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The Scriptural BCP: Reclaiming the textual tradition with technology
Christians love text. Inheriting the enthusiasm of their Jewish forebears for the written word, Christians have left a blazing trail of text in their wake at every turn: sermons, commentaries, philosophical treatises, and liturgical documentation all have their part in the library. Text is powerful because it comes with triple strengths. Text endures; writing our…
The Scriptural BCP: Reclaiming the textual tradition with technology -
The “Reverends Pères Jesuites” Never Change
Pope Francis and most of the bishops are, to put it mildly, not generally seen as protagonists among these communities and networks. There is real danger that the pope’s actions will push such communities, either due to manufactured martyr-complexes, a genuine sense of alienation and betrayal, or a combination of the two, into more adversarial and combative stances vis-à-vis the rest of the church, the pope, and Vatican II. There are quite strong and troubling precedents for such a possibility in the papacy’s (mis-)handling of the Jansenist crisis with heavy-handed documents like Unigenitus.
I’ve related the present attack on the TLM with the Jansenist crisis, most recently in my piece Kicking the Trads to the Curb. But I’m not the only one to make the connection.
My discovery of the Jansenist controversy was a key in confirming my decision to leave Roman Catholicism for the last time; I had been through enough “mini-Jansenist” problems with the Charismatic Renewal. It’s interesting that the Church was able to “gum” the Charismatics into submission during the pontificate of John Paul II. My guess is that the trads will put up more of a fight like the Jansenists did. In the latter case the fight persisted until the century of the French Revolution, but in many ways the suppression of the Jansenists paved the way for that cataclysmic event.
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He Called Them a Rock and Said They Belonged: Bill Atwood Saves the ACNA Chaplaincy
In the recent kerfuffle over which Anglican province has oversight over the ACNA’s chaplaincy jurisdiction, Bishop Bill Atwood opined the following:
Sorting through the history of the relations between the Anglican Church in North America and the Church of Nigeria, we have discovered that a Canonical action remained unaddressed from several years back. Both the Anglican Church in North America and the Church of Nigeria have agreed on a way forward. There is no longer a question of the place of the Jurisdiction in the Anglican Church in North America. The Jurisdiction is fully integrated with the Anglican Church in North America, will continue to be, and we celebrate that.
So why, you ask, did I write the title the way I did? One thing that many Anglicans don’t know is that Bill Atwood is an accomplished musician, and his album 3:25 am (produced in the UK) is one of the gems of the “Jesus Music” era. My title is based on his opening track to the album, and you can listen to it (and the rest of the album too) below.
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Elevations on the Birth of the Holy Forerunner
In these elevations Bossuet expounds on the early life of John the Baptist. The elevations are as follows: Elevations on the Birth of the Holy …
Elevations on the Birth of the Holy Forerunner -
Aquinas in Anglican Thought
Thomas Aquinas—known for centuries within the Roman Catholic Church as the “Angelic Doctor” and the “Universal Doctor,” among other titles—has received increased attention from Protestants in recent years. 8,691 more words
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The Song of the Drunkards
My last formal, parish-bonding attempt to be a part of the Episcopal Church was in 1978, right after I moved to Chattanooga to work in the family business. I was discontented with Roman Catholicism, having crashed from the high of my college years and the problems surrounding the covenant community business. So the Episcopal Church seemed to be a good place to take a look. Although I had left in part over the liberalism, I was willing to give it a try again. My mother, in the last stages of her knock-down, drag-out divorce, passed up the opportunity to join a Continuing Church (she was too Baptistic for such an enterprise.)
The church I picked was St. Thaddeus Episcopal Church, at the intersection of Highway 153 and 58 Highway (how do you like the way we designate roads around here?) At the time its Rector was one John Livingston Janeway IV. There was one Sunday when the Psalm for the service contained the following verse:
They that sit in the gate speak against me: and the drunkards make songs upon me.
(Psalm 69:12)In his sermon he expressed the sentiment that he had never been the “song of the drunkards,” and thought the whole idea silly. I sat there uninspired by such handling of the Word of God. Not only that, I had never been the “song of the drunkards” either, but my interaction with same had taught me being on the butt end of their negative sentiments wasn’t a good thing, whether they set it to music or not. It’s worth noting that people don’t “sit in the gate” any more either, not in this country at least. What the verse needed was some cultural explanation, and that’s the point of this post.
Drinking songs are as old as drinking and music. During the “Jesus Music” era, some of what was served up (especially by the Roman Catholics) struck me as having a “drinking song” feel to it, something the folk group could do over beer and pizza after a successful Sunday evening Mass. Probably the best example of a drinking song that achieved long-lasting fame (with changes in the lyrics) is our National Anthem. The laid, high or drunk crowd that’s kneeling these days needs to think about that.
I come from a long time of serious drinkers who followed the custom of people educated in the Victorian era of setting things to poetry. I wonder sometimes how many or these (some of which are on this site) were done “three sheets to the wind.” At least one of them was set to music. (This custom persisted in Evangelical churches; I can remember our Sunday School superintendent reciting these before church in the mid-1980’s.)
So what happened to the “song of the drunkards?” Doubtless the same thing that killed a great deal of people-performed, sometimes improvised singing and playing: recorded music. Before World War I, if you wanted music in your home, you needed to be able to perform it with played instruments and vocals, as was the case in the tavern. After that the way we interact with music changed dramatically, probably not for the better.
Being the song of the drunkards, however, isn’t the only way you can end up on the wrong end. It’s a hard road being on the receiving end of an abusive drunk, be that abuse verbal, physical or both. That, as much as anything, may have clicked in me when Janeway expressed his sentiment about the above verse. They may not have the wit to make up (or adapt) songs any more, but the drunks have other methods at their disposal, and they’re not pretty.
Janeway ended up leaving full-time ministry, being an Interim Rector from time to time. After my own years of church work, I really can’t blame him for his departure. As for myself the restless urge to find better made me leave St. Thaddeus behind, ending up in the brutally educational experience that was First Baptist Church.
Today hard drinking is back with a vengeance. It’s a way to kill the pain of life while at the same time commiserate with drinking buddies, although its practitioners will find it as destructive as those who went before them. So be forewarned: in some Millennial or Gen Z watering hole, you too could end up being the song–or the trash talk–of the drunkards.
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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.
Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
Positive Infinity 