Quotes and Excerpts
- Greek speaking churches/patriarchates use liturgical Greek, not vernacular. Some patriarchates use Arabic and others alongside Greek.
- Slavic Orthodox churches have always used exclusively liturgical Church Slavonic. Recently, Eastern modernists managed to introduce vernacular, but not everywhere. Russians still use only Slavonic. Even though Serbians, Bulgarians, Macedonians, Belarusians, Ukrainians use much vernacular, Slavonic is still in use.
- The Romanian Orthodox Church used Church Slavonic/liturgical Greek from 10th to 17th century, when it was replaced by Romanian (which was nevertheless influenced by Church Slavonic, making it quite non-vernacular).
- The Georgian Orthodox Church uses old literary Georgian as liturgical language.
- The Coptic Orthodox use literary Coptic language as liturgical language. Even though its use diminished during long Muslim rule (replacing it by Arabic), it’s still alive and it’s being reintroduced.
- The Ethiopian Orthodox use Ge’ez as liturgical language, not one of many vernaculars.
- The Syrian Orthodox use classical Syrian and Arabic. Use of Arabic is related to centuries of Muslim rule.
- The Armenians use a classical literary Armenian.
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Bishop John Jewell, The Works of John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1845), article 3, division 29. ↩︎
I have written frequently that we are not in charge of the outcome of history. “Management” is among the great myths of the modern mind. Humility is the path of Christ.
– Fr Stephen Freeman
Source: Disappointment and Modernity
On this episode of the Stand Firm podcast, Matt and Nick continue tracing the beginnings of the ACNA with Dr. Jon Shuler. On this episode, he tells the story from the foundations of the AMIA in the late 1990s to the Jerusalem GAFCON meeting in 2008.
Source: #89: ACNA Origins: The Rev. Dr. Jon Shuler (Part 2) | Stand Firm
Ultimately, the future of Anglo-Catholicism lies with Orthodoxy or a reconstituted Old Catholicism because they have held to the reformed catholic identity within Anglicanism whilst rejecting its doctrinal Protestantism. The neo-Evangelicals ultimately have more in common with the Holiness and Pentecostal churches through the Convergence Movement than they do with wider Anglicanism because they share the same sort of spirituality, albeit in a moderated form. This leaves the Confessional Anglicans who share more in common with moderate Lutheran and Reformed Christians than they do the Anglo-Catholics and the Neo-Evangelicals.
Source: PETER D. ROBINSON The Greater Church
a different three Anglicanisms, where Anglicanism disbands and starts side projects.
Technopoly tells us that we own ourselves, and that everything we need to fulfill our own (unchallengeable) desires is available for sale in the marketplace. But of course this is a system that only works if what we desire can in fact be purchased; and since that cannot in advance be guaranteed, the initial imperative of Technopoly is to train our desires, to channel them towards what the system already has for sale.
And the greatest instruments ever devised for such channeling are our internet-connected devices, especially when we connect to the internet through apps. The reason? Because while pens and paper can be used in extraordinarily varied and unpredictable ways, apps can’t: the ways in which we can interact with them are determined with great specificity and no deviation from the designed user-interface paradigm is permitted. You can use a pen to write a poem in elaborate cursive, sketch a tree, play Hangman, or, in moments of desperation, scratch a mosquito bite or skewer a chunk of watermelon. (I am describing, not recommending.) With TikTok, you can … make TikToks. The app is so far the ultimate extension of what Albert Borgmann called the device paradigm.
Source: against apps, for wander lines – The Homebound Symphony
“These departures are indicative of a disconnect between two groups within the ACNA: former mainline Protestants, including former Episcopalians, standing against revisionist theology, and post-evangelicals reacting against cultural hallmarks of their prior church homes, such as complementarianism or Christian nationalism,” Walton said.
“The Diocese of Churches for the Sake of Others is among the largest and fastest growing dioceses in ACNA partly because it can speak to those originating from an evangelical, charismatic, or Pentecostal context. These three departing parishes were all within C4SO, but this isn’t exclusively a C4SO problem. It’s a post-evangelical problem.”
Source: Two Anglican Church Plants Leave for the Episcopal Church…… | News & Reporting | Christianity Today
the bishop of C4SO is reconsidering his role in helping these churches. For the congregations in Austin and Indianapolis, Hunter said his approach involved “giving them a lot of space” and “being very patient with their exploration.”
“Here’s what I regret and what I’ve learned: that while I’ve done a good job caring for the clergy, I don’t think I’ve done a good job caring for the people in the church who are not progressive,” he said. “By the time I’ve stepped in, everything’s too far gone.”
