Emerging Anglican Catholic Ordinariates

In America and Canada I see is on Google maps:

 

This map provides the location and contact information for the parishes and new missions that will likely comprise the emerging Anglican Ordinariates within the Catholic Church.

What a good idea.

Check it out here.

HT:    Br Stephen Treat, O.Cist

On Icons

Via the BBC:

The icon has been created from natural materials using an ancient traditional process A renowned religious icon painter has created a painting of Jesus Christ for a church in Monmouthshire. Ian Knowles worked in the Priory Church of St Mary in Usk last week painting the icon. The church also hosted an exhibition on iconography. An anonymous benefactor paid for the work, which has caused a “great sense of excitement” to the congregation, according to the church’s vicar. Jordan-based Mr Knowles also teaches iconography in Bethlehem. His time at the church, which dates from Norman times, was the first occasion he had worked in Wales. Icons are part of liturgical or religious art and have been used as part of Christian worship for centuries. Mr Knowles explains that creating an icon is a spiritual experience and one that uses traditional processes and materials. The process of painting an icon is very much a spiritual one and Mr Knowles prayed before and during the creation of the icon. Ian Knowles has painted the icon of Christ in the church “When you paint an icon you’re trying to be in the presence of Christ and in communion with the saints,” he said. “You’re painting from the heart.” The use of colour in icon painting is very significant. Gold which is used heavily in icon art symbolises the divine milieu. The icon of Jesus created for the church features Christ wearing a blue cloak symbolising his holiness and a reddish purple (caput mortum) inner garment which symbolises Jesus’ humanity. ‘Living prayer’ Mr Knowles only uses natural ground pigments to created a harmonious palate. The colours are mixed together using an egg yolk tempera or binding agent. Rabbit skin glue is also used. The ancient, traditional process extends to the panel which is created from lime wood and comprises of a raised border battened at the back to prevent warping. The panel created for the Priory Church of St Mary’s measures 45 cm wide by 60 cms high and will be placed on a stand and brought out for services.  The church is planning a formal service to bless the icon later this year The vicar of St Mary’s Priory, the Rev Ian Gray said there’s been a great sense of excitement in the congregation and in the community about the creation of the icon. “It was great to have Ian in the church painting the icon. People could come into the church and see Ian and see the icon being painted and learn more about the process.” “It’s been an educational process for the whole congregation. There’s a real sense that this icon belongs to the church.” “It’s a living prayer in paint and wood. It represents God and is much more than just a piece of art.” Mr Gray explained that the church are looking into ways of putting the icon on permanent and secure display in St Mary’s. There are also plans for the icon to be formally blessed by the Bishop of Monmouth later this year.

14 Year Old Boy Gets a Gun for his Birthday and Kills Family

From earlier this week: 14 year old boy gets a gun for his birthday and kills his family.

Appalling news!

CNN reports:

A 14-year-old South Carolina boy used the rifle his father bought him as a birthday present to shoot the man to death, along with a great-aunt, and critically wound his grandmother, police said Tuesday.

The teenager, who was not identified because he is a juvenile, called police just before midnight Monday and reported that he had shot his aunt, his grandmother and his father, said Tony Fisher, director of the Spartanburg, South Carolina, Public Safety Department.

The boy told the dispatcher his father was dead, and said “in a calm, controlled, methodical voice that he would be waiting or come outside when police arrived, and he had laid the gun on the dining room table,” Fisher told reporters Tuesday. As officers arrived, the teen came out with his hands up and was arrested, he said.

Police entered the house to find Joe Robert Lankford, the boy’s 44-year-old father, shot to death in his bed, Fisher said. They found Virginia Gaston, 83, dead in her bed, apparently from a gunshot wound, he said. Gaston is believed to be the boy’s great-aunt, Fisher said.

Rachel Gaston Lankford, 80, the boy’s grandmother, was transported to a hospital where she is in critical condition, he said.

The teen told police he used the .22-caliber rifle that “was a birthday gift purchased by his father for him on his most recent birthday in September,” Fisher said.

