this with great conviction – the last, best hope for humanity to save itself, with God’s help.

This means we all have to be ready to make sacrifices. We have to tolerate other opinions, even ones as wildly different as those between myself and my fellow train passenger, even if those opinions may seem to us intolerant or even heretical. We have to each make the first step in de-poisoning the debate, to raise the level of the rhetoric, to love those we agree with, but more importantly, to love our enemies and make them friends. We can and must reconcile with one another, even if it takes painful sacrifices.

This is particularly true as we celebrate Palm Sunday. Jesus went to Jerusalem riding a colt through a certain gate as a way of proclaiming Himself the Messiah, by deliberately echoing a messianic prophecy. He was in effect throwing down the gauntlet to the High Priests and King Herod, knowing full well what the result would be – his certain death. They chose a particularly horrific way of killing him, by lashing him with whips, by ramming a crown of thorns on his head, by mocking him, spitting on him, then driving nails through his hands and feet to let him hang there to die, in public and in the deepest humiliation. Even his fellow victims mocked him as he hung there. Jesus despaired of the Father leaving him: Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani – my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I can’t imagine a greater sacrifice than what Jesus did, and He knew in advance that all this would happen – yet he didn’t turn back from His course. He experienced the full measure of human pain and suffering – being completely alone, lost in the world, abandoned to die. He made the ultimate sacrifice.

So if we are to fulfill His vision – that we may all be one – we must all be ready to sacrifice, to compromise, to see value in other opinions and love those whom we disagree with. The divisions in the Holy Church are entirely of our own doing, a sign of our own fallen nature – but in reality we are united in one baptism and one faith, whether we are Anglican, Old Catholic, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Methodist, Lutheran, Baptist and many other denominations aside. The Body of Christ is one and holy, incapable of being divided – only we fail to see past our own prejudices and wishes, and perceive division, even inventing discord in order to justify our own church’s right to exist.

In other words, we must return to Queen Elizabeth’s holy vision, the Middle Way that accommodates everyone in the Body of Christ. One baptism, one faith, one Lord. Once we escape our own self-imposed limitations, once we tear down the walls of our own making, and open ourselves to the Christ present in the hearts of all of us, then God can work His wonders through us – and we can all say, “This is the LORD’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes”. Amen.

Believing in doubt: Sermon for the First Sunday of Lent

2010-02-20T17:56:00.002+01:00

Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16; Romans 10:8b-13; Luke 4:1-13

Lent is normally a somber, reflective occasion, as we prepare for the joy of the Easter sacrifice and Resurrection. Not normally the time to be telling jokes. But I’m going to be a bit different and start off by telling one. It goes like this:

Jesus is subbing for Peter at the Pearly Gates.

A Roman Catholic dies. Jesus says, “I have one question to decide whether I should let you in: Who am I?” The Catholic says, “Well, the Pope says...” and Jesus says, “No, I wanted your answer. Sorry...”

A Protestant dies. Jesus says, “I have one question to decide whether I should let you in: Who am I?” The Protestant says, “Well, the Bible says...” and Jesus says, “No, I wanted your answer. Sorry...”

An Anglican dies. Jesus says, “I have one question to decide whether I should let you in: Who am I?” The Anglican says, “Well, you are Jesus, the Christ,” Jesus says “Very good!” And the Anglican continues, “...but on the other hand...”

The reason I tell this joke is because it highlights a central aspect of what it means to me to be a Christian: doubt. Gnawing, constant doubt, about everything. We Anglicans tend to question everything, we question authority and don’t take someone else’s word for it. We reject Biblical literalism, just as we reject slavishly following an overmighty Pope or other leader.

This brings with it an advantage, of course, of being liberated from these things. We aren’t burdened with slavishly following Biblical literalism or the latest utterances of Benedict XVI. But if we want to be honest with ourselves, it has a drawback: We are left spending our lives searching for answers, and our belief is constantly being tested and challenged, and thus evolves and changes over our lifetimes. Another old joke goes, ask three Anglicans what they think the Church is, and you’ll get at least five answers. Other Christians may accuse us of building our church on sand, because we as Anglicans or Old Catholics are so reluctant to accept outside authority beyond the barest necessities, and we keep asking questions.

