A consequence of the coronavirus pandemic has seen the rainbow, the sign of God's covenant with every living creature on earth, rescued from LGBT propagandists.
Instead of being used as innocent flag-waving partakers in LGBT propaganda children have been using their own instincts to make rainbow drawings in support of NHS and care workers.
Instead of being used as innocent flag-waving partakers in LGBT propaganda children have been using their own instincts to make rainbow drawings in support of NHS and care workers.
But the brass neck of it! The Christian Institute reports that LGBT activists are complaining that the rainbow is being appropriated by others to be used as a sign of support for the NHS during the COVID-19 pandemic.
They claim that the LGBT community is being “belittled by the meaning of the rainbow being changed in the current climate” presumably unaware that it is a sign of God's covenant with all His people.
It is heartening to see that even the LGBT/same sex marriage obsessed Church in Wales has adopted the NHS rainbow in an apparent return to faith.
"Somewhere over the rainbow
Bluebirds fly
And the dreams that you dream of
Dreams really do come true"
They can't resist! Did you read David Wilbourne's account of the Church in Wales in today's Church Times? At the risk of being shot down in flames by the trolls, I thought his account was patronising and off key. I can paste it from my PDF copy if anyone wants to read it.
ReplyDeleteCymraes yn Lloegr
It'd be interesting to take a look - as long, of course, as the 'Church Times' isn't going to come in pursuit of you for breach of their copyright!
DeleteOn which topic, whatever LGBT militants may feel, I seriously doubt that they'd be able to obtain their own © on every and any depiction of the natural phenomenon of the rainbow!
I think this is the article referred to https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2020/15-may/features/features/church-in-wales-still-bleeding-after-all-this-time
DeleteSee also https://ancientbritonpetros.blogspot.com/2017/03/not-another-victim.html one of my earlier entries.
Thank you for the link which - slightly to my surprise, given that I haven't patronized the Palmer family's enterprise since the last century! - worked without difficulty.
DeleteHaving now read the article, I agree with Cymraes yn Lloegr: if I tried to sum up its drift in a single sentence of the sort of 'ecclesio-speak' so often heard, I'd go for 'This peasant church is just SOOO authentic, and the example of these humble folk surely carries a lesson for us all to ponder'. Without seriously, in all probability, really meaning any of it!
As for Easter and Whitsun offerings, I'd entirely forgotten them! During my time as an Anglican in the Welsh parochial scene (1969 - 1984) I don't recall ever hearing a single mention of them. The only reference I do now recall dates back to my earliest days in the church, circa 1960 - in England.
Yes AB the link is the correct one. I have a subscription to the Church Times but non subscribers can read a limited number of articles free so your link works for them.
DeleteJoining the move across Offa's Dyke is Father Tom Bates moving from Abergavenny to Grimethorpe in south Yorkshire, following on from Canon Mark Soady who went from Abergavenny to Burnley just as the lockdown came in force.
Cymraes yn Lloegr
The article says the Easter offering in Wales is kept by the incumbent and Pentecost's by the curate. Is this really true? I have never heard of it in my diocese.
DeleteIn the (English) parish in which, on Low Sunday 1961, I first dipped my toe when exploring faith in my mid-teens I remember it being mentioned: the custom there, if I remember rightly, was that one of the churchwardens used to pen an article for the church magazine reminding church members that the Easter offering was by tradition presented to the parish priest and they might want to bear that in mind - presumably for good or ill! - in their giving on that day. As the parish didn't then have an assistant priest, the Whitsun offering didn't apply.
DeleteBut within a couple of years afterwards the parish had a Christian stewardship campaign and I heard no more of it thereafter, presumably because the custom's not really compatible with regular and committed planned giving.
And when I arrived on the Welsh scene at the very end of the 1960s I never once heard mention of it - it seemed to have died the death completely, so much so that I'd forgotten the custom entirely until I read Bishop Wilbourne's article mentioning it.