Going forward, Hunter is working with C4SO leaders and their canon lawyer to develop a clearer process for how and when the bishop “can have his voice in a church earlier, so that it doesn’t get to a place where it’s very far off from not only just what I teach, but what the rest of the diocese expects.”
Like other C4SO clergy, Hunter has been called out and labeled communist, Marxist, and woke for his concern for racial justice and for ordaining women. He says his willingness to engage in conversation attracts the sort of people who are asking questions and deconstructing faith.
“It’s fascinating in online and other spaces to be criticized for these things … I am thoroughly committed to orthodox Christianity,” he told CT, “but I’m equally committed to figuring out how to live that out winsomely and truthfully, without engaging in culture wars constantly.”
Source: Two Anglican Church Plants Leave for the Episcopal Church…
English Altar - A cream and blue damask frontal with embroidered design, riddel curtains, riddel posts and polychromed reredos. Wynnewood, PA
Source: Davis d’Ambly
Daytime shot of Lady Chapel:
When we say their Eucharist is invalid, we’re merely asserting that it lacks the assurance that grace is conveyed in the way it was intended by Christ. Because it is invalid, we cannot say that grace is contained and has its effect through the administration of the sacrament. However, the signatory function of the Bread and Wine is not dependent upon priestly consecration but derives its function primarily through the Word. As such, one need not argue over the validity of signs. It is in regard to these signs that those outside of Apostolic Succession maintain some kind of proper intent. In what they put forth and offer, they truly administer signs of the Body and Blood of Christ Jesus, even if the real presence of Christ is not contained therein.
Source: Apostolic Succession and Sacramental Grace
This is what it’s been like for at least five years in certain corners of the ACNA. Some clergy and congregations look like ducks, they sound like ducks, they walk like ducks, and sure enough, they are happier in TEC after all.
Source: Lingering Between Opinions - by Anne Kennedy
“The American Missal” and “The Anglican Missal (American Edition)” are basically the BCP liturgy embedded in the context of the private prayers of the Tridentine Missal, which alters the theology quite considerably. Hence the old joke about the Anglo-Catholics being prepared to fight to the death for the 1928 Prayer Book provided they never actually have to use it.
Source: The 1928 and Cranmer’s Shape | The North American Anglican
This move was prompted by a number of issues on which the clergy felt, in their words, “increasingly misaligned” with the ACNA - women’s ordination (our former diocese ordains women deacons/priests, but many ACNA dioceses don’t and are very hostile to female clergy; and of course there are no female bishops in the ACNA), racial issues (our rector and one of our curates have been repeatedly attacked on Twitter by ACNA clergy for their race/perspective on racial issues), abuse in the church, and treatment of LGBTQ people.
[…]
These tensions have been brewing under the surface for quite some time, but the actual process has been very quick. The clergy brought all of this to the parish less than a month ago! The speed of the process was actually requested by our former bishop [Todd Hunter], for numerous reasons I’m too lazy to get into lol.
Anyway, as the results of the vote indicate, most of us are excited to reconcile with TEC and be part of a body that supports our vision for how we worship God and serve our community. Largely due to the quiet rule-breaking of our clergy, we actually have a number of LGBTQ folks in the parish, myself included (I’m a bisexual cis man), and we are excited to be able to openly celebrate our LGBTQ brothers and sisters, continue to pursue racial reconciliation, and joyfully submit to female clergy (including Bp. Kai Ryan, Suffragan Bishop of the Diocese of Texas, who was gracious enough to cut her vacation short to join us this past Sunday for a Q&A!).
Source: Ladies and gentlemen: we got ‘em. : r/Episcopalian
A very large percentage of people were legitimately unaware of the history of the ACNA and its policies about women/sexual minorities, until the clergy started talking about it as a preface to why they felt at odds with the denomination. It seems as though many folks came to Anglicanism to heal the wounds they received in evangelical churches, stumbled into a welcoming and loving parish, and never gave it a second thought. It would be very easy to assume we were in an affirming denomination, because there are numerous openly LGBTQ folks around the church who are valued and beloved members of the community. Source: Ladies and gentlemen: we got ‘em. : r/Episcopalian
“But any attempt to ‘modernise’ liturgy in terms of making it more acceptable to modern society (i.e. ‘pastoral respectability’) should be undertaken with extreme caution; the warning of Charles Davis is paramount here: ‘My thesis is that there is no modern form of worship, because worship itself is outdated in the modern world and Christian Faith a state of deviancy from contemporary culture.'”
