E.H. Browne on the Homilies

If you listen to certain neo-Puritan types, the Homilies as formularies are on the same footing, authoritatively speaking, as the Articles and Prayer Book.  But no one in his right mind thinks that a preacher's opinion can have the same authority as a confession or creed.  No Continental Reformer ever thought that, but somehow our neo-Puritan friends differ from those Continental Reformers whom they hold in highest regard.  Here's what Browne said about the Homilies:

All writers on the subject have agreed, that the kind of assent, which we are here called on to give to them, is general, not specific. We are not expected to express full concurrence with every statement, or every exposition of Holy Scripture contained in them, but merely in the general to approve of them, as a body of sound and orthodox discourses, and well adapted for the time for which they were composed. For instance we cannot be required to call the Apocrypha by the name of Holy Scripture, or to quote it as of Divine authority, because we find it so in the Homilies. We cannot be expected to think it a very cogent argument for the duty of fasting, that thereby we may encourage the fisheries and strengthen the seaport towns against foreign invasion. And perhaps we may agree with Dr. Hey, rather than with Bp. Burnet, and hold, that a person may fairly consider the Homilies to be a sound collection of religious instruction, who might yet shirk from calling the Roman Catholics idolaters. The Homilies are, in fact, semi-authoritative documents...

More and Cross: Anglicanism

I continue to make my way through this indispensible intro to Classical Anglicanism.

The Making of More and Cross' Anglicanism.

Orthodox Anglicans Still Fractured But Maintain Identity, Strength

We few.  We happy, fragmented, orthodox and fully Catholic few.

On Apostolicae Curae and Anglican Orders

From Akenside Press.  More on why neither Rome's nor Orthodoxy's refusal to recognize Anglican orders means anything.

Leithart: Baptism and Justification in the Anglican Tradition

From First Things.

New to the Blogroll

The Anglophilic Anglican.  Traditional Anglicanism and the Right Stuff.

The Anglican Institute

An Agenda for Us All to Follow

From Restoring the Anglican Mind, Canon Arthur Middleton, pp. 98-101, concerning the Church of England but re-drafted here so as to include the situation of traditional Anglicanism in North America.  I highly recommend this book and his Fathers and Anglicans: The Limits of Orthodoxy as resources that best answer the vexing question of Anglican identity.  Chapters 1 and 2 of Restoring the Anglican Mind are alone worth the price of the book.  This agenda, found at the end of the book, follows from the preceding argument for a "Western Orthodoxy" that does not imply assimilation to Western Rite Orthodoxy, that is, a bishopless concord with a provision currently offered by certain Eastern Orthodox jurisdictions, but which is likely only a temporary one and does not account for the ancient English Catholic "phronema".  Classical Anglicanism, while substantially Orthodox, needs neither Orthodox bishops nor a parochial Byzantine Orthodox oversight to be classed as a legitimately Western form of Orthodoxy.  We need only our own apostolic succession along with our own perfectly legitimate English Catholic patrimony to qualify.  And I will add this: the Western Rite Orthodox Churches, whose status is very questionable in a sea of hostile Eastern sentiment, might want to reconsider joining those of us who belong to the Anglican Continuum. 

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An Agenda for Us All to Follow

• To pursue the Anglican Way by upholding Canon A5 which states that the doctrine of the Anglican Communion is grounded in the Holy Scripture a divine inheritance and conveying life through its Sacraments--this as against the innovations of the liberals reflected in the pervasive humanism and apostasy in the Church and sometimes supported by politicians and the judges who use Equality Law to discriminate against orthodox Christians and persecute them.

• To assert the authoritative doctrinal character of our Anglican formularies as against the liberalism so often evident in the deliberations of the Synods.

• To recall Anglicans to the revival of neglected truth and 'principles of action which had been in the minds of our predecessors of the seventeenth century.' As the Oxford Fathers urged 'Stir up the gift of God that is in you.'

• To uphold and elucidate the doctrines of the Catholic Faith as Anglicans have received them and to work for the expression of such doctrine by the avoidance of the dumbing down effect of the language of 'political-correctness' in liturgy and biblical translations.

