A few apologies & weekend links, and things

Important & developing news from Scotland about the Ordinariate from Bishop Edwin, writing on the Anglo-Catholic here.
 In fact I agree with him entirely about the Ordinariate (only that, sometimes, "slowly slowly catchee monkey") and  my spectacular & extremely intemperate over-reaction a couple of days ago was aimed elsewhere - but sincere apologies to everyone. Perhaps I'm not coping too well with uncertainty.

And if you needed to be reminded of the importance of the Ordinariates, here's part of a communication from our local C in W diocesan 'Inclusive Church' group:
 "We'll be having our next "Inclusive Church" meeting on Tuesday 2 November at my place (address below). We agreed at our last get-together that the theme this time would be "Naming God".
Some of us may find that familiar ways of addressing God (for instance in hymns, liturgy, prayers etc) use language that does not always encompass everything we know and experience. Are there alternative images and words that avoid inappropriate assumptions, broaden our understanding and deepen our spiritual life? Please come along and share your views over a cup of tea!"
 I do have some ideas, at this moment all of them rather blasphemous.

On a similar theme, this is from 'Virtue Online':
"In the ongoing world of TEC political correctness, VOL has learned the following. For future reference, please know that the Presiding Bishop has made it clear that she does not care for the title "Mrs." as she, like many women, does not consider herself an appendage of her husband. If a similar form of address is needed, she commends the use of "Ms."
Whatever. At least it's more theologically accurate than "Bishop."


A helpful post by Fr Sean Finnegan on his blog Valle Adurni here  aimed at those worried by the reception they may receive on the other side of the Tiber. It's also now available on the Anglo-Catholic 
He also reports news about the forthcoming launch of the Ordinariates in England and Wales

A theologian of convergence? More here on Stanley Hauerwas via La Nouvelle Theologie
"The last thing in the world I'd want is a personal relationship with God. Our relationship with God is mediated. Without the church we know not God. No Israel, No God, Know Church, Know Jesus. Our faith is a mediated faith with people formed through word and sacrament. So I'd never trust myself to have a personal relationship with God...."

I missed this first time around: Fr George Rutler wrinting on liturgical "experts" and those actually responsible for celebrating the liturgy. From First Things: read it all here
Just two excerpts:
"I do know that if I followed the guidelines of one liturgical commission, suggesting that I greet each penitent at the church doors with an open Gospel book and then lead a procession to a reconciliation room which looks more like an occasion of sin than a shrine for its absolution............."

 "But none of this matches the torture of the trans-gendered RNAB which manages to neuter every creature except Satan who remains male. Our Lord sometimes sounds like the Prince of Wales: “What profit is there for one to gain the whole world …?” and other times like a bored anthropologist: “Two people went up to the temple to pray….” But then the inevitable pronouns kick in and we find out that even after the liturgical gelding, these were men..........."

The end of the Llandaffchester Chronicles? Here  Sad -  they'll be missed -  a gleam of mischievous light in a darkling world. If we can take this at face value, someone urgently needs a sense of humour transplant.
The latest oxymoron: 'Anglican tolerance.' I wonder who will be next?
Anyway, having very nearly become one, I can - just about - get away with reproducing this (admittedly very elderly) joke from America about lawyers - apologies in advance to friends in the legal profession - but this is aimed particularly for those in the service of the illiberalism of the ecclesiastical 'liberals'- in whatever part of the world they are found.
"The National Institute of Health (NIH) announced last week that they were going to start using lawyers instead of rats in their laboratory experiments. Naturally, the American Bar Association was outraged and filed a suit. Yet, the NIH presented some very good reasons for the switch.
1. The lab assistants were becoming very attached to their little rats. This emotional involvement was interfering with the research being conducted. No such attachment could form for a lawyer.
2. Lawyers breed faster and are in much greater supply.
3. Lawyers are much cheaper to care for, and the humanitarian societies won't jump all over you no matter what you do to them.
4. There are some things even a rat won't do."

Something I should have realised, having been largely brought up in what was still, then, a mining area, and that is that St Lawrence is the patron saint of miners, something obviously not much talked about in a 1970s - 80s secular culture which was largely a cross-fertilisation of dying methodism, fossilised Labourite socialism and an Arthur Scargill (remember him?) brand of marxism. Still, the parish church (now recently closed) should have had a statue of St Lawrence...or even a window... or something.... So much for inculturation & Anglicanism's (lack of) identification with the working classes..
Here  he is (St Lawrence, not Arthur Scargill) on this link, complete with miner's hat and lamp

The photo (below) is from the Chappelle des Mineurs in Faymoreau