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Peter_J
Guest
That’s not just true of conservative and liberal … We could likewise say e.g. that the more Lutheran (as it were) a Lutheran denomination is, the harder it is for not-so-Lutheran s to belong to it.
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Peter_J
Guest
From my conversations will “traditionalists”, e.g. in the SSPX, it seems that different people have different answers to that question.
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Faithdancer
Guest
I attend a congregation of the Anglican Church in North America, the largest Continuing Anglican “splinter” group in the US, not in communion with Canterbury at present. The general feeling is that the US Episcopal Church leadership has completely lost its way on everything from marriage to teaching and preaching the gospel. So, yeah, I think the title of this thread is pretty accurate.
p.s. I also attend Roman Catholic services, having started again recently after a couple of years of licking my wounds. Of course I cross my arms and receive a blessing come communion time.
p.s. I also attend Roman Catholic services, having started again recently after a couple of years of licking my wounds. Of course I cross my arms and receive a blessing come communion time.
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Peter_J
Guest
Not to nit pick, but I’ve always heard of the ACNA as not being “Continuing Anglican”.
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Contarini
Guest
I certainly distinguish the two, and I suspect that the older “Continuing Anglicans” would not want to be confused with the ACNA.
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GKC
Guest
Technically, true. The ACNA is in formal communion with portions of the Anglican Communion, and accepted as part of it, by some member jurisdictions. The Continuum is not in such a relationship and that has usually been a distinction between them.
A nit I declined to pick.
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GKC
Guest
Wish them well, though.
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7_Sorrows
Guest
What is continuing Anglican?
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GKC
Guest
A generic, informal term for (mainly) those Anglicans (mostly in this country, thus mostly Episcopalians) who began to break from the Episcopal Church in, roughly, 1978 or so, over various trends, things, and oddities that TEC was beginning to do. And continues to do.
I belong to a jurisdiction that is is Continuing Anglican.
Here’s an intro.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuing_Anglican_movement
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Sy_Noe
Guest
I’m not an Episcopalian but your memory about the legs seems intact.
Reason is the 3rd leg.
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7_Sorrows
Guest
Thanks GKC. I had never heard the term Continuing Anglican until I joined CAF. it would be nice if all the continuing Anglican groups could unite under one name. I left the Episcopal church in 1970 and did not return until around 1980 or 1981 and I sensed things were different. I thought it might be because I was in a different city and state that they did things differently. Little did I know what had been taking place 5 years earlier. I didn’t like the changes. I liked the prayerbook of 1928 for one and I didn’t like the idea of female priests.
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Murmurs
Guest
(A quibble of course, but one can be both liberal socially and otherwise very right wing. A supporter of women’s ordination doesn’t necessarily believe in nationalising the steel industry).
(I second the Chesterton recommendation!)
But isn’t it interesting. The Catholic Church has a similar attitude towards the Bible only it is a top-down rather than even potentially bottom-up approach. I know which I prefer (which is why, baptised an Anglican, I am now Roman Catholic!).
But I also understand the appeal of the other. The Catholic attitude is essentially “if we can construe that the Apostles, those gathered at Nicaea, etc, would have believed this, then we should too.” Given how little of early Christian writing actually survives, this is itself sometimes basically an intellectual exercise to glean fragments from Catholic writing through the ages. The Catholic approach is fine, and I trust to Matt. 16:18 on the matter, but I don’t think there is less reason in sorting out what belongs to the Magesterium, or more genuine and fervent prayer, than what happens in the Anglican Communion on knotty doctrinal issues of the day.