• To resist today's new insidious Erastianism, the interference of the Government in the affairs of the Church, whereby a government can dictate to the Church what its doctrine and morality should be as a result of various types of discriminatory law.

• To work for the unity in truth and holiness of all Christians and as Anglicans to bring our own characteristic contribution as our fathers have taught us, according to the Apostolic Doctrine and Polity of our Church.

• To bring recognition to the reality that the way of salvation is the partaking of the Body and Blood of our sacrificed Redeemer by means of the holy Sacrament of the Eucharist and. that the security for the due application of this is the Apostolic Commission. We cannot and do not accept therefore the innovation of women priests and women bishops since sacraments are from God and we cannot tamper with them. The sacraments must never be humanly manipulated on the basis of the politico-sociological arguments of the times and so-called 'human rights'.

• To be on our watch for all opportunities of inculcating a due sense of this inestimable privilege; to provide and circulate information, to familiarize the imaginations of people with the idea; to attempt to revive among Churchmen the practice of daily common prayer and the more frequent participation in the Eucharist.

Conclusion

In the spirit of John Henry Newman, the aim is not the seeking of our own well-being, or originality, or some new invention for the Church. Let our prayer be that God will give us sound judgement, patient thought, discrimination, a comprehensive mind, and abstinence from all private fancies and caprices and personal tastes. Let us seek only the standards of saintliness and service as the measure of our activities.

Let the secret for us lie in those words of Our Lord's High Priestly prayer, 'For their sakes I consecrate myself,' so uniting his humanity with God in the way of holiness that he may capture the reality of that life within the Blessed Trinity and be inspirated by the divine life he lives with Christ in the Holy Spirit. For it is only as we make our home in Him, as he made his home in the Father that we will be able to do anything.

There is the ultimate secret of power; the one sure way of doing good in our generation. We cannot anticipate or analyse the power of a pure and holy life; but there can be no doubt about its reality, and there seems no limit to its range. We can only know in part the laws and forces of the spiritual world; and it may be that every soul that is purified and given up to God and to His work releases or awakens energies of which we have no suspicion - energies viewless as the wind; but we can be sure of the result, and we may have glimpses sometimes of the process.

Surely, there is no power in the world so unerring or so irrepressible as the power of personal holiness. All else at times goes wrong, blunders, loses proportion, falls disastrously short of its aim, grows stiff or one-sided, or out of date - 'whether there be prophesies they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away'; but nothing mars or misleads the influence that issues from a pure and humble and unselfish character.

A man's gifts may lack opportunity, his efforts may be misunderstood and resisted; but the spiritual power of a consecrated will need no opportunity, and can enter where the doors are shut. By no fault of a man's own, his gifts may suggest to some the thoughts of criticism, comparison, competition; his self-consecration can do no harm in this way. Of gifts, some are best for long distances, some for objects close at hand or in direct contact; but personal holiness, determining, refining, characterising everything that a man says or does, will tell alike on those he may not know even by name, and on those who see him in the constant intimacy of his home." (Francis Paget, "The Hallowing of Work", pp. 16ff, cited in The Personal Life of the Clergy, A. W. Robinson (Longmans Green and Co. : London, 1902), pp. 17-18.)

One Stream, Not Three

This:

"If it seems to you that the Church as organised has somehow lost sense of proportion, remember that only through the Church has the Gospel ever reached you, and that only through the Church can it reach the ages far ahead. And you will do more service to the cause of Christ by bringing in what reality you can into its life than you can ever render by staying outside and doing what seems possible to you, or you and your few friends, in isolation." ~ William Temple, Christian Faith and Life, 132.

"The pure notion of Tradition can then be defined by saying that it is the life of the Holy Spirit in the Church, communicating to each member of the Body of Christ the faculty of hearing, of receiving, of knowing the Truth in the Light that belongs to it, and not according to the natural light of human reason." - Vladimir Lossky, "Tradition and Traditions"  in In the Image and Likeness of God (SVS Press 1985).

