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Kicking the Trads to the Curb
I’ve been out of pocket most of this past week for reasons I’ll explain later, but coming back to the blog there’s one topic I’d like to comment on: the Occupant of St. Peter’s see’s downgrading of the celebration of what we used to call the Tridentine Mass, or now TLM. This has been coming for some time and now we are here.
I’m going to skip most of the back and forth as to who is “really Catholic” in this situation and make one observation: those who are devoted to this form of the Sacred Mysteries are almost to a person seriously dedicated to the Church. It’s also worth observing that many of those who oppose them are basically “box checkers” and prefer the box checker church to the exclusion of all others. Evidently the Occupant feels the same way. It isn’t the first time: his Jesuit predecessors (with the connivance of Louis XIV) beat down the Jansenists, and in nearer times the Charismatics have suffered the same fate.
The Roman Catholic Church is a large institution, ethnically and socio-economically diverse in a way that most non-Catholic churches can only envy. It’s hard to make a case that a few TLM preferring Catholics are a real threat to the unity and integrity of Roman Catholicism: indeed, as this article notes, “It is more like amputating a finger to treat a hangnail than it is anything else.” Nobody votes for the leadership in a meaningful way, so the threat of democracy, the inchoate fear of our own secular elites, is not on the table.
But the Occupant and those of like mind to him are threatened by enthusiasm that isn’t exactly their own. They prefer a church where, to use Cardinal Suenens’ quip, the laity know when to kneel, when to stand, and when to reach for their wallet, and that’s just about it. Such a church is sure to die, perhaps not in all places but in many. When institutional control is the main objective, however, institutional death is an assumed risk.
I am sure there are bishops out there who have enough sense to see this. But most, in North America at least, won’t, not in the long run and with the inevitable pressure from the Vatican and their own peers. The main beneficiaries of this will be the Society of St. Pius X (who is probably facing a rough ride of its own) and to a lesser extent the Anglo-Catholics.
Roman Catholicism’s distaste for serious enthusiasm amongst its faithful is the single most distasteful thing I find about the Church, and in my opinion has caused much of the bleed of parishioners the Church has experienced over the last half century. But any church who cannot channel the dedication of the faithful to its mission will find itself with no faithful and in the end with no church.
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Some Advice for the ACNA on Sexual Scandal
The ACNA is in quite a pickle, especially it’s Diocese of the Upper Midwest, with its recent sexual assault scandal in Illinois. There have been many reactions to it; the one that has gotten most of the attention is the Diocese’s, where the bishop is now on leave.
Handling stuff like this isn’t for amateurs, and to show that I’d like to take a trip down memory lane on an other Anglican-Episcopal (in this case the latter) institution, the St. Andrew’s School in Boca Raton, Florida. It’s personal not only because I’m an alumnus but because I found myself a part of it. I’ve tried to cover it on this blog, so I’ll refer to stuff on this and another of my sites.
Let’s start in 2016, with this:
Although things really broke in the Spring–and Headmaster Peter Benedict resigned at the time–it’s still an ongoing business, as Interim Head of School Jim Byer discussed in an email to the alumni:
“At the same time, the start of this school year has been a difficult time for all of us at Saint Andrew’s, and I appreciate your interest and concern for what has happened here. Many of you are aware of the results of two independent investigations related to violations of faculty/student boundaries and inadequate policies and procedures to protect students, as well as the stories that have been reported in the local media.
“Please know that our school is committed to student safety, and I fully expect our community will be stronger and safer as the result of improvements in this regard. We have instituted mandatory child abuse annual training for all faculty and staff in accordance with Florida Department of Education training curriculum, we will hold accountable all who interact and engage with students on a daily basis, and we have engaged qualified, trained professionals to thoroughly examine and closely supervise the residential life program. I am also engaging an expert to oversee the restructuring of all aspects of risk in the school, to further safeguard the welfare of each and every student here.”At the time I stated that the school’s decision to “lawyer up” was a tacit admission of guilt. That’s not all the story: law firms which specialise in this kind of thing have extensive resources to investigate this kind of thing and to properly interact with victim and perpetrator alike. My first advice to the ACNA and the diocese is to engage the services of one or more of these kinds of firms. That’s what happened with the Ravi Zacharias situation; it’s ironic that the firm they chose was the same firm the people who acquired my family business in 1996 used.
