on this Feast of Our Lady's Nativity, that, despite everything, there is truth and beauty in the world ...
Rachmaninov: Sonata for Cello and Piano 3rd Movement - played by Kathryn Price, cello, & Douglas Ashcraft, piano. Recorded at the Jacqueline du Pre Hall, Saint Hilda's College, Oxford.
Monday, 8 September 2014
Thursday, 4 September 2014
From out of chaos - a couple of good stories
Despite the general air of decline - or even worse, numerical and doctrinal collapse (not unrelated) - here are a few encouraging contemporary Anglican developments:
Firstly, from the Church in Wales - where the future for orthodoxy looks particularly bleak - the setting up of the Benedictine- inspired Holywell Community in Abergavenny [here and here]
Kudos to Fr Mark Soady and his parish.
And secondly, the Archbishop of Canterbury is setting up the Community of St Anselm specifically for young people to experience 'prayer, study, practical service and community life.'
All right, these communities have temporary vows and a somewhat looser interpretation of Benedictine community than is traditional (and in the case of the Lambeth experiment we need to be more than a little wary of the liberal jargon - "through these disciplines, they will also be immersed in the modern challenges of the global 21st century church...") but - in very dark days indeed - in these very small beginnings may there be a tiny glimmer of hope? The Lord moves in mysterious ways ...
Firstly, from the Church in Wales - where the future for orthodoxy looks particularly bleak - the setting up of the Benedictine- inspired Holywell Community in Abergavenny [here and here]
Kudos to Fr Mark Soady and his parish.
And secondly, the Archbishop of Canterbury is setting up the Community of St Anselm specifically for young people to experience 'prayer, study, practical service and community life.'
All right, these communities have temporary vows and a somewhat looser interpretation of Benedictine community than is traditional (and in the case of the Lambeth experiment we need to be more than a little wary of the liberal jargon - "through these disciplines, they will also be immersed in the modern challenges of the global 21st century church...") but - in very dark days indeed - in these very small beginnings may there be a tiny glimmer of hope? The Lord moves in mysterious ways ...
Tuesday, 2 September 2014
Catching up after the silly season
Although we could be tempted to think that, for us, the silly season is now a permanent and unseasonal reality ..
Anyway:
Fr John Hunwicke on the patrimony of Anglican Catholics, particularly as regards the questionable methods of 'modern' biblical scholarship and that elusive but immediately recognisable "Anglican, patristic, literary, Oxford tone." He should know ... [here]
The recent Ashya King story has raised some disturbing questions as to the integrity of the family in the face of the suffocating 'benevolence' of the modern liberal State. Not a few news reports ran with the underlying theme that this particular family was 'religious,' so inevitably both dangerously weird and automatically in the wrong ...
This is their MEP Daniel Hannan's reaction.
Sadly, priest and fellow blogger, Fr Mervyn Jennings SSC has died. May he rest in peace. He will be very much missed.
Cranmer has had a long series of posts in the last few weeks about the nature of Islam and its own inherent difficulties in combating the contemporary attraction of fundamentalism.
Peter Hitchens makes another plea for restraint and for more of a historical sense from the leaders of the West as regards the escalating situation in Ukraine. After the acres of print used up this year in analysis of the causes of the Great War, it is astonishing how we fail to see parallels or draw conclusions. One wonders how literate our politicians really are ....
And, a real silly season story - perhaps or perhaps not oblivious (when is self-deprecation ever really meant in the post-modern context?) to the log in his own eye, the novelist and ubiquitous media presence, the aptly named Will Self attacks George Orwell on the BBC as a 'literary mediocrity.' [here]
You would think he would be able to recognise that when he reads it ...
But one can't help feeling that Mr Self really hates Orwell, not for his prose style nor his disputable prescription for writing clearly and intelligibly, but for his very Englishness, in certain circles as desperately unfashionable in Orwell's day as it is now ....
Anyway:
Fr John Hunwicke on the patrimony of Anglican Catholics, particularly as regards the questionable methods of 'modern' biblical scholarship and that elusive but immediately recognisable "Anglican, patristic, literary, Oxford tone." He should know ... [here]
The recent Ashya King story has raised some disturbing questions as to the integrity of the family in the face of the suffocating 'benevolence' of the modern liberal State. Not a few news reports ran with the underlying theme that this particular family was 'religious,' so inevitably both dangerously weird and automatically in the wrong ...
This is their MEP Daniel Hannan's reaction.
Sadly, priest and fellow blogger, Fr Mervyn Jennings SSC has died. May he rest in peace. He will be very much missed.
Cranmer has had a long series of posts in the last few weeks about the nature of Islam and its own inherent difficulties in combating the contemporary attraction of fundamentalism.
Peter Hitchens makes another plea for restraint and for more of a historical sense from the leaders of the West as regards the escalating situation in Ukraine. After the acres of print used up this year in analysis of the causes of the Great War, it is astonishing how we fail to see parallels or draw conclusions. One wonders how literate our politicians really are ....
And, a real silly season story - perhaps or perhaps not oblivious (when is self-deprecation ever really meant in the post-modern context?) to the log in his own eye, the novelist and ubiquitous media presence, the aptly named Will Self attacks George Orwell on the BBC as a 'literary mediocrity.' [here]
You would think he would be able to recognise that when he reads it ...
But one can't help feeling that Mr Self really hates Orwell, not for his prose style nor his disputable prescription for writing clearly and intelligibly, but for his very Englishness, in certain circles as desperately unfashionable in Orwell's day as it is now ....
Monday, 1 September 2014
"The first Anglican woman bishop to preside and preach in a Welsh Cathedral."
Details can be found on the Diocese of St Asaph website [here]
There's an interesting piece of propaganda on the the same subject here
A 'threshold' has indeed been crossed ...
"Bishop Gayle was invited to the Cathedral by the Bishop of St Asaph, Dr Gregory Cameron, who will also attend the conference in Cardiff.
He says, “Women bishops have been a reality in the Anglican Communion, if not in Wales, for some time now. It is good to be able to welcome Bishop Gayle into our midst to lead our worship in this time of transition.”
And, on a related subject, rather than indulge in yet more pointless and wearying speculation, we will see exactly how many 'friends' traditionalists have on the Welsh Bench 'in this time of transition' when the long awaited (and inexplicably delayed) Code of Practice is presented at the Church in Wales' Governing Body when it meets in Lampeter on 17th and 18th September.
There's an interesting piece of propaganda on the the same subject here
A 'threshold' has indeed been crossed ...
"Bishop Gayle was invited to the Cathedral by the Bishop of St Asaph, Dr Gregory Cameron, who will also attend the conference in Cardiff.
He says, “Women bishops have been a reality in the Anglican Communion, if not in Wales, for some time now. It is good to be able to welcome Bishop Gayle into our midst to lead our worship in this time of transition.”
And, on a related subject, rather than indulge in yet more pointless and wearying speculation, we will see exactly how many 'friends' traditionalists have on the Welsh Bench 'in this time of transition' when the long awaited (and inexplicably delayed) Code of Practice is presented at the Church in Wales' Governing Body when it meets in Lampeter on 17th and 18th September.
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