What is liturgy and why is it necessary?

The following was originally posted on Quora as an answer to the question at hand.

I literally just did a workshop on liturgy for my parish last weekend. Liturgy is a big passion of mine. The word liturgy comes from Greek and literally means “public service”. In other words, by doing the liturgy, we are rendering a service unto God and our community.

In general, liturgy refers to the structure and ritual elements of a church service, be it a Mass/Eucharist or daily prayer.

Liturgy and ritual or rites are often (mistakenly) used as synonyms. Actually, liturgy specifically means ritual with a purpose.

The purpose of liturgy is to lead people to God and one another. That’s it. Which sounds simple, but it is actually not. Liturgy should (in a Christian context) take disparate people, with different tastes and beliefs and ideas and backgrounds, and join them together as one mystical Body of Christ.

That is a tall order. And anyone trying to claim that one particular liturgy works for everyone — one size fits all — is horribly mistaken.

Liturgy also seldom “just works”. It requires constant education and catechism of the parish to help them understand the meaning and purpose of the liturgy. The parish ideally should also be active participants in the liturgy, not just passive spectators. By involving the parish directly in the liturgy, they are joined more effectively with one another and with the living God made truly present on the altar in the Mass.

But liturgy does not stop there. All of this is utterly pointless if the people who consume the transformed Body and Blood are not themselves transformed. If the parish members do not take heed of it and go forth into the world to make it a better place and care for God’s gift of creation, then the liturgy has singularly failed to fulfill its purpose.

The liturgy thus should help us to see and hear and feel and touch and taste Christ, not just in the Body and Blood, but in our fellow human beings. “God became man so that man might become like God.” That is the basic sentiment and mission of the liturgy.¹ Everything else is just gravy.

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¹ See Wikipedia’s article on Divinization.

Gender in German: Time to abolish it (or change its name)

After a long hiatus, there was a topic that came up in an online conversation that has inspired me to write about a topic near and dear to me: German grammatical gender. Mind you, I have mastered German pretty well — in fact I can write paragraph after paragraph of flawless German (though for some reason every four or five paragraphs I have one that goes completely all to hell). I also actually think I do get why German has gender — and (hopefully) can show you how it works so that you can appreciate it.

What bugs me is the way grammatical gender is perceived, both inside and outside the German-speaking realm. This is what Mark Twain, in a fit of frustration, wrote about the subject:

Every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system in the distribution; so the gender of each must be learned separately and by heart. There is no other way. To do this one has to have a memory like a memorandum-book. In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl. [...] A tree is male, its buds are female, its leaves are neuter; horses are sexless, dogs are male, cats are female -- tomcats included, of course; a person's mouth, neck, bosom, elbows, fingers, nails, feet, and body are of the male sex, and his head is male or neuter according to the word selected to signify it, and not according to the sex of the individual who wears it -- for in Germany all the women either male heads or sexless ones; a person's nose, lips, shoulders, breast, hands, and toes are of the female sex; and his hair, ears, eyes, chin, legs, knees, heart, and conscience haven't any sex at all. The inventor of the language probably got what he knew about a conscience from hearsay.

[...]

In the German it is true that by some oversight of the inventor of the language, a Woman is a female; but a Wife (Weib) is not -- which is unfortunate. A Wife, here, has no sex; she is neuter; so, according to the grammar, a fish is he, his scales are she, but a fishwife is neither. To describe a wife as sexless may be called under-description; that is bad enough, but over-description is surely worse. A German speaks of an Englishman as the Engländer; to change the sex, he adds -in, and that stands for Englishwoman -- Engländerin. That seems descriptive enough, but still it is not exact enough for a German; so he precedes the word with that article which indicates that the creature to follow is feminine, and writes it down thus: "die Engländerin," -- which means "the she-Englishwoman." I consider that that person is over-described.

So it is easy to make fun of — if you don’t understand what gender is for and what it really is.

Grammatical gender in German actually has nothing — I mean nothing — to do with “gender” in the sexual sense. Zero. De nada. Twain’s observation above that a girl (das Mädchen) and a female (das Weib) are both “neuter”, while a cat is female regardless of its real gender (die Katze), should clue you in on this, but Twain definitely missed the point.

After some 20+ years of speaking the language on a daily basis, I think there is another explanation for the origin and purpose of grammatical gender. If you look at how plurals are formed, they are fairly consistent across each of the three genders. Usually this is taught as “if it is masculine, then it forms the plural like this”. I think that that is actually backwards. It is “masculine” because the plural is formed a certain way, not the other way around.

If a word’s plural adds an umlaut and an -e, like Topf -> Töpfe, then it almost certainly is masculine. Or if it remains unchanged in the plural, then it is also most likely masculine, like der Knochen -> die Knochen or der Knoten -> die Knoten.

