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redrosetea
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Welcome GKC…it’s nice to meet you
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GKC
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That;s good. I;ve been around ehre for about 8 years, IIRC. I’d hate to find out that I was about to be evicted.I see a big difference between you and SIA. And a big difference in what you both believe (I guess). Although both of you are Anglicans.
You said earlier- “Anglicans don’t excommunicate.”
He said this, “Finally, yes there are those churches in the AC which will excommunicate those who commit grave acts in contrast to our beliefs and doctrines.”
I asked that question to him before if Anglicans can excommunicate… didn’t get an answer, see now, I am more confused.
But I never read anywhere that they can and so I think I agree with you.
Just to say, I’m speaking for myself, that you are not unwelcome here.
Peace…
Anglicans could, theoretically, break communion with one another (and have), but formal excommunication is not technically possible. More’s the pity.
GKC
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GKC
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Jerry_Parker
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SIA had said: [T]*he Anglican Communion does NOT teach that same sex unions are acceptable and it also does not teach that clergy involved in actively gay relationships is acceptable either. *
Although SIA has been banned, he did bring up a significant point. However, I would say, from my experience of Anglicanism and its notorious tendency to tergiversate endlessly, that not only does Anglicanism (whatever that even means!) not teach any one thing about gay sex unions, but that it does not teach much about anything whatever, although some individual Anglican corporate members of the Anglican Communion and of other “outsider” Anglican bodies have policies about certain matters. Some Anglo-Catholic parishes or individual clergy teach what sound like firm doctrinal positions, but the ecclesial bodies of which they are part do not, which means that chaos reigns and that nothing truly is “official”. That is, to put it according to taste, “the beauty of Anglicanism”, “the comprehensiveness of Anglicanism”, or “the despair of Anglicans” (among other ways one could rate this ambiguity).Anglicanism did teach at one time within a fairly well delimited range of acceptable doctrines, in its “classic formularies”, among which are the 39 Articles of Religion, the Book of Common Prayer and its Ordinal, the original B.C.P. Catechism, and the two Books of Homilies. However, Anglo-Catholics among the Tractarians and their successors rejected many of these as “too Protestant”, which put into gear the rejection of the same on the part of many “broad” and liberal churchmen as “too restrictive”, until no normative positions from what would constitute truly authoritative documents could be pinned down and enforced. Indeed, any attempt doctrinally to classify amorphous Anglicanism is like trying to pin jelly to the wall, as some have said!
So, regarding those fornicating, sexually active same-sex bedmates and clergy, about the only positive thing that a Catholic or Orthodox Christian can say is that, at least, they are not breaking much of any ecclesial vow (except, perhaps, those arbitrary and/or twisted vows that they set for themselves), which, alas, Catholics in same sex unions or as sexually active gays among the clergy, indeed do break and trample upon.
Jerry Parker
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GKC
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Jason_1977
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Firstly, Anglican is the UK term, Episcopalian is the US term, they both refer to the same community. I was episcopalian. For 30 years in fact! It is in a state of schism. Nothing was sacred anymore. Priests marrying each other in churches??? It’s a bloody circus!!! I would have no part of it. The catholic church for all its faults CONDONES such things, and for all its bumps & bruises, it’s a voice in the right direction. My mother was upset for leaving the Church of England, but I couldn’t be a part of a house divided. I wont. I also wont be a part of a circus. I was sad to see it in such a state. But, I became confirmed in the RCC< and I am happier, and even MORE knowledgable & have learned WAY more about my spirituality, faith, scripture, etc than I EVER did in being Episcopalian/Anglican for 30 years. I understand your frustration. You’re not in Kansas anymore. Trust me, I lived in frustration for 6 years before I had had enough.
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Jerry_Parker
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Jason,
When I was part of the Protestant Episcopal Church, then of the Anglican Church of Canada, for years I simply could not conceive of any other kind of Christianity as having any appeal or more than purely formal validity. Anglicanism seemed the very essence of true Christianity, its very fulness embodies corporately. However, the rug kept getting ripped from under the feet. The sorest contention was the abandonment of the Book of Common Prayer, the liturgical treasure (1928 U.S. and 1959/1962 Canadian editions, which only differ to rather small degree) that made Anglicanism to have the beauty, appeal, decorum, and some sense of unity that the newer liturgies have not provided. The newer liturgies were banal compared to the loveliness of the traditional B.C.P. and, worse, were doctrinally vague or tainted with outright errors. Then came the blow of the ordination of women, first to the presbyterate (priesthood) then to the episcopacy, when upset the continuity and nullified the validity of Anglican orders. Then ever more radical entrenchment of modernism in all of its trendy guises, the most spectacular of which was and is the gay agenda, due more to flagrant and scornfully explicit abandonment of Scriptural authority than to conviction (to which some other Christians have come) of the rightness on biblical grounds of gay sexual identity and activity.