Today’s Old Testament reading contrasts the experience of Israel with our own. Judging from the reading, the Israelites had no doubt that God was there, because He was constantly talking to their prophets and interacting with them directly. God today seems to be harder to spot. We today are plagued by this, constantly searching for evidence that God really loves us, or that God even exists. Bad things happen like the earthquake in Haiti, or the tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004, and our faith is sorely tested. We look for signs of God, and when God doesn’t quite turn out as we expect, we are frustrated and disappointed. Some of us give up entirely, rejecting the whole exercise as a waste of time.

But here, in this doubt, is the seed of our true foundation. It is in this doubt that the rock-solid foundation of our faith lies. Like the singer of the Psalm, we say to God, “You are my refuge and my stronghold, my God in whom I put my trust.” We trust in God and places our hopes in Him because our faith is constantly tested by the fire of doubt. We trust Saint Paul when he tells us, “if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved”, and further, that “no one who believes in him will be put to shame”.

The thing is, if one relies on outside authority, that person is be making it too easy for themselves. They are taking a shortcut. That person has to constantly line up daily events or personal experience and see what their authority has to say to them about it. In a sense doing this is not a test of ourselves, but a test of God, to see if God really lives up to what that authority tells us God said. When God fails that test, as He inevitably will, it somehow becomes God’s fault.

But we don’t serve any authority but God Himself, and we certainly have no authority to question or test God, though it is of course tempting to believe that we can. As Jesus told the devil in the Gospel, “worship the Lord your God, and serve only him”. And in particular, Jesus admonished the Devil by saying, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” To think that we mere human beings can dare to test God or limit God or make God do what we want Him to do in any way is impossible. It is sheer hubris; it is folly. It is temptation of the Devil himself, who promises us the same false rewards that he promised Jesus. The “reward” of allowing our arrogance to get the better of us and to place ourselves above God is to be enslaved by our worst instincts. The temptation of certainty is what leads people astray to fundamentalism in any form, whether it is Biblical fundamentalism, ultramontane Catholicism, militant atheism or any of the other isms out there. That temptation is as evil as they come, and leads directly to war, conflict and despair.

We must be humble enough to admit that our own worldly authority might get it wrong, or that we ourselves get it wrong. Just as we must not test God by laying claim to infallibility, whether it is of a Pope or of the Bible itself, we must also be very careful not to lay claim to infallibility for our individual selves. It is through the deepest humility and self-denial that we come to experience the real divine presence that is God. Only when we are ready to renounce all preconceptions and preconditions are we ready to experience God directly. We have to play by God’s rules, not our own. Thy will be done.

On a lighter note, Casey Stengel, baseball player and legendary manager of the New York Yankees and the New York Mets, put it in his unique way: “Never make predictions, especially about the future.” We can certainly take that to heart by rephrasing it a little, “Never make assumptions, especially about God.” We have to let God define us and not the other way around, and that is the most important thing about learning how to let our faith grow on its own, rather than succumbing to the temptation of forcing the issue or of taking shortcuts. Thy will be done.

Lent is a time of testing our faith. We prepare ourselves for the triumphant resurrection of Jesus Christ at Easter by spending these forty days reflecting on what we believe, and how we came to believe it. This is particularly true for our catechumens, Michelle and Jon, who are working their way towards baptism. Ideally, when we prepare for this, we fast. When we fast, we should do it not just to give up something because someone told us to. Once again that’s just following authority for the sake of following authority. Instead, we should fast because it is a way to strip down our selves to the barest essentials. To remind ourselves that we need nothing but God Himself. To reject the temptation of short-term rewards. To understand that we must be ready to give up anything and everything, just as Jesus gave everything He had when He stretched out His arms on the Cross. Above all, to understand, to see ourselves as part of the greater whole, and our place in it.