If a word’s plural adds an -en or -n, like die Frau -> Frauen or Lampe -> Lampen, then it is almost certainly feminine.

If a word ends in a diminutive (-chen or -lein, such as Mädchen), or adds -er to form the plural, then it is almost certainly neuter. Hence das Mädchen becomes die Mädchen in the plural, or das Kind becomes die Kinder.

In the end, the “gender” is thus a tool for marking words for forming plurals in certain ways. It is nothing to do with sexual gender.

Granted, there are exceptions to these rule above, and Germans reading this will no doubt start posting them in response. The thing is, no language is 100% consistent — English is a particularly sloppy and irregular language. While German is indeed far more regular and systematic than English, that does not mean it is completely consistent. I submit that the plural is the real basis for the so-called “gender”.

So why bother with grammatical gender? Well, it actually helps make the language far more supple and subtle in phrasing and word order. German is able to play with word order in sentences in ways English can not remotely compete with. Consider the following three sentences:

Der Junge gibt dem Hund den Knochen.
Den Knochen gibt der Junge dem Hund.
Dem Hund gibt der Junge den Knochen.

All three nouns in this are “masculine” — der Junge (the boy), der Hund (the dog), and der Knochen (the bone). All three sentences thus mean almost exactly the same thing: The boy gives the dog the bone. The only subtle difference is one of emphasis. Where the first version matter-of-factly says the boy gives the dog the bone, the second emphasizes that the THE BONE was given, and the third emphasizes that THE DOG was given a bone. All this just by swapping word order — something which is impossible in English without adding prepositions. The bone gives the dog the boy means something completely different and only makes sense when we add those prepositions or use passive voice: The bone was given by the boy to the dog.

English had this same system once upon a time, when it was still Anglo-Saxon, before the Norman invasion of 1066. The genders, along with nearly all traces of the cases (dative and accusative), were lost over time as English became the language of simple peasants, while the elite spoke Norman French for some 300 years. We get by without it in English, but I think the language is actually somewhat poorer without it. Yes, it is easier to learn for new speakers, but it is also far less flexible and efficient in expressing complex thoughts.

Seen that way, the “gender” could really just as well have been called the “flavor”, with “der” words being sour words, “die” words being sweet words, and “das” words being salty words. The masculine, feminine, and neuter labels have caused all sorts of misunderstandings — and not just by non-native speakers.

To illustrate this misunderstanding: German and English have diverged dramatically in the way they try to become “gender neutral”. Where English tries to abolish all traces of gender from daily language, such as avoiding the -ess ending and preferring neutral terms instead — flight attendant instead of stewardess, chair instead of chairman, etc. — German has gone the polar opposite way.

German feminists get really offended if you forget the -in feminine ending for a woman’s job position, for example, or forget to use it in the plural. So instead of forming the plural for der Lehrer as die Lehrer to encompass all teachers, whether male or female, they insist on using the plural feminine form of -innen — Lehrer und Lehrerinnen — or sometimes resorting to the rather clumsy short form of LehrerInnen with a capital I.

This results is some really tortured and clumsy grammar. Where politicians, for example, would address others as a group as liebe Bürger (“dear citizens”), now they resort to liebe Bürgerinnen und Bürger (“dear female and male citizens”).

In our church, this had an even more strange effect — one that I tried to point out at our synod in a debate on the subject, but which unfortunately got nowhere. You see, our church — the Old Catholic Church in Germany — is quite vocal about supporting women’s ordination. Which is fine, I support it, too. But part of the point of women’s ordination, I think, is the notion that a person’s gender should not matter in performing their function as clergy. Otherwise, if there is a difference between the genders, that unwittingly opens up a hole for arguments as to why women should not be ordained.

Either gender matters for the priesthood, or it doesn’t. I happen to think it does not. But if it does…then what? And if it does not, then why insist on it being mentioned?

So ironically, by insisting on saying die Priesterinnen und Priester (“female and male priests”) instead of just die Priester to mean “priests”, the feminists among us are in effect forcing us to note the gender where gender isn’t supposed to be relevant.

This on top of the fact that science is showing us how gender is far more complex than a mere binary of male and female. It just is not the case that a person is solely male or solely female. The two blend into each other, like a continuum. Some people are well on the male side of that continuum, some are well to the female side, but in the middle there is a grey area. What about intersexed or transsexual people in Germany? How are feminists going to label them? Would an intersexed priest — not outside the realm of possibility! — be a Priesterin or a Priester? Would a transsexual teacher be a Lehrer or Lehrerin?

