The Traditional Anglican Church in Britain (TAC) has new website, with a new look, and it is looking great…
This is the official site of The Traditional Anglican Church. We maintain traditional faith, worship and discipline for Anglicans in England, Scotland and Wales. You will find out more about our ethos by choosing Constitution above.
There is only one safe basis for building a church, which is the love of God (and his love for us before ours for him). The devil loves those who would build a church on hatred, or even on revulsion. Of course our very existence implies a judgement of those who think differently. How can it be otherwise? But that is not our purpose.
We believe that, odd and incoherent as the Church of England has been ever since the creation of the state religion, there has never been lacking within it a faithful remnant, which God has blessed. We choose to follow them, and so to build on all that was solid before the changes of the last generation.
We are not a preservation society. To become a separate body is to change; to worship in our new circumstances is also to change. For the present, the need to offer reliable foundations is preeminent. But on them may God help us to build with gold, not with stubble.
This is an excellent effort.
The list of Parishes is here, with Canon Ian Gray as the Vicar General.
(Thanks to Mrs Dalene Gill for pointing the site out.)
Only ten priests? And…Where are the others?
They seems pretty unsure of everything. This is from the “contact” page:
The Presiding Bishop was until Easter Archbishop John Hepworth of the Anglican Catholic Church in Australia. There is now no Presiding Bishop; opinions vary on whether there is an Acting Presiding Bishop.
It seems that the former TAC site, the “Messenger” is not being updated. Opinions vary as to the authority of a new site.
In Great Britain (Ireland has a separate church), the Episcopal Visitor was Bishop David Moyer. He has ceased to act. Opinions vary as to whether he has been replaced.
+ PAX et BONUM
And they link to the very nasty anti-ordinariate pamphlet of the Anglican Association…
With the term “a faithful remnant”, it almost sounds Reformational and Reformed, which of course it isn’t, one must express some faithfulness to the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles for that! But, I wish them well.. in this day of small things (faithfulness)… “For who hath depised the day of small things?” (Zech. 4: 10)
*despised
The Lincoln parish is interesting. It apparently meets at St Katherine’s, in the town centre. I go to Lincoln now and then, as I have a very good friend there whom I like to visit – among other things, he is a fabulous cook. Last year, I visited St Katharine’s. It is a small museum, with a number of very interesting exhibits relating to the priory which was once on the site. It is well worth an hour or two of your free time if you have the chance.
There is nothing to suggest that a community of Christians meets there, only that it is a building that was once used for Christian worship. Only a small sign on the noticeboard next to the door (faded enough to be almost illegible) indicated that Mass was offered at 9am on Sundays.
Perhaps they have updated their signage now, but I can’t help but wonder what sort of evangelism this community undertakes. I believe that Lincoln was a bastion of High Church Anglicanism until relatively recently. I would imagine that many local Anglicans would be beating down the door of the church, if they knew it was there.
The new TAC website is very pretty, but the only part of it which seems to be active in any meaningful way is indeed in Lincoln.
That will be by reason of Canon Gray’s connection with The Priory Trust Limited which was established as a Charity to restore redevelop St Katherine’s in Lincoln as a “community resource”- mostly with funds from the National Lottery “Heritage Fund”. Canon Ian Gray and Mr Michael Wilson are Trustees of the Priory Trust.
The Accounts of the Priory Trust show 2011 income of £459,000 which goes on its secular charitable activities of restoring the “heritage site” and making use of the restored buildings as a “community resource centre”. Mrs Gray receives a salary of £28,000 from the Priory Trust. The last page of the Priory Trust website shous the TAC as operating from St Katherine’s. So the secular Priory Trust provided a convenient church for Canon Grey to operate from when he resigned from the CofE.
Mr Wilson and Mrs Gray are also the Tustees of The Traditional Anglican Church (Charitable Foundation) Limited, which also operates from the Priory Centre but this Charity’s income for 2011 was just £2,971 which does not suggest any great TAC UK activity.
Elsewhere with CofE churches being inalienable, it does not seem likely that any of the other contacts are doing very much. Certainly they seem to be “below the rader” of Google searches with one exception. The Reverend Christopher Stephenson of Scarborough was appointed Membership Secretary of The Catholic League in 2011 and is still shown in that capacity on the League’s website.
But as SMM3 points out, it doesn’t presetly seem as if the new site is au courant with what’s been going on elsewhere.
Curious. There are four priests and one reader, and only one regular service per week.
I visited midweek, and there was no sign of any liturgical activity, or even any place for liturgical activity. The altars were beautifully arrayed in museum tableaux, but there was no sign of liturgical life. Perhaps they are obliged by the objects of the Trust to be discreet.
I find the whole TTAC thing to be more than passing strange, and at odds with the TAC activity that I hear about elsewhere in the world.
ten priests… Maybe as many laity…and a coat of arms to boot!
@ Stephen
When a CofE vicar resigns his living to go elsewhere, the inalienable status of CofE parish churches means that the CofE church has to remain behind. Thus it is financially quite astute to seek out a redundant church and Then get oodles of public money to turn it into a “community resource”. St Katherine’s was not the only example. A similar technique was employed for St Agatha’s in Portsea and it too had TAC Sunday services. But in both cases the church in question was no longer required for CofE purposes, but redundant. And as we can see, Mrs Gray also gets a salary for acting for the “secular” charity.
The TAC at St Agatha’s having joined the Ordinaraite, the facility is now used for Catholic Sunday worship. I suppose the same is entirely possible for St Katherine’s.
The new website may be nothing more than an attempt to show that there are still some TTAC clergy to be found in the UK and that the web site is not yet up to date. It may also be an attempt to raise funds. A good web site can raise a lot of money.