The Easter Offertory was alive and kicking in The CiW up until at least 8 years ago. Dean Bonaparte of Llandaff regularly got £4,000 a year and even after he retired, His Darkness insisted that Boney got the Easter offering as part of his leaving 'Gift'. Some parishes even 'fixed' the amount that the PP got at Easter. I think it's died a death in the last few years. I also think it's now time to look at funeral fees being assigned. I have knowledge that certain clerics are officiating at ten funerals a week. That's an awful lot of money to be pocketing and time they are not devoting to their faithful flock. I realise it's their duty but the fees should be shared so that every cleric in the diocese gets a better stipend.
DeleteIf the clergy are doing 10 funerals a week how are they doing any evangelism, pastoral visiting and service preparation?
DeleteNo visiting, we are in lockdown. One service on a Sunday at the moment, via Zoom. But normally only two services in the week, St Wed's and St Thurs. None of the feasts or solemnities observed and if the PP is on on St Wednesday the curate does not appear and if the curate does St Thursday, the PP does not appear. We did not observe the Week of Christian Unity nor that of Christian Aid. Breaks my heart.
DeleteI recall an incumbent in the late '70s in the Monmouth diocese whose parish church was ancient, beautiful and idyllically situated. The number of marriages solemnized there, from far and wide during the summer 'wedding season', was legendary. The incumbent concerned evaded the regulations by the simple expedient of putting enquirers on the parish church's electoral roll, which must have been by some way the largest in the entire diocese.
DeleteBut then 'the Lord saw, and he was wroth': Bishop (Eryl) Stephen somehow heard of it - my guess is that some other incumbent murmured in his ear! - and it ceased ... I think it never really resumed, because the incumbent concerned retired not long afterwards.
This puzzles me. Are you saying that, in the CinW, parochial fees go to the Minister (as they often do in my denomination)? I ask because, in the CofE, they go to the PCC and/or the Diocesan Board of Finance.
DeleteIf you go back a couple of hundred years, my understanding is that no money collections were taken in Anglican churches in England and Wales other than occasionally for specific charitable causes. The gradual decay of the tithe system brought an end to that, but there was a custom - I haven't tried to check how ancient, but there may be elucidation on-line somewhere - that the 'Easter offering' was given to the parish priest and, if he had an assistant, a similar 'Whitsun offering' was handed over to him. Speaking personally, I never encountered a vestige of this in Wales.
DeleteAs for the fees at 'occasional offices' - funerals and marriages - one part of the overall fee is paid to the officiant - strictly, the incumbent is entitled to it even if he has an assistant who officiates, but I never actually heard of that happening; but in England the incumbent had to keep a record of all such fees that he received and the total was deducted from his stipend the following year.
Whereas - at least when I was in Wales - that practice wasn't followed, and any personal fees for occasional offices were additional to the stipend. Hence, presumably, the enthusiasm of the doubtless now long deceased former Monmouth parish priest to maximize his marriages.
Yes, please.
ReplyDeleteRob
Really glad that York now has David Willbourne's Episcopal expertise.
ReplyDeleteNothing to do with the above ...
ReplyDeleteI've been watching the BBC service from St David's. Now I know that most of you are opposed to women's ministry (and I would have been nice to see one man taking part in the service!) Nevertheless I thought that Sarah Rowland Jones' sermon on Noah and Covenant was the most theologically solid and thoughtful we've had in any of these services, and her presentation was excellent.
I've not got a problem with women's ministry - surely we all have a ministry? I have a problem with women as 'priests' as do a lot of Anglican churches. There is doubt and where the sacraments are concerned, there should not be no doubt.
ReplyDeleteThe other and complementary 'arm' of the point you very rightly make in your concluding sentence is that Anglicanism once defined its catholicity on the core ground that it has no scriptures, no creeds and no church order other than those of the universal Church. I can (just!) remember Archbishop Fisher making that point in his customary trenchant style during his tenure as Archbishop of Canterbury.
ReplyDeleteThat can no longer be said; in terms of its doctrine of the Church, Anglicanism now appears more akin to German and Scandinavian Lutheranism than to what used to be its former self.
Have you noticed the proportion of female ordinands compared with men in St Davids? See the latest, online, edition of Pobl Dewi on the diocesan website.
ReplyDeleteRob
I am surprised. Hasn't anyone read the new Church in Wales publication on its centenary which contains an essay by the former Archbishop about his great achievement among clergy changes?.
ReplyDeleteEaster 6.