I left Protestant Episcopalianism/Anglicanism behind for Lutheranism, a big improvement in many ways, but came to see the doctrinal weaknesses of Lutheranism both in its conservative form (which falsely calls itself “confessional”) and in its liberal aspect. The errors of each were quite different, but, essentially, equally appalling. On moving to Rouyn-Noranda, I found that neither Anglican nor Lutheran parishes still were extant, though Anglicanism had been so in very recent memory. Turning to the sects (Reformed Baptist, the better, Pentecostalism the infinitely worse) is no real option at all, and Eastern Orthodoxy, to which I had been so drawn in Montréal, had no genuinely living presence in the entire Abitibi region, I resigned myself to Roman Catholicism, first reluctantly, now more energetically.
Yeah, guy, we both “had had enough” of these forms of the Anglican form of rank mainline Protestantism!
Pax, Jerry Parker
**You wrote about: ** *leaving the Church of England … I couldn’t be a part of a house divided. I won’t. I also won’t be a part of a circus. I was sad to see it in such a state. But, I became confirmed in the RCC and I am happier, and even MORE knowledgable & have learned WAY more about my spirituality, faith, scripture, etc than I EVER did in being Episcopalian/Anglican for 30 years. I understand your frustration. You’re not in Kansas anymore. Trust me, I lived in frustration for 6 years before I had had enough. *
Passionate words, those! When I was part of the Protestant Episcopal Church, then of the Anglican Church of Canada, for years I simply could not conceive of any other kind of Christianity as having any appeal or more than purely formal validity. Anglicanism seemed the very essence of true Christianity, its very fulness embodies corporately. However, the rug kept getting ripped from under the feet. The sorest contention was the abandonment of the Book of Common Prayer, the liturgical treasure (1928 U.S. and 1959/1962 Canadian editions, which only differ to rather small degree) that made Anglicanism to have the beauty, appeal, decorum, and some sense of unity that the newer liturgies have not provided. The newer liturgies were banal compared to the loveliness of the traditional B.C.P. and, worse, were doctrinally vague or tainted with outright errors. Then came the blow of the ordination of women, first to the presbyterate (priesthood) then to the episcopacy, when upset the continuity and nullified the validity of Anglican orders. Then ever more radical entrenchment of modernism in all of its trendy guises, the most spectacular of which was and is the gay agenda, due more to flagrant and scornfully explicit abandonment of Scriptural authority than to conviction (to which some other Christians have come) of the rightness on biblical grounds of gay sexual identity and activity.I left Protestant Episcopalianism/Anglicanism behind for Lutheranism, a big improvement in many ways, but came to see the doctrinal weaknesses of Lutheranism both in its conservative form (which falsely calls itself “confessional”) and in its liberal aspect. The errors of each were quite different, but, essentially, equally appalling. On moving to Rouyn-Noranda, I found that neither Anglican nor Lutheran parishes still were extant, though Anglicanism had been so in very recent memory. Turning to the sects (Reformed Baptist, the better, Pentecostalism the infinitely worse) is no real option at all, and Eastern Orthodoxy, to which I had been so drawn in Montréal, had no genuinely living presence in the entire Abitibi region, I resigned myself to Roman Catholicism, first reluctantly, now more energetically.
Yeah, guy, we both “had had enough” of these forms of the Anglican form of rank mainline Protestantism!
Pax, Jerry Parker
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GKC
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Anglican is the generic term, as in the worldwide Anglican Communion, and Episcopalian is the specific term, for the US (the Episcopal Church) and possibly 4-6 other of the 38 independent Churches which comprise the Anglican Communion, who use “Episcopal” as part of their title (as, the Episcopal Church of Scotland). The rest (including jurisdictions not in communion with Cantaur) are referred to as Anglican. Or, as I said, any Anglican can be called Anglican, Episcopalian or otherwise.
The OP was making that distinction, between Anglicans, generally, and the Episcopal Church, specifically.
GKC
*Anglicanus-Catholicus *
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