If we simply dump the whole idea of grammatical gender having anything to do with biological or sociological gender, then the whole problem disappears — while maintaining the grammatical flourishes and subtlety that grammatical gender provide.

For those Germans reading this (and I would be happy to translate this into German to make it easier for them to read!), think about it. If you really want German to be an inclusive language, and I hope you do, then let’s stop using “masculine/feminine/neuter” to describe grammatical gender. Or at least stop mixing grammatical gender with gender politics. Because it just makes no sense to do it.

Can gays really be Christians?

The following was posted on Quora as a response to the question, “In the Bible it states, "thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind, it is an abomination", Lev 18:22. Can someone be gay and be a genuine Christian, that is, accepting the Bible as the word of God, or that it contains the word of God, and doing ones best to follow it?”

The thing about such Biblical literalism — aside from the fact that this passage may well not say anything like the English translation you quote, as Lana Fisher correctly points out — is that you have to first understand what the Bible is and how it came to be. That in turn greatly affects how it should be interpreted.

The first question is, did the Bible create the Church of God, or was it the other way around? Did someone sit down and write it, and then we Christians all agreed to follow it as written? Or was it more like the Church already existed and then decided which existing writings were canon?

Any cursory reading of Church history shows that it was plainly the latter. The Bible did not fall from the sky fully formed, but took centuries to find its present form (and even now Christians can’t fully agree on which books belong to it, like the Biblical apocrypha). The various books that make up the Bible — along with many others, like the Gnostic texts — were floating around with varying degrees of acceptance by the early Christian congregations, but no “Bible” existed yet. Various lists circulated in those days containing books considered canon; they generally lined up, but there were sometimes significant differences.

Then the Church got together in a general council and decided on what books should be compiled into the Bible. Not only that, but they picked up on the already existing practice in Judaism (which evolved into modern rabbinical Judaism) of following an established tradition of how to interpret that canon — that is, the interpretations of learned experts approved by the Church took on a kind of canonicity of their own. Joe Shmoe can interpret the Bible any way he likes, but in the eyes of the Church, only that established tradition matters and Joe Shmoe has no authority to claim the Bible says this or that.

Thus the Church began that tradition with what we now call the Church Fathers, learned men (and they were generally men, or at least few writings from the period from women survive) who began to interpret the Bible based on that earlier Jewish tradition. And here is where it gets really interesting for this question.

The Church Fathers generally rejected a strict literalist interpretation of the Bible. Let that sink in a minute and read this quote by Origen of Alexandria, one of those Church Fathers (emphasis mine):

15.  But as if, in all the instances of this covering (i.e., of this history), the logical connection and order of the law had been preserved, we would not certainly believe, when thus possessing the meaning of Scripture in a continuous series, that anything else was contained in it save what was indicated on the surface; so for that reason divine wisdom took care that certain stumbling-blocks, or interruptions, to the historical meaning should take place, by the intro­duction into the midst (of the narrative) of certain impossibilities and incongruities; that in this way the very interruption of the narrative might, as by the interposition of a bolt, present an obstacle to the reader, whereby he might refuse to acknowledge the way which conducts to the ordinary meaning; and being thus excluded and debarred from it, we might be recalled to the beginning of another way, in order that, by entering upon a narrow path, and passing to a loftier and more sublime road, he might lay open the immense breadth of divine wisdom. This, however, must not be unnoted by us, that as the chief object of the Holy Spirit* is to preserve the coherence of the spiritual meaning, either in those things which ought to be done or which have been already performed, if He anywhere finds that those events which, according to the history, took place, can be adapted to a spiritual meaning, He composed a texture of both kinds in one style of narration, always concealing the hidden meaning more deeply; but where the historical narrative could not be made appropriate to the spiritual coherence of the occur­rences, He inserted sometimes certain things which either did not take place or could not take place; sometimes also what might happen, but what did not:  and He does this at one time in a few words, which, taken in their “bodily” meaning, seem inca­pable of containing truth, and at another by the in­sertion of many.  And this we find frequently to be the case in the legislative portions, where there are many things manifestly useful among the “bodily” precepts, but a very great number also in which no principle of utility is at all discernible, and some­times even things which are judged to be impossi­bilities.  Now all this, as we have remarked, was done by the Holy Spirit in order that, seeing those events which lie on the surface can be neither true nor useful, we may be led to the investigation of that truth which is more deeply concealed, and to the ascertaining of a meaning worthy of God in those Scriptures which we believe to be inspired by Him.

(Origen of Alexandria, De Principiis IV.15, 3rd century AD — Source: ANF04. Fathers of the Third Century: Tertullian, Part Fourth; Minucius Felix; Commodian; Origen, Parts First and Second)

* — What is meant here is that the Holy Spirit speaks to us through the Church as well as through our individual consciences.