When we test our faith in this way, it is tempered, hardened, polished. It becomes something more solid than rock, harder than steel. When we are ready to test our faith to the utmost, to wear our self-doubt willingly, we come to dwell in the shelter of the Most High, and abide under the shadow of the Almighty. When we deny our own pride and hubris, and all pride and hubris around us, the door to God is opened in our hearts and the fire of the Spirit storms in. God can then work through us to save this world of ours. Each of us can become the hand of God working in our world, as an integral part of the body of Christ. It is when we seek rewards least that we gain the greatest reward of all.

When we confess our faults, our fallibility, we come to the point where Paul says in today’s Epistle: “For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved.” This is why Confession is part of each Anglican service: as a reminder to deny ourselves, to accept we are flawed, to accept that only together can we overcome those flaws. We confess our faith together that God is there for us. We come together as a Church to reinforce one another in our faith, to give one another strength on the journey, to leave no one behind. We come together as the Holy Church to make the world new, with God’s help. And that nagging bit of doubt and restlessness, the thirst for knowledge, the will to know God, is the seed in our hearts to help get us to the Kingdom of Heaven itself. And best of all, we know that at the end of Lent, we are ready to personally experience the triumph over death by Jesus Christ in the Easter Vigil, gaining strength from it year after year.

Remember the joke I told at the beginning? It’s true: All you have to do to get into the Kingdom of Heaven is to recognize Jesus for what He is, and do so out of your own heart. Lent is here, so that we can learn to see Jesus all around us, including in ourselves; at the end of Lent, like the disciples at Emmaus, we recognize Jesus in the breaking of the bread at Easter, when we come together as one to share – and then the door to the Kingdom of Heaven is wide open, so that we can come into the land that the LORD our God is giving us as an inheritance to possess. Amen.

The voice from the whirlwind: Sermon for the Thanksgiving for the Birth of a Child, Proper 24, Year C

2009-10-17T18:11:00.002+02:00

Job 38:1-7,34-41, Psalm 104:1-9,25,37c, Hebrews 5:1-10, Mark 10:35-45

Marcus and Dana (Note: Names changed for their privacy), as a father myself, I’d like you welcome you to the select elite of mankind: parenthood. We’re here today to give thanks for the safe birth of your first child, Daniel, and I can’t tell you how happy I am for you. Now, as a welcome to that elite of mankind, I’d like to give you a little bit of a heads-up: Parenting, as you no doubt know by now, is not always fun and games. Children can be difficult, even maddening. A friend said of his son that »he’s going from the ›terrible twos‹ straight on into the I’m-going-to-freakin’-kill-him threes«.

One of the ways your child will also certainly drive you crazy is with a one-word question. My daughter has discovered this question lately. That question is, »WHY?«

The child will pester their parents, wanting to know this or that, until it in variably ends in a sequence of »why« questions with no end other than the parent gritting their teeth and saying »just because« or »because I said so, now go to bed«.

The thing is, as childish and innocent as that question is, it is still gnawing at us even as adults. We still don’t really know »why«. We grope around such questions, asking why we’re here, why this Universe even exists. Science, of course, tells us all about the how, but it falls silent on the why.

In today’s readings, Job finds himself in exactly the same spot. He asks God that question, »why«, and gets a magnificent booming voice from the whirlwind. Yet what I think is fascinating about this is that God does not give Job simple answers. Instead, God answers with a serious of questions. Each answer opens up a new question. Life, as Job learns, is a never-ending sequence of questions, and only God has the fullness of knowledge and wisdom. Only God has all sides of the truth. We mere mortals are confronted with our basic human limitations: We only see just so much of the puzzle. We try our best to connect the dots, but ultimately final answers will elude us. We are reduced to children asking their parents, »why?«

So the question is, how do we find God? How do we come into that direct personal experience of God? Job had the whirlwind, Moses had the burning bush, Elijah the chariot of fire. They had the luxury of at least directly experiencing God. But what about us?

