Tuesday 27 July 2010

A parting shot

Back again, if only briefly. Can blogging become a compulsion?
This ('Persons of Harlech') is the last word on the theological hands-across-the-ocean love affair between the revisionist leaders of the Church in Wales and TEC - Christopher Johnson's take on it in the MCJ. Trenchant and absolutely true. This is how he ends:
“The gift of Anglicanism has always been to hold in tension, to hold in the same house, people with radically different understandings, because there is value in that whole spectrum.

“There is something good and blessed about that range of positions that we miss, that we lack, when some range of the tradition departs.”
The key words there, of course, are “value” and “good and blessed.” Allow me to translate that into English for you: as long as your pledge checks clear, you can hold any stupid, bigoted opinion you want to since you no longer have the power to influence TEO in any way whatsoever. Hey, silver is silver even if it has a swastika on it."
And a final word from me. Traditionalists (of all kinds) are almost always portrayed in our present culture as buttoned-up, intolerant purveyors of unprovable and arrogant certainties. Yet in the modern Anglican (Christian?) culture wars we are the hestitant ones. We are those who shy away from certainties which tie the hands and chain the minds of future generations.
Anglicanism has fallen apart purely and simply because the post-enlightenment certainties of the liberals are set in stone (handed down to them by the implacable deities of modernity) and outweigh each and every other consideration - the authority of Holy Scripture, apostolic tradition, sacramental certainty (not that that one plays particularly well to the protestant "all-age family worship"  generation.)
All the 'issues' upon which traditionalists and Catholics are hesitant, and believe we simply do not have the authority to impose irrevocably upon the Church, are the matters about which liberals allow no doubt whatsoever and are even prepared to misrepresent the past in order to inflict upon us and upon our children's children.
Sorry -  who are the arrogant ones?

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