An Exchange on the Scottish Epiclesis With A Couple of "Reformation Anglicans"

Reformation Anglican 1, the author of this book, posted the following on his Facebook page today:

Click to read more ...

Why WOULD Anyone Sing in Church These Days?

Another good one from Ponder Anew.

We’ve minimized the congregation’s role.

We’ve changed our focus from disciplined, intentional music-making to creating emotional responses.

We’ve stopped training musicians.

We’ve chosen songs written for solo performance.

We’ve stopped giving the musicians among us the resources they need to apply their abilities.

We’ve chosen instrumentation that doesn’t support a congregation.

We’ve stopped leading and started performing.

So let’s stop asking why people aren’t singing anymore. It really shouldn’t be a surprise, since we’ve done nearly everything we can to kill congregational singing.

New To The Blogroll

The Cathedral Close, blog of Canon Charles H. Nalls.

Book Review: The New American Prayer Book: Its History and Contents by E. Clowes Chorley

Review written by my friend Fr. Isaac Rehberg at All Saints Anglican, San Antonio, TX.

I lucked out yesterday and found one remaining collectible copy of this book at Amazon, but it is also available online.  It's an indispensable resource for those who want to understand the inner geist of the 1928 prayer book.

Greek Orthodox Inexplicably Give Highest ‘Humanitarian’ Award to Pro-Abort Gov. Andrew Cuomo

When Orthodox critics fault me for saying the Orthodox Church, here in the West at least, is suffering from a serious bout of creeping liberalism, I simply point them to stuff like this. 

Say what you will about the small and fractious lot that is Continuing Anglicanism.  At least we've left the Episcopalianization that currently plagues Rome, Realignment Anglicanism and Orthodoxy in the western diaspora behind us, and are on a true holy, catholic and apostolic path.

Another Anglican Home Oratory, Thanks Be to God (And New to the Blogroll)

Family Prayer and Home Oratories.  All you out there hither and yon who would be Ttaditional Anglican but for the fact that there is no traditional Anglican parish near you, this.

This. Boom. Word.

With a Rebel Yell.  Excerpts:

The fate of Highlights is a very small occurrence in this great big world, but it’s a telling thing. It is insane that even Highlights For Children gets bullied into this, and that the editors would capitulate so quickly. This revolution won’t leave anybody alone. If you think you’re going to get away without having to fight, you’re dreaming. They will not leave you alone. There is no neutral ground. You must affirm.

If you do not intend to capitulate, you had better prepare to be hated, and you had better learn to regard that hatred as a blessing. Or you’re not going to make it. . . .

At some point, people, you just have to quit caring what others think, and do what you know is right, regardless of the consequences. There is a lot of strength in just not giving a rip anymore. Over the weekend, I read an advance copy of Anthony Esolen’s forthcoming (Jan 2017) book Out Of The Ashes: A Layman’s Guide to Rebuilding Our Culture.  It’s a full-throated, big-hearted call to arms, both uncompromising and irresistible. This book is the St. Crispin’s Day speech of the Benedict Option. Look at these excerpts from the introduction:

Let’s get straight to the point. We no longer live in a culturally Christian state. We do not live in a robust pagan state, such as Rome was during the Pax Romana. We live in a sickly sub-pagan   state, or metastate, a monstrous thing, all-meddlesome, all-ambitious. The natural virtues are scorned. Temperance is for prigs, prudence for sticks in the mud who worry about people who don’t yet exist. A man who fathers six children upon three women and now wants to turn himself into a “woman” attracted to other women—he is praised for his courage. Justice means that a handful of narrowly educated and egotistical judges get to overturn human culture and biology, at their caprice.

We are not in partibus infidelibus. We are in partibus insanibus.