Jesus, in the Gospel of Luke, gives us a clue. Jesus overhears people sending the children away, because they are (to the adults) being such a nuisance. But Jesus rebukes them, and says, »Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.«

As I grew into being a father, over time that line has resonated with me more and more. Because I came to recognize that children hold the secret. I see God in the eyes of my children. In particular I am reminded of a favorite story from the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, which I’d like to retell now:

One day some old men came to see Abba Anthony. In the midst of them was Abba Joseph. Wanting to test them, the old man suggested a text from the Scriptures, and, beginning with the youngest, he asked them what it meant. Each gave his opinion as he was able. But to each one the old man said, »You have not understood it.« Last of all he said to Abba Joseph, »How would you explain this saying?« And he replied, »I do not know.« Then Abba Anthony said, »Indeed, Abba Joseph has found the way, for he has said: ›I do not know.«

Abba Joseph, in other words, humbly accepts his humanity for what it is. He cannot and will not know everything. The thirst for knowledge is one that will never be quenched. Each question we ask of God, or of science, opens up new ones. We will keep asking »why« until the ends of our days.

But what Abba Joseph and Abba Anthony both also know is that they can put their trust in God that all will be well in the end. God is infinite knowledge, infinite love and infinite compassion. When we see terrible things happen to us – whether it is the death of a child, or a natural catastrophe that kills millions – our first reaction is naturally to blame God, to get angry with Him, to demand answers. But God answers us from the whirlwind: »Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, so that a flood of waters may cover you? Can you send forth lightnings, so that they may go and say to you, ›Here we are‹? Who has put wisdom in the inward parts, or given understanding to the mind? Who has the wisdom to number the clouds? Or who can tilt the waterskins of the heavens, when the dust runs into a mass and the clods cling together?« Who indeed but God Himself, and none other.

We must avoid the hubris of thinking we have all the answers, or even can have all the answers. We must accept that as terrible as things may seem, God really does love us, and it is all worth it in the end. To a child, sometimes parents may seem cruel, heartless, spiteful. They don’t understand why we have to ruin their fun by taking away the markers they used to decorate your antique lamp, or what’s so terrible about tearing out the pages of Mommy’s favorite book. Through those negative experiences, though, we all learn. As Paul says in the Epistle, »Although Jesus was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered«. Children figure out pretty quickly that their parents know more than they do, and accept what their parents have to teach them, because they know the love that is there.

We must learn to love God and one another as a child loves – with simplicity, trust, open eyes and open hearts. We must remind ourselves to come into the presence of God through the sacraments of the Church, so that we can reconnect with that real presence, with the grace of God. Rather than intellectually seek God, we need to feel God. And the means to do that is frequent prayer and experiencing the sacraments of the Holy Church.

Indeed we went to great lengths today to have the Eucharist as part of this service. Rev. Feldes agreed to fill in for our priest today, who is on sabbatical, because Rev. Feldes and the Anglican rector in Berlin sensed how important the Eucharist is to us. And it is doubly important because of what we celebrate today – thanksgiving for the birth of a child. The word Eucharist itself means »thanksgiving«, and what better way to give thanks for the birth of Daniel than by communing with God in the most blessed of sacraments. For that reason I’d like to thank Rev. Feldes for making the trip from Berlin so that we could do just that.

Thus, Marcus and Dana, when your child asks you »why« over and over and over again, accept it with love and learn to see the divine in yourselves, but especially to see the work of God in your child. As today’s Psalm ends, »O LORD, how manifold are your works! in wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.« The voice from the whirlwind assures us, all will be well, there is a plan, and the Kingdom of Heaven awaits us all: it is there for the taking. Amen.

God the builder: Sermon for Proper 18 (14th Sunday after Pentecost), Year B

2009-09-05T18:00:00.004+02:00

Isaiah 35:4-7a, Psalm 146, James 2:1-10,14-17, Mark 7:24-37

The doctrine of »justification« is one that has divided Christians at least since the Reformation and the Roman Catholic Council of Trent. »Justification« is a theological term that basically defines at what point are we »just« in the eyes of God – that is, when are we fulfilling the Law as God foresaw, when are we being truly faithful in the fullest sense of the term, and when are we free from sin.