To summarize Origen, we need guidance and understanding in interpreting Scripture, because sometimes the Bible was meant literally, sometimes it wasn’t. Clearly Jesus was being quite literal when He said to love our neighbors and to love God, but the Earth was plainly not created in six calendar days and the Flood didn’t really destroy the whole world. What matters is the spiritual truth contained in the narratives.

He also wrote, with another Church Father, Gregory of Nazianus, supporting him:

For who that has understanding will suppose that the first, and second, and third day, and the evening and the morning, existed without a sun, and moon, and stars? And that the first day was, as it were, also without a sky? And who is so foolish as to suppose that God, after the manner of a husbandman, planted a paradise in Eden, towards the east, and placed in it a tree of life, visible and palpable, so that one tasting of the fruit by the bodily teeth obtained life? And again, that one was a partaker of good and evil by masticating what was taken from the tree? And if God is said to walk in the paradise in the evening, and Adam to hide himself under a tree, I do not suppose that anyone doubts that these things figuratively indicate certain mysteries, the history having taken place in appearance, and not literally.

(Origen of Alexandria, De Principiis IV.16, 3rd century AD — Source: ANF04. Fathers of the Third Century: Tertullian, Part Fourth; Minucius Felix; Commodian; Origen, Parts First and Second)

St. Augustine wrote similar things roundly criticizing a literal interpretation.

So…how do we decide? We refer back to earlier precedents in the writings of the Church Fathers, while also allowing for a range of opinion to exist. Only where the Church has definitively spoken in a general council is there any one possible interpretation binding on all Christians. The Church decides, not individuals, and only when it is in consensus. As Vincent of Lérins said in his famous rule of catholicity — i.e. that which is established canon and binding — id teneamus, quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est; hoc est etenim vere proprieque catholicum:

[6.] Moreover, in the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken, that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all. For that is truly and in the strictest sense “Catholic,” which, as the name itself and the reason of the thing declare, comprehends all universally.

St. Vincent of Lérins, Commonitory, 434 AD (Source: NPNF-211. Sulpitius Severus, Vincent of Lerins, John Cassian)

Dogma — in other words, something Christians must believe because the Church has decided so — is therefore only that which the Church has proclaimed in general council.

Which brings us to this question of homosexuality in particular. Has there ever been a general council that has defined this text to say what you think it says? Is homosexuality a sin or abomination? Of the seven ecumenical councils (i.e. those recognised by the Orthodox, Roman Catholics, Old Catholics, and in theory Anglicans), none say anything about homosexuality. Nothing. De nada. There were regional councils that did condemn “sodomy” at various times, though what they meant by that term changed over time, so we can’t even be sure that they meant homosexuality per se (e.g. a loving long-term relationship, as opposed to just having extramarital sex with people of the same gender or pederasty or beastiality or any of the many other things the term was applied to). But there has never been a definitive dogmatic statement from the whole Church — a statement establishing that this has been believed “everywhere, always, by all” — declaring that homosexuality as we understand it today is in fact a sin and that this passage means what you say it might mean. In fact there is some evidence that same-sex relationships in some forms may have been tolerated, even celebrated (see Adelphopoiesis), particularly in eastern Europe. At times the Roman Catholic Church has actually worked to decriminalize homosexual relations between consenting adults, like by supporting the Wolfenden Report in the UK in the 1960s or the National Federation of Priests' Councils in the USA noting their opposition to “all civil laws which make consensual homosexual acts between adults a crime”. Thus any claim to homosexuality being dogmatically defined as sin fails St. Vincent’s simple test — and thus a range of opinions is perfectly OK.

To answer your question based on the above: Yes, it is entirely possible to be gay and be a faithful Christian, unequivocally. I certainly hope many more do so, and am glad to personally know a great number of gay Christians (both clergy and laypeople) who enrich our church’s life. As for the great pain that many Christians have caused gays by claiming otherwise, I am deeply sorry and hope that their wounds will heal, whatever path they take.

When receiving the Eucharist: To be succinct, don't intinct

This was mentioned in response to another post elsewhere on Facebook, but became a general plea here. That plea is to not do intinction when receiving the Eucharist — something that is very common amongst Old Catholics and Episcopalians. The usual argument for it is that it's supposedly more sanitary.

However, intinction (dipping the bread into the wine) is actually less sanitary than simply sharing the chalice. The mouth is home to far fewer bacteria than what people carry under their fingernails, even if they've just washed their hands. And the wine's antiseptic anyway.

A friend on Facebook pointed out that the contamination from the fingernails sits on top of the wine's surface tension, so the wine's antiseptic properties don't work as well.

