Tuesday 31 December 2013

The last day

of  2013 at least .....

But today is also the last day for the reception of written submissions on the type of provision which might be included by the Church in Wales' Bench of Bishops in its planned Code of Practice. If anyone concerned hasn't sent in a submission, now would be the time to do it by email. The details are here 
Nor should we forget to pray for the bishops themselves in this process .... we know their inclinations and there will also be those who will lobby them mercilessly from a 'revisionist' direction to reduce any provision to a bare and unacceptable minimum.

Here is an eloquent video 'submission' made by the Parishes of St German with Saint Saviour in Cardiff - it makes its point very well indeed....



On the subject of endings, there's an interesting report here  from a few weeks ago on Pope Francis' reflections on R.H. Benson's dystopian and apocalyptic  novel Lord of the World : 'adolescent progressivism' is found in more places than one and, as someone famously said (or notoriously, depending on your point of view ) it is the enemy within we should fear the most and which is much more difficult to fight.  

So, to sum up 2013 as regards current trends both in Church and State? La trahison des clercs ..... encore ....
"... If a conservative order is indeed to return, we ought to know the tradition which is attached to it, so that we may rebuild society; if it is not to be restored, still we ought to understand conservative ideas so that we may rake from the ashes what scorched fragments of civilisation escape the conflagration of unchecked will and appetite" 
Russell Kirk: The Conservative Mind: from Burke to Eliot







6 comments:

  1. >>an eloquent video<<
    Just as it used to be in many other parishes before the coffee service took over as the principal celebration.
    Well done the Parishes of St German with Saint Saviour.

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  2. Lovely video, well put together and the message is clear. However, the fact is, the tradition which you so stoutly defend, was already lost when the Holy Order of the Church in wales was fractured by ordaining women priests.

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    1. Of course. Some might say that what we are engaged in is a desperate 'rearguard action' designed (mixed metaphor - apologies) to rescue some fragments from the burning building....
      And - and this won't be uncontroversial - I'm increasingly leaning to the view that the true fracture began when women were first ordained to the diaconate ....

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  3. Fr Edward Bryant SSC1 January 2014 at 10:42

    You are of course spot on as regards women deacons. It's not that it was wrong in principle - it wasn't - it was simply that, for those who place the blame for all the ills of modern society at the door of Thomas the Tank Engine and his hapless author, who committed the double crime of being a man and one of that dying breed, a male priest, this was never going to be enough.

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    1. Yes, I agree with you about the consequences of making women deacons. I think I now go even further, though, in believing both that the decision in principle was itself based on the flimsiest of evidence from the patristic period and that admission to any of the orders of the three-fold sacred ministry should be clearly based on the continuing apostolic tradition.

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    2. 'Deaconesses,' of course, are a different matter ....

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