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| Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby welcomed female priests at St Paul's Cathedral in 2014 Source: BBC |
It can be only a matter of time before Anglicanism in this country is dominated by women who feel free to do as they please.
In 2020 the Covid-19 lockdown has resulted in churches being closed, only now re-opening for private prayer but that has not prevented the Church in Wales from carrying out some ordinations.
The diocese of Monmouth has been asked by bishop Cherry openly to pray for a new female deacon who will be ordained in Newport Cathedral today.
Of more concern is the rumoured secretive ordination behind Llandaff Cathedral's closed doors today of a man reportedly in a same sex marriage.
Some observations from a concerned commentator:
The regulations forbidding clergy holding public services in their churches have been the cause of deep anxiety and concern. Even when our churches are permitted to be open for private prayer they will not be allowed to vocalise any form of worship. Grotesque? Yes. You may only go into a church if you promise not to utter aloud any praise of God or articulate intercession!
However – one rule for the lower clergy, another for the hierarchy – there is a rumour doing the rounds that Mrs Goulding (alias the bishop of Llandaff) is intent on secretly holding a ‘private’ ordination service behind the locked doors of Llandaff Cathedral in the presence of only a few members of the Chapter. ‘A private ordination behind locked doors’ is no more possible than a ‘private marriage behind locked doors’. Ordination is the concern and action of the whole people of God. The service makes this clear at various points when the congregation is asked questions about the suitability of the candidates and whether it is the wish of the people that they be ordained.
Furthermore, there is apparently to be no Communion. The 1662 Prayer Book, and Wales 1984 – and indeed all ordination services – are within the context of the Eucharist. ‘ . . . all they that receive Orders shall take together, and remain in the same place where hands were laid upon them, until such time as they have received the Communion.”
If the bishop and the priest do not receive the Holy Communion together then one may justifiably question whether it is a legal or valid ordination.
Postscript
Social distancing being ignored:
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| Deaconing in Newport Cathedral 27 June 2020 Source: YouTube |
RE-OPENING CHURCHES UPDATE Monmouth news Posted: 19 June 2020
Postscripts [28.06.2020]
Episcopal double standards in evidence?
Following the report of a secretive ordination service in Llandaff Cathedral a tweet from Llandaff diocese has been posted in response to a tweet in which it was queried whether or not churches can now hold worship providing it is behind closed doors:
PS 2 [28.06.2020]
A further tweet shows five candidates were ordained as deacons to serve in the diocese plus another four presumably to serve in other dioceses.
Postscript [29.06.2020]
"Llandaff Diocese #StaySafe
@LlandaffDio
Morning Rachel. Yes, ordinations took place in the cathedral yesterday. Doors were closed because public were unable to attend due to strict social distancing rules. No family or friends could attend.
Unusual circumstances this but safety must come first. ✝️❤️"
There was no announcement of the service that I can find and no prayers invited for the ordinand(s) - more than one is now indicated.
In view of the serious observations contained in the main post, above, a fuller explanation should be made instead of a Covid-19 safety brush off.
PS 2 [28.06.2020]
A further tweet shows five candidates were ordained as deacons to serve in the diocese plus another four presumably to serve in other dioceses.
Postscript [29.06.2020]
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| Source: CinW Twitter |
The latest Petertide ordinations reported on Twitter:
"Ordinations Covid-style in St David's Church Abergwili - congratulations to Heulwen Evans, Jordan Spencer and Lorna Jones, the first of our Deacons to be ordained yesterday (Sunday 28th). All duly socially distanced..."
So should one assume there was no laying on of hands in Abergwili?
Postscript [01.07.2020]
From Twitter: Next, St Asaph
"ORDINATIONS
It should have been the ordination of priests last Saturday, and I am currently working towards the provisional date of Saturday, 3rd October, for the ordination of our seven priest candidates (Gareth Erlandson, Sally Harper, Simon Piercy, Chris Spencer, Sue Storey, Carol Thomas and James Tout), hoping that it will be possible to hold the ordination in the Cathedral as usual. Do please hold all these individuals in your thoughts and prayers.