If you're turned off by sharing a cup with strangers, then you can simply refrain from receiving the wine. There is no rule that everyone has to receive the Eucharist in both kinds; in fact according to church tradition, Christ is fully present in both, so you can just receive the bread or the wine.

Then there's the issue of treating the Eucharist with due reverence. I know the concept of Real Presence (or the Roman Catholic version of it, transubstantiation) turns some people off or seems like hocus pocus superstition. Unfortunately, given the way some people explain it or demand others to accept it, I can fully understand why it turns off a lot of people. That said, I think it's really a kind of awareness exercise. For me, the basic idea of the Real Presence is that by saying the Eucharistic prayer, the assembled group led by a priest transforms the bread in some way into the Body and Blood of Christ — "this is my Body, this is my Blood". That doesn't mean you would see muscle and blood cells under a microscope, and that's totally beside the point of the exercise anyway. The point is what the change is for, which is that the Body and Blood of Christ in the form of bread and wine take on a highly charged and potent symbolic meaning. They represent — and are — the Logos of Creation itself, the Word become flesh, and become something very precious to hold.

The idea and hope is that by treating bread and wine with this highest reverence, we then learn to treat everything else in Creation with that same reverence, be it the environment or relationships with other people or even just the food on your table — don't be wasteful in any way, but be mindful of all. The less wasteful we are and the more mindful of our resources and our selves we are, the more there is to go around for everyone, in particular the poor and needy.

Intinction, unlike simply drinking from the chalice, risks dripping wine and dropping crumbs everywhere. So it's not only not a very respectful way to treat the Body and Blood of Christ (would you want to carelessly drop Jesus on the floor?), it's also potentially more wasteful. The hope is that we learn to also not waste normal food or resources and learn to be watchful and mindful of how we treat everyone and everything.

In the Anglican liturgical tradition, there is the wonderful line after the Eucharistic prayer has been said: "The gifts of God for the people of God. Take them in remembrance that Christ died for you, and feed on him in your hearts by faith with thanksgiving." To me this emphasizes what Creation itself is a gift, and we should be thankful for — and mindful of — every aspect of that Creation, right down to the last crumb of bread and last drop of wine.

Some of course will now think of oral communion, that is, having the priest place the bread on the person's tongue. I think it's worth pointing out that the early Church (such as the catechism of Cyril of Jerusalem) taught communicants to "make the left hand a throne for the right hand, which receives the King", and then to raise the bread to the mouth, consuming it all at one go. This has the advantage of not letting crumbs go anywhere, and you can quickly check the palm of your hand to see if any are left. So receiving the Eucharist with your hands is solidly traditional in the Church, far more so than oral communion, and has practical benefits as well.

In one parish I visited recently, I noticed that the distribution of Communion felt careless. Nothing was held under the consecrated bread to keep crumbs from falling as pieces were torn off, and no one seemed much bothered about what to do with the leftovers. It made me wonder if the attendees really believed anything special had happened to the bread and wine. Yet this was a parish whose church at least notionally believes in the Real Presence. To be honest, I was very distressed at how carelessly the people there treated the Sacrament and (whether intentionally or not) Jesus Himself in that Sacrament, because the message sent was that the Sacrament itself was not much more meaningful than having tea and cookies. And half the tea and cookies end up in the trash, because, well, meh. Is this how we want to treat our Savior, or our mother Earth, or our fellow human beings? Shouldn't we instead pay closer attention, be mindful of the sacred, and carry that mindfulness into the wider world in order to make it a better and holier place?

So…a plea to my fellow Old Catholics and Anglicans. Please consider not receiving by intinction — it's not terribly respectful, and it's not even sanitary, in fact it's less so. So why do it?

On gay marriage in the Church

Recently in a discussion over on Facebook, the topic of gay marriage within the Church came up. The thing is, on the one hand I'm convinced that gays should not only be welcomed into the Church, but should not be barred from receiving Holy Orders or serving in offices of the Church. But on the other hand, I also believe quite strongly in marriage (in spite of the breakdown of my own) and that a "gay marriage" within the Church is not, at least on the face of it, possible. I'd like to explain why and sum up my arguments in the other discussion.

The major complaint I have with those arguing for sacramental gay marriage is that they inevitably reduce marriage to be merely the celebration of the love between two people. That love is of course a wonderful thing and should be celebrated, whether the partners are male or female (or transgender, while we're on the subject), but to make something be truly "marriage", it has to be about more than that.

To try and differentiate, I'll talk about "matrimony" and use that term to refer to the Church's sacrament of marriage. Note that this has little to nothing to do with civil weddings and how the state chooses to view such partnerships – this discussion is strictly about Holy Matrimony as the Church defines and celebrates it.