– Bryan D. Spinks, “Christian Worship or Cultural Incantations?”, Studia Liturgical, vol. 12 (1977), 1, 12-13 (quoting Charles Davis, “Ghetto or Desert: Liturgy in a Cultural Dilemma” in Worship and Secularization (1970), pp. 10-27, p. 12).Source: 1662 Book of Common Prayer: International Edition
However, those boys who grew up in neighborhoods where there were more fathers present — even if not their own — had significantly higher chances of upward mobility.
“Ultimately,” Reynolds mused, “it’s about relationships and finding older men who, you know — they’re not flashy, they’re not ‘important,’ necessarily, but they actually are living virtuous lives as men. And then being able to then learn from them.”
This cultural shift is one reason why the crisis of masculinity might take time to fix: because fostering positive representations of manhood requires relationships and mentorship on an individual level, in a way that can’t be mandated.
Source: Opinion | Christine Emba: Men are lost. Here’s a map out of the wilderness. - The Washington Post
Until there is such clarity, there will be no unity among those of us who like to think of ourselves as Catholic and Anglican Churchmen. There will be no unity because you cannot be a pure cup of water in a dirty puddle. That is the simple, basic message of the Continuing Church to the neo-Anglicans. You have gone a very long way down a very wrong path, and that is true even if all the time you were avoiding a still worse path. You have a journey home to make, things to unlearn and to remember and recover. We want to welcome you at home. But there can be no restored communion with us without hard decisions and firm actions from you.
Source: Anglican Catholic Church Archbishop Mark Haverland’s Sermon at ICCA
I remember talking with a bishop who attended ICCA 2015, and this presentation stuck out as singularly off-putting –especially to the international bishops– to most of those present, that “home” was to be the Anglican Catholic Church for all the other Anglo-Catholics, and ACC was setting the terms. It appeared a public assertion that everyone in the room had strayed from the way, but could be welcomed into ACC. Two years after this, the continuing groups began the “joint synods” called the G4. In 2021, DHC was absorbed into ACC, making it G3. So it did work, but just for other continuing groups. Those outside the 1979 secession from the Episcopal church remain, apparently, part of a dirty puddle.
Canon John Fenton, the New Testament scholar, once said of Christianity: “You’ve got to feel it in your guts.” Charles I came to feel Christianity - and, in particular, the Church of England - in his guts.
This meant that he was always going to clash with those of his subjects who felt other sorts of Christianity in their guts: Puritans and Presbyterians. After his imprisonment by Parliament, the king had several opportunities to save his life and regain his throne, but the price was always that he should consent to the abolition of the Church of England and its replacement by Presbyterianism.
The king refused. When all else had fallen away, he still believed that the Church of England was the purest form of Christianity, freed from later accretions, and in tune with the ancient Fathers. For this, he was prepared to die.
Source: Did King Charles I have Asperger’s syndrome?
One of the many threads that link together the post-evangelical left and the Christian nationalist right is a shocking indifference to arguments, ideas, and, ultimately, truth. Both movements are driven chiefly by vibes. The primary rhetorical posture of both most post-evangelicals and most Christian nationalists is the sneer. It is not marked by saying, “this argument is wrong because x, y, and z.” It’s marked, rather, by “oh, you can’t possibly believe that, can you?”
The sneer works rhetorically because it creates a kind of atmosphere in which arguments don’t need to be made because social pressure is exerted in such a way to coerce people into a position. Put another way: Those who sneer don’t actually care about ideas; they care about power.
I am now questioning the accuracy of my claim that the use of the vernacular is as characteristic of the Eastern rites as it is of the Novus Ordo in its vast number of translations into modern languages. Yes, in many linguistic spheres the vernacular will be used (as when the Divine Liturgy is offered in English, as throughout the United States), but there are far too many exceptions.
Moreover, what do we mean by “vernacular”? Old Church Slavonic, for example, was created so that the Slavs could understand the liturgy, but at the same time, it was created to translate a very fancy liturgical Greek. And historically, in most cultures there was by definition a large gap between literary language and spoken language, much larger than is typical today, both because more people today are literate, and because high literary language has basically disappeared.
Compared to the Novus Ordo, the Byzantine liturgy looks like a king next to a pauper, a Rembrandt next to a caricature, a feast after a famine. But compared with the traditional Roman rite in all its intricate splendor and regimented solemnity, it is an equal at the table of tradition. We do an injustice to the Holy Spirit’s work in the Western Church by speaking as if Byzantine liturgy is the “gold standard,” when the Roman rite in its fullness — sadly, so rarely seen by Roman Catholics! — is fully its match. Instead, it is the Novus Ordo that should be shown the door, for it has no claim to be seated at the royal table of authentic liturgical rites.
The key to spiritual therapy is not killing of the desire, for most desires, being a connection to our wills, are gifts from God.