By agreement with the Welsh Government, however, we will be able to proceed with the ordination of our deacon candidates, and this is because the government has accepted the argument that it is a necessary step to their assuming ministry and their work as Assistant Curates. In line with government regulations, the ordination service will be online live streamed and recorded, and socially distanced, or with PPE precautions. Ordinations are joyful occasions when we give thanks to God for the calling of men and women to ordained service, but on this occasion, the absence of supporters and a congregation will be keenly felt. It is my hope, therefore, that many of us can hold them in prayer at the time, and support them from a distance. Please remember George Bearwood, Luke Bristowe, Helen Dawson, Toby Jones, Gregory Lachlann-Waddell, Ben Lines, Jo MacKriell, Jim Thompson and Gail Woodward in your prayers." - AD CLERUM - JULY 2020
If there was 'agreement with the Welsh Government' as stated it makes the secrecy surrounding the ordination, Monmouth excluded, all the more surprising
The bench should come clean and explain to the faithful how the ordinations were conducted with social distancing and whether they took part in the context of the Eucharist.
Postscript [05.07.2020]
Postscript [01.07.2020]
From Twitter: Next, St Asaph
"ORDINATIONS
It should have been the ordination of priests last Saturday, and I am currently working towards the provisional date of Saturday, 3rd October, for the ordination of our seven priest candidates (Gareth Erlandson, Sally Harper, Simon Piercy, Chris Spencer, Sue Storey, Carol Thomas and James Tout), hoping that it will be possible to hold the ordination in the Cathedral as usual. Do please hold all these individuals in your thoughts and prayers.
By agreement with the Welsh Government, however, we will be able to proceed with the ordination of our deacon candidates, and this is because the government has accepted the argument that it is a necessary step to their assuming ministry and their work as Assistant Curates. In line with government regulations, the ordination service will be online live streamed and recorded, and socially distanced, or with PPE precautions. Ordinations are joyful occasions when we give thanks to God for the calling of men and women to ordained service, but on this occasion, the absence of supporters and a congregation will be keenly felt. It is my hope, therefore, that many of us can hold them in prayer at the time, and support them from a distance. Please remember George Bearwood, Luke Bristowe, Helen Dawson, Toby Jones, Gregory Lachlann-Waddell, Ben Lines, Jo MacKriell, Jim Thompson and Gail Woodward in your prayers." - AD CLERUM - JULY 2020
If there was 'agreement with the Welsh Government' as stated it makes the secrecy surrounding the ordination, Monmouth excluded, all the more surprising
The bench should come clean and explain to the faithful how the ordinations were conducted with social distancing and whether they took part in the context of the Eucharist.
Postscript [05.07.2020]
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| Source: Church in Wales |
St Asaph coming clean at their Petertide ordination service yesterday. Oodles of photos here. Clearly much thought of safeguarding is in evidence.
PP. Very interesting blog. The question I have is a simple one. If ordination requires the laying in of hands, how can a bishop perform the sacred right without breaking the lockdown rules?
ReplyDeleteThe Eucharist is an important part of the rite too.
If you cannot speak a word in church except private prayer. Does it mean that the rite us "signed" or "mimed" ?
The question is where us the AB here, leadership?
I think that in the current circumstances, quite unique at least in the memory and experience of anyone currently alive, ordinations - which inevitably involve breaking social distancing - ought to have been postponed until such time as the regulations could be relaxed.
ReplyDeleteAs to reaching a situation in which the majority of clerics are women, I recall predicting, back in the '90s when the decision to admit women to the priesthood was made, that this was likely to happen at some point.
Modern secular society views 'the caring professions' as preponderantly female roles, and, in modern times if not of old, the Anglican churches have more and more characterized the ordained ministry as 'a caring profession' - and so in the same broad category as nurses, health visitors, social workers, the various types of therapists, &c.
These being viewed as primarily roles for women, and especially perhaps more mature women, it's no real surprise if the ordained ministry comes to be viewed similarly, and in consequence takes that form.