It's self-evident that matrimony involves love between two people, but to reduce it to just those two people makes it stunted. Matrimony also means providing a foundation for something else, producing children. (Edit: As someone else pointed out, "matrimony" comes from "mater"/"mother" + "monium"/"the state of", i.e. "the state of motherhood/parenthood".) Some would of course quickly argue that I'm trying to make marriage be only about making kids, but that's simply wrong – holy matrimony offers a healthy and blessed foundation for reproduction, but that doesn't mean that the newlyweds absolutely must take that offer. Some may simply decide not to have kids, some may not be able to, but that doesn't change the basic assumption that one integral aspect of matrimony is indeed providing a basis on which we produce the next generation and pass on our love to them.

I don't marry someone because I want to have kids, I marry that person because I love that person. That love in turn produces the wish to create children as an expression of that love, not just to the betrothed, but to their children, to God, and to the wider community of the Church – and above all to create new life. By marrying and having children, we too become creators of life like God, a form of theosis if there ever was one. If matrimony is reduced to just those two people, then all those other forms of love are ignored, and it is stripped down to something much more mundane.

None of this means, however, that gays can't have a sacramental wedding in the Church. I mean in no way to degrade or denigrate gay partnerships. The blessing of a same-sex partnership in the Church is just as sacramental as any other liturgical action of the Church: Anything the Church does in corporate, assembled, ceremonial fashion is a sacrament, so long as it does not contradict Scripture and Tradition.

Of course, you may be thinking of the Seven Sacraments – baptism, Communion, confirmation, penance, matrimony, Holy Orders, unction of the sick – and wondering how I can claim gay partnerships are on that list. I don't claim that at all. What I do claim is that that list is not exhaustive. Any sacramental rite the Church performs is a sacrament, and that list is meant to mean a minimum of what the Church must do, not a maximum. So that list can be expanded by any local church, with the sole limitation that it can't contradict Scripture and Tradition, while also not requiring any other local church to accept that rite. So some local churches may choose to bless same-sex partnerships, some may not, and it is best left to them to decide, rather than try to redefine one of those seven sacraments to suit one's own personal tastes and wishes.

Some people are called to receive Holy Orders and be priests, some are called to matrimony, some are called to both, some to neither. There is no right to receive sacraments, only a calling. Perhaps gays are simply not called to matrimony under this definition, but they are called to express their sacred love in other ways. Why not celebrate that for what it is, as yet another expression of love, rather than try to bend and twist existing millennia-old sacraments to suit one's own preconceptions?

Thus it is of great importance to clearly define what matrimony is, while not degrading or ignoring one important aspect of it. In the process, we have to orient ourselves on the wider Body of Christ – that is, with the wider ecumenical community and with Scripture and Tradition. Otherwise, we cut ourselves off from that wider Body of Christ. On the one hand, one can certainly understand the blessing of same-sex partnerships to be a sacramental rite, not least because there are indeed some precursors in Tradition (even liturgies!), but one cannot redefine one of the basic Sacraments of the Church without also making those same sacraments – and with them the Church – completely arbitrary. Holy Matrimony is one thing, sacramental blessings of partnerships another, but please, let's not confuse the two.

(Almost) Live from Mainz, it's the Old Catholic Synod 2012!

Starting tomorrow, I'll be attending the German Old Catholic 2012 synod in Mainz as a delegate. I'll also be posting via Blogger and Twitter on my own account in English and German. Follow @jlgrantham for my updates and personal views in English, and follow @altkatholisch for the official tweets in German that I'm posting together with other delegates. You can also follow the hash tag #aksynode2012 to get the full hashtag channel for the synod, or use the official Twitterwall at alt-katholisch.de.

The Old Catholic magazine Christen heute has an overview of the issues and resolutions to be discussed at the synod in German here. Some of the highlights: A resolution to change the name "Old Catholic" to "Christ Catholic" (like the Swiss Old Catholics always have been called); dropping the requirement for vicars to reside in the vicarages provided for them by the parish; revoking the electoral reform from the last synod that tried to make absentee balloting easier for diaspora parishes – but may have made things for worse for all the others; and some 53 other resolutions, some of which should prove to be quite controversial. All that and the election of the new diocesan standing committee, plus much praying, preaching, and postulating, some of which will even be in church.

For what it's worth, this is my fourth Old Catholic synod as a delegate, so I guess I'm going to end up chairing the Ways and Means Committee, if we had one, which we don't. (Sorry, American political joke there. Nevermind me.)

The synod runs from Thursday afternoon to Sunday midday – stay tuned here and on the links above for news and views from the synod from your friendly neighborhood armchair theologian and blowhard.