Some people asked me to share what I just shared in a space about the rate limits. I don’t work for Twitter but, I do architect IT cloud solutions as my day job.
It is temporary. Twitter’s rate limiting is not what everyone is thinking it is. It is not to punish non-paying users.
“Data scraping” is a big deal. This is where automated systems load the website or app and pull your tweets/data. It’s a huge security issue. Automated systems are pulling every tweet/word/user account information to store in an unknown database somewhere else.
This could be state actors like China, the US Government, Australia, or other bad political actors like PAC’s that are trying to gain access to everyone’s information to analyze and use for nefarious things. Manipulating what is said on the site can be done at scale with data scrapping.
It could also be used to figure out the identity of Anons or to punish people in their country for what they tweet. Looking at you #Australia and #Canada and #UnitedKingdom
The temporary measures of limiting tweets is to protect users just as much as it is to protect the entire Twitter network from going down. They are currently scrambling to get ahead of this and tune their network security to block it from happening again.
It’s also important to note that twitter has 500,000+ servers. That’s not free. In cloud data centers, the companies that use them have to pay for what is called “ingress and egress” of data going “in and out” of the servers. A data scrapping event that is large enough for them to start limiting means that it was a MASSIVE event that could be considered an attack on the site. It would also put massive load on their servers and cost them so much money it could threaten the site’s financial ability to keep running. It could be on purpose to put twitter out of business from cost alone.
Many people are misunderstanding why @elonmusk wants people to pay for twitter or for the twitter API (a programming interface that can pull data for other sites and apps).
The reason he wants people to pay is because if China or porn companies want to create massive bot farms of fake accounts, it is currently free. These bad actors are highly skilled and operate like a business. They have professional staff that continuously change their tactics and Twitter engineers have to fight 24/7 to stay ahead of them. If they have to pay for every account or pay to use the API, it would cost them A LOT of money. This limits the amount of people who could create bots, put automated porn on here, and the hacking/scrapping/DDOS attacks on the site. It protects you.
Bring back the Zine!
We started a zine, and just like it’s 1992 . . . it comes with a sampler cd ! Feature interviews w/ Fine China / Unwed Sailor / and artist Sarah McPhail, along with classic record reviews, recording with Frank Lenz, and other stuff. Contributing writers include : Emanuel Mora, Ronnie Martin, Andrew Horton, J. Cloud, Ed Harbour, and Ben Heywood. Cd comes with a lot of unreleased tracks.
Source: SMALL SOUNDS PRESS – Zine + CD No. 1 : Velvet Blue Music
Since the English Reformation, Anglican theologians have been keen to retain inherited liturgical practices that do not violate Scripture and have support in the tradition. Bishop John Jewel wrote, “Kneeling, bowing, standing up, and other like, are commendable gestures and tokens of devotion, so long as the people understandeth what they mean, and applieth them unto God, to whom they be due.”1 Bishop Jeremy Taylor wrote a tract, dripping with Scripture and typology, called “On the Reverence due to the Altar,” that makes a biblical case for the use of our bodies in proper adoration while critiquing abuses.2 Archbishop Laud similarly insisted “‘tis no Popery, to set a Raile to keep prophanation from that Holy Table.”3 All of this is to point out that Kay’s concerns are not new and have been addressed by a number of Anglican Divines quite extensively.
Why is it that at this particular historical juncture numerous churches—Catholics and Orthodox largely excepted—have changed eucharistic admission policies that prevailed throughout the preceding tradition? Why is it that Derridean pure hospitality has made huge cultural strides at precisely the same time that we have witnessed the loosening of eucharistic guardrails? And why is it that in the wake of Lambeth 1968, Protestants increasingly question any kind of eucharistic boundary?
We should be aware what is at stake when we apply the notion of pure hospitality to the Eucharist: It is the erasure of ecclesial boundaries and hence of ecclesial (or confessional) identity. If, as Henri de Lubac used to put it, the Eucharist makes the church, then a boundaryless Eucharist makes a boundaryless church. Pure hospitality applied to the Eucharist implies a universalism of the worst sort: It is the radical insistence that the church is without any positive identity whatever.
Source: Open Communion Invites the Devil to the Table | Hans Boersma
Inter-Parish Associations promote communication, camaraderie, and cooperation across Orthodox Christian parishes of all jurisdictions in a given geographical area. They are local (ie. the city/town level) and include both clergy and laity. Their purpose is to break down barriers across Orthodox Christian jurisdictions and, as a unified Orthodox Christian community, witness Christ’s love in local society. Source: AoB Announces its Inter-Parish Association Program