About a month later I noted the following about another Episcopal boarding school scandal that was tangentially related to St. Andrew’s:
It’s interesting to note that, according to this, “(Headmaster) Zane terminated White in 1974 after he said White admitted ‘sexually abusing a sophomore boy and attempting to sexually abuse at least two and likely three others.’” The wheels of justice turn very slowly in this “enlightened” Episcopal Church, since someone was put on notice 42 years ago. It puts Episcopal Bishop Porter Taylor’s statement that White “…had been identified by former students of St. George’s School in Rhode Island as having engaged in sexual misconduct in the early 1970s while he served on the staff at that school” in a different light. He should have used the plaintiff attorney’s favourite phrase “by his own admission,” but he didn’t.
Back in Boca Raton, things ground on another two years, until this:
In late March we shared with you information regarding Bruce Presley, a former board member (1994 – 2000) and part-time instructor at Saint Andrew’s. As we mentioned in that communication, Mr. Presley allegedly engaged in inappropriate behavior while he was at the Lawrenceville School (New Jersey) in the 1970s, prior to his time at our school and unbeknownst to us until earlier this year…
As part of this process, however, we received an allegation of past sexual misconduct involving a former member of our faculty, Evans “Dutch” Meinecke. Mr. Meinecke taught at Saint Andrew’s from 1971 – 1983. He passed away in 2006.
Upon learning of this information, we reported the past incident in question to the proper authorities and initiated an internal review in accordance with our policies and procedures. We also enlisted the support of William Shepherd, a partner at the law firm of Holland & Knight, to further investigate these allegations and any other claims that might surface during the course of his investigation. The investigation found that Mr. Meinecke sexually abused a student while he was employed by our school. We have shared this same information with the schools at which Mr. Meinecke previously taught.
We are grateful that this former student had the courage to come forward. We, the entire Board of Trustees and the school community, are deeply sorry for the harm Mr. Meinecke has caused. We know that nothing can erase the actions of Mr. Meinecke, but we are committed to doing all that we can to support survivors impacted by sexual abuse while at our school…
Most importantly, we want all of you to know that we are here to help. Please do not hesitate to communicate with us directly if you have any questions or concerns. We also encourage you to be in touch with Susan Schorr, an investigator with the law firm of McLane Middleton, if you have any information, past or present, that you think may be of interest.With this the memory clicked, and I contacted Ms. Schorr, who in turn referred to me to Mr. Shepherd. The latter interviewed me re my incident with Mr. Meinecke. Both of them were professional and thorough in their interview and made the process as painless as could be possible. But at this point, as I noted in 2019:
I did manage to become SA’s first documented victim of sexual harassment at the hands (literally) of Evans “Dutch” Meinecke.
My only complaint is that, after Mr. Shepherd’s interview, the school didn’t do a simple follow-up contact until after some pestering. That’s very important with people who have come forward. Other than that the school’s handing of the situation was good.
The ACNA is a relatively new organisation and has a lot to learn about many things, and this is one of them. It took some time for St. Andrew’s to figure it out. My advise to the ACNA is to follow St. Andrew’s lead and engage legal counsel (albeit expensive) to assess its risks, interact with victim, perpetrator and witness alike, and to present as clear a picture as possible to all parties and stakeholders. And don’t forget the follow-up, even if you need to deputise someone to do the job.
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Is Meaningful Lay Involvement in the Church That Bad?
Every now and then I run across an article that has me saying to myself, “What is going on here?” One such piece is Ben Jeffries’ Abiding with Error in the ACNA. There’s a great deal to unpack here, but I’m going to try to focus on one thing: his idea that easing the laity out of the meaningful life of the church is a plus.
Let’s start with a liturgical issue, he notes the following:
1907 — General Convention loosed the ancient discipline that made ordination a required qualification for preaching a sermon in the midst of a liturgy.
Back in the Old Country, the 1662 BCP had provision for lay people to celebrate Morning Prayer. With that is the implication that the lay person doing this might say something outside of the liturgy. That never quite made it into the American prayer books, but since the 1662 book has a special place in the life of Anglicanism, that should not be discounted or classified as a “wound.”