Sola scriptura vs. apostolic succession, Church vs. Bible

Over on HuffPo (full disclosure: I don't normally read HuffPo, but for this article I made an exception) there is an interesting article by Marcus Borg, a leading Biblical scholar and well-known liberal serving as canon theologian of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Portland, Oregon. I'm not normally a fan of Canon Borg, but this article is indeed thought-provoking and highlights why a belief in the Bible being the "inerrant Word of God" is at best a mirage and at worst downright heretical.

Historically, it's clear that the Bible was very much a work in progress for centuries. The same is true whether we look at the Old Testament or the New, and the familiar order of the books of the NT is actually historically misleading. The Epistles came first, the Gospels later, and the Bible wasn't even canonized until the fourth century. Thus rather than the Church being a creation of the Bible, it's the other way around, with the Epistles clearly documenting the evolution of the early Church. By the time the Bible as we know it existed, the Church's foundation had been outlined for many generations.

So to insist on sola scriptura – Scripture alone – being the basis of the Church literally puts the cart before the horse. The Bible is a creation of the Holy Church, acting in the name of Christ Who founded it. The Bible is a document of the Holy Church, recording her early history, and therefore can't define it any more than an autobiography defines its subject's life and destiny.

Meanwhile, a friend is a Lutheran pastor who is also a fan of high church liturgy and especially of Anglicans. My friend was raised in and educated by the Lutheran church in northern Germany, which is low church to a fault. To my surprise, given her fascination with and enthusiasm for High Anglicanism, she boldly claimed that the Apostolic Succession and historic episcopate – something which is firmly anchored in Anglicanism and which separates it from nearly all Protestants – is a fiction.

The Apostolic Succession and historic episcopate simply says that bishops have been in an unbroken line of succession ever since the days of the Apostles. Jesus laid His hands on the Apostles, who laid their hands on their successors the early bishops, and so on down the line to today's Catholic, Old Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican bishops. Luther initially tried to get bishops in the Succession to join his reform movement, but failed – and thereupon the early Lutherans rejected the Succession as not being necessary for the good order and efficacy of the sacraments of the Church, referring instead to the Word of God (i.e. the Bible). In other words, the historic episcopate, for Lutherans, is at best "nice to have" and at worst a fiction used and abused by Rome to deny Lutheran Christianity any legitimacy.

But hold on. Once again we have to ask, which came first, the Church or the Bible? If the Church came first, and through her councils defined the priesthood and episcopate while also defining the Bible, then how can one throw away the Church's early doctrine while also insisting on the Bible the Church created?

To me the conclusion is clear: You either have to accept the historical Church and the Bible, or neither. If you accept the historical Church, you have to accept her decisions made in council as binding, and that includes the basic threefold order of bishops, priests and deacons. We clearly see that order documented and defined by the Church Fathers long before the Bible was canonized. In particular the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus of Rome is quite clear on the workings of this threefold order, and it was written in 215 AD, long before we find the first complete list of 27 books of the New Testament in a letter by St. Athanasius from 367 AD, and far longer than before that list was ever formally defined as being the canon of the New Testament.

So while it is impossible to historically document the Apostolic Succession and historic episcopate – who ordained whom as bishop and when – that does not mean it does not exist. There are many things in history which we can infer from the available documentation, and it is clear that quite early on, the Church placed great store in the concept of the personal succession of bishops from Peter and ultimately from Jesus Himself.

We see this all over the place in the writings of the Church Fathers in the first four centuries of the Church, not least Hippolytus' Tradition, so it makes no sense to doubt that that principle was carried forward even if no detailed lists of succession were maintained. In particular, the practice of always having at least three bishops participate in the consecration of a new bishop ensured that at least one of those bishops would pass on a valid line of succession.

Of course, I don't want to give the impression that the Succession is of paramount importance to what makes a church or denomination legitimate. In fact it isn't – the true belief in God is what matters, and the Succession is only a tool to try and ensure the correctness of that belief. Just because someone is "validly" ordained doesn't mean that they are truly doing the work of God, and just because a Lutheran or other pastor isn't "validly" ordained doesn't mean their sacraments or spiritual life is meaningless. (For the record, I do in fact receive Communion from Lutheran pastors on occasion.) But if we're talking about the proper order of the Church and how it should be defined, then I think we have to accept the entirety of its history when acting in consensus – and that clearly includes the historic episcopate as viewed by the early Church.

Sermon by Bishop Matthias Ring for the consecration of the new Old Catholic cathedral in Bonn

Here is a link to an MP3 podcast file of the sermon (in German, with no transcript, unfortunately) by Matthias Ring, bishop of the Old Catholics in Germany, at the consecration of the new cathedral church in Bonn mentioned in the previous post, the Church of the Holy Name of Jesus. The website of the foundation funding the maintenance of the cathedral also has pictures. Enjoy.