Martin Luther and the Protestant reformers, of course, changed the emphasis by insisting on the doctrine of sola fide, justification by faith alone. The principle of sola fide essentially says that without faith, no amount of good works will save you: Faith in God and Jesus Christ are absolutely necessary for being pardoned of our sinful nature. According to them, works are therefore irrelevant.

The thing is, neither of the two extremes – neither Catholic doctrine of faith and works, nor the Protestant doctrine of sola fide – really manages to tell the whole story as succinctly as today’s readings from the Epistle of St. James and from the Gospel of St. Mark.

In the Epistle, James says point-blank, »What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ›Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,‹ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.«

In the Gospel, we see an example of Jesus living this to the letter. Jesus is of course the Son of God. He is free of sin, and by definition filled with grace – by definition as »justified« as it gets. Yet Jesus spends much of his time healing people and comforting them. Indeed that is the central aspect of His ministry as shown in the New Testament – in a time where there was no such thing as doctors or nurses or clinics or hospitals, where sickness and disease were rampant, Jesus went around making a difference. Jesus didn’t need good works, because Jesus Himself was free of sin – but it was because of His totality of grace that He performed those good works in the first place. The two ideas are absolutely inseparable.

Our good works are the necessary consequence of our faith. When we accept Christ as our Savior, we explicitly recognize our place in the Holy Church of God – that we are part of a communion of believers, but just as importantly members of the human race, itself a gift of God’s creation. God’s power and love permeate all aspects of Creation, and it is by that power that life itself exists and flourishes. It is also that power, that grace, that moves us to be there for our fellow man. A faith that is »strictly personal« is a faith that is totally hollow and without meaning. On the other hand, a faith that moves us to care for the needy and sick, the unemployed and the outcasts, indeed also for those having a crisis of faith themselves – that kind of faith is the sort that truly justifies our existence.

There is another aspect to this that is important, however, and that is the power of prayer. I think many people get confused about what prayer is for and what it’s all about, and what our place is in Creation. When our prayers don’t appear to be answered the way we imagined it, we blame God for not doing as we asked. When things don’t happen as we would like, we get angry with God. Some even turn away from faith entirely – I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the statement »I can’t believe in a God that…«

That attitude, however, demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of what prayer is, and what we are, and why we are here. God did not just create the world for us: God created the world with us and by us. God created us to with the ability to help ourselves. God created us as part of His Creation, as His tools as part of His great plan.

When some people pray, they do so in expectation of some supernatural result. Maybe it’s to ask God’s hand in making sure the right lottery numbers are picked. One imagines the hand of God reaching down and changing the numbers on the balls as they’re drawn out of the bin. But God clearly doesn’t work that way. In the Lord’s Prayer, we don’t say »my will be done«, but »Thy will be done«: we learn to surrender our will to the greater purpose, learning to see that even when things don’t go the way we want, it still all works out in the end. Prayer is the means by which we receive grace. From prayer comes the grace and the inner peace that we need to stop worrying and start doing.

God made us so that we can complete the great plan. Our own fallen nature, our own sinfulness, is the powerful motor that drives us on. We want to do better, we want to change, we want to transform: It’s all part of the human condition.

So when we pray, we do so not to ask God’s invisible hand to do something, but to gain grace and strength from experiencing God to do what we have to do. It is from our faith that we gain entry into that experience of God so that we are motivated to do good works in the first place. We acknowledge our sinfulness, and analyze our mistakes so that we can do better. We open up the gates of our hearts to let God in, and the power of the Holy Spirit fires us on to do more in God’s name. By experiencing God, by tapping into the love of God that permeates our Universe, we experience the totality of humanity. And when we see humanity’s suffering and troubles, we want to make it all better.

The amazing thing is that thanks to God’s grace, we are able to make it all better, even if it takes generations and thousands of years. Not only that, God’s grace is free for the taking – we only have to ask for it in prayer. As Jesus says in the Gospel of Matthew, »ask, and you shall receive«. To see the results, one only has to look and see the progress of the last five thousand years of human history. When we do work to change the world for the better, we call that »social justice« – we build a just society. Like James says, »If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.« It is through working for »justice«, by caring for the naked and hungry, that we find »justification«. If faith doesn’t motivate someone to do work for justice, it’s not really faith at all, but rather a kind of idolatry, a distraction from the true path. When we walk that path, we build that world of justice because of our faith. Meanwhile, we can hardly blame God for the state of the world, because it’s our job to change it in the first place.