Of course I’ll bet that Jeffries may be thinking that such a provision was the “camel’s nose in the tent” for something like lay presidency, which the ACNA’s allies in Sydney have advocated. In turn that assumes that the Holy Communion is the normative/only service on Sunday. He should be informed that it’s not just Anglo-Catholics who advocated for that: liturgical movement types such as William Palmer Ladd did the same thing. And I’m also sure that there are many in the more traditional parts of the ACNA who feel that the results of the liturgical movement are a wound in a league of their own.
There are some (wounds) that were inflicted while we were still a part of The Episcopal Church, which would have been fatal to us had they not been treated and healed at our founding, e.g. the consecration of women as bishops, the consecration of openly gay persons as bishops, or the laity having authoritative voice in council on matters of faith, etc.
Let’s look at the last one: easing the laity out of their “authoritative voice.” The first thing that statement assumes is that the laity were responsible for the rot that engulfed the Episcopal Church. I rather doubt that; the vast majority of lay people had neither the inclination nor the education to take on such a task. The rot in the Episcopal Church started in the seminaries with the introduction of Higher Criticism of the Bible, going back to the latter part of the nineteenth century. While that isn’t as significant as it is for, say, the Baptists, it’s a start. The Episcopal Church was led down the path of its own destruction by its own ministers, and Jeffries would do well to acknowledge that.
I’ve spent most of my life in churches where the ministers pretty much ruled the roost, and the lack of accountability that results from that can have some unpleasant results, such as we’ve seen in the Roman Catholic Church with Bishop Stika in Knoxville, to say nothing about my own church. Concerning the last, I’d like to repeat an observation I made:
The second is that (with exceptions) our ministers and academics alike have a “trade union” mentality, that thinking and speaking/preaching of the deeper things of God is “bargaining unit” work and that the laity (“scabs” in union terminology) don’t have any business delving into this kind of thing on any level. Sometimes it’s framed as a replication of Roman Catholicism’s view of the priesthood, but that’s too high of a view of what’s going on.
I definitely get a strong whiff of the trade union mentality in Jeffries’ piece.
As far as the other issues he deals with, I’d like to go back to a piece I did in 2008 when the ACNA was in the process of its formation:
There are several items that tell me that Anglicans better be in for the long haul on this one:
The difficult process of recognition, as Conger outlines. That speaks for itself.
I don’t see any Archbishop of Canterbury, either the present occupant or any successor that a British Government might suffer, recognising this province. They can talk about the ACC or the Primates all they want, but unless the Archbishop of Canterbury gives the high sign, real entry into the Anglican Communion is impossible.
The issue of women’s ordination (WO.) There’s simply no consensus on this issue, irrespective of which side you take. That goes to the heart of the apostolic succession issue, which is key for a proper Anglican church.
The resolution of the seceding dioceses, which will involve the U.S. court system.
The real possibility that our government, in its desire to be politically correct and its need for revenue, will begin revoking tax-exempt status for churches that do not embrace homosexuality. That will doubtless be coupled with a legal assault based on anti-discrimination legislation and all of the other legal tools I outlined in my 2007 piece Waiting for the Cops to Show Up.
The many “wounds” that Jeffries describes were and are not bugs in the ACNA: they’re features, there from the start. That’s especially true with WO. Either he was and is naive about the reality of, say, WO in the ACNA or he and people like him went into it with the idea that they would be able to beat it into submission.
Either way, I think it’s safe to say that Jeffries would be better off in a Continuing church from a doctrinal and practical standpoint.