A very good point about the 'caring professions' with which the Church has aligned itself. This is now the Church - like it or not - and the picture shows it only too clearly. There would seem to be no way out now for the traditionalists. Unlike the Catholic Church, Orthodox and most other Christian denominations, as well as all other faiths, the Anglican Church has been taken over by female representation.
DeleteLW
Or, more accurately, female misrepresentation.
Delete@ LW:
DeleteI never believed that there was a 'way out'; which was why after just over thirty years - I'd been a convert from secular nothingness in my mid-teens - I left Anglicanism in the aftermath of 'the decision'.
I've never regretted it, and indeed in retrospect I think I was rather naive in earlier years. Back in the mid-80s a couple of acquaintances of mine who were Welsh Anglican clergy - in their thirties at the time - both decided to become Roman Catholics.
One of them explained his decision in a memorable phrase which I've never forgotten: he'd come to the conclusion, he said, that Anglicanism was 'the joking church'. The bishops and the senior clergy, he thought, all knew the right Catholic things to do liturgically; they could act the part very well. But he'd come to the conclusion that it was all frills and externals. Once he finally reached the point when he'd concluded that they didn't actually believe the substance of it all, he felt a move to Rome was his best next step.
At that time - as I say, it was around 1984 - I thought that he was being unduly pessimistic and cynical. But, as it turned out barely a decade later, he was right and I was wrong.
Just to clarify the situation, I've written to The Archbishop of Wales to confirm if these 'ordinations' took place. I shall let you know the response, or lack of
ReplyDeleteGood luck with that MO, one imagines if you receive any reply at all it will be "We continue as we please."
DeleteExactly and well done Episkopos. "We continue as we please". An own goal in the art of arrogance, coined in 1997 by the learned Calamity Evans QC, me lud. Please stop laughing.
DeleteEnforcer
Confirmation on Facebook today. Congratulations to the four 'priests' 'ordained ' yesterday at Llandaff cathedral.
ReplyDeleteThank you MO. That raises the tally to nine deacons and four priests. Thirteen candidates ordained behind Llandaff Cathedral's closed doors yesterday.
DeleteNow that's a new one: Facebook confirmations!
DeleteAnd a word of caution from England. Here, public worship will be permitted from next Sunday, 5th July. However, it is not compulsory. If clergy do not want to resume public worship, they can apply for a dispensation from the bishop and it will be granted according to the C of E guidance. Since mid March, my local vicar, as I have mentioned previously on this blog, has celebrated communion in his living room twice every Sunday and once or twice during the week. That will continue for the foreseeable future. So the church, in the middle of a Midlands town centre, will remain locked just because one selfish individual refuses to unlock. As to the dispensation to continue with no public worship - I do not know whether it will be time limited so at some point the vicar will be forced to resume some form of public worship or how many other clergy will seek dispensation. Ultimately, churches will run out of money, maintenance ignored and the church buildings will become redundant. I am appalled that there is no way of challenging the selfish decision of one person.
ReplyDeleteCymraes yn Lloegr
Are you absolutely sure that the only reason for the church remaining locked is down to the selfishness of the Vicar? It appears that a whole gamut of risk assessments and planning which will have to be worked through, not just by the Vicar but presumably with the PCC and Wardens, before churches can reopen for worship. And, despite the PM's announcement having been made last Tuesday, the UK Government's guidelines remain unpublished. Although those churches which have reopened for private prayer will, in a sense, have had a 'head start' on those that haven't, it may be a pretty tall order to open by next Sunday. Certainly in my church, which has a far simpler building than many Anglican ones, we are trying to think through the issues that must be dealt with before we can reopen (whenever that may be!), but this is difficult when we don't exactly know what the guidelines, either for Wales or the UK, will say.
ReplyDeleteThe Government's advice/rules has now been published (not applicable in Wales of course though I'd expect something similar): https://tinyurl.com/yahsygss
DeleteAncient Briton. Do not forget who delivered double standards here.Or are we now gagged from reminding ourselves? What a tangled web we weave.