In the end, what today’s lessons reveal is that each and every one of us plays a part in that great pageant of history, as part of God’s plan. God is like Bob the Builder: God asks us, »can we fix it?« and we reply in faith, »yes we can!«

The revelation is that we are the custodians of Creation. We are the tools of God. By God’s grace, experienced through prayer, we become the hand of God itself. And that is the faith that moves mountains. Amen.

Beam up Jesus, Scotty: Sermon for Easter Season/Ascension

2008-05-03T12:00:00.001+02:00

The following was a sermon I wrote for an English service at our parish in May 2008. Needless to say, there was a lot of suppressed chortling and WTF looks, which is just the way I like it. :-)

Acts 1:6-14, John 17:1-11)

The Easter season has, for the untrained yet modern eye, a lot of odd things going on. On Good Friday we have a rabbi being falsely accused and executed for saying we should be nice to each other. Then he comes back from the dead. Then, as we heard at the last English service, he does a vanishing act after walking along with some of his disciples – he breaks some bread and »poof!«. And now today we have Jesus doing his very own forerunner of »Beam me up, Scotty«.

Now I’m not going to remotely suggest that Jesus Christ went up to some Starship Enterprise waiting on him. But that’s what the text of the first reading sounds like at first glance: Jesus is »taken up into Heaven«, as if Jesus is up there in the stars and galaxies swirling above us, doing warp eight. Maybe the two guys in white are the landing party. As for us, we even use the word »heavens« as if the sky – or outer space – is indeed where Jesus went when he left his disciples.

Jesus’ words in the Gospel make it sound like that as well: He’s returning to the Father, going to Heaven, leaving the world. Live long and prosper.

The name of this particular season doesn’t help: Ascension Day. Christ »ascends« into heaven. The German word is even worse, Himmelfahrt, as if Christ gets into a car or spaceship and – zoom! – off he goes.

That’s not really what is happening, so I’ll stop weirding you out with that. I’ll weird you out with something else: Merry Christmas!

You may not see any Christmas trees or greenery, and the weather sure doesn’t look like a White Christmas outside, but today we celebrate Christmas – or more exactly, the fulfillment of Christmas. You see, Christmas is when God became incarnate. He walked the Earth as one of us. That says a lot about God and a lot about us.

To paraphrase from a sermon I once read, let’s say we heard that there was a cat that had died and then came back from the dead by God’s power, and used that power to do great things to help other cats. We’d know two things: One, that cat was pretty special, and two, God thinks cats are worth saving, because after all, He sent a cat to help kitties all over the place.

Of course, Jesus wasn’t a cat or a dog or a fish or a cow, but a human being. God sent His son to be with us and to show us the Way. He cares about us: as the Bible says, »for God so loved the world that He gave his only-begotten Son«. Not only that, but because God became human, God knows what it’s like to be human. When we suffer, or go through rough times, it’s reassuring to know that God isn’t just putting us all through this, He went through it Himself, even death. God loves us very much and knows just how we feel.

So on Ascension, this Christmas incarnation stuff comes full circle: Jesus returns to His Father, and the cycle is complete. Not unlike the spinning of a galaxy coming full circle. Life is a series of cycles, of things coming to fruition. Ascension is the completion of such a cycle, just as our own lives are smaller cycles inside far greater ones.

Ascension is thus a reminder: First and foremost of God’s love and transcending power. But also of ourselves and our need to keep moving, to keep growing, to keep learning, as Time’s Arrow pulls us on and on along life’s path. What kind of a path, though?

The path of Ascension is not about is physical laws or literal senses of direction. Christ did not take a celestial elevator and certainly did not get beamed up. To think in such terms of »where is Heaven« is to fundamentally misunderstand the whole story of salvation. We can’t fly to Heaven any more than Jesus could.