Authorities investigating the teen’s background, including school records and information from neighbors, have found “there were no behavior issues that would in any way suggest the predictability of this violent behavior,” he said…

Who in their right mind buys a gun for a 14 year old anyway?

The Church of England's Mean-spirited Attitude to the Ordinariate

… whatever happened to the ‘Broad Church’? asks Damian Thompson.

A leading evangelical Anglican commentator has asked the question on the lips of many Catholics. Yes, we understand that some members of the Church of England are hurt by the setting up of the Ordinariate, but do its bishops have to be quite so ungenerous to departing Anglicans, huffily refusing them to allow them to share church buildings?

The writer is Andrew Carey… 

The Church of England’s apparent pride in its comprehensiveness in contrast to the ecclesiological narrowness of Roman Catholicism is now emerging as fantasy.

The Ordinariate is showing the Roman Catholic Church offering compromises, fudges and political fixes to Anglican traditionalists. Whereas the Church which has always taken pride in the image of itself as a via media and a place where everyone could fit in had nothing to offer the same traditionalists. As a result a number of bishops, clergy and laity have joined the Ordinariate or are still considering Pope Benedict’s offer.

And while the Roman Catholic Church’s secrecy, which bordered on contempt for Anglicanism, is to be criticised, it is the Church of England time and again which is showing itself to have no vision for the possibility of ecclesiological change. Bishops have even harshly ruled out the use of Church of England buildings for Ordinariate congregations, even under sharing arrangements. This looks more like a political strategy to dissuade laypeople from joining the Ordinariate than a decision about ecumenical principles.

Where is the harm in allowing congregations which are now at odds with the Anglican settlement to maintain access with the buildings which they themselves have maintained and cherished? The Church of England has too many buildings for its now weakened ambitions and in many areas we can barely maintain a presence. In other areas we have a preponderance of failing churches.

The tragedy is that the Ordinariate is a wake-up call to do things differently to look at ourselves again. Do we really want to be ungenerous, churlish and flint-faced to ecclesiastical dissenters? Or do we want to be comprehensive and embracing of the many networks which the Church of England has always comprised?

We are a broad church because we all have fixed, differing, mutually-excluding identities. We are broad precisely because we are different in our convictions. We are not broad because we can’t make our minds up about who we are.

The Church of England is essentially an umbrella ecclesial body for a range of incompatible theological concerns. We have forgotten that element of necessary compromise that might have allowed us to respond more positively for traditionalist pleas for third province. Yet that generous, broad church impulse might nevertheless assist us in responding more positively to the Ordinariate in order to build unity even as traditionalists Anglicans formally leave.

Pope Benedict XVI Blesses Two Lambs

… on the feast of St Agnes yesterday. The wool of these sheep will be used to make the pallium for the feast of Saints Peter and Paul on June 29.

What is a Priest?

I’ve recently noticed on the Anglican blogs I read more frequent references to “lay presidency” and “diaconal presidency” at the Eucharist. Such ideas strike me as completely daft, and remind me of why I quit the Anglican Church 25 years ago.

So why, if I’m no longer Anglican, do I blog about such things? It certainly doesn’t bother me, because it no longer affects me, and it makes little difference to my life what Anglicans ultimately decide about such things. I’ve been debating with myself whether to write a blog post on it or not. It’s not that I hope to influence Anglicans to do one thing rather than another. I suppose at one level my interest is academic. My academic field of study is missiology, and so I am interested in the way that ministry in the church affects mission and vice versa. Also, I cannot deny that my experience as an Anglican, and especially in training self-supporting priests and deacons in the Anglican Diocese of Zululand, helped to shape my understanding of ministry in the church, and thus helped, if indirectly, to lead me to Orthodoxy. And I also believe that whereas the Orthodox understanding of ministry in the church is theologically sound, the practical application of it has often been a hindrance to mission. So I think it could be quite useful to “think aloud” about it in my blog.

So, to go back to the beginning, why do I think “lay presidency” and “diaconal presidency” are daft?

They are daft because they seem to assume the interchangeability of ministries in the church…

Read more by Steve Hayes (who is Orthodox) here. He makes some rather pertinent points.