ReplyDeleteSolomon Morgan
A rumour circulates hereabouts - north-east Wales - that certain Anglican dioceses in the province of York have decided to make significant numbers of their unbeneficed clergy redundant - the trigger said to be a financial crisis anticipated in the aftermath of the convulsions arising from Covid-19 and the months of 'lock-down'.
ReplyDeleteMy first reaction was that the story sounded rather implausible, and probably suspect as regards authenticity in these distinctly febrile times. On the other hand the rumour came from an impeccably Anglican source. Anyone else heard of it?
This lengthy extract provides clarification and adds to Baptist Trainfan's comment below:
Deletefrom psephizo.com blog
At last week’s Diocesan Synod in Chelmsford Diocese, a paper was discussed which proposed a radical reduction of stipendiary clergy posts from 275 to 215 within the next 18 months, a reduction of 22%...Despite some of these positions already being vacant, this will almost certainly involve making actual clergy redundant, which I think must be unprecedented in the modern era...the proposals are potentially more radical; beyond the drop to 215 posts, the paper mentions the next move to 202, and that only 150 will be secure in the longer term—a potential 45% cut...What will be the parallel approach to senior clergy posts? I understand that the diocese has recently increased the number of archdeacons to seven, in order to support growing churches. But if clergy numbers in parishes are being cut, what reason is there to continue to keep non-parochial clergy posts? Why, for example, do we now have half the parish clergy that we did a hundred years ago—but twice the number of bishops?...A more personal question for those of us in the Northern Province of York relates to strategic leadership. Stephen Cottrell was bishop of Chelmsford since 2010, so has been overseeing the diocese for a whole decade. He will very soon be inducted as Archbishop of York. We might now be wondering whether this approach—cutting clergy to address budget deficits—will under his leadership become a more widespread strategy. If so, I don’t think that is a very hopeful scenario....At the moment, this is a decision being made by one diocese. And yet there are at least ten others who are, I understand, facing major deficits. The structural problems and strategic challenges were already there, and have been gathering momentum over the last five years. But all these have been rapidly accelerated by the pandemic of Covid-19 and the impact of the lockdown...If this is the wider response of other dioceses (from conversations, it appears that at least a quarter are now actively considering clergy redundancies) it is hard to see how all the elements of the strategies for growth in the Church of England can remain intact.
And a commenter observed:
This should not be news for anyone in Chelmsford diocese. One of the first things that Bishop Stephen did, 10 years ago when he arrived from Reading, was to ask us all to plan for the halving of stipendiary clergy by 2025, which is not far away. Now he has the chance to do the same thing in the national church, as one of his first tasks as ++Ebor is to undertake a complete strategic review.
However, as usual, the loudest silence comes from the bench of bishops. Having attained the status of Managing Director of their diocese, they now find the company failing beneath their feet. Worse than that, they find that the sales and marketing department has been neglected for so many years that it almost doesn’t exist. Even worse, there are many people in the company who appear to be unclear about what product it sells. I’m sorry to use a commercial simile to describe all this, but that is what the C of E has come down to – is it viable financially? And just like any company that asks itself the same question before declaring itself insolvent, leadership is necessary, leadership that has spent too many years managing decline.
and another commented:
Never mind the small detail of the wheels apparently falling off the entire Church of England; our visionary bishops have saved the day by introducing baptismal services to celebrate gender transition.
Cymraes yn Lloegr
Anglican provinces will doubtless do whatever they decide to do; these days, and indeed for rather a long time now, it's no longer any of my business.
DeleteBut it does strike me as droll that while local clergy numbers may be set to be reduced, the number of bishops somehow remains the same and archdeacons seem to proliferate. Is the Anglican Communion now merely a career structure for senior clergymen?
Certainly Chelmsford Diocese (some miles south of York!) is cutting stipendiary posts: https://www.chelmsford.anglican.org/uploads-new/pages/05_An_approach_to_reducing_stipendiary_numbers.pdf
ReplyDeleteThanks for the link, which I've finally got round to reading! It leaves me with the impression that while the strategy descrribed might have been accelerated by the events of the last few months, it has probably been mulled over in some diocesan circles for rather longer.