There are, however, yet again hints of a journey in Jesus’ words, of travel. Over and over again, Jesus uses motion and travel to express what He is about. »I am the Way and the Truth and the Life«. Indeed the Christian Church itself in the early days was simply called »The Way«.

So Ascension is a story of progress, of growth, of achieving higher states of being. Not in a literal sense, as if taller people are closer to God than shorter ones. Rather, we reach a higher spiritual plane, of traveling higher and higher within ourselves to discover more about us. The more we explore and improve ourselves and shine light within the darkest recesses of our minds, the more we see and learn, the closer we get to God. Most importantly, we pass on the knowledge and insight that we find on to the next generation, and the cycle begins anew. Each of us has been given the power to ascend, to get ever closer to Truth.

Today’s archaic-sounding liturgy is also a reminder of that journey. Ancient people went before us, and we follow in their footsteps. As an old Anglican once said – Sir Isaac Newton – we stand on the shoulders of giants. As we recite the same prayers our forebears did, we remind ourselves of the Way of Christ. By looking backwards, we also force ourselves to look ever forwards. We learn.

Thus the Church is The Way. As we sit here together, sharing Communion with one another, teaching and learning from one another as well as from the wisdom handed down to us over the generations, we walk on Christ’s Way – a path that leads ever upwards, higher and higher, until we can reach the proverbial stars. Amen.

My first sermon: Baseball

2007-05-30T14:33:00.000+02:00

This was one of the first sermons I wrote for the English services at our parish, all the way back in May 2007 for Trinity Sunday. It is, oddly enough, still my favorite. I hope you enjoy it.

Trinity Sunday

This weekend we celebrate Trinity Sunday. Trinity Sunday is the bane of sermon-writers everywhere, because, well, you have to talk about the Holy Trinity. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. A minefield even for experienced theologians. Oddly, the word »Trinity« doesn’t appear in the Bible, though the triune God does make cameo appearances. St. Patrick famously tried to use the shamrock – the cloverleaf you see on the cover of the bulletin – to describe the Trinity, which according to an article by some theologians I found, is actually a fatally flawed model. Wonderful. So what’s a desperate inexperienced sermon-writer to do?

This is the sort of thing where you desperately invite in the bishop for the weekend to give the sermon, then you find out he’s booked solid (because all the other parishes were much more clever than you and booked him years in advance) and you’re left thinking of a way of explaining the Trinity to your parish without causing yourself great embarrassment.

So you just change the subject.

So let’s talk about baseball.

I love baseball. Baseball is the true quintessential American sport, and like many Americans I grew up watching baseball. In the thirteen years I have lived in Germany, when I most feel homesick it is often because I can’t watch a baseball game.

Homesickness is a kind of loneliness, a spiritual feeling of being separated from other people. When you can’t share with them. Being lonely is a terrible feeling. Being unable to share your feelings is a a terrible feeling. Being unable to share them with your own child is a really terrible feeling.

One of the basic essential things about baseball is watching it with your kids. Unlike European football or soccer, baseball has a very wholesome childlike feeling to it, a tradition of fathers taking their sons and daughters to games. Now that I have two small children, the homesickness got worse, because I couldn’t take my kids to a ballgame.

So recently we got digital cable with some English channels. Thus we can now watch baseball on TV. Not quite the same thing as going to a real game, but close enough. And my son Edward clearly understood what it meant, because he was really excited by getting to watch baseball. So we shared it, and it was a great experience watching a game together. Father and son bonded, and my daughter was there too, the three of us bonding together.

We were together. The loneliness was gone. Three in one.

And that, to me, is the beginning of understanding the Trinity. God is three persons, but one being. God is never alone. God is by definition never lonely. God is infinite companionship, love and togertherness.

Thus when we are lonely, the triune God is always there for us when we need Him. The Trinity is just a way to represent His infinite love and companionship for us. But the Trinity also represents the community of God, and the community of Creation itself. God’s church is that community, the place that ends loneliness. The Trinity is thus community, community is church and we are here together, in church, sharing our time together. Nothing to be scared of.

So let’s play ball. Amen.