(No) Catholic alternative? And a new cathedral

Here is an interesting article about the Old Catholic Diocese in Germany from Deutschland Radio, a state radio network. The title, "(K)eine katholische Alternative", is deliberately provocative – the Old Catholics are often portrayed as being an alternative to Rome, but the report makes clear, that a true alternative is a long way off simply because of the reality on the ground.

Here are some excerpts, translated from German and edited for brevity by me:

The Old Catholics are able to record a small increase in numbers

The Old Catholic church is an association of independent Catholic churches. It was formed in 1870 because a majority of the Bonn seminary faculty's professors refused to accept the dogmas of papal infallibility and supremacy. As a result of this protest, in 1873 the Old Catholic Seminary was founded at the University of Bonn.

Two years after his ordination as bishop, Matthias Ring can lay hard numbers on the table: The Diocese of Old Catholics in Germany counted 15,420 members in 2011, over 100 more than in the previous year. More Old Catholics are in Germany than in any other country save Poland, with its 19,000 members, and somewhat less in Austria and Switzerland. Together with the members in the Netherlands and the Czech Republic, the Union of Utrecht, the European association of Old Catholics, can claim over 70,000 members.

Bishop Ring says for Germany that the Old Catholics are growing, if slowly. For some years, about three or four new members join for each one that leaves. More than half of the new members come from the Roman Catholic church – like Bishop Ring himself, who says:

"A church that is mainly one of new members has a certain inner dynamic. Every new person brings new ideas along. That is not always easy, especially at the local parish level. Though of course two or three people can also have a lot influence. That is of course also an opportunity. So one can do much more in a small church than in a large one. But that is a dynamic process that doesn't always go smoothly."

Matthias Ring is a wandering bishop. [Note: this is a sarcastic reference to episcopi vagantes, a topic that has long been a thorn in the eye of European Old Catholics – literally means "wandering bishops".] Between Easter and Advent, he has over 100 engagements where he celebrates church services far from his episcopal see in Bonn. Sometimes out in the boondocks, sometimes in big cities like Munich, Augsburg or Hannover:

"We are an urban phenomenon. That was the case in the 19th century – in the city, one could belong to a minority. And I believe that will stay that way. We naturally also have more rural regions where we are in effect the popular church, such as in southern Baden, where I see a very positive development. But such small rural parishes have it difficult."

For example, upper Franconia in the Free State of Bavaria. The local parish is spread out across Coburg, Bayreuth, Weidenberg and Neustadt an der Orla. The services in Münchberg were cancelled for lack of interest. In the main center at Weidenberg, however, one finds a lively parish with a choir, a flute group and board game evenings. A parish member, Lothar Adam, writes:

"In the outer regions of our parish where there are only occasional services, there are not many Old Catholics. Our history is tied to the refugees from the Sudetenland, who brought their Old Catholicism with them. Not many of those are left. Often when their spouse was not Old Catholic, then the children were not as well. Out in the extreme diaspora, we have the problem that the numbers are shrinking."

The opposite development, growth in urban areas, can be seen in new Old Catholic parish churches being built in Hannover and Augsburg. The new Old Catholic cathedral in Bonn also demonstrates a new confidence. €7.5 million was spent by the building owner, the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia, to renovate the Church Holy Name of Jesus near Beethoven's birthplace. The church was formerly the location of the university Roman Catholic parish.

Of 640 members of the Bonn Parish of St. Cyprian, only 100 are over 65. In Bonn, there is an Old Catholic kindergarden and the only Old Catholic seminary in Germany at the University of Bonn. Founded in 1873 by Bonn seminary professors, a majority of whom refused the dogmas of papal infallibility and supremacy, today it has 40 students, among which are four candidates for the priesthood for the whole diocese.

The Dutch Archbishop of Old Catholics, Joris Vercammen, is chair of the Union of Utrecht, founded in 1889 as the European federation of several smaller national Catholic churches independent of Rome. He regrets the wave of departures from the larger Roman sister church, because most turn their backs on Christian life altogether. The Old Catholic Church, with its synodical-democratic organization and funded by the national church tax, stands ready to welcome the disappointed. Does he have a vision to grow by a factor of ten? He says, "no problem":

"That has to be organized. That has to be structured. That is a different job for a million than for 100,000 or 200,000 people. But we are able to organize that, that is not a problem. But the ideals must stay, for that is our calling."

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

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...

Vesper blessings and “Phos hilaron”

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.

The blessing of bells for our new church

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.)

Utrecht Old Catholics and the Orthodox Church: Meeting on Crete

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?

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?

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

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?

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.

Church and communion: Rome and Utrecht

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.