DeleteYou may well be right. Prior to coming here (2017) I was in Suffolk, and I know that the Diocese had been pursuing a radical pruning of posts, which caused some pain. I don't know if any clergy in parochial ministry were pruned or combined, but several diocesan posts were. My understanding - which may be wrong - is that the incoming bishop (2015) had been told to make cuts, and that he brought in a "hatchet man" to do so. It was an unsettling time.
DeleteDunno about financial rumours John but I sincerely hope that Justin Welby remembered to take some HRT tablets before surrounding himself with that ocean of women of a certain age!The photograph certainly has me coming out in hot flushes and night sweats.
ReplyDeleteAt least these ordinations gave you something to feel aggrieved by - none of you would have been present had they been open to the public, so what are you moaning on about. Hardly any of you even attend church because it's no longer in your making. If I were the Archbishop I'd simply ignore your emails and letters also. Get a life!
ReplyDeleteMy word Pilgrimprogress, is St David's checking radiation or ordination levels?
DeleteEnforcer
What a silly post from pilgrimprogress. I've now heard that the police are interested in this as it was an illegal gathering, at least 12 people from different households meeting inside and Churches are only supposed to be open for PRIVATE PRAYER . Another wag has called it The Cummings Ordinations.
ReplyDeleteInsightful and perceptive analysis Pilgrims Progress. Da iawn a dal ati. Much pretense of possessing virtues on here - beliefs, principles, etc., but little by the way of substance. Shake of the dust brother. Most serious pundits have. Same 7 or 8 commentators now. A very sad group. Waldo.
ReplyDeleteThe Abergwili ordination photo suggests a new liturgical practice: bishops wearing their amice across the mouth rather than round the neck.
ReplyDeleteDoes it symbolize an end to ex cathedra pronouncements? ;-)
You have to admire the (women) Bishops - they didn't allow the pandemic to get in the way of ordination and found creative and safe ways to ordain priests and deacons into the church of God. What an encouraging sign that is. And to suggest that the police are at all interested is nothing but salacious gossip (the bread and butter of this blog, granted).
ReplyDeleteI can only say that in at least 1 CofE diocese, ordinands have been licensed (remotely!) as lay ministers, and will be duly ordained as deacons when public worship becomes possible - seems the sensible, theological and appropriate way to go! (NotGone Yet)
ReplyDeleteYes a number of C of E dioceses have done this but the candidates will have to wait several more months before they are deaconed which is abominable and treats their vocation with contempt. I applaud the Church in Wales for doing the deaconings. Some of the newly minted lay ministers in England will be doing nothing for a while because their churches remain locked as a number of stipendiary clergy intend to remain exclusively on Facebook, having abandoned collective worship and their congregations in mid March. For those who enjoy worship on Facebook - how do you baptise, or conduct weddings or share communion on Facebook. Collective worship in one place is Biblical. Clergy who stay on Facebook when they could be in church are evil in my opinion.
DeleteLyn
Methinks Mr P Progress needs to understand the definition of salacious!
ReplyDeleteThe question I have to ask in all this - as so often - is this: Is God as bothered by "proper procedure" as we often are? I suspect He isn't. Does a Bishop's hands really have to touch an ordinand's head for grace to flow and the ordina tion to "take"? Surely not. Isn't the ritual more about declaring God's invisible actions in a form which is visible to us humans? I think it is.
ReplyDeleteYou instance one of the differences between the catholic and the reformed views. Perhaps the best brief summary of the catholic view - at least that I came across - was 'God's grace isn't bound by the sacraments, but we (i.e. the Church) are'.
DeleteBased on the words of Christ in John 14:16-7: 'I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever — the Spirit of truth. ... You know him, for he lives with you and will be in you'. And on the notion that sacraments aren't mere 'nuda signa' - bare signs - as Zwingli taught, but that they effect what they signify.