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An Anniversary, An Announcement and Looking Ahead
Today is an anniversary I’ve commemorated before: it’s the anniversary this web site/blog (take your pick) got its start as the Wave Equation Page for Piling. It’s been twenty-four years since I put the first pages on GeoCities, and it’s been going (with spin-offs) ever since. It’s time for a little looking back, and some […]
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Sifting Through That Which Remains
A memorable quote from Anne Carlson Kennedy on the death of her own grandfather: It’s only when you grow up and start trying to assemble bits of information together about the people who have put you in the car, and taken you out again, and lifted you up onto a stack of books on a […]
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Anglican Tidbit: Benedictus es, Domine
This tidbit was an old favourite of mine back home. First, the canticle itself, from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer:
It was introduced with the 1928 BCP. Before that (and in the 1662 BCP) you only had two choices between the First and Second Lessons of Morning Prayer:
- Te Deum Laudamus, that magnificent hymn that many French martyrs sang to their beheading during the French Revolution. However, like the Gloria in Excelsis, it’s notoriously difficult.
- Benedicte, Omnia Opera, the deuterocanonical/apocryphal (take your pick) song of Shadrach, Mishach and Abed-Nego in Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace. If that’s what they sang in the furnace, there’s no doubt that they had divine asbestos in their clothing: it’s very, very long.
With the Benedictus es, Domine, a shorter piece between the lessons was possible, and our youth choir took advantage of that.
Below is an actual proper Anglican performance of same, at St. John’s Church in Detroit.
It shares a common defect with many proper Anglican performances: the organ, the sole instrument allowed, gets progressively louder, drowning out the choir and making it impossible for the congregation to sing along. This was a fault with much of the worship I grew up with. Unfortunately, loud organs wouldn’t end with my years as an Episcopalian, and now loud organs are replaced with loud praise and worship teams, with the same result: inhibiting the congregation’s desire and ability to join in the worship.
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Elevations on the effects which the Incarnate Word produces on men immediately after his Incarnation
These elevations concern Mary’s visitation to her cousin Elizabeth, who was pregnant with John the Baptist. It includes an exposition of Mary’s canticle the Magnificat, shown below. The elevations are as follows: Elevations on the effects which the Incarnate Word produces on men immediately after his Incarnation: 1, Mary goes to visit Saint Elizabeth. Elevations on […]
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The Reformed vs. Athanasian/Nicene Approach to God
An interesting comparison by Bobby Grow:
Scholastic Reformed theologians claim to be in line with Nicene theology proper. But when you read scholastic Reformed theology, particularly their confessions, what becomes immediately apparent is that scholastic Reformed theology operates out of the apophatic ‘negative’ and/or speculative tradition for thinking a doctrine of God (and Christ); whereas Nicene theology thinks from cataphatic ‘positive’ and/or revealed theology for thinking God. By way of prolegomena or theological methodology this places Niceno-Constantinopolitano theology at loggerheads with something like we see in the scholastically Reformed Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF).
First, the Reformed theologians aren’t the only ones working in an apophatic tradition. Moses Maimonides did likewise, and his contribution is certainly valued by Aquinas and myself.
Second, I am inclined to think that Grow is right on this point. As frequent visitors to this site will attest, I’m not much on Reformed theology in any form, and as the years pass I get progressively sourer on the subject. Pieces like this only justify my antipathy.
Third, I think it’s fair to say that Scholastic theology, of which I am an enthusiastic student, started to go downhill after Aquinas, which is the opposite of the narrative that, say, Francis Schaffer was so enamoured with. The idea of a “Reformed Scholasticism” is somewhere between an oxymoron and a sign of the decline that began years before Calvin and Luther.
Fourth, I wonder if this apophatic aspect of Reformed scholasticism made it easy for the Sydney Anglicans to come up with their lame idea of functional subordination in the Trinity without essential subordination. That’s just speculation on my part.
The one part I’m not so sure about is this:
But this is to our point: to think God from speculative philosophical notions, as the Arians and Homoiousions did, only leads to unbiblical conclusions, and thus grammar about who God is; indeed, it thinks of God in terms of whatness rather than whoness as a first-step. Athanasius, and the Nicene theology he helped develop, repudiated thinking God from Hellenic frames of reference, and instead allowed God’s Self-revelation in the Son, Jesus Christ, to shape the way he, and the other Nicenes, thought God.
As I’ve noted elsewhere, the whole Arian controversy ran in the context of Greek philosophy. Athanasius and his homoousion colleagues simply did a better job aligning it with the Scriptures. It was ultimately beyond the ken of Greek philosophy to explain essential subordination in the triune Godhead, but I think that problem can be solved.
Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
Positive Infinity 