What shall we do now? The answer is both daunting and liberating. We do everything. That doesn’t mean that I do everything, or that you do everything. Suppose you find yourself in a bombed out city. There are all kinds of things to do, and all of them have to be done. Some needs are more pressing than others, and some things can be done only after other things are in order. But everywhere you turn, there’s work to do. You have to find clean water. You have to find food. You have to tend to the wounded and bury the dead. You have to erect shelters. You have to see which of the few buildings left standing are actually safe. You have to demolish those that are ruined beyond repair. You have to organize work teams. Someone has to prepare the meals. Someone has to keep the children out of trouble. In such a situation, it’s almost absurd to ask whether it’s more important to build a latrine than to gather together some undamaged books. All of it has to be done. So you do what you can do—the work that is ready to your hand.

More:

Recover the human things.

You remember them? The things that human beings used to do. They are not to be underestimated. Let’s not pretend here. We’ve all lost a great deal of what once made up whatever sweetness that human life had to offer. People used to dress becomingly, play cards, talk to others, take long walks, sing songs, play ball, grow peas and beans, strum on the guitar, drop in on friends, and have friends to drop in on. Boys used to ask girls to do innocent things with them, like go bowling, or attend a concert, or dance. There’s an idea—learn how to dance again. The world, besides being quite mad, is now an unspeakably drab, tawdry, and lonely place. Build outposts of normality. It will take time. Begin.

Pray like the pilgrim you are.

That goes without saying. If you pray for ten minutes a day, pray for fifteen. But pray with a clearer aim. Remember that you are going somewhere. Its name, in one sense, is the grave. The whole world is in mad denial of that plain fact. It turns to the garish and obscene, lest it have to consider the quiet grassy mound and the stone with a few words on it. Be different.  You are on the way.  Take heart, and don the hat of the pilgrim. Do not be like those who have no hope. Jesus has gone before us to prepare a place. Will you have to repent of having sometimes gotten on the carousel of the world? Repent of it then. Begin.

It does, after all. Let no one say to you, “What difference does it make if you sing beautiful hymns at Mass?” That’s the way the world thinks. For the world, despite all its pretense of love for every individual, considers men to be mere stuff, an accumulation or amalgamation. Do not believe it. The next person you greet may be on the verge of sainthood or damnation. Every moral choice we make repeats the drama of Eden. No one can do everything. Everyone can do something. Begin.

I encourage you to pre-order Out Of the Ashes, along with Archbishop Chaput’s book Stranger in a Strange Land, out in February. It follows the same themes. And don’t forget The Benedict Option, coming out in March. Something big is happening now. A band of brothers and sisters are saying, “Enough! No more. We are not going to shore up this corrupt and decadent imperium any longer. We are going to live as free and upright men and women, and we don’t give a damn what you think of us.”. . . .

. . . Who knows what form civil disobedience will take in the future. For now, it requires a conscious, deliberate, and progressive secession from the imperium, a defection in place, a refusal to cooperate with its aims.

New To The Blogroll

Anglican Church Planting

Anglican Audio

Anglicanism and the Benedict Option

Three recent articles devoted to the mode in which we will soon find ourselves.  I've written much on how we will soon be forced to do politics by other means, but that is really secondary.  To weather the storm that's coming, we must first be men of prayer.  In His time, God will show us the next steps to take, but not if we do not seek to live our everyday lives in the flame of prayer.

Anglican Church Planting: Some Virtues of the Benedict Option

I Pray Every Day.  It Changed My Life.  (Roman Catholic reflection on praying the Hours.)

Christian Thinkers Call for a Policy of 'Localism'

Tradition and the Development of Doctrine

Here.

Benediction is Good for the Anglican Soul

A reader emailed me about this question, and a few days later I ran onto this.  I'd have to say that generally speaking Anglican divinity frowns upon it.  Bicknell's treatment is one of the best.

That being said, I would say it's somewhere near adiaphora. Even if it has no solid root in either Scripture or Tradition, it's hard to see why it might be harmful, and a case can be made that it can certainly be beneficial to Christian devotion.  Bicknell even seems to admit this. 

If you want to wade through the long video to find his comments, REC Bishop Ray Sutton's thoughts are interesting.

New To The Blogroll

Katehon.  News from the Orthodox bloc, and a necessary balance to the Western spin on things.