The Church, as the Spirit-filled community, determined certain essential actions - in the case of ordination, the imposition of the bishop's hands - as the locus of the sacramental action, and that was accepted universally - east and west alike - and indeed for centuries exclusively. The argument is that this unanimity is as near as we can hope to get to an assurance that this is God's will.
Whereas departure from it suggests that anything goes. Several posters on several topics on these threads have emphasized the importance for them of 'certainty' when it comes to the sacraments. This is what they have in mind.
Thank you. As I've gone on I've moved away from the "bare signs" position somewhat, but not as far the full "catholic" one. I can understand the need for continuity - if nothing else it provides some security in a world where little seems secure. But at what point do circumstances or "force majeur" have to take precedence?
DeleteFair question - recalls the moral theology we did when I was in university. We looked at the the way that we make decisions. One possible rule of thumb was the maxim 'In dubio, pars tutior sequenda est' - 'When in doubt, follow the safest course'. But in most human situations that would be quite over the top.
DeleteTo take a couple of obvious examples: if I need to cross a busy country main road with no speed limit lacking any central pedestrian refuge. the 'safest course' is probably not to try it. Or maybe trek a mile to the nearest roundabout/traffic lights to cross more safely, adding an extra two miles to my journey. So I don't do it; I bide my time time, await a gap in the traffic, and at the right moment run for it!
Or I read that one in every three marriages ends up in divorce, with risk of the acrimony and bitterness which often accompanies marriage breakdown. If I followed 'the safest course' I decide I'd be wiser to refrain from commit myself to an intimate relationship! And so I decline to run the risk of love and a fulfilling shared life as the hazards look too high.
However wise it might look in abstract, 'tutiorism' doesn't work in everyday decision-making. But not so when it comes to the Church's sacraments, where certainty arguably has a greater priority than in other situations. In crossing a busy main road or in embarking upon marriage, we have more to go on: we can apply experience and common sense. But in judging whether a sacrament is 'kosher' (a cheeky use of that term!), common sense and experience have less value, because we're trying to assess 'things unseen'. And intrinsically, from the human perspective, unseeable.
Which is why certainty - or as much of it as we can hope for in this world - becomes much more significant, and 'in dubio, pars tutior sequenda est' comes more into its own. How do I KNOW, as far as I can know such things, that a particular sacrament does effect what it signifies? Only by carefully doing what the Church, the Spirit-filled and -inspired community, has set forth.
But even here there are limits. You've reminded me of a conversation which I had with with a fellow theology undergraduate many years ago. 'Imagine', he said, 'that a group of committed Christians on a flight to some remote place had survived a crash - akin to 'Lord of the Flies' or even 'Robinson Crusoe'!
After they'd adjusted to their situation, discovered that they were on an uninhabited island which did, with some difficulty, provide them with the necessities to ensure their survival, and begun to suspect that no one appeared to know where they were or was making effective attempts to find them, realization dawned that they might have to hang on in there for an uncertain but rather protracted length of time.
At which point realization also dawned that, since there was no priest in their company, they couldn't share the Eucharist or, for that matter, receive any other sacramental ministries. Did I think, he asked, that they could reasonably, prayerfully and legitimately choose one of their number to be their priest - even though there was no bishop to ordain him?
It wasn't a scenario that had ever occurred to me, but I said that in those circumstances I thought they could - though I wondered how, in the absence of any capacity to produce bread and wine, they could celebrate the Eucharist! As my friend was a definite Anglican Catholic, I thought he would demur. But not so - he said thst this was his conclusion too.
So here - if you accept the thesis - 'in dubio, pars tutior sequenda est' can be suspended in extremis; Christians need the Eucharist and that in exceptional and unique circumstances, when 'the safest course' is entirely unavailable, it's legitimate for Christians to think, snd to decide, outside the customary 'box'.
I can think of another, more pragmatic, instance of the same principle, but for now I'll leave you with this one!
