Saints and Marian devotion in Episcopal Church

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I have been reading in an episcopal forum that Marian and saints’ devotion, not forbidden or taught, can an episcopal give me a position on this?
 
I’m Anglican, not specifically Episcopalian, but I can tell you.

It depends on which Episcopalian or Anglican you are thinking of. Some jurisdictions will teach both, some will not. Some will encourage it, some will not. Those teaching/encouraging/practicing it will mostly be found on the Anglo-Catholic side of the traditional Anglican spectrum. Those on the evangelical/reformed side, less so.

My parish does both. Our Mary Shrine is OL of Walsingham.
 
I am not Episcopalian, but I am a former Anglican. Basically, the same as @GKMotley said. If you want to know the answer, ask 10 Episcopalians and you’ll get something between nine and 11 different answers, all different and all perfectly permissible within the range of Anglican theology.

In short, there are Anglicans who pray the rosary and the Angelus, venerate images or statues of Our Lady, ask for the intercession of Our Lady and other saints, make pilgrimages to Marian shrines, keep Our Lady’s feast days, and so on.

There are also Anglicans who decry Mariolatry and believe that so-called “saints” are just dead people who are sleeping until the day of judgement and therefore are in no position to pray for us. Speaking of Walsingham, there are Anglicans who go there on pilgrimage, but there also Anglicans who go there to protest. “Walsingham no place for archbishop of Canterbury”, read one banner when Archbishop Runcie visited the shrine. The most famous slogan is, “Behold the waltzing ham show with its wobbling high doll mimic praise to Jesus Satan’s farce”.

In the middle there are the “modern Catholic” or “liberal Catholic” Anglicans who perhaps say a Hail Mary at the end of the intercessory prayers, invoke the prayers of a saint on his feast day, hold a few of the Marian feasts, such as the annunciation, though not the really Catholic ones like the assumption or the Immaculate Heart. They probably don’t have statues.

Note also the language used by Anglicans. The really High Church ones will say “Our Lady”, the ones in the middle will say “the Blessed Virgin Mary”, and the really Low Church ones will just say “Mary”. There’s also the relatively new phenomenon of Anglicans who are drawn more towards Eastern Orthodoxy, who may say “the Mother of God” (in the English-speaking world not routinely used outside the rosary and when discussing the Council of Ephesus).

Anglican Churches around the world (including TEC) have calendars of saints, which vary somewhat from one Church to another. Traditionally, it’s said that the only post-Reformation saint recognised by the Church of England is Charles, king and martyr. However, Anglicans do in practice recognise many post-Reformation saints, including Catholic and Orthodox saints and Protestant non-conformists who aren’t really considered to be saints by anyone. TEC has a feast day for W.E.B. Du Bois, who wasn’t even a Christian.
 
So there are episcopalians who have devotion to the saints, have statues and do prayers and others who don’t? If I became the Episcopal Church, could I, for example, maintain these practices?
 
I’dont change for Episcopal Church, i have this doubts.
 
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A well constructed exposition of the motley crew of Anglicanism. I might add a furbelow here or there, but no need. I would say that in the 15 years or so I’ve been posting here (both board incarnations) around 1/4, by weight, of my 16k+ posts have addressed in some fashion the subject of “Anglicans: who they/what they/why they”.

Kudos.
 
CTBcin said:
Anglicanism sure is fascinating- and confusing!
Click to expand...
I think if you look at the history of the Church of England, its shifts between Catholicism and Protestantism and back again (and back again, and back again) and its attempt to find a series of compromises that would enable as many Christians as possible to worship within the same national church; and if you then look at how the Church of England has given birth to a worldwide communion of Anglican churches, each independent of all the others; and then how many Anglican churches have become even more independent by removing themselves from that communion; then you can see how a multiplicity of practices and shades of belief can be found within the world of Anglicanism. Some find that unhealthy, some find it healthy, some just find it motley.
 
Me, I’d crack down with the iron hand of dogma and discipline. But no one will let me. So, like Anglicans generally ( a dangerous expression) I settle for a self-filtering system.
 
I would say it would be odd, for an Episcopalian. As a former lifelong Episcopalian, (not low church) I only ever heard prayer to/for the dead on All Souls Day and no one ever mentioned the Blessed Mother. Over the last several years that church has gotten more and more progressive and they officially don’t hold traditional Christian beliefs (although individual churches may be more traditional). It had become more like a political movement than a religious one when my family and I left for the Catholic Church. I would say that the Anglican Church would be more likely to have Marian devotion and prayer to saints and traditional Christian belief.
 
Yep, I have a friend of mine that is Anglican Church in North America, and she to the best of my knowledge, I don’t know if she still does but she did pray the rosary, believe in the real presence, and practice auricular confession. There’s a wide range there. I can’t answer the question, because I’m Catholic so I have to refer to someone I know.
 
Londoner’s reply, while based primarily on the CoE, is a good overview of Anglicanism and its …breadth.

ACNA is moderate, as to the overall Anglican spectrum of praxis. Some of this, some of that.
 
in the episcopal forum many said that they do this by praying with the saints but some practices such as calling Our Lady as “co-redeemer” was something more.
 
Without anything to back it up, I’d guess you could find Episcopalians that might use that term.

No guarantees.
 
I am an Anglican as well, and I can tell you it varies by jurisdiction. Some teach Marian devotion on some level. There are Anglicans(my almost former church and others) who teach the Hail Mary and have statues of her. I never learned the rosary or other Marian prayers. Traditional Anglicans venerate Our Lady of Walsingham. Many Anglicans, including my parents have taught me that Catholics love Mary too much and are on the verge of worshipping her.
 
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