tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2911068236939343613.post5225577376632444561..comments2023-08-24T16:41:19.306+01:00Comments on Let nothing you dismay: Do we need a distinctive “Anglican” liturgy?Michael Gollop http://www.blogger.com/profile/00076220518083389674noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2911068236939343613.post-32897358158378999872009-07-24T10:23:03.558+01:002009-07-24T10:23:03.558+01:00Yes, it's a fascinating parallel and a communi...Yes, it's a fascinating parallel and a community which produced the novelist Shusako Endo. The differences,too,between their situation and ours also give much food for thought in that mainstream English culture itself (unlike the Japanese) in its post reformation, Anglican incarnation at least was schizophrenic to say the least, despite the historical overlay of popular protestantism. Haigh's comment "haunted by its Catholic past" seems the most apposite, although the Church of England is still - even now - haunted and troubled by the survival of Catholicism in its midst.Michael Gollop https://www.blogger.com/profile/00076220518083389674noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2911068236939343613.post-57032190272771696612009-07-24T10:21:09.242+01:002009-07-24T10:21:09.242+01:00This comment has been removed by the author.Michael Gollop https://www.blogger.com/profile/00076220518083389674noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2911068236939343613.post-9161840055742933972009-07-24T05:56:23.850+01:002009-07-24T05:56:23.850+01:00Now I understand why Japan's kakure kirishitan...Now I understand why Japan's <i>kakure kirishitan</i> fascinate me: in a way they parallel the Anglo-Catholic experience. <br /><br />They were 'hidden Christians' (what the Japanese means), originally Catholic converts who survived a wave of persecution (the emperor turned on the European traders and missionaries) and, cut off from the church including religious instruction for at least 200 years, maintained the faith as best they could. (They had no clergy.) When Japan was opened to the West again at American gunpoint (by ship) in the 1800s and European Catholic missionaries came back, the missionaries found these people and a number came back to the church. I think their descendants are the nucleus of Japan's tiny Roman Catholic minority today. <br /><br />But there were those who didn't return; they'd forgotten what their crosses, images of Mary and Latin prayers they said phonetically by rote really mean. These remaining <i>kakure kirishitan</i> are almost extinct but still around; they really believe much as their fellow Japanese do (venerating ancestors and nature; Buddhist philosophy). Among their interesting practices are having a Buddhist priest do their funerals then having their own crypto-Catholic ones immediately afterwards.<br /><br />It doesn't line up perfectly but you can see things mirrored. Of course the <i>kakure kirishitan</i> didn't have to deal with a mother church where many of its members had slunk off and joined the enemy (liberal Protestant wannabes), the post-conciliar RC experience. But those who remain outside remind me of the Affirming Catholics in the C of E and high-church Episcopalians today, a sort of ritualist congregationalism cut off from the mother church where the substance of the teaching has been lost or spoilt.<br /><br />Anyway my answer to your question is in the com-box under Fr Hunwicke's entry on the subject.Ecgberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06354592772973677609noreply@blogger.com