Thank you. You will realise, of course, that our polity on the celebration of Eucharist (or Communion/Lord's Supper, which would be more usual terms for us) is not contingent on having an ordained Minister to preside. I remember at theological college being posed the question: "You are the Church Secretary. On Saturday evening you hear that the Minister, due to preside at Communion on the morrow, has gone down sick. Is the correct response to (a) phone around other Ministers in the area who have never been to your church, to see if one of them can preside; or (b) ask around the Diaconate to see if one of them can preside?" Obviously the question is artificial as it says nothing about other elements of the service; but the correct Baptist answer (different I think from the Methodist or the URC one, although there are exceptions in the latter case) would be to go ahead with a respected and trusted lay leader from one's own church rather than calling in an unknown ordained Minister.
DeleteOn a different but related tack, I would wonder if the churches which are keenest to get back to communal worship are those who place the highest emphasis on the Eucharist, while those for whom it is less central can afford to continue "virtual" worship for a little bit longer as they are not feeling "sacramentally hungry" in quite the same way?
Yes, I am aware of it. And in my day that was a polity shared - at least in principle if not, given the Church's discipline, in practice - by Anglican conservative evangelicals. I remember reading that 'lay presidency' was regularly on the agenda at the annual Islington Clerical Conference of Anglican conservative evangelical clergy in the British Isles. As it recurred as an agenda item over many years I presume it was never back then resolved to their satisfaction!
DeleteMy guess is that your speculation in your second paragraph is probably correct. Reformed corporate worship is, on the whole, intrinsically more 'cerebral' than is the case in the - more 'material! - catholic tradition, and thus probably copes with 'virtual' worship rather better. Except, of course, that the 'fellowship' which protestantism has always prized is significantly impoverished when the worship's on-line.
On a related topic, I've always wondered if the abrupt shift in worship style which came in with the second prayer book in 1552 lay behind the calamitous fall-off in church attendance in many remoter rural areas which is reported by many surviving bishops' and archdeacons' visitation returns during the three or four decades following its introduction. It does seem possible that more educated urbanites adapted better to the 'new religion' than illiterate rural peasants whose devotion had been grounded in the visual, in symbolism, colour, icon and liturgical drama, and who found that the new religion's overwhelming emphasis on sober reading and exposition of the word went over their heads. So - despite a pretty ineffective attempt to enforce attendance by a regime of fines - they drifted away.
Two deacons from the Diocese of Swansea & Brecon being done behind closed doors in Cardiff on Saturday according to their Deanery Facebook page
ReplyDeleteCofE advice is that ordinations are public events and should only take place when churches and cathedrals are again open for public worship … if agreed procedure is not followed here, then why not lay presidency? Does anything go? I guess how this is seen goes some way to explaining why we have different denominations! If you can't agree with 'order', then you can easily find another 'church' home. I suppose the nub is whether the CinW has actually moved AWAY from 'Anglican order' with regard to ordinations, and whether it is legitimate to do this. (NotGoneYet)
ReplyDeleteGodly order disappeared from the Church in Wales as soon as --Darth Insidious took over and has been in terminal decline since. The swamp and the stench grow and the likes of PilgrimProgress wallow in it with the gay cabal and the coven.
DeleteWell - the ordination appears to have taken place, broadcast on YouTube with two ordinands, the Archbishop, a further two Priests all indoors, liturgy spoken, Eucharist celebrated and hands laid on. Can other churches have such services and close contact?
ReplyDeleteYou touch on a point, AB, in your blog where you link ordination and marriage. For a 'legal' ordination to take place, surely the "si quis" has to be read in the candidate's home church prior to ordination, just as in the main, banns have to be called for weddings. Since churches have been closed, no si quis could have been called, which in itself calls into question the legality of the ordination. That ordination is the action of the whole Church, undertaken on its behalf by the Bishop, excluding the Body of Christ from this pivotal moment, means that nobody can assent to or object to the ordination. If I were one of the current group of candidates, I would hate to have that uncertainty about my ordination hanging over my head. Suppose one of these candidates were to become a bishop in due course. Someone could argue that their episcopacy is invalid, simply because their deaconing was not canonically undertaken.
ReplyDeleteSeymour