Thank you Coptic.
As an Anglo Catholic, I do not call myself Protestant. I believe in the Sacraments and the Graces they impart. My view of salvation is almost identical to yours.
Ironically, I found the Sacraments in Scripture, then discovered Tradition, then left the Southern Baptist Church. I’m only one stop away from the CC.
Anna
P.S. Not all Anglicans believe in same sex marriage or the ordination of those of same sex affection (who have not taken a vow of celibacy.)
Anna,
I am responding to your post above more than the thread topic, but what is the common denominator of all these threads including this one? Thread is the perfect name for the discussions. They are threads all connected in a bigger fabric, pieces of the big tapestry. Why do people have these discussions about religion? Why are we all not happy in our denominations minding our business leaving one another alone?
You remind me of two people, one I knew personally and another historical figure, because in tracking your thought as expressed in posts I see similarity in your ideas, a pattern maybe that indicates you are following the same path. It is there in where you have been and possibly are going through the intellectual process or chain of events.
When I go fishing occassionally the fishing line gets in a giant snare. Untangling it is a giant frustration. You want to be fishing, looking at the ocean or river, casting your tackle, catching fish. You can’t be doing the thing you are supposed to be doing, because your line is a big ball of mess. You have to trace all the same looking stuff that seems hopelessly entangled and if you pull at a thread it might come free or it might tie harder knots. You will either give up and cut all the mess out and start again or be patient and contiunue to try to save the line.
This is how I see Christendom divided. We are all in a tangled up snare and it prevents us from fishing for men, from accomplishing our divine mission.
One of the things that cause us to change is discomfort. Another thing is seeing some thing or some place that appeals to us more than what we have or where we are.
One person you remind me of is John Henry Newman. He is one of the great Christian minds, as you probably already know, of the last couple of centuries. He was Anglican and fiercely defended Anglicanism and saw it as the link between Protestanism and Catholicism, the bridge in the gap. I wish he were right, because my great desire is unity. If there is a link, or a bridge that will reunite fractured Christnedom I don’t care what it is.
Unfortunately he was not right, at least on that. Outside of pockets here and there like yours, Anglicanism is collapsed as anything resembling what it once was and has abandoned the very core foundations of the Christian faith delivered to us by our forebears.
But in Newman’s day this was not so. He saw Anglicanism as the middle way, maybe the means of untangling the mess and allowing us to get back to fishing. He lived before the emergence of the born again notions as expressed in the get saved Protestant phenomeon of today existed. He saw himself as Catholic, because he was completely in line with you in what you expressed in the first sentence of your post above. He could have written it.
He was the most preminent Anglican leader and recoginzed intellectual powerhouse defending Anglicanism of his day, a day in which the Anglican religion had not of the problems it suffers today. Yet he converted to Catholicism and became the leader of Catholic Angland. The things he defended vehemently he quit. It would be like seeing Barack Obama become a Republican conservative.