The Anglican attitude is characterised in the intellectual enquiry in the spirit of the Renaissance, which, after all, shouldn’t be surprising given the Renaissance intellectually fed into the Reformation. With the exception of a few colleges turning out relatively tiny numbers of ordinands, and those of course in the American colonies before 1789, all Anglican clergymen until the 19th century went either to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge (although admittedly that was partly because they were the only options available to anyone!), Anglican writing has always been characterised by a fairly rigourous intellectual approach. All Anglicans were essentially trained by the same institutions in a very similar ‘establishment’ way (even if they disagreed, the reasoning often impeccable). Reason, therefore, is from that historical perspective a perfectly, well, reasonable, 3rd leg to the stool. From the internal reference it probably makes a lot more sense than the Magisterium (“we can work out our problems for ourselves” is the most laudable, if sometimes ultimately rather arrogant, feature of humanity)
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GKC
Guest
That’s 2 of the major points that began the exodus of what are now called Continuing Anglicans. My parish uses the 1928 Book. Some Continuers do use the 79.
As to getting all the Continuing jurisdictions into a single group (that’s pretty much how they started), many attempts have been made to herd those cats. It’s always making progress, and losing ground.
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Peter_J
Guest
FWIW, I sometimes feel like a third leg myself.
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commenter
Guest
I have relatives who insist “I have to think for myself” on issues like abortion and SSM. When they express their views, they invariably repeat, almost verbatim, the doctrines of the mega corporations that control the media. When I taught grad students up until last year, their process of “reason” almost always presupposed the categories, the assumptions, set by the Media. Thus they reached the same conclusions as the Media. Teachers who fail to “get with the program” tend not to get tenure.
The “3 legged stool” of Scripture, Tradition, and Reason may have worked in other eras, when schools and denominations were independent of the Media, when the Media was decentralized, when people were trained in critical thinking. Today some people follow a reliable living Magisterium, in which there is wide latitude to interpret Scripture, Tradition, and using their reason; or else, they follow the unreliable “magisterium” of the dominant secular culture. Nobody is “thinking for themselves”.
I believe groups like the Anglican Continuum, or ACNA, are indirectly responding a little to the living Magisterium for instance by upholding the Natural Law, and other things. The TEC has mostly abandoned it. Slowly but surely the TEC will become Unitarian, though retain its forms of liturgy and Christian language. The 3 legged stool doesn’t work today, without the Magisterium.
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Glomung
Guest
I don’t intend to offend any Unitarians here, but the whole point of Unitarianism is that “there is no point”. That is to say that their doctrine is that they have no doctrine.
Why bother?
A particular statement is either true or false regardless of whether someone believes it or not. The whole point of existence is to find the truth and accept it. That is why I am Roman Catholic. Having known what the TRUTH is, I cannot be anything else. I can be a bad Catholic, but cannot be a non-Catholic without lying to myself.
And here is where we get to the crux of the issue. Those who are willing to accept sloppy theology that suits their whims and fancies are truly lying to themselves.
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Memaw
Guest
Can’t happen, Christ promised HIS Church would NEVER teach error. Many have tried that in the 2,000 years of Catholic History and never could, not even with “help” from within. They may do harm to their own faith and that of others, but the Church will continue on in the TRUTH till the end of time. If disobedient Catholics can’t destroy the Church from within, no one from the “outside” will ever be able to either. Thanks to the Holy Spirit, God Bless, Memaw
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Sy_Noe
Guest
UU has 7 guiding principles. You’re only right in so far as these 7 guiding principles are not dogma or doctrine. But they are moral values and guides by which the UU strives to live his or her life by…
1st Principle: The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
2nd Principle: Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
3rd Principle: Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
4th Principle: A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
5th Principle: The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
6th Principle: The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
7th Principle: Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.
uua.org/beliefs/what-we-believe/principles
So why do UU’s bother? What’s the point?
Now granted you may not agree with their search. But see their 7 principles and also note #4: A search for the truth.
And therein lies the point and why UU’s bother.
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Michael1978
Guest
Who decides what the truth is?
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Sy_Noe
Guest
You believe the Catholic Church. Others believe differently or are still searching. That doesn’t at all mean that truth is relative and that there is no ultimate truth. In merely means that in any case, the truth is we can’t truly know or believe we know, without faith. Walking by faith not by sight. And time will tell who is right and who is not, if anyone fully is.
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